During today’s episode, Daphné Vanessa (@daphnevanessa) and Shamil Rodriguez (@shamilrodriguez) discuss how to pay off your student loans in the new year! Instead of waiting for January, we’ve put together some of the tips and tricks from previous episodes in this how-to guide to help getting you rolling before the new year begins.
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THIS EPISODE COVERS:
- the money mindset you should have when deciding to tackle your student loan debt;
- the many ways you can hold yourself accountable during your debt payoff journey;
- the importance of writing down your strategy to help increase your odds of being successful; and
- much, much, more…
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The Student Loan Podcast Intro (00:02): Welcome to the Student Loan Podcast. Here you'll find practical advice on tackling student loan debt, paying down your higher education expenses And inspiring stories about paying off student loans. We are your hosts, Daphne, Vanessa, And Shamil Rodriguez. Daphné Vanessa (00:21): Please rate, review and subscribe to the Student Loan Podcast by visiting the Student Loan Podcast on Apple Podcast or wherever you find your podcasts. Shamil Rodriguez (00:32): This is not professional advice and we speak from our own personal views and opinions. Daphné Vanessa (00:37): The Student Loan Podcast is brought to you by StartNoo, where you can serve your community and get rewarded with tuition and student loan payments. To check out if Start New is on your campus, visit startnoo.com. Shamil Rodriguez (00:52): Welcome to another episode of the Student Loan Podcast. Daphné, take it away. Daphné Vanessa (00:59): Well, thank you everyone for joining. We're so excited this new year, it's coming up, it's getting close and some people wait until after January, you know, to start thinking about resolutions. But really it's in the fourth quarter of the year that you can really benefit from just thinking about what next year is gonna look like. I know I've been doing a lot more of that type of reflection over the years and it's worked out better. It gets better every year. So are you excited about 2023 Shamil? Shamil Rodriguez (01:35): I am. I'm looking forward to it. And I think that there's an opportunity for everyone to take advantage of the extension of the loan Pause, which was supposed to go from end or begin your payments in January, but now you have until July. So amazing. With that being said, I think it's a great episode. I'm a big believer in starting off the end of your, starting off your new year, at the end of your, of the previous year. So, you know, use the last core like that you said to ane uh, and if you haven't done so already, cuz we're already in December, uh, then still use the next couple of weeks to get yourself planned out or moving forward in that right direction. Daphné Vanessa (02:17): Yeah, for sure. So I think the first thing that I would think about just when it comes to student loans is whether or not how I'm gonna use the pause basically, right? So make a decision. How are you going to use the pause? Does, what are the benefits, what are the pros and cons of paying it off, paying some of it or not paying it all, you know? And I think that really is gonna depend on everybody's individual financial situation. So if you have a savings account or you have your emergency fund and it's, and it's filled, you have other consumer debt, I think all of those factors are going to impact whether or not you take advantage of the student loan. Pause. Do you agree? Shamil Rodriguez (03:09): Yeah, I think so. And just because you may not be able to pay off all of your student loan debt doesn't mean that you shouldn't take steps to tackle some of it. Yeah. So there's still the idea that you can still make progress towards your goal because even if you end up making payments, you know, a couple thousand dollars, by the time uh, it's over, by the time the extensions ends, you're still saving yourself, uh, actually a lot of time, years sometimes, uh, interest loan payments cuz you were paying it down just the principal without the interest being included. Daphné Vanessa (03:47): Right. As long as you're writing letters to the servicers to let them know about your extra payments. So, you know, servicers don't have the best reputation right now and sometimes they need just a little reminder. So if you are making payments, I'd suggest you write it down, write it down, send them a little note and let them know what's going on. Shamil Rodriguez (04:13): Absolutely. So I think we should get right into the steps Daphné, so like, once you've decided, um, that you want to tackle your student loan debt, whether you are paying the entire amount off or you're going to just make whatever payments you can without putting yourself in a dire financial situation, um, then you should map it out. What do you think, Daphne? Right? Actually putting something down on paper, Daphné Vanessa (04:38): For sure. I'm the queen of paper, I think, but yes, Shamil Rodriguez (06:12): I think that's really Yeah, no, that's a good, a good point and a good example. Let's not poo poo on anything, right? Uh, poo poo should only be in the toilet. Daphné