My last student loan – for my doctorate – showing a zero balance

There you go, folks. That is what it looks like to no longer owe anything in student loans. Not only does it look pretty good, but it feels pretty good, too. Also, here is another screenshot from another part of the student loan website showing the zero balance. Check it out:

My student loans are fully repaid – all of them

As I mentioned the other day, I plan on writing more about student loans from time to time, but I just do not have much more to write about my own repayment journey because it is now, completely, over.

I repaid $244,826.91 in undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral student loans. The debt was comprised of $193,430.16 in loan principal, $14,313.42 in capitalized interest, $2,146.59 in closing and refinancing fees, and $34,936.74 in interest. My lenders included the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, their subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, CitiBank, and SoFi. You can read my entire student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

A screenshot of my last student loan payment, which went out this morning

Then two years later in August 2015, I started on a new academic journey to earn a doctorate. That quest ended in May 2018 when I earned my doctorate from the University of Southern California at a grand total cost of $89,286.86. I also financed my doctoral program through student loan debt. Repayment on those student loans began in December 2018 and now, just about two years later, I am happy to announce that I have fully repaid the doctoral student loans as of this morning. When I have a screenshot available of that student loan balance coming in at $0, then I will share it here for everyone to see.

The final count for the doctoral student loans is as follows:

$87,360.16 in loan principal
$1,878.84 in capitalized interest
$47.86 in closing and refinancing fees
$6,084.93 in interest

Total Amount Repaid: $95,371.79

When you add up the undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral student loans, the total amount I repaid is $244,826.91. I never missed a payment, never incurred a late fee, and never asked for a deferment for any reason. I took out this debt knowing that it meant I would have to repay the obligations I was incurring. I never asked for my loans to be forgiven. I never contemplated a world where I would want them to be forgiven. I never believed that other people should be forced to pay for my student loans. The discipline needed to pay off these loans gave me a near perfect credit score.

While I am thankful that my student loan repayment journey is at an end (for good, this time), I am even more thankful of the financial discipline and education that I was able to garner over the last 14 years. Stay tuned to my blog for more student loan entries in the future… they just will not be covering my own student loan repayment because it’s finally over!

I repaid $244,826.91 in undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral student loans. The debt was comprised of $193,430.16 in loan principal, $14,313.42 in capitalized interest, $2,146.59 in closing and refinancing fees, and $34,936.74 in interest. My lenders included the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, their subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, CitiBank, and SoFi. You can read my entire student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Just in terms of raw numbers, when I started repaying my doctoral student loan in December 2018, I owed $89,286.86. Today, I owe $49,301.17, though I just made a $17,000 payment so my loan balance will drop after that payment is applied. And there you have it – that is the big difference between me paying back a student loan in the year 2020 and me working like a madman to pay back my student loans 10+ years ago. Today, with a lot of experience and seasoning under my belt, I am a highly educated professional who earns a respectable living and who has curated several sources of income. It was easy to set up a strategy to pay back the new student loan at this point in my life because I have worked diligently to be a position to not have major financial obligations like this become life-defining. In fact, I plan to have the rest of this student loan paid in full by early December of this year. That would not have been possible during my first time around paying back my loans.

Is it easy to make these big payments to eliminate this loan? No, of course not. Sending any entity a $17,000 check is frustrating for so many reasons. I can certainly put that money to better use in the stock market, in improving my home, as a charitable donation, or any other number of potential uses. However, I am a big believer that you repay the debts that you owe and then you move on with life, so I am going to repay this final student loan and then focus on those other things. Besides, my investment portfolio is doing pretty well as it is with the markets (for which I am thankful, given the pandemic) and my charitable causes are all weathering the storm as best as can be expected. Even my 401k is not that bad at the moment, which is remarkable given the instability in the larger economy.

I have been thinking about putting together a new footer for these student loan posts. You may recall that I had a standard footer in my old student loan entries and it looked like this:

Here is the update that I am going to begin using on posts like this one, though I will change it in the future to highlight the total amount of principal, interest, and fees that I repaid over the course of all of these loans.

