For my January & February student debt statement, I made a total payment of $5775. The biggest update is that I paid off another loan! I will also give quick but important tips on filing your tax return at the end of this post so be sure to not miss it.

Why I Paid Off a Low Interest Loan Before  a High Interest Loan?

My Perkins loan is the only loan I have that is managed by a different lender. So I decided to stray from my debt avalanche repayment method of making extra payments only to the highest interest debt to pay off my Perkins Loan.

All my other loans are managed by Nelnet which makes managing them in one place easier. As repayment officially started in February for my Perkins Loan I decided to pay it off and not have to worry about keeping up with loans from different sources.

With debit cards, credit cards, and student loans to keep up with already, I definitely believe the simpler I make everything, the easier chance I have of tackling debt down. Most important, it gives me less chance of missing a payment which is a big no-no.

Progress and Thoughts

I am very excited to see that out of the 4 different loan types I had acquired, I am down to my subsidized and unsubsidized loans (albeit a lot of them). On a less positive note, my contract position has ended, so I foresee the extra payments coming to a halt at least for the month of March unless I miraculously can snag and start a new position within a month. It is such a bummer because I am $7600 away from paying off one of my highest interest rate unsubsidized loan which I was hoping to tackle by May so that will likely be delayed.

Tips on Filing Your Taxes:

Have you filed your 2017 taxes yet? If you haven’t, make sure you get your 1098-E form (Student Loan Interest Statement) from your loan servicer. Interest payments made in 2017 can be deducted up to $2,500 to reduce your taxable income so be sure not to miss putting it in! My 1098-E showed that I paid $7,240 in interest alone for the 2017 year which is sad but just further inspires me to repay my debt as fast as possible to avoid paying extra money for interest.

How can you file your taxes online? If you are looking to file your taxes online, I would recommend Turbo Tax. I filed my federal and two state taxes with them this year for free!  The online program walked me through everything step by step and made everything fairly painless. They also kept all my previous tax returns on file so I still have access to them. Just as a disclaimer, I am not sponsored in any way by Turbo Tax, I just really like using their service.

As a reference, I filed as a single, non-homeowner, with multiple W-2s, and did not claim any businesses and was able to file everything completely free. They do offer premium services if your tax return is more complicated, but if you are at a point where you need the premium services, I would highly consider hiring a tax preparer.

Good luck everyone and I hope you get a good tax return this year.