Goals: Round 1

Now that I have my budget, I know what I owe and how changes in payments will affect this, it's time to dig in and set some goals. Of course my big picture goal is to pay off my student loans, but I need some stepping stone goals set to achieve that monstrosity of a goal.

To help me I did a quick Google search and came up with a site called MindTools. This site is geared towards helping out your career, but there is a nice section that helps with goal setting. I like some of their suggestions, like setting small, precise goals that have time limits. They also have a mnemonic for goal setting:

• S - Specific or Significant
• M - Measurable or Meaningful
• A - Attainable or Action-Oriented
• R - Relevant or Rewarding
• T - Time-bound or Trackable

Makes sense. I'm not going to complete my goals if I can't articulate them and create them with a purpose. The site also states to set performance goals, not outcome goals, this way you have control over them.

I've already stated two goals in my previous posts, so here goes setting pen to paper... or fingers to keys:

1. Check Mint as often as I check Facebook for one month (to be continued if it's useful)
2. Check Tuition.io once a month until loans are paid off
3. Comb through my expenditures this week and determine where I should cut back my spending (above what Mint tells me)
4. At the end of each pay period check my bank account and transfer any excess money to pay off my loans
5. Once goal 3 is completed set goals on what I will do to cut back spending
6. Over the next month research ways to increase income
7. Keep blogging at least once a week about my progress (this will keep me honest)

Tuition.io, io, io...Ice, Ice, Ice...Break it Down Now!

A few days ago I set up a Google Alert for any articles pertaining to paying off student loans, and everyday since I've received links to articles on Tuition.io. After reading a Mashable article I decided to give it a go.

Like Mint, Tuition.io is super easy to set up, as long as you are okay with giving them access to your personal accounts. Actually, I felt that setting up my Tuition.io account was less painful than setting up Mint. The only thing I had a problem with  was remembering my Federal PIN (shows how much I was checking that...).

Once you've linked your loans to Tuition.io it automatically creates a graph for you. There's a slider at the bottom representing your monthly payments. You can slide it to the right to see what would happen if you increased your monthly payments by X dollars, and low and behold the graph shows you how much faster you'll pay off your loans. Under the graph it also tells you in months how much sooner you'll pay them off, and how much you'll save by not letting interest accrue. Other things you can track in the graph section is your progress since joining, details about you student loan accounts, and your transactions.

Given my love of graphs I seriously spent about 30 minutes playing with this and imagining how to get the money for those payments, and what it would be like once my loans were gone. Think of all of the amazing trips I could take! Or I could buy a condo! Anyway, I clearly found this to be a motivational tool.

The other aspect I liked is many people I feel like don't know the exact dollar amount that they owe on their student loans. It's just some large vague figure looming over them. For me I never sought out to know the exact amount because of the painful process of checking. There are several different lenders, countless passwords and security precautions, just to get an update. Well, Tuition.io now makes this easy to access. It aggregates all of your loan info into one place, so you only have one password to really keep up with (of course you still need to store/remember your other passwords!).

At the top of your page there is a link to "Your Plan". Here you enter in a little about your financial situation, and then Tutition.io suggests what to do with your loans. Personally, I didn't find this very useful. Tuition.io told me to consolidate my loans and to set up an income based repayment plan. I've already done both of these things.

However, if you are a recent graduate, or still in school, then this would definitely help. I think the only reason I consolidated my loans when I did was because I had a friend that worked in the Financial Aid Office at a school. She pretty much told me everything I should do in regards to my loans, and told me I was stupid if I didn't follow her advice :).

While I think that Tuition.io is fun, and motivational, I don't know how often I'll be checking it. I think I'll set a goal for at least once a month. There's not a whole lot that's going to change daily on my loans, or advice/tools to pay attention to. Also, I checked my iPhone, and couldn't find a phone app for it. I'm addicted to apps, so that was a bit of a let down.

One thing I should note: they have a blog! I might check the blog out more often for any useful tips. From the few articles I've read the blog seems pretty accessible to the average person, plus some articles have fun gifs (ie. the Sharknado/Student-loan-nado gif). If you're interested check out their blog here.

Mint It, Mint It Real Good

Mint.com....So there's been a lot of hype over the past few years about Mint. Admittedly, I signed up for Mint a while ago. I thought it was great because it automatically uploads your banking info, you just have to be comfortable with giving Mint access to monitor your personal accounts. Well, I unfortunately did not keep up with it, so here goes round 2.

