Chill Maadi | Page 5 Of 48 | All About Managing Your Money ...

The Growing Student: Sex, Drugs and … Health?

With a busy schedule of partying, experimenting, disobeying their parents, further experimenting, and (of course) receiving a 4.0-grade average, a student tends to forget perhaps the most important aspect of living—health.

Taking into consideration the rising numbers of smoking, pregnancy, drug use, alcohol consumption, malnutrition, and obesity among young adults, it seems appropriate now more than ever for a student to receive proper, quality health insurance. This demographic tends to live invincibly. Many believe themselves to be indestructible, as though nothing dangerous can happen to them, even while staring danger in the face. This vicarious attitude may add an intended flavor to their lives, but it’s almost as if an overdose could lead to poison.

Debauchery in Numbers

So they wear the shortest skirts, drive the fastest cars, and eat the greasiest pizzas. What are the numbers saying about teens and young adults?

SMOKING: A third of all smokers began smoking at age 14. Almost ninety percent of all smokers began smoking at age 21.
PREGNANCY: In the United States, one in ten babies is born from a teen mother. Three-quarters of a million teens between 15 and 19 become pregnant each year.
DRUGS: On an average day, 586,000 adolescents used marijuana, about 49,000 adolescents used inhalants, 27,000 used hallucinogens (e.g., Ecstasy and other club drugs), 13,000 used cocaine, and 3,800 used heroin.
ALCOHOL: Among persons aged 18- to 22-years-old, 18 percent of full-time undergraduates were heavy drinkers compared with 12 percent of those who were not full-time undergraduates.
MALNUTRITION: About one out of every one hundred young women between ten and twenty are starving themselves, sometimes to death. Four percent of college-aged women have bulimia. One percent of female adolescents have anorexia. Researchers at Harvard University Medical School have new data that suggests that up to 25 percent of adults with eating disorders are male.
OBESITY: About 31 percent of American teenage girls and 28 percent of boys are somewhat overweight. An additional 15 percent of American teen girls and nearly 14 percent of teen boys are obese.

In the United States, approximately three-fourths of all deaths among persons aged 10-24 years result from only four causes: motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide, and suicide. There are several options of low-cost student health insurance available, and it is much better to be safe than to be sorry.

16 Quick Tips to Help Keep Positive in a Down Economy

Times are tough for everyone. People are losing their jobs left and right and unemployment is at its highest level. Businesses both large and small are struggling to stay alive. When money gets tight it can be very hard to keep a positive attitude. Negativity leads to depression, and depression makes it very difficult to move forward in life.

I recently lost my full-time job after 17 years with the same company. It was due to the economy, our clients were cutting back on their marketing budgets and only doing the minimum required to continue sales. Almost all the creative work we were doing dried up and trying to find new clients became harder and harder. I saw the writing on the wall and had been preparing for the inevitable for a while. I updated my resume and portfolio, started networking more, and lined up some freelance customers.

After I lost my job family and friends were calling to make sure I was ok. I told them I was and not to worry. Honestly, I was ok, actually, I was better than ok, I felt great! I felt like a huge weight had been lifted from my shoulders and now my life was my own again, I could do with it as I want. It was an opportunity for a fresh start and as the saying goes, I took lemons and made lemonade!

For many, a life-altering change like losing their job or a major decrease in sales for their photography business would lead to depression. In this article, I’m going to share 16 quick tips that helped me keep a positive attitude to continue down the road of success.

