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Posts tagged with: Saving Money

Preparation – Week 1 Results

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The goals for this last week were:

Week 1 – December 3

  1. Create a $2,500 budget
  2. List/re-list sellable items that might do better during this Christmas season (jewelry, old computer, etc.)
  3. Research selling digital products online, make a list of steps and related resources

Here’s how it went…

The $2,500 Budget

What a good and eye opening exercise! Although I found is near impossible to get down to the goal of $2,500.

I loved watching the conversations on Ashley’s recent post about paying off her mortgage vs buying an income generating property. The idea of having a paid off house going into retirement age is certainly appealing. I know it is an emotional thing, but there also is some sense of security with having what is typically one of your largest bills paid for going into that age when you work less or not at all and live off a fixed income.

I know I am nowhere near there, but definitely a conversation I am following.

For Sale

I relisted a bunch of jewelry and items on Facebook Marketplace that I have collected over the last few weeks as I have been going through all the nooks and crannies in my house. I took the time to take better pictures and am opening to make a couple of hundred dollars this month  as much of what I am selling would be great Christmas gifts. My motivation for the purge has been twofold. One, I am more and more inclined to own less so believe that after the holidays I will do another big purge of primarily furniture type things. I’ve mentioned before that I’ve given the kids time to give me feedback on anything that is important to them. So after the crowd leaves, I anticipate I will be ready to do a purge on a much larger scale.

It’s not that I don’t love my stuff. Most of them are inherited from grandparents and even great grandparents, but I find myself less and less inclined to spend time dusting. 🙂 Can anyone relate to that? So I want to live in a far more simple setting.

The second reason, is that as I consider renting out or selling my home…I realize that much of the “stuff” I have does not bring me joy anymore. So less to care for, less to potentially store or move. And I’d rather purge now, then have to have a “fire sale” down the road. I am being very thoughtful and intentional as I sort through things. Handling them, remembering where they came from, and deciding if they are worth keeping to me.

Digital Products

I have thoroughly enjoyed this research. And it’s been coupled with a lot of questions about what is next for me. I believe I’m pretty clear on the process and what will need to happen to set it up, all within my skillset. The question now is, what direction do I want to go in…still working on that.

The New Part Time Job

As of this morning, I have accepted a new part time role as a Catering Coordinator that I had two interviews for last week. The details that I know are as follows:

  1. Expect 20-25 hours per week but will start with regular onboarding for this fast food company.
  2. Starting pay at $13 per hour as advertised. Once I’m trained and working independently, they will reevaluate pay.
  3. I won’t have “regular hours” rather I will work hours required by catering orders that come in which means, I could work any combination of breakfast, lunch, and dinner hours on any given day. I will not be preparing the food rather coordinating the teams efforts to make sure the right food and goods are ready/delivered on time. And I will also be doing community outreach/marketing to grow the catering side of the business.

This is a new role for them so it’s kind of a grow and evolve as it makes sense. I’m super excited.

And I did speak with my current boss at the accounting firm and she fully supports the flexible hours I will need to make both jobs work. Woot, woot!

 

Student Loan Servicers Are At It Again!

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I have a long history of issues related to my student loans, even across several student loan service providers. I think my loans have been sold 3 times over the course of time that I’ve been blogging here. Most recently, my loans were sold to Mohela at the same time I applied for public service loan forgiveness. I don’t actually qualify for forgiveness yet (I still have approx. 2 years to go), but I just applied to the program during the pandemic timeframe.

Payment Pause and Resumption

As folks with student loans are aware, student loan payments were paused for about 3 years during the pandemic. After all this time, interest started accruing again in September, and payments resumed in October. But….did they, though?

You may have seen one of the numerous articles written in October about Mohela (my current loan provider). Apparently, Mohela made a big mishap and did not actually get their borrowers into repayment status, causing over 800,000 borrowers to be considered delinquent.

Alternatively, there were also borrowers whose debt had already been forgiven who received past-due bills from Mohela. Sounds like their process to resume payments was a big old mess.

I counted my lucky stars that I was not among one of the botched repayment jobs. My payments resumed as normal and everything was fine for the months of September and October.

Loan Forbearance that was Never Requested

That changed quickly. In November, I received an email that the status of one of my loans had changed. If you recall, to qualify for PSLF, I had to consolidate two of my student loans into one. That consolidated loan, all a sudden, was showing up as being in forbearance. The problem is, I never requested this! And, in fact, I couldn’t figure out a way to get it OUT of forbearance.

I started googling, “Why is my student loan in forbearance when I never requested it?” Guess what, friends. I’m not alone. Looks like LOTS of student loan borrowers had a similar problem with Mohela in November.

From reading articles written about this random forbearance, it sounds like Mohela has done this automatically to cover their own butts while they figure out some issues in their loan processing system. That said, they don’t relay this information to borrowers. So others, like myself, are left scratching our heads as to why our loans are suddenly in forbearance when it was never requested.

In my case, my assumption is that this occurred due to my loan consolidation throwing things off. I consolidated my loans and made a single payment toward the new consolidated loan, and then suddenly received a forbearance processing message the same month. In fact, my payment was submitted on 11/9, and the forbearance suddenly appeared on 11/28.

Interest Paused and Future Communications

The one bright side of this conundrum is that, while Mohela struggles to figure their “ish” out, they’ve paused the capitalizing of any interest. In the letter I personally received, it says this is the case until the end of February.

Even so, I prefer not to be in forbearance. And it does not appear that I can change my loans to be in normal repayment right now, even if I try!

When I log into the Mohela website, I receive a big alert at the top of the screen that it has high call volume and to expect long wait times. Sigh. Hard to get much done with them when you have to set aside a 2-hour chunk of time for a simple phone call.

Watch and Wait

Rather than try to chase down this issue at what is one of the busiest times of year personally (kid’s holiday parties, performances, and weekend activities) and professionally (semester wrapping up, final exams, excessive grading!)… I’ve decided to just follow a “wait and watch” approach.

I’ll continue monitoring any happenings with my loans through the Mohela site. But I’m not planning to sit for 2 hours for a phone call to the loan servicer anytime this week (or month for that matter!).

My hope is that they straighten up their stuff and my payments will automatically resume as I’ve been promised. I can revisit this sometime in the New Year to ensure that’s happened.

Does anyone else have Mohela as their student loan service provider? Any similar loan servicing issues?