Through my undergraduate, masters, and doctoral programs, I incurred $209,890.17 in student loan debt. The debt was comprised of $193,430.16 in loan principal, $14,313.42 in capitalized interest, and $2,146.59 in closing and refinancing fees. My lenders included the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, the USED’s subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, CitiBank, and SoFi. Both the USED and SoFi used the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (commonly known as MOHELA) to service my loans. I repaid my undergraduate and masters loans in August 2013. In total, I paid $149,455.12 on those loans including $120,603.31 in consolidated principal and $28,851.81 in interest. I continue to repay my doctoral loan and, to date, I have paid $62,652.35 including $56,944.27 in consolidated principal and $5,708.05 in interest. You can read my entire student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Graduating from the USC Rossier School of Education last spring

Well, that doctoral program has come and gone and I absolutely loved it. Soon, I intend to post an entry talking about the tremendous experience that I had as part of the University of Southern California’s online doctoral program. It was amazing and really rewrote the entire online learning experience for me. Again, though, that story is for another time. This update is about student loans.

To start, I do not intend to write a series of updates about my student loan repayment experience like I did after I graduated from Monmouth University and Rutgers University some 10+ years ago. Writing about my on-going repayment of the $120,603.31 in student loans that I incurred getting a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree was fun, but I have already provided that type of content to this blog and I do not want to write about the same issue in the same manner again. Also, my personal circumstances during this repayment are much different than they were back in 2006 when I started that repayment program. When I started repaying my first set of loans back in July 2006, I did not even have a full-time job yet. Now, I have two full-time jobs and two thriving small businesses… so yeah, my situation is a little bit different.

What is also different is the amount of student loan debt that I needed to incur to complete the doctoral program. All in, I took on $89,286.86 in new student loans. This number is comprised of $87,360.16 in loan principal, $1,878.84 in capitalized interest, and $47.86 in closing and refinancing fees. For those of you keeping count, when you combine all of the student loan principal, capitalized interest, and closing and refinancing fees that I have had to pay off in my lifetime, that number is $209,890.17.

Pretty amazing, right?

Just for fun, if you want to add in the $28,851.81 that I have already paid in interest during the first set of student loans, then the total amount that I have repaid and am still tasked with repaying is $238,741.98.

In terms of repayment, the first set of student loans took me seven years and one month to repay in full. Those seven years did not necessarily go by quickly in terms of financial time. In other words, repaying those loans was brutal to a young professional just getting his career started – in the nonprofit sector no less. Today, my repayment plan is a little bit different as my first payments began in December 2018 and I expect to have these loans paid in full sometime around the end of 2020 or the beginning of 2021. My estimates are still somewhat off because I am unsure if I want to repay the loans earlier and, to be honest, I am contemplating a few different repayment structures that make more financial sense. Unfortunately, my income is at a point where I can no longer write off my student loan interest as a deduction on my taxes, so paying interest on the student loans really has no financial benefit at all.

But there are other ways to make student loan interest work for you. For example, I own a home now and I have a good deal of equity in the home. If I refinance my student loans into my mortgage, then the interest incurred on the increased amount of the mortgage loan would be tax deductible (up to a point, given the recent state and local Tax limits). Also, I could take out a loan from my 401k and repay my loans that way, too. By doing that, 100% of the interest paid on the 401k loan would go back into my 401k and I would earn all of the interest paid. Either one of these options seems like a better choice than just making payments on the student loans.

That is about it for this student loan update. Again, no regular updates on my repayment this time around, but I might post a random update here and there, so be on the lookout!

Several years ago I wrote about how I was preparing to start a Post-Master’s Certificate program in Curriculum Studies. I remember writing that entry and at the time the only phrase I kept hearing go through my head was Chris Rock on the Howard Stern Show saying, “You’re going back to Shawshank!?” after Stern announced he was getting married again. I had that same thought going through my head when I started the Post-Master’s Certificate a few years ago and, in some respects, I have the same thought now as I prepare for this doctoral program.

There is a slight difference between now and then, though. When I started the Post-Master’s Certificate I had that, “Here we go again,” feeling because I was putting myself back in the classroom setting as a student. This time around I don’t have that feeling because I’m going back to the classroom setting as a student, rather I have that feeling because I’m going back to using student loans to finance my education. If you haven’t read my student loan story, then you can get a full rundown of my life with student loans by clicking here. If you scroll through those posts, you’ll find the one where I announce that I’ve fully repaid my student loans.

