#AskAnAdult: Getting out of student debt
First adulting question for our Financial Fitness Coach comes from Taylor Reynolds, a photographer / animator / all-around artistic badass who’s asking about student debt. This #AskAnAdult series is going to be a regular feature on the Kastor & Pollux blog, and you'll be able to read it here on the Mogo blog as well.
Hey Taylor! First of all, you need to change your perspective on your student loan debt and not feel so guilty about it. Sometimes you need to borrow money in order to purchase an asset and to get yourself ahead in life. Education is an asset. It’s not like you borrowed to pop bottles at the club! Don’t forget, you don’t actually have to pay it off until 6 months after you’re done school, so this means you’ve got 6 months to get your shit together quick!
If you’re concerned about how big your debt is, get a side hustle and start paying it down early. If you have ANY credit card debt, you’ll want to get that under control ASAP before you start worrying about the student loan debt. Otherwise you’re coming out of school with both credit card and student loan debt.
Student loan debt is the cheapest debt you can have and you get an income tax credit too. Always pay off your other debt first cause that’s gonna cost you more. Oh yeah and you’ve got 9.5 years to pay off your student loans so if you can only make the minimum payment for a while, that’s okay when it comes to student loans. Obviously once you start making more chedda- you can pay more towards this debt. I would hope that the more you spend on school means the more you can potentially can earn one day.
Basically, you gotta budget and not rack up any more debt especially when you’re done school, because you’ll have this new thing to pay off that will eat up some of your income.
So, to sum it up…
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Chantel Chapman is Mogo's Financial Fitness Coach and Credit Score Expert. She teaches you how to be an adult, and is also the host of our Adulting 101 events. With over a decade’s experience as a mortgage broker, Chantel recognized a need for financial education with many of her first-time homebuyers, so she began creating custom content to help guide them. Chantel is the founder of Holler For Your Dollar, a consulting firm that jump-starts anyone who’s ready to dive into the world of Adulting or entrepreneurship. Her role at Mogo puts her skills to use creating and teaching digestible, educational financial literacy content geared to millennials and daring entrepreneurs.