Overview:
The first tab you will see is the "Overview" tab. I think I'll be spending most of my time here because it tells me about upcoming bills, I can set bill reminders, and it also shows you how you're doing on your budget. Here's a quick pic of what the "Upcoming Bills" display looks like:

Hopefully this will help me plan on when it's a good time to schedule future payments, or make purchases.

Budgeting:
The budgeting tool seems pretty fantastic. Mint automatically looks at your expenditures and lists them under "Everything Else". If you want you can manually set your own budget for items that aren't variable, like rent, and save them. Or, you can click on "Everything Else" and click on the little + button next to each item. This will pop open the budget setter, and Mint suggests a budget for you. The site says that it generally sets a budget for 20% less than you spend normally. Once everything is set you have a fun little bar chart to look at to track your progress.

I love charts and data, so I definitely geeked out a bit in this section. Now, I just need to be diligent about monitoring, and keeping to my budget. Easier said than done, am I right? Luckily, Mint is also a phone app, so you can easily check how you're doing on your budget. Each time you open the app it refreshes the information.

Goals:
Initially the goals section of Mint seems pretty awesome and validating. I love to check items off lists, so immediately I started setting goals. Since I first signed up I have been able to happily check off "Pay off my credit cards" from my goal list. Very satisfying. Unfortunately the goals failed me this time!

I wanted to add "Pay off my student loans" as a goal. Well, based off of my income-based repayment plan Mint calculated that it will take me over 50 years, and therefore, it's an insufficient minimum payment. This is just frustrating. I know it's going to take that long, but I don't know how much I'll be able to save on any given month. I would have to up my minimum payment to $2,000 a month for Mint to be happy....that's what I make each month. Lame.

So I tried to make my goal just to pay off my loan with the highest interest rate. This so happens to be my largest loan. Again, with the insufficient minimum payment. I then tried my smallest loan. Finally, success! Mint would accept my goal.

I don't know how I feel about an online budgeting tool telling me that my goals/payments are insufficient. I already know that, way to make me feel better.

Trends:
The "Trends" section is a fun one if you're a data geek like me. It shows you where you spend the most money. See:

Clearly, I should cut down on gifts...wait what? Who the heck am I giving to? I might have to go back and reclassify some expenditures so Mint puts them in the right category.

Overall Impression:
Great basic tool. There definitely are some limitations like the "Goals" section, and you may have to go in and manually classify some expenditures. Also, if you are working off of a cash budget Mint will be a pain in the butt. You will have to enter in every expense individually. I don't know about you, but I'm lazy when it comes to that type of thing. I hate health and fitness apps for that very reason.

However, the pros of the budgeting tool and overview tab greatly outweigh the cons. The more you know about how you spend, the better you can evaluate your situation and cut out unnecessary items. Of course, for this tool to help me succeed I must actually work on using it. So my personal goal is to check Mint as often as I check Facebook. This will be easy with the app version. I'll let you know next month about my progress (and hopefully savings!).

The Kick Off

Over the past few months I've been stressing about my graduate student loans. A few years ago I left my job and went back to grad school. This took place right after the recession hit, and my thinking was I would wait out the bad job market in school. Unfortunately, while I was waiting out the recession I was burying myself in debt. Not my smartest move.

For the sake of transparency, I'm cringing to tell you, that I now have $91,540.02 in student loans and a job that pays over $10,000 less a year than my job pre-grad school. I'm making roughly $33,000 a year. Looking at those numbers I've become overwhelmed. Most examples I've read about people paying off that amount of debt were about people earning around $50,000 and living frugally. Well, at $33,000 I'm already living frugally, so where does that leave my loan situation?

At one point I gave up hope of paying off my loans in my lifetime, and resigned myself to always having a monthly payment. This thinking is S-T-U-P-I-D. I've decided to take control of my situation and aggressively work on paying down my loans.

First order of business: creating a budget. I've searched for some budget templates to help me with this task, and found this article on different budget tools: http://www.doughroller.net/tools-resources/10-online-budget-tools/, and this article on an app that specifically focuses on student loans(!): http://mashable.com/2013/08/13/tuitionio/.

I'm going to give Mint and Tuitionio a go; I'll let you know my thoughts on these soon.