The concept of just making interest-only payments on your student loan while still in college sounds like a simple concept. This will require you to only pay the interest off on your loan without actually paying off the principal that the loan is based out of.
Here’s the Rundown
For an unsubsidized loan, interest accrues on day one after you’ve taken the loan out. The formula banks use to calculate interest is: rate x loan balance / 365 = daily interest. So if you take $4,000 to pay for college with 3.86% interest, the amount of interest you’ll accrue on the first year will be $154.4. If you take another $4,000 loan the next year, your principal now being $8,000, your interest will be $308.8. At the end of 4 years in college, taking out the same loan amount every year, the interest you would have to pay would climb to $1,544. If you’ve paid off your interest during college, the amount you’ll end up owing will be $16,000 instead of $17,544 when it comes time to paying down your loan.
You can make monthly payments each year to pay your interest while in college: $12.86 for year one; 25.73 for year two; 38.6 for year three and 51.46 for your last year of college. If you paid off your interest during your years in college, you’d avoid a term called interest capitalization which basically means interest accruing on top of interest. Essentially, you’ll end up saving a lot of money making this financial strategy very valuable. Here are a few other positives to paying off your interest while in college.
It Encourages Positive Habits
It is easy to fall behind on your payments if you don’t have sensible habits. You just need to consider making a good habit of paying off your debt whatever you have taken in form of loan. Interest-only payments on your loan will help you get into the habit of saving money for your loan and can even help you adjust your finances properly. It is critical for you to think about how you’re going to manage your finances when it comes to getting such good habits to work for your life in the long run.
It Manages Your Credit
You may find that your overall credit rating will be a little easier for you to work with if you just manage your debts the right way. By keeping the charges on your student loan from being too high while also making payments on time, you will find after a while that your student loan will do more to help your credit rating. This can be critical for any of the different forms of credit that you might require at some point in the future.
It Keeps Your Debts Organized
More importantly, you might find that your payments will be a little easier to manage over time. You will have a good idea of what you would have to spend in order to get your debts covered. Of course, you can always choose to pay a little extra every once in a while to cover a part of the principal but the fact that you can keep your debts from being a burden to your life is a point that is great in its own right.
You have to see that interest-only payments are going to work well for your demands. You can get more out of these payments as you will keep your costs down while being astute with your responsibility to take care of what you owe.
A Few Ways you Can Afford Making Monthly Interest-Only Payments
If cash is really tight, there are some things you can do to afford making those interest-only payments on your loan. You can reduce the amount of your loan by seeking out easy scholarships to apply for that’ll help pay for school. You can also find a part-time job or find a few online gigs like being a virtual assistant, selling services on Fiverr, or getting paid to write articles on iwriter or text broker.
Tags: Debts, Education Loans, financial planning, loans, Pay Off Debts, personal finance, student loans
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