TIL: Student loans sucks

It's been a little over a year since I graduated from Institute-That-Must-Not-Be-Named: Online Division and while I'm pretty happy with the job position I'm currently in, I'm really not happy with my financial situation. In other words, I'm drowning with student loans, and it sucks.

First off, I know how I got here. I knew the big financial risk I was taking with going back to school. I knew the mistakes I made along the way. So there's no point in me ranting how I could've done things differently.... again. I'm one of the young adults that are faced with a high figure student loan debt that is significantly higher than their annual salary and are trying to find ways to deal with it.

So what did I do? First, I got severely depressed, which is hard not to do in this kind of situation. Even though I was making more money with my new job, I hated seeing such a big chunk of it going towards Sallie Mae every month. I depleted most of my savings account to pay off a few of the federal loans so I'm somewhat in a better position now but it still sucks because there's still more loans to take care of. I was bitterly jealous because Vince was student debt free, thanks to his family being smart with their money. He's able to splurge and save up, while I live in personal poverty. That feeling sucks.

So what did I really do? After browsing subreddits on student loans and personal finance, I decided to do something about it. Instead of being bitter about throwing money at Sallie Mae AND Navient, I decided to come up with a plan to really tackle my debt. I applied for IBR/PAYE, which can help you lower your monthly payments without having to defer or go into forbearance. THIS REALLY HELPS. You don't have to write a letter about your hardships, just see if you're eligible and apply for it. I was approved and I saw my payments go down by a lot. I had extra money but I had to discipline myself to use that extra money towards paying my private loan with the highest interest rate. Applying for IBR/PAYE extends the life of the loan but there's no penalty in paying more than the minimum amount.

I'm not happy with my financial situation and it still sucks but at least I'm determined to get this debt managed. Some people might be happy paying their loans for 10-25 years but I'd rather get out of debt fast.

Number of times "SUCKS" was used: 5

Cupcats are back! Well... sorta.

If the cupcat designs look familiar, it's because it's from Sugar Nyao.
This was a project my friend Pam and I were working on... and off... and on... and off. It never took off because it was never really decided what Sugar Nyao should be: is it artwork? A cute clothing line? Concept design for a game app? A webcomic? We thought of doing a kickstarter to make prints and shirts. We had a cute story developed for the cupcats and the human mascots, Sugar (with purple hair) and Nyao (with turquoise hair). I was really excited about this because I would be drawing again and I wanted to see if we could be the lucky few to get stuff like this off the ground.

So what happened? We got busy with life. Pam and her hubby, Joel, welcomed their first child and I was transitioning into a new job as well as graduating from the Art Institute of Pittsburgh (Online Division). The project was never put on hold. It just lost steam.

One good thing about the downtime was that I got familiar with Illustrator. My god, vector makes everything so much easier. I was doing the previous stuff in Photoshop but I was spending too much time faking it to look like vector with the Paths and Pen Tool. So, instead of feeling bummed about Sugar Nyao, I decided to do it as a little art project for myself. The cupcat design is not original obviously but I wanted to do something fun with it.

 

Cosplaying cupcats? Sure, why not. I've seen cooler and/or weirder stuff at artist alleys anyways :)

Everything is awesome

Hey there~! Time for a quick rundown on what happened since my last blog post. Not in chronological order.

- Vince and I celebrated our 10 year anniversary this month and we're planning a special trip that doesn't involve driving to Cali (not that it's a bad thing). I've been slowly saving up for it so I want to make sure we have a great time ^_^

- We're playing Pokemon X and Y. That's probably not a big deal but for me it is. It took a few years for Vince to warm up to the series and it's a pretty big jump from Pokemon FireRed to Pokemon X. It's nice to see that he enjoys catching, raising and playing Pokemon. He doesn't want to battle or trade with me though -_-

- I've been with my current job for over a year now. I'm still mildly stressed out but it's for other things. I think I'm doing good o_o

- I started paying my student loans and that sucks. I had the option to apply for IBR (income based repayment) and while lower monthly payments sounded good, it meant that I would just paying off the interest over a much longer period of time. The remaining loan amount would be forgiven after 25 years... WTF. I would rather try to pay it off as quickly as I can. At the rate that I'm paying for it monthly, it could be done in 6-7 years... Assuming they don't raise the interest rates again.

- This year has a lot of good movies coming out. Captain America, Amazing Spider-Man 2, Godzilla, X-Men: Days of Future Past, How To Train Your Dragon 2, 22 Jump Street, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, Guardians of the Galaxy, and more :D

- So yeah! New Doctor Who! It looks like it's a sort of reboot since we're going with an older doctor (Peter Capaldi). This will filter out the fangirls that only got into it for Matt Smith.

- I'm collecting more comics now, than to Vince. I still read manga series but I only read it online. Comic books and graphic novels seem much easier to collect and manage than mangas. Crunchyroll and Hulu is saving me a lot of money so I'm not going out of my way to buy it on Blu-Ray unless I really like the show.

- I'm not playing as much video games as I used to. I still have my Nintendo 3DS but I'm growing more comfortable with PC gaming, thanks to Steam. I don't see a game I personally want to get for myself on a console and we don't have a reason to get the XBox One or the PS4. I got the Windwaker edition for the WiiU a few months ago and we're pretty happy with that.

Umm... That's all I got. Ending this post with a UniKitty. See ya in a few more months!