November and December were very busy months for me, with the holidays and the new job. I only made one payment total in November so I decided to combine November and December into one student debt statement.

Overall I made very great progress in December, making up for that one payment I made in November. I decided to tackle my next highest interest, deciding to go with the debt avalanche method.

I had previously requested Nelnet, my student loan servicer to separate my loan groups into individual loans. This is easily done by just giving them a call. They did ask me what the reason was, so I simply told them for personal preference.

It makes a difference in the sense that if I want to make extra payments, I am only responsible for paying the smaller interest that has already accrued on that individual loan first before my payment goes into the principal rather than the higher amount that would’ve accrued from having them in a group.

As I mentioned in my previous post, my loan repayment officially started this December so I had to make first mandatory payment of $619. I chose the Extended Graduated payment plan which is a 25-year plan that increases over time. It is the lowest monthly payment plan available to me, excluding income-based payment plan.

I chose this plan to give myself the lowest mandatory monthly payment plan that is allocated to all loan groups so that I could make extra payments to my individual chosen loan.

I do not recommend this payment plan for someone is not going to be making extra payments because as the representative I spoke on the phone told me, $600 will only cover my monthly accrued interest! So if I continue only making this minimum payment, I will never hit my principal balance ever!

Overall, I made over $7,500 in payments these last 2 months which I’m very proud of. I want to stay aggressive in my payments until I’ve lowered my debt to $100,000, then I plan to be less aggressive as I put more into saving for a house.