Comfortably at $40 thousand

There are some variables that I can’t anticipate yet so my projected final repayment might change by a month or two (closer, not further away). In the next year or so some of my major volunteer obligations will be coming to an end. Along with the increased free time that I’ll have (where I could potentially make more money), I’ll also be free of some annual donation requirements that I accepted when I assumed these volunteer positions. With a few extra bucks to play with I might be able to bring that final repayment date back another month to May 1, 2013.

Also, I always have the option that I exercised last fall to accelerate my repayment and final payoff of my NJHESAA student loan. That option is to cash out of my small stock portfolio and use all of the proceeds to repay the balance of my USED student loans. If I was to exercise that option, then the final repayment date wouldn’t be June 1, 2013 or even May 1, 2013, but instead it would be somewhere around December 1, 2012 – or about one year from now.

While I enjoy having my small stock portfolio it is very tempting to cash the whole thing out to speed up the repayment of my student loans. I’m going to have to think about that for the next few months and see which way I want to go with that option.

Not much more to write about today. I did want to note, though, that not only is my student loan debt sitting at $40 thousand, but as of today I’ve repaid some $30 thousand in interest and another $81 thousand in principal. Pretty spectacular (when the alternative seems to be marching around Wall Street and complaining that my student loans are too big).

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. Since I started repaying my student loans in July 2006, I’ve repaid a total of $61 thousand in principal to various lenders including the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank. I currently owe $40 thousand in principal to the United States Department of Education’s Direct Loans program – a loan which started repayment in July 2006 with a balance of $59 thousand. To date, I’ve repaid well over $30 thousand in interest to these lenders. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

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Let me know if you sign-up for this program. I’ll be interested to see how it works for those of you out there who take the plunge. Enjoy!

Just $41 thousand left

If you’ve been reading my blog for a while now, then you may remember when I wrote about how utterly useless and totally not helpful the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority’s online payment system was when it was implemented. By the way, that entry from February 2010 is one of the most viewed and most popular entries on this entire blog. In fact, if you go to Google and type in “NJHESAA” there is a link to that entry in the first four or five results that come up on your screen. Pretty good for some random guy’s personal blog, huh?

Before I start to go off on a tangent, let me get back to the short point that I want to make here. The NJHESAA’s online payment system was totally useless. Much like the government-enforced monopoly held by utility companies (which are keeping a large portion of New Jersey literally in the dark right now), NJHESAA actually charged borrowers to make online payments. It was pathetic. On the other hand, the USED doesn’t charge their borrowers to make online payments and even allows you to add additional funds to your regular monthly payment amount. It’s a great system – very easy to use.

A few weeks ago when the USED transferred their system to the new MyEdAccount.com website, I wanted to come on here and rant and rave about how much I hated having to wait for the new website to be implemented. Well, after using the new website and the new system for a few weeks I have to say that I’m very impressed. They didn’t cut many corners putting that website together and yet they still managed to pack it with a bunch of great information and keep a simple, no nonsense look.

Anyway, after my latest payment I’m down to $41 thousand left outstanding. That’s about $80 thousand in student loan principal repaid (and another $30 thousand in interest paid) since July 2006. Absolutely amazing. I definitely could have used that $110 thousand for other purposes over the last 5 years (buying a house, getting a new car, not working around the clock at multiple jobs during my mid-to-late 20s, etc), but it’s okay. The end is near for this repayment plan. Soon, $41 thousand will drop to $40 thousand and then $40 thousand will become $35 thousand and so on and so on until we’re counting down the last $10 thousand together. We’ll get there sooner rather than later.

It’s just a matter of sticking to your guns no matter what people suggest that you do with your money or your life. Most of the time in life, only you know what’s best for you. For me, repaying these student loans as quickly and efficiently as possible is what’s good for me.

And that’s what I’m going to do.

