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student loan debt

Wednesday’s need-to-know money news

January 22, 2014 By Liz Weston

Today’s top story: Preparing to deal with debt collectors. Also in the news: Getting financial help while caring for elderly parents, why parents’ personal finance decisions are changing, and how to avoid being scammed by the wolves of Wall Street. Hope

What to Do Before Debt Collectors Call
Have your numbers in order.

Retirement: Get financial help for caring for parents
Getting help for the help you’re giving.

Is a Joint Bank Account the Secret to a Happy Marriage?
It’s all about transparency.

Personal Finance Decisions Parents Are Changing in 2014
Saving money to avoid student loan debt.

5 Tips to Avoid a Real “Wolf of Wall Street”
Never give your savings to a guy named “Wolfie”.

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: aging parents, debt, debt collectors, investment fraud, joint accounts, student loan debt, Student Loans

Putting off retirement savings is an expensive mistake

December 30, 2013 By Liz Weston

Dear Liz: I have about $16,000 in student loans at 6.8% interest. At the current monthly payment it would take me about 7.5 years to pay them off. I contribute 10% of my income to my company’s Roth 401(k) plan (my employer matches the first 6% contributed). I also contribute 3% to the stock purchasing plan. I am thinking of cutting back my 401(k) contribution to 6% and not contributing to the stock purchasing plan. Applying the extra money to my loans would reduce the payback period to about 2.5 years. After that, I would increase the contribution amount and diversify with a Roth IRA as well and maybe even begin the stock purchase program again. What do you think?

Answer: Not contributing to retirement accounts is usually an expensive mistake. The younger you are, the more expensive it can be.

Every $1,000 not contributed to a retirement plan in your 30s means about $10,000 less in retirement income. That assumes an average annual growth rate of 8%, which is the historical average for a stock-heavy portfolio.

In your 20s, the cost of not contributing that $1,000 is $20,000 of lost future retirement income. The extra decade of not getting those compounded returns makes a big difference.

People have the erroneous idea that they can put off retirement savings and somehow catch up later. Catching up, though, becomes increasingly difficult the longer you wait. A better approach is to save as much as possible starting in your 20s when the money has the longest time to grow. Then you’ll be in a better position to withstand job losses or other interruptions of your ability to save. If those setbacks don’t happen, you’d have the option of retiring early.

Granted, your plan would require reducing retirement contributions for just a few years. But the federal student loans you have are fixed-rate, tax-deductible debt that you don’t need to be in a hurry to pay off. In the long run, you’d be much better off boosting your retirement contributions.

If you’re determined to pay down your loans, however, use the money you’ve been contributing to the stock purchase plan. Continue making at least a 10% contribution to your retirement plan and increase that as soon as you can.

Filed Under: Credit & Debt, Q&A, Retirement, Saving Money Tagged With: pay debt or save, retirement savings, student loan debt, Student Loans

Wednesday’s need-to-know money news

September 11, 2013 By Liz Weston

creditWhich debts you should settle before applying for a mortgage, what to glean from your free credit report, and why crowdfunding is no longer just for opening a new coffee shop.

The Right Way to Pay Off Debt to Get a Mortgage
Which debts you should pay off before trying to get a mortgage.

The Ten Commandments of Personal Finance
Ways to avoid financial confession.

4 things you don’t know about 529 plans
What you should know before withdrawing funds from the popular college savings program.

5 lessons from free credit score notices
Things to keep in mind while reviewing your free credit reports.

Crowdfunding for Student Loan Debt?
Could the Kickstarter method be used to paid down student loans?

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: credit report, Credit Score, debt, mortgages, personal finance, student loan debt

In case you missed it: the youth edition

July 5, 2013 By Liz Weston

Cut up cardsSpurning credit cards means younger people have less toxic debt but they may be doing inadvertent damage to their credit scores and costing themselves money. Learn more in “Why young people hate credit cards.”

Read some smart answers to the awkward questions your kids may ask about family finances in “One way money is a lot like sex.”

You’ve probably read that student loan rates doubled on Monday, but that’s not quite true. Read “Student loan rates: Facts amid the fictions” for the straight scoop.

Have a great weekend!

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: Credit Cards, Credit Reports, Credit Scores, credit scoring, Debts, federal student loans, FICO, FICO scores, kids and money, Student Loan, student loan debt, Student Loans

Student loan rates: facts amid the fictions

June 28, 2013 By Liz Weston

Paid education. Graduate cap on bank notesStudent loan rates aren’t about to double, despite the headlines.

Only rates for newly-issued, subsidized federal student loans are set to rise July 1 from 3.4% to 6.8% because Congress couldn’t get its act together to prevent the increase.

Loans that have already been made won’t be affected. Neither will there be an impact on unsubsidized federal student loans, since those already carried a 6.8% rate, or on PLUS loans for graduate students and parents, which have a 7.9% rate.

Subsidized loans traditionally got lower rates because the borrowers have demonstrated financial need. But subsidized loans also charge no interest:

  • while the student is still in school at least half time
  • for the first six months after the student leaves school and
  • during an approved postponement of loan payments.

Those are powerful advantages not available on unsubsidized loans, which is what you get when you can’t demonstrate financial need.

College expert Lynn O’Shaughnessy points out in her MoneyWatch column that the doubling of subsidized loan rates actually won’t have an outsized impact:

The hike will mean that a borrower will spend less than $7 a month repaying that extra interest, according to Mark Kantrowitz, the publisher of Edvisors Network and a national financial-aid expert. Keeping the subsidized rate at 3.4 percent would cost the government $41 billion over 10 years, which is a high price to pay to save borrowers a few dollars a month.

Kantrowitz has said it’s unlikely that higher interest rates would dissuade many from attending college, and he would rather see the money go toward increasing Pell grants for the neediest students, which would do a lot more to encourage them to get a degree. Here’s what he had to say in a New York Times op-ed piece co-authored with O’Shaughnessy:

But the partisan posturing is a distraction from far more pressing issues that face students and parents who must borrow to cover their college costs. What’s lost is how Congress, in numerous ways, has been hurting the most vulnerable college students and dithering on the crisis of college affordability….Congress has starved the Pell grant program, an educational lifeline for low-income families.

He goes on to question why most student loan rates are so much higher than the government’s cost, something that’s turned education debt into a profit center for Uncle Sam. Congress also hasn’t done anything about the suffocating student loan debt many graduates have already taken on or the continuing (if somewhat moderated) increase in education costs. Private student loans remain especially problematic, since they lack the consumer protections of federal student loans and many lenders have been unwilling to work with borrowers to create affordable repayment plans. I’ve argued that we should give bankruptcy judges the power to modify private student loan terms as a way of forcing lenders to play ball.

Nobody wants to pay more interest, but there are bigger problems with the way we pay for higher education than a hike in the subsidized student loan rate.

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: college costs, college students, federal student loans, Pell grants, private student loans, Student Loan, student loan debt, Student Loans

Our #CreditChat is about to begin!

June 26, 2013 By Liz Weston

liz-westonIn a few minutes I’ll be answering your questions about how to deal with your debt on Experian’s #CreditChat, which starts at 3 p.m. Eastern/noon Pacific today. Topics include how to balance savings and paying off debt, which debts to tackle first, how to handle student loans and what to do if you’re drowning in debt. Easy ways to follow the conversation include Twubs or tchat.

Please join us!

Filed Under: Liz's Blog Tagged With: college costs, Credit Bureaus, Credit Cards, Credit Reports, Credit Scores, credit scoring, debt, debt collection, debt settlement, Debts, FICO, FICO scores, financial advice, mortgages, student loan debt, Student Loans

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