Five tips for paying off student loan debt early

Today, 70% of students with a bachelors degree have student loan debt by the time they graduate. Some graduate with a lot of student loan debt and some graduate with a smaller amount. Regardless of the amount, student loan debt is an annoying burden. How can you get rid of that burden as quickly as possible? Work to pay it off early with these five tips:

1. Pay more than you’re expected to pay on your loans. When you pay more than the monthly minimum on your student loans, you’ll reduce the length of time you have to pay them and reduce the amount of money you pay in interest.
2. Refinance. There are lots of options out there for refinancing student loans. If your current interest rate is high, you might be able to refinance and lower your interest rate and monthly payment. With a lower monthly payment, you’ll hopefully be able to pay even more than the minimum required each month.
3. Use extra money toward paying student loans. Okay, so maybe you don’t spend every penny you get as a gift or bonus toward student loans, but putting a little of that extra money toward your student loans will make a difference!
4. Take a job that allows forgiveness. Certain occupations, such as public service jobs, offer student loan debt forgiveness if the employee spends enough time in the role.
5. Use Centra’s Bill Payer for auto deduction. If you do nothing else, set up Bill Payer in digital banking so that your monthly payment is automatically deducted and you never get any late charges. If you want to do one better, set your Bill Payer to pay $10 more each month than is expected of you. Even the small things will really add up over time.

Do you have other debt? Are your monthly loan payments as low as they could possibly be? Let us do a Loan Check-Up to see if we could lower your monthly debt payments, which would allow you to pay more on your student loans and ultimately, pay them off quicker!