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. Since I started repaying my student loans in July 2006, I’ve repaid a total of $61 thousand in principal to various lenders including the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank. I currently owe $41 thousand in principal to the United States Department of Education’s Direct Loans program – a loan which started repayment in July 2006 with a balance of $59 thousand. To date, I’ve repaid well over $30 thousand in interest to these lenders. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Canadian students in a lecture hall - not my students, but students nonetheless

Some of you might recall a little over a year ago when I wrote about how I was getting a little suspicious of the online learning environment and its influence on student achievement. In short, that blog entry talked about how I was unimpressed at the amount of classes that the online college I work for allowed their students to take at a single time. Further, I’ve been continually unimpressed by the inability for my online students to write in an academically acceptable manner or conform to basic academic formatting standards. Frankly, my students are not great writers nor do they give a damn about the required academic formats (APA, MLA, etc) when submitting their papers.

And still – as aggravating as those issues may be to an educator, believe it or not the focus of this article is something different! Today, my unnecessary complication is the with the attitudes of my online learners. To put it succinctly, these students don’t understand the first thing about the teacher/student relationship! Actually, there is a second annoyance that I’ve been encountering with my students which has to do with their inability to comprehend the nature of the online learning environment, but let me bitch about the teacher/student relationship first!

I’ve been continually amazed at how poorly prepared for the advanced learning environment some of my online learners are when my classes start. Now granted, I’m not talking about the entire class of students nor am I referring to even half of the class. However, at least 10% to 15% of each class that I teach is comprised of students who do not understand their role in the teacher/student relationship. Let me define that a little bit more…

I do not expect my students to be rote learners like we’re all stuck in the 1950’s or something. Instead, I expect my students to understand that they are not my customers – they are my students. This is a big topic of discussion in the higher education circles: whether the people who sit in the classrooms are customers/consumers or students. And, to my great disappointment, the trend is pushing more towards students being viewed as customers instead of seekers of knowledge or impassioned learners.

This is a big problem.

Defining a student as a consumer puts the student in a position to believe (incorrectly) that they can control the flow of work in the class (homework and weekly assignments) or the requirements for passing the class (grading metrics and evaluation rubrics). Why does this happen? Well, it happens for the same reason that, as a consumer, you can bitch and moan to your local auto mechanic and get your bill lowered. Namely… the customer is always right!

Exacerbating this problem is that this customer/teacher relationship just doesn’t work well in online learning (or higher education in general). In fact, it is the job of the college to tell these “customers” when they are dead wrong. At some point I hope to write a longer piece on this blog about how creating the customer vs. student scenario has led to the painful destruction of what should be a great American academic system. For now, though, my focus is on how some of my students believe that they can dictate my grading schedule. It’s outrageous! I had a student e-mail me two weeks before the class ended to tell me that he expected his final grade to be completed within 12 hours of his final paper being submitted (which was due the following weekend) because he needed to report his grade to the company that funds his education. After laughing out loud, I e-mailed the student back and explained that there is a ten day period between when the final student work is submitted and the final grades are due and that he should expect to see his final grade at some point towards the end of that ten day period.

He began e-mailing me every single day about his final grade. The student started contacting me one day prior to the class ending through the middle of the ten day period, which was when I had completed my final grading and submitted his grade for posting. Luckily, the online university was on my side in this debacle because – believe it or not – the student had been contacting the university daily, too!

For the last course that I taught, I had five or six of these unnecessary student complications. Again, all of this stems from the idea that the student is a customer and not a person being evaluated for his or her academic capabilities.

To finish up, the other item that annoys me about the online learning environment is the lack of online learners to understand how this arrangement is supposed to work. The best example that I can give is the students themselves – these are good people who, for one reason or another, could not attend college during the traditional time in one’s life where they would attend college (right after high school or a few years after high school ended). Maybe they started a family, maybe they took over the family business, maybe they had a job in the trades and are only now going back to get a degree – whatever the case, these folks are typically hard-working, already employed people on crazy schedules.

And I totally respect that fact. In fact, I encourage more people who are not of the traditional college age to seek out methods to procure college degrees.

