{"id":820,"date":"2015-11-05T11:02:37","date_gmt":"2015-11-05T15:02:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/?p=820"},"modified":"2015-11-06T12:53:10","modified_gmt":"2015-11-06T16:53:10","slug":"5-things-to-do-before-making-your-first-student-loan-payment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/2015\/11\/05\/5-things-to-do-before-making-your-first-student-loan-payment\/","title":{"rendered":"5 Things to Do Before Making Your First Student Loan Payment"},"content":{"rendered":"

Yes, it’s hard to believe. But, for most of you with student loans, your first payment is probably due this month.<\/p>\n

How do I know?\u00a0 I was in your exact shoes two years ago.\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n

I was on an 8-hour drive for my job (not fun) and in the middle of the 5th radio appearance of Pharrell William’s “Happy”<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0I realized my first loan payment was due that day. I pulled out my crappy, quasi-smart phone and tried to make my payment on the side of the road.<\/p>\n

After navigating the worst website in history, I managed to click the payment button before my browser crashed — did I make my payment? Only the internet gods knew for sure.<\/p>\n

When I finally got home and logged on from my laptop, it hit me. I had already signed up for automatic loan payments and my side-of-the-road payment also went through.<\/p>\n

I made a double payment — not because of my financial acumen — but because of my disorganization.\u00a0 <\/strong><\/p>\n

I ate lots\u00a0of Ramen that month. This is definitely not an experience to emulate and I’m going to try and make up for it by giving you really solid advice.<\/p>\n

Here are 5 essential things you should do before making your first payment:<\/strong><\/p>\n

    \n
  1. Read this article from the New York Times.<\/a> It walks you through a lot of scenarios and links to other great resources.<\/li>\n
  2. Get Organized<\/a>. Figure out if you have federal loans or private loans (or both) and how many. It’s probably easiest to ask your parents, look at old mail, or check your email — you loan provider has almost certainly tried to contact you by now.<\/li>\n
  3. Pick a repayment plan<\/a>. There are several types and many loans have an option for income-based repayment.\u00a0 Also, if you are in grad school, make sure to defer your loans.<\/a><\/li>\n
  4. Don’t make your payment late<\/a>. They are already going to get enough of your money. Don’t give them any extra.<\/li>\n
  5. Get your free UVM Alumni Association Bottle Opener<\/a>.<\/strong> This is our way of easing the pain of that first payment. Open your favorite Vermont beverage with it, sink into your couch, and start a Netflix binge. You earned it<\/a>.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    \"2015<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

    Yes, it’s hard to believe. But, for most of you with student loans, your first payment is probably due this month. How do I know?\u00a0 I was in your exact shoes two years ago.\u00a0 I was on an 8-hour drive … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[265760],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-820","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tips-advice-and-hacks"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6o9cB-de","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/298"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=820"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":847,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/820\/revisions\/847"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=820"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=820"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/afterword\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=820"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}