Though I need to take out student loans to finance my doctoral education, I am in a much different personal and financial place than I was when I finished my Master’s Degree in 2006. For example, after I graduated in 2006 I began working at a company in an entry level-type position making an entry level-type salary. Now, almost 10 years later, I still work at the same company and I’ve obviously progressed in my career. Granted, I don’t have the regular financial capacity to make $2,500 per month payments like I was making at the end of the aggressive, self-imposed repayment plan for my previous student loans. However, I do have the capacity to make payments on my new student loans while I’m still enrolled as a student.

And that’s probably the biggest difference between me being a student in 2015 versus me being a college student from 1999 to 2003 or a graduate student from 2004 to 2006. Today, I can afford to pay down my student loans during the actual semesters when I take them out in the first place. Will I be able to pay down the entirety of each loan during the semester when I’m taking the classes that the loan paid for? Probably not, but I’m in a much better position to try to do that now than I was 10+ years ago.

There are two other differences that I think are worth mentioning outside of the student loan issue. First, this is the first time that I’ll be taking fully online classes. In the past, I’ve successfully completed hybrid courses that are partially online and partially in the classroom. And for the last several years I’ve actually instructed many fully online classes. However, this will be the first time that I am a student in such a class. Second, this is the first time since I completed my Master’s Degree in 2006 where I’ll be taking more than one class per semester. After I graduated with the Master’s Degree, I completed two additional graduate programs by taking one class each semester (outside of textbooks, I didn’t pay to take these classes or to earn these degrees as I was provided with tuition remission at the local college where I work as an Adjunct Professor). The last time I was enrolled in more than one class as a student was during the spring semester of 2006.

All of these comments aside, I’m really looking forward to being engaged in the classroom as a student again. I’m particularly interested in engaging with my new classmates in an all-online setting. And, of course, I’m excited at the prospects of completing the doctoral program and finishing up a lifetime of classroom activity.

Remember when I paid off my student loans?

Now I’m not going to go into another discussion here about how I paid off my student loans and you can, too. Lord knows I’ve written enough about that stuff that if you really wanted to learn how I was able to pay off those loans and pay them off quickly, then you can find that information on the blog.

And yet, I was struck by my buddy’s utter shock at my having paid off my student loans. And this had me thinking about something for the rest of that night and for the days since the auction ended. Namely, there are some people in life who are victims and there are other people in life who are victors. I’m not suggesting that my buddy is a victim. In fact, he’s the furthest thing from a victim.

There are people out there, though, who look at the hand they were dealt and hang their shoulders in defeat; they essentially turn into Droopy. They may as well turn around and ask everyone to go ahead and kick them in the ass. That’s the victim mindset. That’s the mindset that takes whatever the world gives you and says, “Oh, I was hoping for something better. But okay. I guess this will do.”

It won’t do, damn it! Be a victor! Be someone who makes their own way on this planet. If you don’t like the hand that you’re dealt, then get a new hand. If you don’t like the new hand, then stop playing that game and get up and make something else of your life! We are all the end result of the various choices that we make – choose to be a victor. Choose to be the person with their hand raised at the end of the fight. Choose to win!

I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve made many mistakes and I’ve not always made the choices that led me to be the victor at the end of a particular fight. But when it came to student loans I made a conscious decision that I was winning this fight. In fact, I made the decision that I wasn’t just going to be the victor, I was going to be the conqueror! And I was…

Throw your excuses to the side and make this world your own. Be a victor – the choice is yours!

“Getting into debt beyond means of repayment” is ranked No. 5 on the Society of Occupational Medicine’s 2001 “Life Events Inventory,” which ranks the psychosocial stress of 100 life events. “Stress is one of the drivers for health conditions related to cardiovascular disease, allergies, diabetes (and) gastrointestinal disorders,” says [Carole] Stovall. That’s why paying off debt can result in physical healing. “When people pay off debt, they’re going to say ‘My stomach feels better, my heart feels better,'” says Stovall.

