Loan Cancellation Update #2

Called this morning to ask why my second year of teaching was not counted and they told me it would count once August rolled around. They also told me that my account would be frozen and I WOULD NOT HAVE TO PAY ANOTHER DOLLAR FOR THAT LOAN!! WOO HOO!! This loan was our biggest loan at nearly $8,300 and we were paying $100 a month for just that loan. Now, I do not have to pay $100 a month. We will be rolling this $100 into another loan every month now. If I would have seen this forgiveness earlier, I would not have needed to pay a single dollar to it, but I ended up paying off about $700 in principal. Oh well, I am saving $8,300, I think I will be OK. All I have to do now is submit my paper work every August.

With that loan forgiven, we are not under $70,000 in loans and 28% paid off! We definitely beat our goal, but we will not slow down. Hopefully by the end of the year, we can pay off another 7% of loans and get to the 35% paid off mark come December 31st.

This is a good start to the week. Hope all of you have a similar start!

Enjoying Summer on a Budget

Hello again, I'm here to pass along free things to do in the summer.  This is the first summer my husband and I have off together, as we are both currently working as teachers.  While it's great to have all this extra free time, it's quite the problem when you don't have the budget to go anywhere or do anything that costs a lot of money.  We have had to promise each other not to go "looking" for things to do around the house, because it will likely turn into a headache and very expensive project. Therefore, I've decided to peruse the web for free things to do throughout the summer and pass these suggestions on to you.

The first "free" thing we did this past week was attend a Food Truck event at a neighborhood park.  This is a new thing in our community as of two weeks ago, and I think it's a great idea.  There are different food trucks each week (about six) and a live band and activities for the kids.  It's a major plus that it's walking distance from the house, so we were able to save gas and walk the dogs at the same time! While dinner wasn't free (it was $15 for both of us), this was a great way to spend the evening and do something that we hadn't done before.

So look around your area for food truck gatherings, take the kids, pets and a blanket and have a cheap (if not free) night out.  Another suggestion is to take a picnic, or at the very least your own drinks, and go enjoy the free music.

Stay tuned for more fun and hopefully free events we do this summer.  Here's to not being bored and saving money!

Loan Cancellation!

 

I told you guys a few posts ago that I was bored at work and I found that I could qualify for a 15% cancellation of my Perkins loan. Well I heard back and I qualified!! Woo hoo! The original loan balance was for $8,310.93. It is now down to $6,960.93; a reduction of $1,350! This is actually a decrease of 16.2%. They apparently base the 15% on the original loan amount which was for $9,000. I am pretty excited about this. This was one of our biggest loans with a 5% interest rate.

As exciting as this is, I am going to call them on Monday and ask them why I did not get the other 15% decrease. I should qualify for another 15% cancellation because I have been teaching for two years in an area of need at a Title 1 funded school. I know I am being greedy, but I definitely need another 15% forgiven. That would be a total of $2,700. Next year, this number will go up to 20% forgiven.

If  you have student loans, please go scour the internet for different forgiveness options on your student loans. They have all kinds of forgiveness for different areas of public service, so be sure you look. It could definitely pay off! If you have questions, I will be happy to help!

What to do?

About two months ago, I sold off some of our mutual funds and individual stock in order to get a healthy balance to invest in a stock. Altogether it was about $4,400. I decided I would find a pretty big company and invest all of that money into it. Yes, I know, very risky. I did my due diligence and found Icahn Enterprises. This is the investment vehicle owned by billionaire Carl Icahn. I figured he would be a pretty safe investment considering he has a lot more money than I do and he does not want to see his money decrease. So I took a shot and I invested in his company at a share price of $67. I was able to get 67 shares at that price. Not to mention, Carl pays his stock owners a $4 dividend on every share.

I followed this stock closely and used stop-losses as it started going higher. It was a very volatile stock trading up or down 1%- 2% a day. Eventually it got to my sell point of $90, then the stock tanked and I sold at $87. So, I made almost $1,300 with that stock. Now I have about $5,700 to invest with. I am not sure what to do. The market seems to be very unstable recently. The Fed can't decide what it is going to do and the market does not seem to like that. Now would certainly not be time to be risky. I need some healthy growth stocks that have had a dividend for quite a while. I am looking at a company like Coke. It is a little on the expensive side with a P/E at 21, but it seems to be going through a pull-back right now. It would certainly be a good entry point.

Another one is Costco. They have been on a tear recently. Their earnings are improving and their P/E is high at 25, but EPS is 4. So the multiple is not bad here.

I also question if I should get in a mutual fund. Tanner was correct about FNMIX. That thing has done nothing but go down since I bought it in February. So, I saved a few months of retirement contributions and purchased FBIOX, which is a mutual fund around health care. It has returned close to 35% this year alone. I wonder if I should put my $5,700  into this mutual fund as well and see what happens. I am definitely looking for risk so that I can see some upside, but do not want to be too crazy.

I would love to hear what you guys think, or if you have had any success recently with investments. I would love to know what you invested in and why. 

