JerseySmarts.com

The Actual Final Student Loan Payment Screenshot

Joe — Sat, 28 Nov 2020 14:00:57 +0000

Several years ago, I posted an update showing what the screen looked like after I paid off my undergraduate and graduate student loans. It was great to finally see the “current balance” on those loans paid down to zero. As my Mother mentioned the other day, it gives you a real feeling of accomplishment having paid off a major student loan. And now, more than 7 years later, I am posting another screenshot of a zero balance, but this time for my doctoral student loans. Check it out:

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.

Just Finished Paying Off My Student Loans… Again

Joe — Tue, 24 Nov 2020 15:00:14 +0000

It seems like it was just yesterday (or seven years and three months ago) that I announced I paid off my student loans… for the first time. Back then, I was happy to announce that I paid off my undergraduate and graduate student loans over a repayment journey that lasted seven years and one month. That journey covered a total repayment of $149,455.12. But it wasn’t just $149,455.12 repaid and then everyone goes home happy. No. I repaid that amount during the beginning of my career when my income was also at its beginning and without any financial assistance coming in for any living expenses or any other costs. In fact, USA Today covered my story in an above-the-fold cover story in their newspaper. During that repayment, I learned that if you focus, work hard, and do not waste your income on frivolous garbage, then you can redirect a substantial amount of that income towards paying down debt and actually be successful in paying it off. So that’s just what I did to repay my first student loans off in August 2013.

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!

A Student Loan Update from a Much Different Position

Joe — Tue, 07 Jul 2020 12:30:20 +0000

The last time that I wrote about my students loan was last summer. Back then, I only wrote about the loan just to note it existed after obtaining my doctorate from USC. This summer’s update is that I have made significant progress in repaying this student loan and I expect to have it repaid in full by the end of 2020 (assuming, of course, that the disruptions in the economy do not totally destroy my ability to earn a living). And while I have not followed my repayment on this student loan on this blog as closely or with as much discussion as I did when I repaid my first student loans, that does not mean that there are not little gems of wisdom that I can shed for those who are in a similar situation.

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:

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.

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.

A New Student Loan Update – Many Years Later

Joe — Sat, 08 Jun 2019 01:47:58 +0000

Sometimes the updates on this blog are few and far in between and this update, in particular, is long overdue. The main focus of this entry is how I went back to the student loan well to fund my doctoral education, which ended in May 2018. In fact, the last update that I made to the Student Loans category of this blog was a note about how I was going back to school to get a doctorate and I posted that updated in June 2015.

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!

Small Business Entrepreneurship and Doctoral Studies

Joe — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 07:55:40 +0000

Last August, I started a doctoral program at the University of Southern California. Thus far, I have really enjoyed all aspects of the program from my fellow students to the incredibly talented professors to the online learning environment that our learning takes place in to everything in between. Even the textbooks that we are required to purchase for our classes are a cut above most of the textbooks that I used in my other graduate and undergraduate studies. Since starting this program, the majority of my free time is now spent reading different studies for my classes and preparing for small group and full class discussions. I am writing this short paragraph about the USC program to show that I am enjoying the program and to state how glad I am that I decided to apply to become a student again for the last time.

Greek State of Mind is growing!

With the start of the USC program at the end of last summer, I opted to stop all of my activities in whatever was left of Usable Web Solutions, LLC. Those activities included keeping several websites updated on a semi-regular basis and working to promote those websites via social media. Before completely stopping my activities with UWS, I was keeping at least one website regularly updated (“regularly” = almost daily) for about 20 years. Stopping those updates and moving away from my online business was a big change for me, though not an entirely bad one. The best part of relieving myself of my UWS duties was freeing up more of my time to focus on my other small business – a small, niche apparel company.

The apparel company that I co-own with another alumnus from my fraternity is doing very well, too. Our company – Greek State of Mind – had its biggest sales year in 2015. However, we are about 10 weeks into 2016 and we have generated more revenue this year than we did during the first 40 or so weeks of 2015. In the world of small business entrepreneurship, this is the type of growth that most companies dream of achieving. We are very happy with GSOM and are excited about expanding our product lines including a shirt celebrating the Monmouth University men’s basketball team and their Bench Mob.

And speaking of the Monmouth Bench Mob, I know that I speak for all Monmouth University basketball fans when I write that we are hopeful the NCAA selection committee will make the right decision and send the Hawks to the big dance this Sunday! #FlyHawks!

Heading Back To School As A Student – One Last Time

Joe — Tue, 09 Jun 2015 12:30:38 +0000

Last week, I was admitted to a doctoral program at the University of Southern California. The program is all-online and focuses on Organizational Change and Leadership. If completed successfully, the doctoral degree that I will receive is a Doctor of Education, or an Ed.D. Though the program is 100% online, I will have to travel to Los Angeles for an immersion weekend once per year. The program is expected to last through 8 semesters with 3 semesters taking place per year.

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.

USC vs. Ohio: What A Great Game

Joe — Sun, 13 Sep 2009 03:49:10 +0000

For those of you that just got done watching the University of Southern California’s football team beat Ohio State University, I’m sure that you’re just as impressed with the quality of the game as I am. What a great game! That’s why you have to love college football – here it looked like Ohio had a real chance to win this thing and beat USC for the first time since the mid-1970’s and USC comes back to win.

Great stuff.

And how about the fact that tonight’s attendance at the game was 106,033? Can you imagine that? I went to college at Monmouth University as did my roommate, who I watched the game with tonight. We were talking about it and there were more people sitting in that stadium tonight than have cumulatively graduated from Monmouth University since it was founded in 1933. How ridiculous is that?!

USC’s quarterback did a great job, as did the USC offensive line. And when you have Pete Carroll running the defense and inserting himself into the offense during crunch time, you can only expect the outcome that we had tonight. Not that the Ohio guys didn’t have an equally impressive outing – they definitely did. However, it appeared that their offense fell apart right at the end of the game, when it counted the most.

How great is college football?!?!