Regardless of what my doctor thinks is going on with my body, I’m convinced that my enjoying my return to the gym is directly related to not having a six-figure cloud hanging over my head. Now I workout not just because I need to for my health, but because I actually enjoy the entire working out process. It’s fun!

Eliminating debt is more than just a numbers game. It’s an act of breaking free from difficult past experiences. Debt associated with rough events — such as divorce or a reckless phase in life — is painful to carry around. So when you finally cut that debt from your life, you’ll likely “experience tremendous emotional liberation,” says Dallas-based financial adviser Derrick Kinney.

I guess I’m not the best person to make a comment on this particular outcome of paying off your debt because I don’t really carry around any emotional baggage. How this particular blurb translates to my life is that I can now actively plan and work towards achieving certain life goals that I should have achieved 6 – 8 years ago (for example, buying a permanent residence, building a sufficient retirement fund, and fully funding a just in case savings account). The article actually talks about these types of life goals in the context of buying a house and starting a family, so if you click on the link at the top of this entry, then you can read their take on achieving major life goals for yourself.

When you pay off a big debt, you strengthen your resolve to stay financially solvent. That comes with one important caveat: Your ability to stay out of debt likely depends on how you paid off your debt, says [Derrick] Kinney. If you worked hard to steadily pay off your debt, you likely have practiced discipline to keep your finances in check going forward.

Not only did I work hard to steadily pay off my debt, but I worked hard for years on end to pay off that debt! Even though I had a strong work ethic heading into my major repayment all of those years ago, there is no doubt that my work ethic and determination were both honed during this process. By adding precision to determination I believe I’ve developed a dangerous calculus for those obstacles that may get in my way in the future. There are a lot of ancillary skills that come along with devoting so much time and effort to a successful debt repayment – too many to list here. However, suffice to say that I agree with the point in the blurb above and I believe that my financial discipline is stronger than most individuals my age.

Click on the link above if to read more about the connection between psychology and paying off debt. Enjoy!

However, the biggest tangible shift that I’ve experienced since my last update (which was almost one full month ago!) is the new laptop that I find myself typing this entry on. That’s right – after 7+ years as my go-to home computing machine, my HP Pavilion dv8000 finally kicked the bucket. Well, to be honest it didn’t actually kick the bucket – rather the primary hard drive started skipping and slowing down to an unacceptable pace. This is a problem that can be easily fixed by installing a new primary hard drive, but I took the failure of the primary drive as a sign… that it was time to get a new computer. And that’s just what I did! The picture below shows an incredibly bright picture of my new laptop computer – check it out:

There’s my new laptop and the free tablet that came with it.

The new laptop is an HP Envy 17-j029nr Quad Edition Notebook PC and, if I’m not mistaken, this is the highest grade, pre-configured laptop that you can purchase at HP.com.

It’s a pretty bad ass machine.

There are too many bells and whistles for me to explain all of them, but they include a 24GB solid state drive dedicated solely to making start up and shut down times blazing fast (we’re talking less than 10 seconds and, in most cases, less than 5 seconds). Other cool features are the Beats Audio, the fingerprint scanning and log-in system (now I log-in to websites by swiping my finger across a reader built into my laptop), a terabyte of disk space, a fourth generation i7 processor, Windows 8, and a back-lit keyboard which makes it easy to read the letters and numbers in front of me when it gets dark around my laptop. When you add up all of the great benefits that I’m receiving by using this new laptop over the old one, the relatively few annoyances that I have with the new machine melt away. For example, I really liked the layout, size, and feel of the Pavilion’s keyboard. However, after about a week or so of using this new laptop I’m getting used to the feel and touch of the new keyboard system. Also, the left part of the keyboard on the Envy seems to dip and appears extra “soft” (which isn’t the right adjective to use, but it adequately describes that side of the keyboard). However, I really haven’t experienced any negative outcome because of this “softness,” so I’m assuming that it doesn’t really matter that much.