Vanessa (06:21): We allowed to say that. Sorry. Shamil Rodriguez (06:23): Yeah, poo poo is fair. We can say poo poo all we want. I don't know how many times we're gonna say it on this podcast today, but I think I've reached my limit for today, Daphné Vanessa (07:01): You heard there's a, an, I forgot who, but there are these two guys that have a financial freedom audience, and I forgot the term that they use, but essentially they're reviving the idea of applying zero interest loans or cards towards paying off your student loan debt balance. Have you heard of that? Shamil Rodriguez (07:26): No, I haven't. I haven't heard of that. Oh, we may have to bring that up for another episode. You Daphné Vanessa (07:30): Have? Yeah. No, that would be, I would love to have somebody in that space sort of talk about how they did that. Mm-hmm. Shamil Rodriguez (08:37): We, we've had some really good, I just wanna make sure that like we're adding so people can know where to go to like listen to them because we've recorded these episodes and we know these, these folks because we spent so much time speaking to them. But, uh, like the people that you mentioned, Jennifer J. Hammond, she literally paid off for student loans with one flip. So that was episode 68, 8. It's actually one of our top 10, uh, most popular episodes that we have. Um, then there was, who else did you, who else did you mention there? We've had, Leslie Daphné Vanessa (09:03): Was six, episode six Shamil Rodriguez (09:05): I think. Yep. So Leslie did it. Um, David Ek is one of our, or one of the most popular episodes where he paid off over $350,000 in student loan debt. Uh, so there, there are plenty of folks there that, um, have used it. Who else did you mention that we wanted to make sure that we bring up there? Death? I just wanna make sure we got the episodes out for people. Daphné Vanessa (09:24): So many people. But check out, check out our episodes for Shamil Rodriguez (09:28): All the Daphné Vanessa (09:29): Creative ways that you can pay off your student loan. There's so many episodes. It's, it's a rabbit hole situation. It's a binging situation. Shamil Rodriguez (09:37): No, really if you're like looking for inspiration on how to pay off your state loans cuz you're just like, this is overwhelming or I don't know which way to go. Like, there are plenty of people, plenty of ways that we've had on, uh, the show and like how they did it their way. Whether it was like, uh, working extra jobs, living below your means, making extra money. Um, like Dian mentioned, the different, many strategies that you can use to pay off your, your student loans. Um, I think it was who else did real estate? A lot of real estate. We had three real estate folks. So Pamela Keith, she used the HeLOCK to pay off her loans. That was episode 36. Uh, so the list literally goes on and on and on of folks that paid off. We had people that went to medical school that paid it off. But enough plugs about Daphné Vanessa (10:38): Yeah. And don't let anybody judge you. You do whichever strategy works for you. So if you are a side hustle, queen or king, then go do your side hustle thing. If you are a live below your means person and you're happy doing it, more power to you. If you are a person who loves real estate, use your passion. So there are so many different ways to do it and there is no one method that is the method for everybody. We're all different and that's what makes this world go round. Shamil Rodriguez (11:12): That's true. Or other laws of physics, but I get what you're saying, Daphné Vanessa (12:17): I love it. And I know Heidi has those debt free charts that are on her Instagram and website where you can download free charts that you print out and they, you color each section as you pay something off. I think it's a super cute concept and it it works very well psychologically for some people. Shamil Rodriguez (12:39): Okay, no, that's a good idea. I think that's really good to do that. So what do you think about the idea of, some people feel comfortable sharing their, you know, student loan debt journey. Some people don't. Uh, do you think that just a piece of paper would be enough or do you think people should actually have an accountability partner like you had mentioned before? Daphné Vanessa (12:57): I think everybody is different. You know, yourself. I'm personally the type of person that works better with accountability partners. So yes, I can, as an example, go on a weight loss plan or a workout regimen to get stronger and I'll probably succeed. But if I had a personal trainer, I personally would do better. I would be more consistent. So I'm the type of person that benefits from having an accountability partner, but everyone's different, right? Some and everybody's different on the, depending on different spaces too. In the health and fitness space, I personally am better with an accountability partner, but in the personal finance space, I actually perform better by myself. Just like school work, Daphné Vanessa (13:55): I wanted to do things by myself because I was just better by myself for academic things. But, um, as I've gone into the workplace, I've actually benefited from team projects, group projects. So I think it just just depends on