7 Tips To Tackle Student Loan Debt

Most people want to know how to pay off their student loan debt fast. Student loan debt has become a normal part of attending college. It can be shocking to realize just how much you owe once you graduate. Your student loan payment can hold you back from doing the things you cherish. It takes a part of your pay that you could use to achieve other financial goals. Your student loan payment can likewise make you unwilling to take risks when it comes to your career or different choices. It is important to tackle your student loan debt as quickly as possible.

Below are a few tips to get on the path of repaying your student loan debt:

1. Know Your Student Loan Debt

Do you know how much student loan debt you have? If not, this is the very first step you need to take when working on paying off your loans. You have to know what you’ve gotten yourself into to create a strategy to get out of debt.

A lot of young college students sign paperwork they don’t understand. Fast forward four years,  do you remember all the loan paper work you signed? If you don’t, your student loans are also recorded on your credit report.

2. Factor your student loan payments into your budget and pay more than the minimum

As you pay off credit card debt (if you have any) your student loans should be your next priority. The one good thing about student loans is that interest rates are typically low.

Make sure your weekly or monthly budget includes your minimum student loan payments plus any extra you can put towards them each month. This means if you have any spare money, instead of shopping or going out to eat, apply some of it towards knocking out your student loans.

3. Prioritize your student loan payments

This will depend on the interest rates and your student loan terms. Federal student loans usually have lower interest rates than private loans so ideally you should to tackle your private loans as first priority if you have both types.

4. Make sure all your additional payments are being applied to your loan principal

If you are able to make more the minimum payments on your student loans you want to make sure your additional payments are being applied to your principal and not to the interest otherwise you’ll never see your balances go down and many creditors will apply your payments to interest by default.

Review your statements, login to your accounts and if necessary call your creditors to ensure your additional payments are going towards your principal.

5. Don’t skip your student loan payments

Skipping loan payments just adds to the amount of time and the amount of interest you will have to pay on your loans.  A lot of times when you graduate, you may get a student loan grace period which will allow you to skip payments for a certain amount of time. If you don’t have to, don’t do it – make those payments.

If you are currently unemployed its ok to defer your loans until you can pay them. But as soon as you start working again you should start making your loan payments. And if you can afford to while unemployed, at the minimum, make your interest payments so you are at least paying something.

6. Increase Your Income

If you want to accelerate your student loan payoff, you might have to increase your income. This means you would take on additional work.
Or work outside of your job to come up with extra money to contribute towards your student loans.

To accelerate my student loan payoff, I take on freelance writing projects in addition to my full-time income. My other online side-hustles include blogging, taking surveys, user website testing, and blog commenting

7. Don’t stop saving for your future self

Once you have a plan in place for your student loans, don’t stop saving for your future self. Pay yourself first even if it means contributing just a small amount to your retirement savings.