What shocks me, though, is that these online learners don’t take a minute to do the least bit of research on the people who teach their classes because if they did – surprise, surprise – they’d find out that their professors are in the same boat! We’re typically teaching at two or three universities and, in my case, I’ve got a variety of jobs and volunteer positions that take up all of my time. In other words, when I have a “customer” student complaining that they want their grade to be submitted first and ten days earlier than the rest of the class, it makes me want to punch the wall. There’s an arrogance – an ignorance of reality – in that request. There’s a certain, “I’m in charge and I’m paying you for my degree so fork over what I want, when I want it – NOW!” in that type of request.

It’s unacceptable and I hope that my fellow online teachers are approaching these problems the same way that I do – with the knowledge that we have an obligation to uphold the academic standards of our institutions and thus we need to be sure that the teacher/student relationship as well as the teaching environment are both preserved and respected.

For example, the other day I wrote about how the online payment system offered by NJHESAA that is, essentially, useless since this private student loan company passes the cost of doing this type of business on to its borrowers. NJHESAA offers an online payment system, but it charges you 2.5% for a “convenience fee” in order to use the service. What a disgrace!

Well, another issue that I’ve been aggravated about with NJHESAA is their inability to process my paper check payment in a timely fashion. For example, after I send a student loan payment to this private lender it generally takes them 10 – 15 days to process the check. WHY!?!?!

Why does it take NJHESAA so long to process a payment!?

Well, if you know anything about finance and how loans work, then you know why it takes NJHESAA so long to process payments. It’s very simple – the longer you hold a payment and not process it, the more the interest due on the payment grows. Here’s my real world example:

On Thursday, February 11th I sent my latest payment to NJHESAA. As of that date, I owed about $62 in accrued interest. Now, I understand that it takes some time for my payment to work its way through the postal system, through the NJHESAA’s mailing system, and eventually to be deposited in the bank. In 2010, that process should take between 3 and 5 days.

However, since my check has not been deposited yet and here we are – 9 days after the payment was sent – another $85 in interest has been accrued. So the total interest owed on the NJHESAA loan today has gone from $62 on the day that I sent the payment to $147 today. How disgusting is that?

And I don’t believe for one minute that my payment isn’t sitting on someone’s desk at the NJHESAA waiting to be deposited early next week. After all, since NJHESAA is closed on the weekends they get to accrue a few more days of interest by not depositing my check! Awesome! And why do I not believe that the payment isn’t sitting there? Because I have a job and I know that when someone sends me something, I get it in a matter of 2 or 3 days. There isn’t any big secret to the United States Postal Service – you send an item and they deliver it. In the rarest of cases your item might be lost, but the chances of that happening are slim to none.

It is becoming clearer and clearer to me that the folks at NJHESAA are organized for the purpose of making money on the backs of college students. Months ago I showed that there is absolutely no reason for me to be paying 7.3%+ in interest on my student loan. There is no reason for them to pass the 2.5% credit card/online check processing fee onto their borrowers. There is absolutely no reason why my payment hasn’t been processed after being out of my hands for 9 days already. The sum of all these parts equals a student loan company that is directly focused on generating cash for itself at the expense of a young cohort of the public.

Each of these points are made more glaring due to the fact that my federal Direct Loan doesn’t have any of these problems. Think about that for a minute. The interest rate is lower. There is no processing fee for online payments. And when I send a check to the USDOE (which goes to a southern state somewhere), they process it in a day or two. Meanwhile, when I send a check to Newark for the NJHESAA it takes days and now weeks to process the payment? Bullshit.

They’re obviously holding my checks in order to generate more interest on my loan. I can’t wait to be done with this student loan company. And when I am done with them, I’m going to devote even more of my time towards exploring their practices and showing the Garden State’s young borrowers why they should avoid this organization at all costs.

For shame, NJHESAA. For shame.

The USDOE has figured out how the system is supposed to work. There’s no hassle, no aggravation, no fees for the online payment service, and they even offer an incentive to use the automated system. This incentive comes in the form of a 0.25% interest rate reduction. That’s some pretty good customer service and the USDOE deserves credit for doing the right thing by its borrowers.

And then you have the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority (NJHESAA). Ugh… These profit-focused folks just don’t get it.