the space. And, and if personal finance for you, or even let's get more micro, if student loan debt for you is something where you would benefit from having an accountability partner, then get one, you know, make it happen. There are tons of communities you can feel free to, you know, obviously if you're in the start new community, then you have your community there. But use the community that you have available to you to, uh, find an accountability partner. Find somebody who's on the same mentality as you that wants to get rid of debt. Because not everybody does. Some people are like Christmas, black Friday, cyber 12 or whatever other day, spending, spending, you know, some people are into the spending and they don't care that they're in debt. They really don't care. They're just like, it's a part of life. Those people exist. Find people around you that are gonna help you accomplish the goals that you care about. Shamil Rodriguez (15:04): Yeah, I think that's, well, well said. And making sure that you keep people around you that are gonna keep you on track with what your goal is. Uh, so that accountability part, and, and it really, you hit it right on the head. So we've got write it down or decide whether you're gonna pay off your SY loan debt or not, uh, how you want to do that. Then once you've got that visualize in your mind, you're gonna write that down. Uh, you're gonna decide on what strategies and methods you're gonna implement, what your timeline's gonna look like. And then you're either gonna, you're gonna print it out, paste it all over the house, uh, or the room, wherever you wanna do it somewhere. You're gonna see it frequently. And then if you, if your personality matches well with sharing it with, with a person that can keep you accountable, then do, so. This thing, this goes into, uh, another step that I wanna make sure that we cover is picking a time to actually review how you're making on your progress, right? Mm-hmm. Daphné Vanessa (16:04): Speaking of June 30th, right? Are you even aiming for that deadline? Like right. Setting a deadline I think is something that, sorry, I know I just interrupted you, but setting a deadline is something that Shamil Rodriguez (16:18): In hand. I'm, I'm, I'm definitely gonna post this video, Daphné Vanessa (16:29): Whoops. Shamil Rodriguez (16:32): Hashtag co-host, hashtag married couple. Hashtag known each other for too long. Go ahead, Daphné Vanessa (16:38): Too long. Um, but yes, no, definitely having, um, a date I think is what I wanted to add to your illustrious point, but please, please continue, Shamil Rodriguez (16:50): Daphné Vanessa (17:21): I'm waiting my turn. Shamil Rodriguez (17:24): Daphné Vanessa (18:09): I think I agree. And making time to assess goals periodically is key to achieving them. So some people remember the Stick IT app. I don't know if that still exists, but it wasn't. Shamil Rodriguez (18:26): That's a good question. I don't know. Daphné Vanessa (18:28): Shamil Rodriguez (18:59): It still exists by the way. Just add. So it's definitely still there. Stick Awesome. Uh, dot com. S t I C kk.com. Daphné Vanessa (19:08): Link's not stick anymore? Shamil Rodriguez (19:10): No, it's just called Stick. Daphné Vanessa (19:12): Oh, okay. Fan C on Shamil Rodriguez (19:14): C. Yeah. So they're still there. I do remember this app. It does work. Um, just like any tool, if you want it to work and you know, and you can incorporate it in your life where it's not managing your life, but you're using it as a tool, as a part of your life, then you have great success with it. For sure. It was Daphné Vanessa (19:30): Good. Does it, since you're checking, does it do other things besides working out? Shamil Rodriguez (19:35): Uh, yeah. People can use it for saving money. Um, Daphné Vanessa (19:38): Oh, Shamil Rodriguez (19:39): Providing social media. Oh, cool, cool. Um, you know, uh, finding their dream careers, uh, it's really like whatever you're, you're going through for them. Daphné Vanessa (19:48): They start off with the Jim Rats niche, but they've outside of Jim Rats too. Shamil Rodriguez (19:54): No. Yeah. If you, if you go on their website and like, this is great for people to check this, this tool or many others right out there, uh, that allow for you Daphné Vanessa (20:02): Competitors. Now Shamil Rodriguez (20:03): You're right. Yeah, I'm sure. Yeah. This is not an endorsement. Uh, we are not getting anything for this. We're Daphné Vanessa (20:08): Not affiliates. We don't, we don't, we didn't even know they were still alive. Guys. You Shamil Rodriguez (20:12): Know what's great? I am a big fan of sharing resources and tools that actually work, you know, through our personal experiences. So that was one, that was a good one. I forgot. I totally forgot about that app. I haven't used it in a while, but it was a good one when you, Daphné Vanessa (20:25): So much weight. I feel like I remember how much weight I lost when you were my accountability partner. I need new friends, guys. I'm accepting applications for Shamil Rodriguez (20:35): Daphné Vanessa (20:41): Kidding here. I just aged myself. I'm trying not to age myself, but, um, no, I, I remember how, how much it worked like it worked so well. Just the weekly