Keep busy – Sitting around staring out the window is the worst thing you can do. If nothing else do house chores. Just keep moving and keep busy.
Work hard – It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, just work hard to do it well. At the end of the day, you’ll have a sense of accomplishment even if you only cleaned the bathroom.
Work even if you’re working for less money – If you have nothing going on and a small project comes your way, take it. Even if you have to do it for less than your normal rate, at least you’ll be working. Give it 100% effort just as you would with any other project and smile while you’re doing it. You never know what work that customer may have for you down the road.
Take better than usual care of yourself – Start eating healthier and start working out. Everyone complains they don’t have time to eat right and work out, well now you do. Physical well-being significantly impacts mental well-being and response to stress.
Get out of the Sweats – Hanging out in your sweats all day although comfortable, is bad for self-esteem. Get up, get a shower, eat a healthy breakfast, and dress for success.
Forget about “the good old days” – Nostalgia is self-destructive. Learn from the past and think about the future you want.
Network like crazy – You have some time on your hands now, start calling all your past customers. Contact people, you’ve been meaning to get in touch with. You need to stay in front of and on the minds of everyone.
Take frequent breaks – You need to break up the routine. Take breaks for the usual stuff and maybe add in a few new ones.
Simplify your life – Cut out unneeded expenses and distance yourself from people or activities that negatively affect you and cause stress.
Surround yourself with positive people – Stay away from the doom and gloomers and find positive and successful people to spend time with, those traits have a tendency to rub off on you.
Keep learning – Photography is always changing. Take this time to learn new photographic techniques, brush up on your software or learn more about a different part of our industry (HDR, DSLR video, etc.)
Shoot for fun – We spend so much time shooting for others we sometimes lose sight of what makes photography fun and why we started shooting in the first place.
Become a mentor – Helping other photographers learn the tricks of the trade is very rewarding for both parties.
Celebrate your successes – Even small accomplishments deserve to be celebrated.
Shrug off the losses – Don’t dwell on the negatives, stuff happens! Learn from it and move on.
Be thoughtful – Think about others more often.

Next Steps…

Life is tough and sometimes bad things happen to good people. What separates us is how we deal with change and move forward. Being positive reduces stress, reduced stress will increase self-esteem and when you feel good about yourself, there’s nothing you can’t accomplish.

I’d love to hear how your lemonade turned out, please feel free to share your stories in the comments below.

Expense Trackers – Indian

The pandemic has not just reiterated the adage ‘health is wealth’, but has also forced many to keep a check on their financial health.

With cash-strapped companies resorting to furloughs, layoffs, and pay-cuts, many from the salaried class are now seeking to tighten their purse strings. As noted by the recent consumer confidence survey of the Reserve Bank of India, drop-in discretionary spending is another new development that is gaining the limelight, aside from work-from-home and social distancing.

Reduced sources of income have reminded us that *money does not grow on trees*, and hence, has to be spent judiciously. To achieve this, you should first assess your spending habits and track your expenses. This can help you set realistic budgets and curb unnecessary spending.

FinTech Apps For Tracking Expenses

Monefy

Every time you swipe your card or make a cash payment, you can make a record of it in the Monefy app. Capturing fewer details of the transactions, the app makes the process of recording easier. All you need to enter is the amount and select the category of income or expense. You can even add a tiny description of the transaction if you so wish. In the pro version (paid) of the app, you can set recurring transactions such as utility bills and salary credits. The pro version is available for a one-time fee of INR199.

The app summarises your expenses through visual graphs and diagrams making it easier to understand your cash outflows. Based on the period selected, the app throws up a pie chart explaining the break-up of your expenses. You can further view the detailed transactions grouped as a category, by clicking on that part of the pie. If you wish to alter the default categories of expenses, you can do so in the pro version.

The app scores on ease of use and simplicity. You can even export data from the app to Google Sheets, and work further on the sorting and grouping. Additionally, it offers features such as an inbuilt calculator, passcode protection, multi-currency support, and budget mode.

There are many other apps that help track your expenses manually such as Walnut and Money Manager. However, manually entering all transactions can be tedious for some, and there could be chances of errors while entering the transactions.

Spendee

The Spendee app can help automate your expense tracking. Using the premium version of the app, you can link your bank accounts and credit cards. After this, the app automatically downloads your financial transactions and categorizes your expenses and incomes, using a pre-set algorithm. Aside from the transactions on your card, you can also add cash transactions manually and change the automatic grouping as well.

These premium features come at a cost though. The app has different subscription plans, ranging from INR79 to INR119 per month, or INR619-INR899 per year. The lifetime membership for the app’s premium version is available for INR7,900. A seven or 14-day trial period is also available to try the various features offered in the premium version.

However, the app’s feature to sync bank accounts is currently only available for a few banks – Axis Bank, HDFC Bank, and ICICI Bank. This can be a limiting factor for customers of other banks.

Also, if you are uncomfortable about the automatic sharing of your bank and financial transaction details, you can enter the transactions manually.

