School’s Out

So, if you read my last entry, then you have a brief rundown of what’s gone on in my life lately.  I figure I’ll just start at the top and work my way down.  So, this entry will be devoted to school and loans.  I mean, I figure, why not get the boring stuff out of the way?

Graduation day came and I was completely calm through the whole thing.  I had a wee bit of reading material available for the name-calling section.  However, she breezed through the names.  There were almost 400 graduates, and the entire commencement service took only 2 hours.  That’s short.  Very short.  We had the president from another University in Tennessee (I can’t remember which school, though) and he had an excellent speech, but it was short…and that made everything very nice.

Afterward, I had pictures done with my parents and then my mom wanted to take pictures all over the campus because we didn’t do it the first time I graduated.  So, she took like 15 pictures of me with the Lee sign and my degree and then me and my dad with the Lee sign and my degree and then us with just the Lee sign…and a bajillion other pictures.  We went to lunch after that, and then it was all over.  I came home, cleaned house, took a nap, and realized that this time it’s for real and for all the cookies.  If I don’t get a job in my career now, I’m totally screwed.  Instead, I’ll think about how I’ll get a job as a teacher and I’ll get to mold young minds…or warp them, depending on how you view the learning process.

Okay, so moving from the boring stuff onto the boringer stuff.  School loans.  Chances are, if you went to college or university, you have ’em.  I was fortunate enough in my undergrad to only have about $15k.  That’s cheap for five years of a private college.  I worked my tail off to keep the loans as low as possible.  I also was able to avoid having unsubsidized loans – those are the ones that the interest begins building while you’re in school.  I didn’t have those during my undergrad.

This time around, however, I had to have them or I wouldn’t be able to live in my apartment.  So, after all that, I have roughly a bill somewhere in the 40s.  It’s funny that I’m not flipping out about it.  So, I called the lender to see about consolidating and get this:
My loan repayment schedule is set for 25 years.  I know that sounds like a long time, but keep listening.

My monthly payment will be close to $250.  Since I had budgeted $500 a month, I’m going to stick with it and that extra $250 will go straight to the principal.

What this means is that with unsubsidized loans, the interest compounds, so the more you can take off the principal, you reduce the number of payments exponentially.  So, by paying double the monthly payment, I don’t reduce my payment schedule in half, but a semi-great deal more.   So.  I’m looking to have it paid off within 10 years.  And every year that I get a raise, I’ll put that extra toward the loan payment and that’ll speed it up even more.

Now, onto the interest rate.  I had to call them to get everything settled before the end of June because interest rates are going to jump up somewheres near 6%.  Now, Suntrust is nice in that, when my consolidation goes through, my interest rate is locked in at the current percentage.  So, I will pay that percent in interest for the rest of my repayment period.  However, in order to keep my rates down near 4-5%, I had to go ahead and forego my grace period and settle in with the consolidation now.  I’m going to call a service person and see if I can get a deferment since I don’t have a job yet.  However, so as not to mar my credit report too much, I’ll get off the deferment as soon as possible and hopefully not have to keep it for six months.

Anyway, what all this means is that I will have a full consolidation of ALL my loans – graduate and undergraduate – with a locked-in interest rate of 4.5%.  Not too shabby.  But it gets better.  If I sign up for automatic deduction from my bank account, they’ll knock another .25% off that.  Then, once I’ve paid 24 on-time consecutive payments, they drop another 1% off that.  So.  In two years, I’ll be repaying at a locked-in 3.25% interest rate.  Can’t beat that.

Now the only thing to do is find some children with minds that I can warp.

Coming soon:  Los Angeles and the surrounding (almost lack of) drama.