check-ins. Basically the point of us bringing that up was the fact that you checking in periodically to say, in that case it was weight, but in this case it would be maybe on a monthly basis, how much has gone towards your student loans, how much has gone towards your emergency fund, whatever your goal is for the New Year's resolution. It's nice to have a monthly check in at minimum as you get towards your annual goal. And then I was gonna add something that's related. So there, there are different opportunities to have accountability partners as people, but one interesting thing that I've watched over the years is how people use social media to be their accountability partner. I found that very interesting. It's almost the equivalent of when blog to post their income statements. Do you remember that? When people would be Shamil Rodriguez (21:46): Like, I do you know that Yeah, yeah, Daphné Vanessa (21:48): Blog, my blog made this much money and blah blah blah, blah. So I find that very interesting. And just another way, if that's your personality, you respond well to large amounts of people publicly seeing your financial information, then social media maybe for you. Shamil Rodriguez (22:07): Yeah, that's a good point. Uh, no, I mean social media for me as an individual. Cause I just wanna like, share the other side of that view. Uh, when it comes to social media, it didn't work for me in a lot of ways where I like try to like hold myself accountable there. Cause I could just like not check it anymore. Like if I just stopped checking it, then I wasn't being held accountable. Uh, but I think, uh, it's a really good idea. What does work for me in that whole social concept still is like group chats, right? I think I find that as a really good one where you, yeah, I like updating group chats cuz it's personal, but you still have other people that are likeminded. Um, those work really well for me. Like I was surprised at how well they work for me. Daphné Vanessa (22:49): Yeah. Shout out to Hadassa, who used to be my running group chat accountability group. Shamil Rodriguez (22:54): Yeah. Okay, there we go. Uh, so if we're giving a shout out, you know, what, are we allowed to, we have somebody on the show, huh? Daphné Vanessa (23:01): Sorry, I don't think we're allowed to shout out people. Are we allowed to? Shamil Rodriguez (23:04): Not This is not still podcast. Uh, co-founders, co-host. This is, uh, where show some good stuff. And you know what, uh, Jay Oliver Perry, who's in one of my, uh, accountability groups, um, has the j j Oliver Perry show. Go check him out. Anyway, uh, back to our show, Daphné Vanessa (23:23): Random Plugs Shamil Rodriguez (23:52): But for accountability purposes, Daphné Vanessa (23:56): It's not me, but I'm here though on the podcast though. This is actually me not a virtual reindeer. Shamil Rodriguez (24:03): It's not like deep fake. We're not, we don't have like a video of you from the past and we're just like moving your lips, Daphné Vanessa (24:10): That's gonna be scary. Shamil Rodriguez (24:13): All right, so what's the next step? Daphne, what do you got for us? This is good. I think this is good. Daphné Vanessa (24:18): Well, I I wanna talk about mindset for a little bit just because I know that for me personally, mindset was a limiting, uh, almost a barrier for me for accomplishing a lot of things. And as you craft your goals and everything, you can put things on paper, you can have accountability partners, but sometimes your own mindset is what's really holding you back. Like, maybe do you believe that you're that person that can be financially free? Do you believe that, that you're the person that can graduate from college debt free with money in the bank? Do you believe that you're that person that will wake up tomorrow and be in your dream career? Do you, you have to believe those things and you have to feel it, and it has to be real to you. And there are so many tools to accomplish that vision. It's really a personal endeavor. Daphné Vanessa (25:17): Um, and if you're having trouble crafting that vision, I'd suggest certainly like a mindset coach like Nicole, she was a great mindset coach for me. Um, Nicole Stealings, you guys can check her up. And I think you need a mindset coach sometimes to get you into a space where you're willing to accept that you will accomplish certain things. I personally was only able to realize that mindset was my block after multiple years of documenting, having accountability systems in place, et cetera, the same goal for multiple years and it not happening. And then with a mindset coach, I was able to break through and accomplish goals that I've had on my, um, new Year's resolutions for years. So I think having the right mindset is incredibly important, especially when you're breaking habits, because it's one thing to say, this is the goal, it's another thing to break that goal down into little steps of what you're going to accomplish each month. Daphné Vanessa (26:21): And then in another step to say, okay, for each month, what are the habits that I need to have in place to accomplish those goals? And what mindset do I need to have to make those habits real? Right? You have to believe that you're that person that is debt