After graduating from Monmouth University in May 2003 and the Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy at Rutgers University back in May 2006, I earned two powerful degrees: a Bachelor of the Arts Degree in English and a Master of the Arts Degree in Public Policy. However, I also obligated myself to an overwhelming financial anchor in the form of $120,720.46 worth of student loan debt. NJHESAA’s share of that anchor was $51,595.27. Believe it or not, I actually tracked how all of that student loan debt was assumed and here’s the breakout (the financial 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 loan company keeps on file).

I’m compelled to note that the total repayment amount is 165% of the original loan amount. I don’t know about your point of view, but the fact that hardworking students and graduates are put in a position to pay 65% over their original loan amount is revolting. What aggravates me the most is that I paid 165% of the original loan amount even though I engaged in an extremely aggressive repayment schedule.

Imagine the folks who can’t manage to engage in that type of aggressive repayment schedule. How much is their total repayment as a percentage of the original loan? I shudder to think of it…

Really – you should see this spreadsheet that I put together with all of my student loan debt broken out from each of my loan sources. I sit back and look at the spreadsheet these days and I can’t help but comment that the amount of debt I took out to attend both college and graduate school is absolutely remarkable. However (and let me say this again), I’m not some victim nor was I duped into signing these promissory notes. I fully understood that by taking on these student loans I would be fully responsible for repaying them. This is what I wanted and this rapid repayment is what I always planned to accomplish.

But what’s even more remarkable is that as of today, that $51,595.27 student loan (plus $14,645.33 in other interest and fees) sits at $0.00. It’s amazing. But where does that leave this whole repayment plan that I’ve been talking about for the better part of the last year? Well, actually… it’s over. I specifically created and designed the repayment plan to aggressively repay my NJHESAA student loan and as of today that goal has been achieved.

But there’s a new plan in place…

Only $54 thousand left!

And the other part about the USDOE Direct Loans Program that I love is how their online payment system doesn’t charge any additional fees to make a payment! A borrower logs online, makes a payment, only pays the amount of the payment, and that’s it! No additional fees. Period. Much different from the online payment system over at NJHESAA. For almost a year I’ve been on the USDOE’s automatic debit plan where they take an ACH transfer from my checking account each month to make the monthly payment that is due. I’m going to stay on that plan and then make some additional payments here and there to bring down the total amount of principal outstanding on this loan. By the way, if you were wondering how these additional principal pay downs impacted the repayment of the NJHESAA student loan, take a look at this breakout, which covers the entire time during which I engaged in this overpayment – starting from last December through today:

I’m not sure if I’ll wind up attacking the USDOE loan – which sits at about $54 thousand outstanding right now (down from a high of $59 thousand) – with the same vigor and hyper-focus that I put into repaying the NJHESAA loan. Over the summer, I drafted my financial goals for 2011 (yes, I draft my financial goals half a year in advance and then I revise them during the months leading into New Year’s Day) and among my financial goals for 2011 is to pay $10 thousand in excess of the minimum monthly payment due to the USDOE. And when you consider that I paid more than that to NJHESAA this week alone, it shouldn’t be too hard to accomplish that goal!

However, I don’t plan on increasing my focus on the USDOE student loan until the end of this coming summer. This doesn’t mean that my financial vigilance ends today, though. My mindset today remains the same as it has for years: less spending + reducing debt + more saving + more investments = stronger financial health. In fact, I look at today’s victory through the words of the late Senator Ted Kennedy at the Democratic National Convention in August 2008: “The work begins anew. The hope rises again. And the dream lives on.”

It feels weird to quote a Senator that I wasn’t crazy about from a political party that I’m ambivalent towards, but his words really fit the day.

For those of you who have been following my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com, I thank you for your patronage. If you’re coming to this page or to JerseySmarts.com for the first time through a Bing or Google search, then I welcome you to the blog and I hope that you stick around to hear the story of how I repay the remaining $54 thousand that I have outstanding in student loans to the USDOE.

