Hello and welcome to my first student loan debt statement post. Every month I will create a debt statement listing out my student loans, any payments I’ve made that month, and my current balance.

Perkins & Subsidized Loans

These are my undergraduate loans. I had made a couple of payments on them while still in undergrad because I realized I had taken out too many loans, hence the payments of $1500 and $339 listed.

In retrospect, had I known I was going to graduate school, I would have chosen to keep that money instead of taking out more unsubsidized loan which accrues interest while I am at school.

As you can see, since I’ve graduated, some of my subsidized loans have started accruing interest, but because they also have the lowest interest rates, I plan on putting them on the back burner for the time being.

Unsubsidized Loans

I accrued most of my interests from my unsubsidized loans but because I have bigger fishes to fry (my Grad Plus Loans), I have chosen not to start payments on unsubsidized loans until I have to make minimum payments on them when my grace period ends. Many sites have advised on paying accrued interest before they capitalize but I believe it is more beneficial for me to focus paying down my principal balance on the Grad Plus Loans rather than on accrued interests. I will create a separate blog entry demonstrating how I came to this conclusion.

Grad Plus Loans

I made the most progress on my Grad Plus Loans. I made a total payment of $16,339.37 in July. As my first blog post will tell you, my parents have been helping me financially in reducing my debt by loaning me their own money. This is why my current balance stands at $153,000 rather than over $200,000 which is what I owe in total if I count the money I owe to my parents.

Changes for this month

• I received an additional $10,000 in a loan from my parents in July which I put straight into my Grad Plus Loan with the highest interest rate hence finishing up my highest interest rate Grad Plus Loan. (Yay!)
• In addition, I put $6000 of my own money which was a combination of ~$1000 that I had received from various relatives and parents as graduation gifts and $5000 that I had made from 3 months worth of salary at my job that I was working at since graduating in May.
• You can see that although I tried paying off 2 of the Grad Plus Loans, there was a delay in timing between when I paid and when interest accrued that caused a balance to still remain on the loans. I will talk about how I resolved that issue on my August 2017 Debt Statement.

Last Thoughts

Overall, it felt great to make so much progress on my loan, even if most of the progress was made by a loan from my parents. At least they are allowing me to borrow without accruing interest! I cannot believe that I’ve accrued $11,000 worth of interest in just 3 years of grad school. It is crazy to think that I owe so much money that I never even used and it makes me that much more motivated to finish paying off my loans.

A couple things for clarification purposes:

1. I am currently still in my 6-month grace period, therefore minimum payments have not started. Any payments that I make now are extra payments.
2. I actually owe more than the amount listed in my current balance because this spreadsheet lists only the amount I owe to the government. I owe about $60,000 directly to my parents.
3. I have a couple of plans in mind in terms of how I want to pay off my loans. However, the super simplified plan is that I plan to tackle my debt through the debt avalanche method which means I will focus on paying the loan with the highest interest rate first.