All the stuff you need to know. — This post isn’t meant to go viral or convince you of my awesome writing abilities. Rather, it’s a functional way to let everyone know that I’m not perfect. Many of my early articles focused on personal finance, and I used to put the same disclaimer at the end of each…

You took a chance on yourself…now own it. — For student loan borrowers, it’s bad enough to deal with our repayment plans, trying to find some way to scrape together enough cash to meet the minimum monthly payment. It gets worse when the rest of the world starts carping on us for our struggle. The world is awash in…

How a big family can save you big(ish) money. — Unless you are one of the dwindling few student loan borrowers who are on a fixed payment plan, your monthly student loan amount is heavily dependent upon two main items: income and family size. Most Income Drive Repayment (IDR) plans rely on calculating your family’s “discretionary income”, which is calculated…

The reality of college debt and steps to address it. — It seems like everyone is giving the issue of student loans the Bob Rumson treatment: making you afraid of it and telling you who’s to blame for it. That’s how you win elections and sell newspapers, but it does nothing to actually help solve the problem. My question is this…

…and why that debt is so #WorthIt — Like millions of freshmen before me, I took out student loans to attend college. It didn’t seem like a big deal at the time, especially since my plans were to get a double major in chemistry and mechanical engineering. I was going to make bank, right? At least, that’s what…

After years of being vilified, PSLF is easier than ever. — There has been plenty of ink spilled about the Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) program in the past couple of years, and some of it is quite fear-inducing. Coverage about the PSLF program has picked up since October 2017, which marked the first month of eligibility for loan forgiveness in…

If you thought 2021 was bad, you ain’t seen nothing yet. — It wasn’t long ago that I wrote about the delays of the 2021 tax refunds. In that article, I mentioned that the IRS had been gutted for decades prior the pandemic, then was faced with implementing myriad new laws and emergency actions while still expected to process returns on time. …

It’s not the economy. It’s politics. — This time last month, my wife and I were preparing for our student loan payments to restart in February. We were mostly ready, as both of us were lucky enough to keep our jobs through the pandemic and didn’t need to use that money towards rent or groceries. Instead, the…

It was planned, but it’s still scary. — Today was the last day at my old job of five and a half years. My new job starts in 6 days. I moved to a different city for the job I just left, bringing my family with me. Now I have a new…