I'm back...Here we go!

Well, it's been over 4 months since my last post. I apologize! You may be wondering what has happened since then and where we are on our journey. Over the next few posts I'll get everyone up to speed.

First things first - I've graduated! I'm officially an Auburn Alumnus. My degree was in Industrial & Systems Engineering w/ a minor in Supply Chain management. Graduation was May 14th and I started my new job with Eaton in Jackson, MS on June 1st. This spring has been busy with school, work, raising a toddler, and moving to a new place and job.

We are settled now though in our apartment in Brandon, MS. My job is going well and my wife Hilary is almost through with orientation at the hospital. She is going to be working weekend nights as a float pool nurse. With her working Friday/Saturday nights, we won't have to worry about child care! Plus, she will be getting paid very well so our income is much higher than I was previously planning for. We are so thankful that she was given such a great opportunity. By the way, you can check out our family blog at followthehills.blogspot.com.

My priority now is to get everything updated and settled. With a move and new jobs it takes a while to get expenses under control, figure out what monthly expenses & income are actually going be, etc. I am going to be drafting a realistic budget and will soon know how much of my income will actually be used to pay on student loans.

Student loans are funny. Lenders don't exactly make it easy to find info and pay. Of the approximately $140K, my loans are divided in to private and federal. Luckily my private loans are all in one place (Citibank). However I have to go to about 4 different locations to get information on my federal loans. Sallie Mae has most of my Stafford loans but they are divided to 2 different websites. My Perkins loans are managed by Auburn University on another website. Then I have about $10K of unsubsidized Stafford's managed by the Direct Loan Service on a 4th website.

To make it even more difficult, Sallie Mae divides loans into "loan groups" by interest rate. So, I make a different payment for each group of interest rates.

I'm not sure how many "different" payments I'll be making but once I get all that sorted out I'll post it on here. I'll then order the balances from smallest to largest and start the snowball method as Dave Ramsey prescribes.

The Challenge:

In order to pay the loans off asap we must stick to the budget and pay all extra towards the loans. Therefore, I'm going to try to pay my loans first and then leave only enough money to meet the budget. This should force us to live within budget rather then blow it and pay less then expected on student loans.

I look forward to keeping up with the blog regularly now. I also am looking into having someone design a better look for it. Thank you for following and see you soon!