free. You have to believe that you're that person that is going to walk out of the June 30th, 2023 deadline and be like, extend, don't extend. Mm. Doesn't matter to me. I'm debt free. You know, like, you need to be able to believe that it's real. It's the first step. And I thought all of this stuff was so woo. I was like, please, you know, Caribbean people, we, we a little on the harder side, I would say. Um, but it's real. I don't know. It's real Shamil Rodriguez (27:07): Shamil Rodriguez (28:01): Like, if you're a person that wants to like both of this journey on your own, I do recommend, like Daphne saying, to find someone to talk to that can help you see the forest if you're too close to the tree, so to speak. Mm-hmm. Daphné Vanessa (28:34): Well. Yes. And I also wanna credit Leslie episode six, um, for talking about mindset in this space, because he brought that on early on and he was actually another person that helped me identify that mindset was a block for me for accomplishing certain goals. Shamil Rodriguez (28:51): Shout out, this is a shout out episode today. So back to back to all this, I mean, this all also applies to other parts of your New Year's resolutions, right? Let's not, let's not get away from the idea that what we're doing is basically helping you come up with a plan and a strategy that you can implement and some tools that you can actually use to hold yourself accountable, whether it's yourself by printing it out and putting your plan in a place where you can see it every day, right? So it's yourself holding your own self accountable, uh, or whether it's like using the app like Daphne had mentioned, or using social media or using a private group chat with people that are like-minded that wanna achieve a similar goal. All of those ideas are just ideas that we want you to implement now or start to pro start that process now in December before the new year begins, so that when January comes, you're not starting off and now trying to figure out what's going on. And then every day that passes by, you're like, oh, I got this feeling that like, I had this great goal on the first, but now it's the third and now it's the 10th, and now it's the 14th, and now it's the 21st, and I still don't have any progress towards my goal. Whereas if you do that now before you hit the first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and you're like, oh yeah, my plan's already in place, like I've already set myself up for success. Daphné Vanessa (30:08): Yep. So what are the steps that we take from here? So what you want to do is first decide, of course, you want to decide, and you have to believe in your decision, believe in yourself and decide once you've made that decision, you have an amount, you know what the date is, you know when you want to accomplish your goal, you're going to reverse engineer the steps that it would take to get there. So let's say your goal is by the end of 2023 to pay off $20,000 in student loan debt or your entire balance, you would then break that step up into microsteps and put monthly at minimum check-ins so that you can understand how close you're coming to accomplishing your goal. And in those monthly check-ins you put on your calendar recurring invite, what the micro habits are that you need to implement to accomplish that goal. Daphné Vanessa (31:01): So I would like to pay off $12,000 in student loan debt by next year. That means each month I need to pay off 12 a thousand dollars. And for the a thousand dollars that I'm paying off, the steps that I'm going to take to generate an extra a thousand dollars are a side hustle that generates $500 a month and then saving another $500 a month in expenses. So reducing my expenses by 500, and I'm taking that extra thousand dollars each month and applying it directly to my student loans. And you check yourself with your accountability partner every month to say, all right, it's January 15th. Did I stop spending the extra 500 check? Did I make the extra 500 gigging, DoorDash, whatever your side hustle is, check. And your accountability partner says, good February. Did you do the same thing? Maybe, maybe not. Your accountability partner is there to help you get there. Daphné Vanessa (32:01): Did you exceed your goals? Awesome. You may get there more quickly. So the check and accountability is a wonderful opportunity to actually make, come, make your dreams come true. Really is is what what you're doing, you're forcing yourself to make your dreams come true. And if you see that despite having an accountability system, despite having reminders, despite doing everything, you're still not accomplishing your goals, then I would seriously consider understanding whether you have a, a mindset, um, I don't wanna say issue, issue sounds so negative, but I would consider thinking about how your mindset is impacting your ability to deliver on those goals. And you can do that through coaching or self development, personal development on your own, whatever your your style is. Shamil Rodriguez (32:51): Yeah, I think that's a really good summary, Daphne. So for more information on today's episode, visit the podcast.com/eighty. That's the solo podcast.com/eighty.
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