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!

I'm sick

Hey.

It's that time of the year where I might get a little sick or gravely sick. Doesn't help that I skipped out on getting a free flu shots that was offered at my work last week. Ugh.

So... What I have been up to since the last update? (Warning: I'm feeling super depressed again.)

- Working. I'm still stressing out with the ads. Now I'm working on t-shirt designs for our 2014 shirts. Last year's shirts can be found here: http://www.pololu.com/catalog/category/109. I'm also nearing my 1 year anniversary next week. I can't really be excited for it because deep down, I feel like I'm going to get fired at some point because I'm not living up to their expectations.

- Vince and I went with his parents and his mom's side of the family to Bryce Canyon in Utah for a day about 2 weeks ago. It was beautiful and we did a difficult hike down the canyon before we left. We basically drove 5 hours to eat Adobo in the cold >_< Also had Cracker Barrel for the first time... and last time.

- Halloween's coming up. Not sure if I want to do my Wendy (from Gravity Falls) costume again or use my Gothic Lolita costume.

- I got my bachelor's degree in the mail from Art Institute of Pittsburgh. I don't feel really happy about it because I've recently started paying my student loans. I can afford to pay for it but I just hate that all of my money is going to this piece of paper for the next decade. I had to tap into my savings account.

- Hopefully I'll be a little more enthusiastic in my next post. I just want to curl up and sleep for the next 2 days.

Wooooooot :D

Well! Today was a pretty awesome day and it also happened to mark my 6-month anniversary with Pololu. Let me backtrack a bit...

For the last 2 weeks or so, three of our engineers, Jeremy, Jon, and Grant (aka Pololu B-Team) decided to participate in the Red Bull Creation 2013 competition. They were given a TurBull Encabulator to work with and they decided to send the Red Bull cans into (the edge of) space. I took pics and video of their progress but I didn't join the team when they launched the TurBull Chiller (I couldn't pass up on the Las Vegas Foodie Fest). The team had one of our guys, Daniel, do all the photos and videos while additional footage came from the the two GoPros that were attached to the Chiller. After that, I reviewed a majority of the clips and edited a few videos.

The first clip was our qualifying video entry for the competition. They originally wanted the video to be a skit but I wanted to incorporate the existing footage we already had. Then they had the brilliant idea of making it like The Office where they will comment on the skit. While editing the video, I went with Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "BomBom" song as a placeholder for the background music. I tried to look for a free song to use but we ended up liking the song and keeping it in there. 

The second clip are outtakes from B-Team. I made this for fun but we ended up using it for the youtube channel. Background music is from "It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia" soundtrack!

And lastly, I made a final video that consists of mostly GoPro and HackHD footage. Jeremy wanted to use Ellie Goulding - "Lights" for the video. Luckily, I already had the album on me!

So in short, I did a lot of video editing and it was quite fun :D

Update 5/17/13: Aaaand we didn't win. Oh well :/ Also, I just noticed the clips I embedded are not showing up. Oh well. You can view the clips at their youtube channel here: http://www.youtube.com/user/PololuBTeam?feature=watch

I hate my car

© Joel Orduna Rivera Photography

That's a lie. I LOVE my car, which is an '02 Nissan Sentra GXE. I've been having problems with it lately and it's gotten to that point where I should just trade it in for a new car. I wanted to keep this car for a few more years but it doesn't look like it's possible. This car has been with me through a lot of things, such as helping me move out of my parent's place, taking the kitties to the animal hospital (where I learned they should really stay inside their crates), and it bares the emblem of two anime shows I once loved; Naruto and Bleach.

This actually is my second car to own. When I first moved here to Vegas, I didn't have my own car yet and I was either being dropped off/picked up by my parents, riding the bus, or getting a ride from Vincie. Due to my parents' poor planning (i.e. not adding me as a licensed driver to their car insurance and not being able to file a car accident claim), I decided to get my own car. My first was a brand new 2006 Kia Rio, which I bought hastily.This was extremely hard to pay on a monthly basis since I was making minimum wage from my first job. Then I got into a car accident a few months after I bought it. I panicked. I still had 4 years left to pay it off and I couldn't imagine how to pay for it on top of the repairs. Luckily (?), the car was deemed a total wreck and I had no obligation to pay for it anymore. After spending too much money on renting a car from Enterprise (which was also a Kia Rio), I decided to buy a car-- again. And better car insurance! By then, I had a better paying job and reasonable monthly payments.

And here we are, six years later after paying it off. Unfortunately, I've learned recently that this model has had poor head gasket issues. Not to mention everything else has gradually broken down, like my sun visor and my compartment. Nissan is still a good car - it currently has over 103,000 miles on it - but this particular car is sadly not. My car seems to get worse and worse each year whenever summer and winter hits, which is more severe in Vegas. Now that summer is fast approaching, I'm faced with possibly spending even more repairs for the car or taking on another car loan and paying it off for another six years.I have a hard time letting go of stuff o_o

Hey, it's an update!

Hey! I have some free time to blog! So, a few things have happened since starting my new job back in December. For one, I'm busy and I like it-- well sorta. Not in a bad way! Let me explain...

Everyday, I come to work either mildly or super stressed every morning. It's mostly trying to go over a list of things I have to do on a daily basis. I know it pales  in comparison to what the engineers have to work on but for me, it's something I'm still trying to adjust to. Keep in mind that with my last job, as far as I was concerned, I only had one thing to do: show up. It was SSDD: Same sh*t, different day. With my new job, however, I found myself doing different things, like working on ad concept for the next month, taking product pics (I'm still pretty rusty on this), shooting and editing video (I'm REALLY rusty at this) or making signage. Even though I get stressed with what I have to do for the rest of the day, at the end, all that stress is gone because I've completed my work. So that's how busy I am.

A few other things since my last update; my Vincie found a new job last month! Even better, we're just 10 minutes away from each other's jobs! We can carpool and meet somewhere to have lunch together when we feel like it. And best of all, he is appreciated at his job. His last job was ridiculously stressful and demanding but I'm happy that he left on good terms instead of quitting out of frustration. 

I also recently visited my parents out in Arizona for the weekend. I was freaking out because I have never flown by myself before. It was nice seeing my parents, my auntie and their doggie, Buddy! It wasn't just a family visit though, I was the family IT person. I advised my family to get a router, a printer, and a GPS for their car since they get lost easily when they drive. I also had to do the set up. It was pretty interesting to see Arizona. It was a lot more... desert-y than Vegas. Needless to say, it looks like I would be making another family/business trip to Arizona soon.

So that's that for now.