Steps to Repaying Your Student Loans

By Sean Flynn

Repaying student loans is one of the biggest challenges that university and college graduates face. When you are still a student, the more you get, the better. However, once you complete college and then it dawns on you that you need to repay that loan, you get to know how the whole process might be.

In this article, I have outlined a number of tips that might help you pay up your students loans and not have them bog you down.

Consolidate your loans. Even though your student loans may have been received separately, it is important to merge all your loans so that you can tell the financial burden that you have to carry just for repaying your loans.

Know how much you owe. When you are a student, it is usually about getting the money. Just like you would do with your normal debt, it is much easier to borrow than to repay. The first thing that you need to know when you are repaying your student loans is to clarify the amount that you owe. Know how much of it is the principal amount and how much of it is the interest.

Set clear goals. Now that you know how much you owe, it is time to set goals on how you will repay your student loans. Put up goals that are measurable, attainable, and timely. Ensure that you are clear on when you intend to have cleared the whole debt, how much you shall be paying and how frequently you shall be paying. To make the goals measurable, break down the whole project into a couple of milestones. This will help you keep track of your success in regards to repaying your student loans.

Now that everything has now been done, it is time to prepare a budget. This will enable you to allocate concrete money to the repayment of student loans. You can choose to pay the whole debt at once or you can choose to pay it in bits. It all depends with you. At this stage, discipline is the most important thing if you are to achieve your goal. If you are planning to be paying $4,000 every year and your annual income stands at $26,000, you need to budget your expenditure as if your annual income is $22,000.

Take advantage of existing tax laws. To encourage people to take up student loans, current tax laws allow for borrowers to treat interest paid on student loans as a tax-deductible expense, up to a certain limit. The more time you take to pay your loan, the higher the interest amount that will be required.

Create reminders. Always make sure that you repay your loans as agreed. This will help you a great deal in avoiding the bad credit tag just because you have failed to repay your loans. In case you have difficulties in repaying your loan, consult your creditor and agree with him as to when you will be able to honor your obligations.

Every person's student loans repayment is different. What is convenient for me may not be convenient for you. This is because many of the repayments, depend on the level of income, personal needs, saving habits and much more. For this reason, no single plan can claim to cover all the intricacies of repaying student loans. However, the tips raised here will form a very good foundation for anyone who wants to quickly finish his or her loan repayment obligations. - 31377

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