Student Loans....

Oh how I wish this was gone! It's been 16 months since I have graduated. My original loan amount was $31,000 (well $24 short of that). That is 5 years of school (4 undergrad, 1 teacher's college). I also had a bank loan my first two years of school.

I have paid $1246 in interest on my OSAP loan SO FAR!! Wow the price of education. No full-time job yet, but I still think it was worth it!

I now owe $1975 to osap 16 months after graduation. I should have it paid off by new years. I owe family an additional $5000 (goal is end of February for this).

I think I have done quite well so far. I wish it was gone now but I'm close! Some friends I know are only making the minimum payments which means that it will take them 10 years to pay off their student loans. I would have been 33 by the time my student loans were paid off if I had done that! I will be done at 24.

My education was paid for almost entirely by me. My parents gave me approximately $3000 over the course of 5 years. The rest I received from OSAP or working during the summers and part-time during the school years. I think this is a good thing too, I feel more accomplished knowing I paid for my own education. I knew people who had their way paid for them and went out all the time and didn't care as much about their studies. My boyfriend has also offered to pay the rest of my loan off, but I won't let him. I don't want help with that either.

However, what I did not know graduating is that my uncle and my mom had set up education funds for me when I was a kid, and together they gave me $5500 when I graduated. That went straight toward a lump sum OSAP payment. Decreased my interest accured daily by a lot!

A great tool that I LOVE is the CanLearn website has a loan repayment calculator (http://tools.canlearn.ca/cslgs-scpse/cln-cln/40/crp-lrc/af.nlindex-eng.do). I look at this often and input the amount I owe, the interest rate I have and then how many months I would like to repay it in. It calculates what my monthly payments would have to be, and the total amount of interest I would be paying. Very interesting to see how making some extra payments can take off months or even YEARS of paying off the loan and how much you are saving in interest.

I have always been fairly wise with my money in high school I set up my own RESPs. But I think I learned a lot more when I went to school. Cost of living! I had never before paid any bill! Internet, phone! We decided against cable in my first year, and set up some bunny ears, talk about lifestyle deflation! I had also never paid for groceries before my first year of university! I quickly learned to stock up on non-perishables during sales, and that meat was very expensive. I often went without it in my diet due to cost. For Christmas my wishlist consisted of needs like laundry soap, toilet paper, and groceries! It made me almost as excited to open a set of oven mitts as it did a new movie I had been wanting. Priorities change.