As a guy who knows a little something about technology – and I admit that what I know continues to decrease in an increasingly technological world – I’m very impressed with this system. And I’m glad that I bit the bullet and purchased the pre-configured system instead of building my own. This configuration is the one that HP knows, trusts, and manufactures in mass quantities. They obviously chose this configuration for a reason and the expertise of their design team is fine for me! Also, as an older “tech head” I tend to suffer from analysis paralysis when it comes to buying a new system. If you haven’t heard of analysis paralysis, then you should know that it basically means I analyze and consider different purchase options until I eventually convince myself that I don’t want to be the guy purchasing the system that is either already obsolete or will be obsolete within days or weeks of my purchase. I managed to get over that perspective when buying this laptop and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Two final points…

First, I don’t think that I’m done with the old HP Pavilion laptop just yet. The thing just needs a new primary hard drive and it’ll work fine. I can purchase a new primary hard drive and install it fairly easily. The issue will be kicking the internal backup drive into gear – if that can even be done. My purpose for doing that would be to transform the old laptop into a media hub for my television. Of course, this will all be easier to do and make much more sense once I purchase my own home and I have a living room that I’m setting up, but one thing at a time right now!

And on that note… second, it is really nice to not have the weight of student loans hanging over my head when situations like these come up. I use my laptop on a daily basis not just to browse the internet, but to manage the two small businesses that I own. I also use my laptop on a daily basis to manage my online presence for the classes that I teach and the one that I’m taking. Plus, my laptop allows me to work from home one day each week. So you can see what type of a crisis it is when I don’t have a laptop that is functioning. Before I repaid my student loans, this crisis would still be going on because I wouldn’t have been able to purchase a new laptop right away. However, with the student loans gone and no longer hanging over my head – I was able to purchase a new laptop (and a top-of-the-line one at that) without any problems.

The moral of the story is that being student loan free and facing a crisis isn’t a major problem any more.

And that’s the end of my student loans.

And not only is there nothing due on the loan, but it looks like MOHELA actually owes me 15 cents! Ha ha!

In July 2006 I began repaying $120,603.31 in student loan debt. This debt was comprised of $106,070.00 in loan principal, $12,434.58 in capitalized interest, and $2,098.73 in closing and refinancing fees. I made the final payment on this debt in August 2013. My lenders included the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, the USED’s subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, CitiBank, and the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (the USED sold my loan to MOHELA in April 2012). In total, I paid $149,455.12 to these lenders including $120,603.31 in consolidated principal and $28,851.81 in interest. You can read my entire student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Before I started an aggressive repayment plan in December 2009 it seemed like today would be impossible to realize. Think about the situation that I was faced with (and remember that many current large dollar student loan borrowers are still in similar situations): How could a guy manage to repay approximately $121 thousand in student loan debt with a bachelor’s degree in English and a master’s degree in Public Policy? Further, how could a guy repay such an astronomical figure much quicker than the 25 and 30 year repayment plans his lenders put him on? Worse yet, how could anyone who worked at a nonprofit organization, did not rely on outside financial support, did not live at home, paid all of their own bills (on-time), lived in the most expensive state in the union, and who felt a moral obligation to annually donate at least 10% of his income achieve this goal? To say that the odds were against this day coming as soon as it did is an understatement! This goal was nearly impossible for anyone to achieve.

It's over!

During my last “major announcement” post back in December 2010 I happily reported that I was done repaying the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA). The NJHESAA’s series of smaller NJCLASS loans were – after consolidation – one of the two major student loans that I was obligated to repay after graduating from a master’s degree program at Rutgers back in 2006. The other major series of smaller loans – also consolidated into a single loan – were from the United States Department of Education (USED) and their Direct Loans program. Ultimately, the USED sold my loan to the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA) – the lender that received my final payment earlier today.

I also had loans from two smaller sources including $1,400 from the USED’s federal Perkins loan program through Monmouth University and $7,000 (plus an additional $1,071.52 in interest) from Citibank’s student loan program.

Just as I reported after paying off my NJHESAA loan, here are the stats as they pertain to repaying my USED/MOHELA loan (these figures include both the amount of the loan and the capitalized interest; also, these are my figures and may be a few pennies or a dollar or two off from what the USED/MOHELA keeps on file).

