Monthly student loan payments can be something very difficult to carry for many students who occur debt over the course of their studies. Whether you’re a freshman at a your local university or a graduate student studying abroad in another country you still need to be careful about your financial choices.
Five steps for lowering your monthly student loan payments:
1. Make a spreadsheet document that includes all of the lenders that you owe, the amount that you owe them and the minimum monthly payments. Calculate the total amount of money that you owe on your student loans.
2. Research the lowest interest rates offered for student loans by looking online and/or visiting local banks. You will find that it is often easiest to use your current bank to refinance your loan but in the long run it isn’t always cheaper.
3. Check out the availability of federal loan consolidation programs that may be provided through your school or the government.
4. Decide which bank you are going to use to consolidate and refinance your loans. This means that you will take out a loan big enough to pay off all of the individual loans and lower your payments while slightly increasing the time it takes to pay off the total loan.
5. Sign a promissory note to begin making payments to your new lender on a lower monthly payment schedule.
Warning: Debt consolidation can be used to lower your payments but it will not necessarily lower the total payment of your loan. There are many students who do not understand debt consolidation loans and occur even more debt because they have lower payments and end up spending more when they should be applying their excess income to paying off their consolidated debt.
Many times we have the desire of buying the car of our dreams or simply upgrade the car we are driving now. But in the back of our mind we think, Can I really afford it? will I have a negative impact on my saving plans?
Or what’s the right amount of money for down payment, and consequently what’s the smartest decision on the length of the car loan, and the monthly payments.
Experts recommend that the first issue to consider is how much of your financial resources at this point of your life you are willing to devote to upgrading your ride opposed to providing yourself a bigger margin of financial security. The second issue is how you should pay for a new car whatever the car you might want.
In deciding how much you would devote to buy a car, it is recommended that you check what percentage of your yearly salary your car payments would represent. If such percentage gets close or higher to 10% you are probably paying too much, despite the down payment you gave away.
So at the very least you should ask yourself how taking on this new commitment on will affect your ability to save for retirement. Will you be able to pay off the car loan while maintaining your current savings rate? Or will you have to cut back?
In other words, in order to make a wiser decision, you should keep in mind that the fact remains that you’re diverting resources that could go toward enhancing your financial security into a car. So making the right decision now, will require from you to think about the future and your personal financial goals.
Money is anything that is used by an economy to purchase goods and services. The fact that currency is issued by the government does not necessarily make it money.
For example, the 100 dollar bill is issued by the US government, but how many people in the united states actually pay for things with $100 cash? Answer: not that many. So the bill is currency, but it is hinging on the edge of not being a form of money.
Here are some interesting forms of money from all around the world:
Forms of money
1. miniaturized tools
2. miniaturized swords
3. cowry shells
4. slabs of salt
5. beaded belts (wampum)
6. giant stone wheels
7. tobacco
8. electronic transactions
As illustrated in the list above, things such as tobacco and cowry shells (which are not issued specifically as a form of government currency) are used as money in some places. They are simply used to purchase goods and services.
