You might think that the hardest part about college is passing your final exams, up until the moment you think about how you’re going to pay off your student loans. Because paying them back in full can take several years, you might feel like you’re up against a herculean task, not to mention that it would cause you constant worry and stress, which will distract you from your studies. Luckily, there are some solutions that will help you pay your loans in a relatively short amount of time. If you want to find out more, check out the following guide.
Take up a Side Hustle
There are numerous methods that can help you pay off your students’ loans in a short amount of time. Unfortunately, most of them are circumstantial. Luckily, picking up a side hustle isn’t one of these circumstantial methods. A side hustle is a great way to increase your monthly income. By picking up a job or two alongside your studies, you’ll have more money by the end of the month, which will allow you to make bigger payments and thus, reduce the payment time of your loans. You can start with becoming a bartender, which is mostly the go-to method for most college students, but if you can drive, you can become an Uber or Lyft driver, but just make sure that your car meets the requirements of both companies. You can also try to sell cosmetics, or become an affiliate for cosmetic companies, as they pay well for their affiliates.
Make Biweekly Payments
Instead of making monthly payments, you can break them up into biweekly payments. If you think about it, making a full payment each month means that you will be making 12 payments a year. However, if you’re making biweekly payments throughout the year, you’ll be making 26 payments annually, which means that you’ll make 13 full payments instead of just 12. The people at LendingBee.com.sg explain that this will help reduce the interest rates on your loans in the long term and will also shorten the amount of time in which you have to pay that loan. This is the easiest and least costly method that you can apply to reduce the interest rates. All you have to do is to pay about 8.34% more per paycheck.
Extra Principal Payments
Bigger principal payments will work in a similar way to biweekly payments, as they will impact both the interest on your loan and the amount of time in which you’ll pay the loan. For example, if you are paying $600 hundred each month and have an interest rate of 6% you can increase your payments to $1000 per month by adding an extra $400, which means you’ll pay an extra $4,800 per year. Considering your interest rate, this means that you will be reducing about $8,109 off your loan, which will translate to some hefty savings in the future (exactly 13.5% in this example). However, you can save more depending on how much extra cash you pay per month and whether or not you choose to make biweekly payments.
Get a Job with Student Loan Perks
A lot of people realize how important student loans are that some companies offer perks while hiring to help out students pay off their debts. Basically, these companies will service your debt in exchange for working for them, which means that your job will work like private health insurance or a pension plan.
The employer-matching contributing system these companies will put you on will rid you of a large figure off your balance sheet in a short period of time, which will make paying your student loan much easier. However, note that not all companies will offer perks associated with student loans. In addition to that, you may have to trade some benefits in work in order to get that perk.
Share Your Creative Work on Patreon
Everyone has something they’re good at. If your interests are on the artistic side, you will be able to share your passion with hundreds of people online. Many people share things like short stories, poems, comics, etc. and they love to share them with people for free. If you’re one of those people, then you must have a large fan base online, which means that you can use Patreon, a crowdfunding platform that will enable your fans to donate to your art every month. This will create a decent source of income that will help you pay off your student loans.
As you can see, there are several helpful methods through which you can pay off your student loans. Student loans, like all financial responsibilities, need smart planning, steady income, and patience in order to manage them quickly and efficiently. Once you’ve finished paying off your loans, you can focus on other goals like start saving, for example.
