Hi everyone my name is Jeni. I want to share with you why I’m constantly talking about, writing about, and spreading the word about everything student loan debt related. I was woke to my lack of knowledge about student loans when I uncovered a $7,000 mistake. Let me get right into my tale.
I come from a working class family. My mom and dad have worked hard their entire lives. Thankfully, they’ve impressed that work ethic on me and my siblings. It’s the key ingredient to my resilience and grit.
Although neither of my parents have a college degree, they’ve always stressed the importance of doing well in school. So naturally I decided to go to college to earn myself a white collar career. One that would enable me to build a financially secure lifestyle so I wouldn’t have to worry about money. I chose to become a pharmacist because I love science and math, it helped people, and it would make me the kind of money I thought I would need for financial security.
During my six years of college I worked hard at part time jobs to ensure the only thing I had to borrow money for was tuition and books. I worked to pay for my cost of living which was no small feat. I can remember in my third year of pharmacy school working two jobs at around 20 hours per week. Sometimes, if the shifts stacked just right it was up to 30 hours. Every single break in college was an opportunity for me to work full-time. I didn’t travel, or chill and Netflix. I worked as many hours as I could get my hands on between the two jobs.
Despite working my ass off I manged to graduate with $128,000 in student loan debt. By the end of my pharmacy residency year that number rose to $132,000 even though I had paid over $6,000 toward my loans.
I can remember the relief I felt when I started to make pharmacist pay and really go after my debt. But even with aggressive payments, I didn’t feel like I was getting anywhere.
Then 2015 tax season rolled around and I filed my taxes, submitting the amount of interest I paid on my student loans into the tax form.
And then the pivotal moment in my repayment happened. I typed $13,776.15 into that box and a message came up. The message told me that my individual income was too high to claim this tax deduction. I almost lost it.
I mean this was ridiculous. The only reason I made too much as an individual to deduct the interest was because of those loans. I worked my ass off through college and residency, and now they were keeping all of my tax money?! Eff that!
So I was furious, not only had nearly half of my student loan payments gone to interest but I couldn’t even take the measly tax credit (you can only deduct $2,500). It felt like the government was taking my money twice.
But what could I do about it? Change that tax code? Yea right! Change my interest rate? Maybe but it seemed pretty sketchy. Then I heard an ad for SoFi and an add for Earnest on two different podcast shows. So I decided to do some googling to find out exactly what refinancing was all about.
I checked out both sites and submitted applications. Ultimately Earnest gave me the best interest rate so I went with them. My interest rate went from 6.8% on my federal loans to 3.36% on my refinanced loan overnight. This was in June of 2016.
My mistake and lack of knowledge cost me $7,000 in 2015. and who knows how much additional money in interest on principal that would have been paid down. If I had known about refinancing sooner my remaining debt would be <$78,000 instead of $85,000. It’s a big difference.
I wanted to do something to help people like me out. People who have made the responsible choice throughout their education but are still screwed with mountains of debt.
So for awhile I complained about debt and talked about it and annoyed everyone to death until the idea for Repayable was born. I want you to learn from me instead of having to learn the hard way at a cost. It’s tough to navigate the waters of student loan debt without guidance. It takes hours of sifting through difficult to find information to gain even a mediocre understanding.
Repayable is here to guide you, encourage you, and help liberate you from the shackles of student loans.
You can always ask me any question here in the comments, on the Repayable Facebook Page, or by sending me an email to jeni@repayable.org
For the sake of transparency, if you click my Earnest link and refinance we both get $200. I didn’t choose Earnest because of this. I chose Earnest because they have the best borrower benefits and gave me the best interest rate. Choose the refinancing company that’s right for you.
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