The work begins anew… right now!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. After completely repaying over $61 thousand in student loans from the federal Perkins loan program, the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority, and CitiBank, I currently owe $54 thousand to the United States Department of Education’s Direct Loans program. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Update – December 26, 2010: Hey everyone! I’ve added some downloadable content to this page. Now you can download a version of the spreadsheet that I used to track my repayment of this NJHESAA student loan. Incidentally, I’m going to use this same spreadsheet to track the repayment of my USDOE loan, too. In addition, I’ve uploaded a PDF of my official paid-in-full letter from NJHESAA. Oh, and this letter includes the amortization/repayment schedule, too… including a breakout of the $14,645.33 that I paid in interest alone! Feel free to look through this stuff and let me know if you have any questions. Enjoy!

Update – July 30, 2012: Sometimes, I get the urge to revisit some of these older posts. After reviewing this one, I noticed that the student loan breakout was not as clearly attributed as it could have been. So, I revised some of the numbers up above to show the true cost of the loan during its lifetime. The numbers above all “foot” (i.e. equal) the same amount paid to the NJHESAA – $66,240.30. However, with the revisions above I’ve better described how much of that $66,240.30 was actually principal, how much was capitalized interest or regular interest, and how much was different fees. For those of you who are learning about student loans and financing – capitalized interest is interest that is added to the principal amount of a loan. The interest due on my NJHESAA loan was added to the principal balance at the end of each semester. Anyway, the numbers above are more reflective of what I actually paid to this private loan company.

Down to $65 thousand overall

As of today, I’ve sold off all but one of my holdings from my stock portfolio. I’m still holding on to Sirius XM’s stock because I hate to sell thousands of shares of a stock that will only go up I think the stock will go up a few more pennies in the next week or so. And since I own so many shares, those pennies can translate into big dollars (hence the name “penny stocks”). However, at this point I’m all sold out of my Ford, Barnes & Noble, and other stocks.

It sort of sucks, actually. I spent two years building up a pretty powerful portfolio and here I am two years after my very first investment was made and it’s pretty much all gone. What’s more – it’s all gone in an effort to eliminate this NJHESAA student loan! So while I’m a little annoyed that my portfolio is all but eliminated in an almost-completed successful effort to repay a single student loan, I’m glad that the loan will be gone before the end of 2010 and that I can focus on rebuilding my savings and investment accounts in 2011.

Be on the lookout here at JerseySmarts.com. When that final payment is made in the next few weeks, there’s going to be a celebration!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $65 thousand, which breaks down to $10.8 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54.5 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

Down to $73 thousand

But it gets worse.

One day after I sent that check, I sent a second check to NJHESAA. That’s right, folks. On Tuesday, October 19th, I sent a $4,300 check to NJHESAA that has not yet been applied to my account. Let me repeat that in different terms. I sent a gigantic check to NJHESAA TWO WEEKS AGO that they have not processed yet.

Unacceptable. Absolutely unacceptable.

At this point, I really should file some type of Better Business Bureau complaint against NJHESAA. What excuse could these people have for sitting on my check? Could the check be lost in the mail? Sure. Is it more likely that the check is lost somewhere in the creepy, disgusting NJHESAA system? Absolutely. And what bothers me even more is that I’m getting ready to cash out another few thousand dollars from my investment portfolio so I can apply the funds to this account. But what is going to happen? Am I going to send a $10,000 check only to have it sit on some desk in someone’s office for a month? Unacceptable.

NJHESAA is the worst financial institution that I’ve ever interacted with in my life – and I used to bank at TD Bank! Given my previous, gross experiences with NJHESAA, I can only imagine that they are holding my check in order to generate more interest on this loan. In short, NJHESAA is a disgrace.

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $73 thousand, which breaks down to $18.9 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54.5 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

I concur.