The list above shows the various USED loans that I consolidated into the final $59,020.15 loan that I began repaying in 2006. If you study that list above, there are three lines that will probably bounce out and hit you – my summer session in 2002, my part-time graduate semester in 2004, and my first year in graduate school as a full-time student in 2004 – 2005. The first two of these line items probably stand out because I did not incur any USED loans during those semesters. Why didn’t I take out any loans, you ask? Simple. As an undergraduate, the USED would not advance me any loans if I was a part-time student – that eliminated me from potentially getting a loan during the summer of 2002 (I made up the difference from NJHESAA that summer). And in the spring of 2004 I was still deciding if I wanted to apply to the Rutgers graduate program where I was a non matriculated student. Again, being a part-time student didn’t allow me to take out any loans from the USED.

Of course, I did wind up applying to the Rutgers program on a full-time basis and that first full-time year of graduate school is the other line item that stands out in the list above. This line item stands out because it is so much higher than the rest of the line items at a whopping $19,156.45. What in the world could I need that much money for in a student loan?! Again, the answer is somewhat simple: somewhere along the line I figured out that the USED would advance loan funds to pay for my “living expenses” while I was going to school full-time.

If there is one thing that I can point to that inflated my total student loan debt more than anything else it would be the ability to add my “living expenses” to my student loan requests. Even though I worked part-time at two different jobs during my undergraduate years and full-time during my graduate years (in addition to owning and operating a small business), I still included my living expenses in my student loan requests. Those living expenses including my monthly rent payments, cell phone payments, food money, automobile payments, and Lord knows what else. Unfortunately, I can’t tell you the exact amount of my student loans were allocated to these living expenses, but let me put it in perspective this way…

Pretty much all of the tuition I was charged during graduate school was paid either by me, my family, or scholarships. You read that correctly – I did not need to take out student loans to pay for my tuition at Rutgers. In other words, if you look at the list above and add up the line items titled Graduate Year One (2004 – 2005), Summer Session (2005), and Graduate Year Two (2005 – 2006), then you’ll have the total dollar amount of student loans that I requested for reasons other than tuition. After doing the math, you can see that this amount equals $32,043.37. Just to be clear, of the $120,720 that I took out in student loans, at least $32,043.37 were for expenses other than tuition. I won’t set this number in stone as the definitive total amount of loan funds that I received for non-tuition expenses because I also applied for and received living expenses (primarily rent costs) from the NJHESAA’s NJCLASS program, too.

However, to estimate that approximately a third ($40,420) of my total student loan debt was for living expenses and not tuition would be a pretty good guess. Pretty frightening, I know.

And yet today still arrived. From an above-the-fold cover story in USA Today in June 2006 to fully repaying my NJHESAA loan in December 2010, to a nice mention in an online story on USA Today in May 2011, to the milestone of having repaid $100,000 in principal, to today – it’s been an incredible ride. If you’ve been following my student loan story from the beginning, then I offer my heartfelt thanks for your patronage and willingness to read my repayment story to the end. For those of you who have added comments to these blog entries from time to time, I thank you for being a part of the conversation. If you’re one of the many folks who’ve e-mailed me saying that I inspired you to take a more aggressive stance in your own student loan repayment, then I wish you luck.

Quickly and efficiently repaying a student loan is possible; even if that student loan is $120,603.31 on day one and you wind up paying an additional $28,851.81 in interest over the life of your repayment. The great truth that I learned over these past few years is that if you want to do something, then you will find a way to achieve it. In other words, no one can stop you – except you.

And if you’re trying to repay an enormous student loan, then contact me and share your story. Good luck!

In July 2006 I began repaying $120,603.31 in student loan debt. This debt was comprised of $106,070.00 in loan principal, $12,434.58 in capitalized interest, and $2,098.73 in closing and refinancing fees. I made the final payment on this debt in August 2013. My lenders included the United States Department of Education’s (USED) Perkins loan program, the USED’s subsidized and unsubsidized Direct Loan programs, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s NJCLASS program, CitiBank, and the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (the USED sold my loan to MOHELA in April 2012). In total, I paid $149,455.12 to these lenders including $120,603.31 in consolidated principal and $28,851.81 in interest. You can read my entire student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.