The NJHESAA recently instituted an online payment portal, too. Sounds good, right? Well, not so fast! Not only is there no incentive for the borrowers to use the system (i.e. no interest rate reduction), but there is a fee for using the service! And not just a small fee, a 2.5% fee! How disgusting is that?!

Think about that fee in action. I just sent a $2,000 check to the NJHESAA. If I opted to make that payment online, that would have resulted in a total charge of $2,050. I’m sorry, but that’s just unacceptable. And I’m sure that the NJHESAA’ers that troll this blog are thinking to themselves, “Hey! We get charged to offer those online services. There is a cost to process payments online due to merchant fees and other fees charged by the credit card companies. This guy clearly doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Having dealt with the NJHESAA over the phone I know that they typically think their borrowers aren’t as intelligent as they are when it comes to, well, pretty much anything. So since I know that the NJHESAA folks are likely reading this and that they are likely thinking what I wrote above, let me remind them of a few business basics. First, there is a cost to doing business. The NJHESAA’s cost for offering the online payment system is being charged the various merchant fees associated with credit card and other payments. Since the NJHESAA isn’t in the business of selling retail products, it can’t raise the price of its goods to cover this fee. Instead, if the company wants to offer this feature, it has to absorb the cost.

Second, this company couldn’t try any harder to project a money-grubbing public image. Sure, they can get away with continuing to sell their services to unsuspecting new borrowers. However, with a growing chorus of voices like mine who aren’t necessarily focused on “exposing” anything, but instead are focused on educating younger generations on what getting a loan from the NJHESAA really means, I wonder how long they’ll be able to operate in their profit-first, borrower-second mindset.

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For those of you who are looking for even more commentary presented from a unique New Jersey point of view, be sure to follow JerseySmarts.com on Twitter @JVince81. Also, sign-up for our quarterly newsletter by using the sign-up form in the box to the left. The newsletter is sent four times each year to provide links to just a few of the top stories that you might have missed. That’s it – there’s no random sales pitch and we do not sell our mailing list to any third party advertising companies. The only updates you will ever receive are from JerseySmarts.com with links to the latest updates from this site. That’s it. Period.

And to think, all the NJHESAA needed to do in order to avoid this particular entry of negative press was take their focus off of profits and put it on the needs of their borrowers. All they needed to do was absorb the cost of doing business instead of passing on that fee to their borrowers. But they just couldn’t do it. They just couldn’t focus on what was best for their borrowers because they were blinded by their bottom line.

For shame.

The Black Friday Deals 2009 Guide is a one-stop deal hunter’s dream. Become.com is a comparison shopping search engine that finds the best deals on the web. As I?m sure you know, the holiday shopping season is already in full swing online. More than 55% of US consumers plan to do their holiday shopping online in 2009, and 26% plan to purchase more gifts over the internet than they did last year, according to a study from MarketLive, Inc. and the e-tailing group.

I went over to http://blackfriday.become.com/ and it’s not such a bad site. There is a lot of useful information and I’m sure that you’ll be able to find what it is that you’re looking for it you bounce around the site and take a good look.

My Mom also sent me a link for Black Friday advertisements. This one is called Black Friday Ads 2009 and you can find it by clicking here. This site has a more basic set up in that it lists all of the various retailers right on the front page with direct links to their advertisements.

Whichever site you decide to use (if any), I hope these websites are helpful.

Welcome to the online world!

Unfortunately, due to the financial downturn, the Elk Candy Company closed their doors a few years ago. However, after an outcry from long-time customers (myself included), the Elk Candy Company has decided to open up an online shop – which is now open and ready for business! Take a look at the e-mail below, which I received about a week and a half ago:

Many people have been looking forward to this day and now, we take great pride in announcing Elk Candy Company is now open and ready for your marzipan orders at www.elkcandy.com. We are proud to be able to share our world class marzipan with you.

We accept Visa, MasterCard, American Express, Discover and PayPal on our secure website.

We offer a variety of shipping methods through FedEx and UPS. To celebrate our online opening we are offering free ground shipping on orders of 1 pound or more now thru December 31, 2009.