Not only has NJHESAA been troublesome to deal with (including sending their friends and allies onto this blog to consistently attack my previous entries regarding their horrible customer service), but the interest rate that they charge me is damn near criminal. When you combine the fact that this private student loan company has been very tough to deal with and the fact that they have been charging me an arm and a leg in interest, this question becomes almost a no-brainer.

Of course, a thorough review of the pros and cons of this plan also requires that I project out the possible return on my existing investment portfolio. Trust me when I say that I’ve done that time and time again and while I like the fact that I’m in the stock market, I think the bulk of my “big” returns have already been achieved. Plus, there’s nothing stopping me from getting back into the market on the very next paycheck that I receive after the NJHESAA loan is retired.

In real numbers, my NJHESAA loan has about $19,800 outstanding in principal right now. The accumulated value of my investments as of today is about $17,500. Obviously, I’m not quite at the point where I could cash out all of the investments and completely retire the NJHESAA loan, but I estimate that my investment portfolio will match my total outstanding principal balance sometime around mid November (you guys all know how I ridiculously overpay this student loan each month, so this estimate shouldn’t be a big surprise).

Thank you all for helping me make this big decision. Stay tuned for the latest and greatest with my student loans – the next few weeks are going to be very big!

Down to $74 thousand

That’s a pretty impressive decrease for a 10 month period, huh? And, actually, if you look at how much money I’ve dumped into my student loans since January 1, 2010, the average amount that I’ve spent PER DAY on student loans this year is $95. Amazing, right?

In fact, if you look back at some of my earlier writings around this repayment plan, I was looking forward to this moment in particular. And for those of you who haven’t read these entries (or stopped because they were repetitive), you can read this clip from the December 21, 2009 entry regarding my student loans:

My plan for the coming year is to send as much excess money as I can to pay down the NJHESAA loan. Once I get it down to a manageable level (unfortunately, $41 thousand is not manageable) my plan calls for me to revisit my savings and investment accounts to see whether my aggregated funds can finish off this loan and still leave me with some playing money.

I imagine that once I can get the NJHESAA loan down to $20 thousand or so, I’ll be able to give some serious consideration to wiping it out with one payment. And, if I continue to stick to my plan, then I might be hitting that number right around this time next year…

Well, as it turns out I skipped that $20 thousand “remaining outstanding” number on my NJHESAA loans and went straight from $21 thousand down to $19 thousand. Oh, and I reached $19 thousand two months earlier than I originally projected. As you can see from the quoted text above, back in December 2009 I was anticipating that – at this point – I could cash out of my savings and investment accounts and use the proceeds to repay the remaining outstanding balance on the NJHESAA loan. In truth, though, while my investment account has increased this year, my savings account is all but depleted. And now I’m faced with an interesting personal finance situation. I’ve been mulling over this situation and running internal financial projections on this question for two weeks now:

Do I clear out my investment account and put all of those proceeds towards eliminating the NJHESAA loan? Or do I keep my investment account and just stick to this repayment plan? Here’s one pro and one con for each…

Keeping the Investment Account. Pro – I bought some of these stocks at a very low price and have realized some amazing gains on them. If I sell out of the investments, then I lose that huge return (and I have to pay taxes on my gains). Con – I’m not sure how much higher some of these stocks are going to go in the current market, so I might just be sitting on dead money (dead in that it’s not earning a return in excess of the interest being generated each month on the NJHESAA loan).

Cashing out the Investment Account. Pro – If I opt to wipe out the investment account at some point in early to mid-November, I could use all of the proceeds from the sale of these stocks to wipe out the entire NJHESAA student loan. Con – I lose all of my investments and have to pay taxes on the gains I realize (note that taxes go up on these investment gains come the new year).