Tax Update

Good Afternoon Everyone!

We got an "Annual Notice of Assessment" from our tax commissioner. This number is fantastic compared with the $5,100 we spent last year. The number came in at $3,394.87! Woo hoo! It looks like our $2,100 mortgage will go away pretty quick. I am faxing in this letter and they will post the changes to the account within 5 business days.

It looks like they honored our homestead exemption like they said they would. Also, our home's value decreased $20,000 to just over $250,000, which is what we paid for it. This I am not happy about, but our local school system has been struggling recently replacing board members and fighting accreditation issues. Moreover, we are not looking to sell at this moment so I won't lose too much sleep over it, but I would like our value to slowly climb back up.

This is extremely relieving. I was literally losing sleep over this payment. It looks like we pay it this month, but next month it should come back down. Now we can focus back on paying down our debt! Right now, we have about $900 waiting to clear and post. Once this is done, I will give you guys an update on the debt total. We are going to fight hard to make it to that 25% mark. When our escrow gets figured out, we should be good-to-go with meeting our goal. According to my calculations, that means we will need to payoff $5,200 worth of loans to reach that mark. This should be feasible considering the summer money we are set to make.

I used the $500 gift card to buy two new tires on the car today. This was overdue and something we definitely needed. That cost was $234. My granddad told me to never skimp on tires, so I have always bought the same tire throughout my ownership of the car. Of course they are the most expensive touring tires, but since we are reliable on this car only, I can't afford not to have the best.

To top off this good day, Chik-fil-a was giving away chicken sandwiches today! I only spent $1.50 on my lunch. I cannot resist the sweet tea. I don't understand why. I guess it is just a southern thing. Any of you have the same problem?

Hope everyone has a great Thursday and weekend! 

Internet Searching

While at work on Friday, I happened to get bored and do research. I know you all probably think I am a slacker, but I finished cleaning my room and posting grades on Thursday so that I would not have too much to do on Friday. I decided I would look into student loan forgiveness programs available for teachers. Since I am a science teacher, I should be able to qualify for a lot of them.

I found a program for teachers in low-income schools, or teachers in an area of shortage. I qualify for both of these. I then read further into it and it would only apply to Perkins loans. These loans are loans made specifically through the 4 year school. They have a Perkins loan fund which they will issue to students after completing the FASFA. This fund is replenished by the principle and interest payments made by other borrowers. Lucky for me, I have a Perkins loan through my school and it happens to be the biggest loan I have; roughly $8,300. The program will provide the qualified teachers with 15% forgiveness through the first two years of teaching, then 20% for years 3 and 4, and 30% for year 5. If you are interested in this information, here is the link - http://studentaid.ed.gov/repay-loans/forgiveness-cancellation/charts/public-service.

When I saw I was able to receive forgiveness for this much of my loan, I ran to my principal and told him to sign off on my paperwork. I got this in the mail on Friday afternoon. I am hoping to hear back from them soon. I have no reason not to qualify so I am pretty optimistic. I doubt I will hang on to this loan that long, but it will definitely be nice to get some relief at least for two years worth. If I qualify, and I if my assumption is right that they will forgive 30% of my total loan value because I have been teaching two years, then I will see a reduction of $2,493.28 bringing my loan balance to $5,817.65. That would be awesome! I will of course keep you guys updated on this.

We have done well to have some extra money in our checking account to absorb the new mortgage payment coming on June 1. I am not looking forward to this, but it could be worse I guess.

We have another $550 in payments waiting to clear and I am going to pay an additional $350, so another $900 will go to loans. This month we will have paid almost $2,000. That is pretty solid. Come the end of summer I project us to be under $70,000 and right around $67,000 in total debt. I am looking forward to that.

I hope everyone is having a wonderful Memorial Day. My family has a lot of vets and I always go pay tribute to them and their service at the North Georgia Cemetery where they are laid to rest. Be sure you thank anyone you know for their service.

Rejected

We were denied our request to close our escrow and release the funds. We now have a $2,100 a month mortgage payment for the foreseeable future. This number will go down once November rolls around, but for the next 5 months it is going to suck. There is really no other way to say it. Apparently if you have an FHA loan and do not put down 20% on a home, you are stuck with an escrow until you get 20% paid off. Take home story here, do not buy a home until you have 20%! Why didn't someone tell me that?

Our debt payments will obviously slow down and I do not think we will be able to hit that 25% mark. As bad as I want it, I just don't see how it will happen. 

I have some payments waiting to be cleared out. We paid about $800 to principal this month and once the accounts reflect that, I will update the totals again. 

I read the greatest article this morning about a family that paid off their mortgage in less than 5 years. Pretty incredible article that details how they did it. It provides me with some encouragement and new ideas. Maybe it will provide some of you the encouragement to kick that small credit card bill or put you on a path to being debt-free. Here is the article is you would like to read it http://homes.yahoo.com/news/paid-off-mortgage-less-5-years-230600500.html. 

Hope everyone has a great day. Last day of school with the kids today! And, faculty bowling after work! Woo-hoo!!