Loan payment way too high for what you make?

by sir_richard_head

 

Step 1: You need to start a proper budget. What you have above is a decent “back of the napkin” math, but you really need to keep a ledger or use an app to help know exactly where your money is going. If you don’t have a budget, then don’t waste anyone’s time talking about your money problems because I don’t know anyone that got out of debt without having a budget. If you can’t pay for something with cash, then you can’t afford it. Simple as that.

Step 2: If you can’t get a better job with that degree of yours, you need a second job until you DO get a better job. Until you are debt free, you should not ever relax your efforts to upgrade jobs. Literally any job will do and if you have to keep looking to upgrade this job, then do exactly that. Work fast food. Work in an Amazon fulfillment center. Deliver pizza. Whatever you have to do, do it.

Step 3: 100% of your paycheck from a second job should be going towards debt. Make sure you pay your monthly bills, but then start eliminating the debt with the smallest balances. You could eliminate the two smallest credit cards in a couple of months easily. This will free up an extra $85/mo for you. Then you’ll keep at it and pay off CC3, then CC1. At this point, you’ll have freed up nearly $200/month and have 4 items off of your plate. This should take you less than a year. If you’re aggressive about it and your second job is decent, then this could be done in 6-9 months. Imagine that. By this time next year you have 0 credit card debt! If you’ve been making your car payments on time, every time then it’s also reasonable to assume that your car loan will be in range of you paying off in only a couple months. That’d be a total of $466/mo you’ve freed up and $10,417 of debt you’ve paid off by simply getting a second job.

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Step 4: If you haven’t already, now is the time for you to really press yourself to get a better primary job. You have some manner of experience under your belt now and you need to move towards a career. The job you get might not be the job that you want to finish at, but it at least has to be a job that moves your career forward a bit before you make the jump to a different job. Climb that career ladder.

Step 5: We’re going to stay the course here and keep making huge strides towards your debt. You may very well work all year at your second job and still not pay off one of these student loans, but you gotta keep at it. Eventually you will pay one of them off or start giving the collective principle of the loans such a beating that your monthly payment starts getting lower and lower. Assuming you are ~23 now, there’s no reason to believe you couldn’t be 100% debt free by age 30 if you make paying off debt the priority in your life. I think most people in this subreddit would sacrifice a human baby to a volcano if it meant that they could turn 30 years old with 0 debt and a college degree under their belt. Even if it takes you a couple more years to do this, why wouldn’t you at least stick it out as long as you can?

 

When you’ve found that you’ve dug yourself pretty deep into a hole… the most important thing to remember is to stop digging. You cannot afford any of this stuff and you’ve already got a biology degree. You need to find a way to make money with the tools already on your belt. You could easily go and get these certifications and then not find a job that pays any better than what you are taking home now. And then what? You’ve tossed a few more shovel loads out of the hole and then you’ll decide that you need some other sort of degree or certification or some crap. No. Wrong. It’s time to be an adult now and start putting the degrees to work. You can make a career change once you’ve paid the debts of your first career choice.

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