The other aspect of this that I have to project out is how much more money I’ll have each month since I won’t be sending checks to NJHESAA any more. During this time of the year (the autumn months and early winter) when I have my income from my day job and two teaching incomes flowing into my account, I typically send about $3,000 each month to the student loan companies ($2,700 or so to NJHESAA and $300 to the USDOE). The $2,700 figure to NJHESAA is more of an average for each month; in September, for example, I sent NJHESAA $3,500. If I was to eliminate the NJHESAA loan, my total monthly student loan payment would be reduced to about $300 each month. A 90% drop in money-out isn’t so bad; and neither is an average of an extra $2,700 each month to play with…

What would you do in this situation? I know which way I’m leaning, but I’d love to hear your thoughts so I’m leaving this post on JerseySmarts.com for a few days, uninterrupted by new entries!

In May 2006, I graduated from Rutgers University with a Masters Degree and $120,720 in student loan debt. I currently owe $74 thousand, which breaks down to $19.8 thousand owed to the New Jersey Higher Education Student Assistance Authority and $54.5 thousand owed to the United States Department of Education. Follow my student loan repayment story on JerseySmarts.com.

And so here we are.

In the last two days I’ve done really well in the stock market – like absurdly well. Granted, I’ve only been investing for about fourteen months, but yesterday and today were significant. I managed to bring my total earnings back up to above 100%. Most investors get excited about 10% – 15% gains and I am admittedly greedy by looking for triple digit percentage gains, but it’s my money so of course I want it to be wildly successful in the market! And yes, I understand that this is the market that we’re talking about and that there’s a strong chance that I’ll lose much of the last two days worth of gains in the next two days, but that’s part of the game.

Anyway, it got me thinking about my overall financial situation in a much larger picture. Since I started college in Fall 1999, I’ve been at a negative net worth. When I graduated Graduate School in Spring 2006, that negative net worth was approximately $121,000. That’s pretty bad. In fact, that’s absolutely horrendous. However, that negative net worth was comprised of 100% student loan debt. In the last few years, that number hasn’t really moved…until 2009.

In 2009, I rid myself of an automobile that sucked my savings account nearly dry, I committed myself to at least doubling the funds in my savings account (I wound up tripling them), and I lived according to an extremely strict budget which I planned at the beginning of the year and then micromanaged daily throughout the year.

But what’s interesting to me (and what prompted this entry) is that in 2009 I also committed myself to donating more money to nonprofit organizations. In other words, while I was trying to increase my net worth from a negative number to a positive number I was actually giving money away! Though I haven’t run the final numbers yet, I think that 2009 might have been my most charitable year on record. I might have given away more than $7,500 last year. For a guy who began the year with a net worth that was already $100,000+ in the hole, that’s an incredible feat.

Then I see days like today and yesterday where my stock portfolio jumps.

Then I think about how I know that I have another check already sitting at one of the student loan payment centers which will allow me to make another announcement about my total student loan debt dropping before the end of January.

Then I think about my negative net worth slowly inching towards a positive number.

Then I check my 401k and realize that it’s not doing so bad, either.

And after all of that I begin to see much more clearly that my total student loan debt (which is my only debt) is measurably decreasing while my investments, savings, and retirement funds are measurably increasing. That’s significant. That’s the result of creating a budget and micromanaging that budget throughout the year. That’s the result of making a plan and sticking to it – of committing yourself to being in a better financial position tomorrow than you are today.

That’s something to be happy about.

I made a few bucks buying Bank of America last week and Barnes and Noble in December and January, but the real winner for me has been Sirius XM satellite radio. I bought this stock (a LOT of this stock) when it was ranging between 11 cents and 16 cents. Less than 2,000 shares overall, but still a decent amount. Today the stock closed at 35.7 cents a share so I’m doubling some of my money and tripling some other money. My only regret with this stock is that I didn’t go “all in” when it hit 5 cents a few months ago. Just think, if you invested $1,000 in the stock when it was 5 cents, your share would be worth over $7,000 right now!

Anyway, no point in crying over spilled milk – especially when I’m still up 163% on my initial investment in the company! Ford has also been a winner for both me and one of my roommates who decided to invest in it. And Alcoa (an aluminum making company) has provided more than a 30% increase in the last week.

