tax man!
nice, I did my taxes at home 7 days ago and filed them online and just got my refund already! this is particularly good news because I deducted quite a bit more from my fellowship than I should have, so that means they're not looking into it. Right? I actually considered not even reporting my fellowship because it explicitly says that the government does not know that I received it, and I am only to report my stipend after I deducted related costs such as books and fees. But I did taxes on my parents' Turbotax and it kept asking me about it so I finally just reported it, but I deducted an extra, oh, $400 that I could never account for because I was annoyed; I could have saved $400-$500 if I hadn't mentioned it. Anyway, I got almost $400 in taxes back plus the full $600 of stimulus money, and I most certainly am not going to stimulate the economy. Unless paying off student loans somehow stimulates it by adding liquidity to a small loan company, then sure.
I have recently become addicted to paying off this particular loan, which started at about $13k last year, because paying it off sooner than later saves in total interest, and oh do I hate interest, even though it's quite low on this loan. I go to those online loan calculators where you enter the principle and interest and then you adjust how long you want to take to pay it off and it breaks it down, including how much total interest you end up paying on it. So then I say, well what if I put down $200 right now, how much interest does that save me in the end? And it's like $10, so of course I do it, because otherwise it's like ripping up a $10 bill... and then I run out of money that week and have to make meals out of the mainstays in my house like peanut butter and onions and pasta and dried fruit. It's really difficult to overemphasize just how frugal I am, and I'm not really sure how I got to be this way.
I have recently become addicted to paying off this particular loan, which started at about $13k last year, because paying it off sooner than later saves in total interest, and oh do I hate interest, even though it's quite low on this loan. I go to those online loan calculators where you enter the principle and interest and then you adjust how long you want to take to pay it off and it breaks it down, including how much total interest you end up paying on it. So then I say, well what if I put down $200 right now, how much interest does that save me in the end? And it's like $10, so of course I do it, because otherwise it's like ripping up a $10 bill... and then I run out of money that week and have to make meals out of the mainstays in my house like peanut butter and onions and pasta and dried fruit. It's really difficult to overemphasize just how frugal I am, and I'm not really sure how I got to be this way.