[taidan]

Oh man, I just had a loan horror story. I had a loan with Sallie Mae, cosigned with my grandparent and whatnot. Had it for one of my first years of college. Stopped getting any mail about it, to the point where I forgot about it. My folks have some loans with Sallie Mae as well to help me get through school, and I figured all that old mail must have been for them.

Nope. I got a letter in December saying I was late on my first payment. Neither my cosigner or myself got any correspondance via email or the post office. I got it sorted out in the end, but its scary to face possible (and major) damage to your credit rating. Even if I remembered the damn thing I wouldn't know my account #, what address to send payments to, or even how much they would be.

Thankfully the gov't is very good at giving you ways to pay them back.

Anyway, after settling down after school, I have something of a budget figured out. After a while you quickly learn how much your monhtly bills are. The trick for me was figuring out how much I could feasibly spend on frivoulous things (games, bar, etc.). For a while I was good with avoiding these things, and that turned out to be beneficial when I lost my job and had no income for three months.

Many find it all too tempting when you have a full time job to go wild with the newfound income, but the spendthrift in me couldn't (and can't) do that until I've something of a financial buffer for when things go bad.

Oh yeah, and loans never seem too bad alone, but when each monthly payment is put together it can be quite a sum.