Now that I’ve dropped GM completely the only negative returns that I have in my portfolio are Martha Stewart Omnimedia and THQ, Inc. Omnimedia is the parent company for all of Martha Stewart’s various subsidiaries (and Emeril Lagasse, too). I think this stock is poised for major growth in the coming 12 – 18 months and buying it right now at $2.31 per share might pay big dividends in the future.

As for THQ, Inc., this is the video game company behind the wildly successful WCW/nWo and WWE video games. They also have the rights for Disney/Pixar video games, too. I think this is another company that has a good long-term earnings potential ahead of it and it’s one that I just bought heavily into (in my world, heavily is a hundred bucks or so!).

Just thought I’d share…and see if anyone has any decent stock tips out there!

The Joe’s Journal & JerseySmarts.com Merger
Without getting into too many details, the merger of Joe’s Journal and JerseySmarts.com has been nothing short of a major success. On any given day, either of the two blogs averaged some 40 or so hits (JerseySmarts.com would get 5 or 10 hits each day and Joe’s Journal would range between 60 and 80 hits each day). With the new, merged site, there are some days where we’re over 300 hits, some days over 200 hits, and we’re now averaging between 100 and 150 hits each day. What’s exciting is that these hits aren’t really people reading the blog in the morning, afternoon, and night (though you should be checking in as often as possible). Rather, the hits are largely being generated by unique visitors. That’s awesome!

Also, the financial end of this blogging business has been great. Between the sponsors that you can find all over this blog and the program-specific advertisements that I’ve been setting up here and there, Joe’s Journal on JerseySmarts.com is making a healthy living for a small, personal blog!

The Stock Market
What a mess!? Many of you know that I started investing in earnest a few months ago and since that time I’ve taken a hit in the market just like everyone else. The difference, though, is that the hit that I’ve taken is small compared to those folks who have big time money in the markets. First, I don’t have big time money to invest at this point in my life! Second, I started investing after the market was already down.

When I began investing I knew a few of my stock picks for sure. I knew that I was going to invest in Sirius XM because – no matter what the biased internet media may say – this is a good long-term stock for the small time investor’s portfolio. I also knew that I was going to invest in the automobile industry and that I would probably go in to Ford heavier than GM…which turned out to be a good move!

I’m invested in a few other stocks, but what I didn’t know when I started investing (and I still don’t know now) was how I would diversify the industries represented in my portfolio. Right now I have all of my exposure in the retail sector. I’m thinking of investing in some smaller, solid banks to get into the financial sector. Just a thought at this point, though…

Usable Web Solutions, LLC Doing Well
My small business is doing very well in this rough economy. All of my clients have signed on to extend their business relationships with my company and I’ve actually begun to bring in a few new clients; only two clients at this point, but two very strong organizations. For the longest time I stopped taking on new clients because I was getting some of the weirdest requests from some shady characters. But it’s good to be back creating new websites again.

The other part of the website business that is doing well is the advertising revenue. Perhaps my suite of sites has been lucky, but we’re all doing very well with selling ads and getting some income from those ads.

Teaching at the Local College
Two quick points on my adjunct professor position at the local college. Number one – I suggested a new course for my department and it was accepted! Starting next spring I’ll be teaching Community Public Policy (i.e. Community Development)! This is pretty exciting because I designed the course from the bottom up. Very cool!

Number two – well, here we go. Remember a few months ago when I had a problem with a colleague of mine at the local college? Turns out that for the class I’ll be teaching next fall, not only will this person be teaching in the same classroom that I’m scheduled to be in on Monday, but on Wednesday, too. What joy (sarcasm)! I’ve already filed a request to have my room changed because no one should have to put up with racism, sexism, or ageism – especially not on a college campus of all places!

Update – April 13, 2009: My class reassignment request was granted. Thankfully, I won’t have to deal with this person again!

There you have it, folks. A quick, random update on some of the things going around in my head. I’ll be sure to put some more random ideas up soon!