Those of you who were familiar with the store will remember our complimentary gift wrapping, we will continue to offer free gift wrapping to our online customers. We ask that if you would like your purchase gift wrapped please state so in the special instructions portion during the checkout process,.

Keep up with our updates through our blog, email, Twitter, and Facebook.

Shop at: http://www.elkcandy.com/
Keep up with us on our blog, Sweet Talk: http://blog.elkcandy.com
Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/ElkCandy

Give this candy company a shot this Christmas season. I guarantee that you won’t be disappointed!

I’ve signed up to be on Food Democracy Now’s e-mail list so I can help advocate for better food policies for all of us. The latest advocacy effort is asking Agriculture Secretary to help organic farmers get more land to grow their crops. Below is an e-mail I received from Food Democracy Now – give it a read.

It’s time to end the bureaucratic squabbling at the USDA and put beginning and minority farmers first.

What new and minority farmers need most is access to affordable land — unfortunately USDA officials are stalling a potential solution.

A new program created by sustainable agriculture advocates in the 2008 Farm Bill, called the Conservation Reserve Program (CRP) Transition Option, offers incentives to land owners enrolled in the CRP to sell or lease the land to beginning and minority farmers using sustainable or organic practices at the end of CRP contracts.

Currently, 4.3 million acres enrolled in CRP are about to leave the program and this land is badly needed by the next generation of farmers to overcome the greatest obstacle to new farmers – affordable land.2

Unfortunately the USDA’s bureaucratic wrangling and fear of lawsuits is holding up implementation of this vital program. Rather than release the land as it should be under new Farm Bill rules, the USDA is holding it up with an unnecesary environmental impact study. Any further delay will deny beginning and minority farmers the opportunity to get access to the land they need in the next 2 years.3

Please join Food Democracy Now! by asking Secretary Vilsack to implement the Conservation Reserve Program Transition Option now.

Our beginning and minority farmers don’t have a moment to waste.

Interesting information, huh? If you’re interested in sending a quick, online message to the Secretary, click here. If you believe that quality food provides a large benefit to our society, then I encourage you to send the Secretary a message.

If you don’t know already, TD Bank merged the TD Banknorth and Commerce Bank databases last week and it stunted the bank’s ability to post transactions to customers’ online accounts or for those transactions to be viewed at ATMs. Factor in that the folks at TD Bank decided to do this during a time of the month when almost every once of their customers gets paid or receives their government subsidy and, well, you can understand the uproar.

Some TD Bank supporters out there might suggest that technical glitches happen every once in a while and I can appreciate that statement. However, when a bank decides to make such a major switch during a time of the month when people are receiving paychecks and governments subsidies (plus when rent or the mortgage payment is due), that tells me that the bank doesn’t care enough to know about their customers’ daily lives. Something tells me that the move from Cherry Hill to Toronto really destroyed the true relationship that TD Bank had with its customers.

Anyway, I went over to Central Jersey Bank on Friday and opened up a totally free checking account. Central Jersey Bank (although it was just purchased by OceanFirst Bank) is based out of the Monmouth/Ocean county area. Because this bank is based out of the same area where I live, there is a greater likelihood that I’ll be more than just an account number and a deposit at Central Jersey Bank. In fact, after reviewing the offers from Central Jersey Bank, I’ve decided to explore other accounts that I can close at TD Bank (including those related to my fraternity and its alumni association) and move over to Central Jersey Bank.

I’m a big believer that when you go to a restaurant and you receive stellar service, that you leave a stellar tip. On the other hand, I also believe that when you are the customer and you receive horrendous service you vote with your dollars by pulling them from the company giving you the terrible service. TD Bank really screwed up. Between the bungled online transactions, their recent message to all business account owners that they were raising fees, and the continuing fee that I have to pay if my account ever dips below a certain amount (this is for a supposedly “free” checking account, by the way) – I’ve decided to vote with my dollars and leave TD Bank.

I suggest that any former Commerce Bank customers who are disgusted at the level of service offered by TD Bank do the same.