Banking apps

The mobile banking applications of some banks offer features that help you track your expenses. The features vary widely among banks. For instance, Syndicate Bank (now merged with Canara Bank) has an e-passbook application for its customers. The app offers a tool – Personal Ledger – where customers can manually tag each transaction to a particular ledger – food, education, health, fuel, travel, grocery, etc. While this scores over private apps on safety and privacy concerns, manually tagging transactions every month to a particular ledger, can be a hassle for some.

For customers of Axis Bank, the Money

Quotient feature available in their mobile banking application helps get a better understanding of their spending pattern and savings. Not only does this feature help you automatically categorize all your debit cards and credit card spends on a monthly basis, but it also gives you a trend of your expenses and savings of the last six months.

SBI’s YONO app also does a similar spending analysis, by auto-tagging and categorizing transactions.

Axis Bank’s Money Quotient also allows comparison of the spending, saving, and investment habits of the customer with peers with similar demographics, life stage, income profile, etc, within the region category (metro, semi-urban, etc).

My Money

A personal finance management tool available within the internet banking facility of ICICI Bank also has useful features. Not only does the tool help categorize and summarise your expenses automatically from all accounts – loans, deposits, savings account, credit card, and Demat account – with ICICI Bank, but you can also link accounts from over 200 other (non-ICICI Bank) institutions and get an overall picture of your financial status. This can be beneficial for customers who have multiple bank accounts and credit cards. Customers can also get email alerts if they overshoot their budgets and can set reminders for monthly bills.

My Money is however available only for ICICI Bank’s savings accounts customers and is free for the first 30 days. After that, annual charges of INR300 plus taxes shall be debited from the savings account.

How much is your Endowment Policy really worth?

Endowment policies have received bad press in recent years, due to many people’s policies not maturing at the value they may have been expecting. If you have an endowment policy but are unsure about how much it is actually worth, you may want to read on.

What is an Endowment Policy?

Endowment policies are usually used to pay off interest-only mortgages. There are two parts to the policy; the investment, and life cover. The policy lasts for a set amount of time.

If the policy dies during this time, the mortgage is automatically paid off. If the holder is still alive at the end of the ‘life’ of the policy, it should be worth an amount which is enough to pay off the mortgage; but this is not guaranteed, it depends on how the markets perform.

In recent years, some policyholders have found that their endowment is unlikely to reach the valuation that was predicted when they took out the policy. This leaves them unable to finish paying off the mortgage and can lead them to have to find other ways to pay off the mortgage. Consequentially Endowment Policies have not been as popular in recent years, with many lenders no longer offering them.

Pros

There is still a chance that your endowment will be worth enough at maturity to pay off your mortgage and some.

Cons

If the policy doesn’t perform as well as expected, it might not pay off the mortgage.

An Endowment policy will only repay the assured sum if you die, you may have cause to buy extra life cover to provide for other debts.

When the policy expires, so does your life insurance.

How do I know if my Endowment will pay off my mortgage?

Speak to your endowment provider. If it seems likely that your policy is unlikely to be worth enough to pay off your mortgage at maturity you should speak to an Independent Financial Advisor (IFA). You can find your local IFA at Yell.

For more information, you can contact the Financial Services Authority, who is in charge of dealing with complaints about endowment policies. It is also responsible for securing compensation for anyone who thinks they may have been wrongly sold an endowment mortgage.

There are private endowment buyers who are willing to purchase with-profit endowment policies of a certain type. This can recover some of the value of your endowment policy. Patient investors will buy up several small endowment policies and wait for them to mature, something you may be unable to do.

Investigate Before Investing Into Any Cash Gifting Program

In this fast-paced world that we live in today, you can never really tell what or how things will turn out for you. Oftentimes, numerous unexpected events happen. Furthermore, when such unfortunate events occur, numerous individuals find themselves in a dire predicament because they don’t have any fallback plans.

To counter this, some people have looked into the online money-making programs. Online money making programs are very powerful means to make money because you get to leverage the ability of the internet. Due to that, you are able to reach thousands or even millions of individuals effortlessly. A proven online money-making venture that a lot of people turn to either for full-time work or for part-time work is called as cash gifting. Cash gifting is a very simple money-making venture that when executed by the rules and correctly, can reap amazing rewards and benefits.

Numerous people continuously ask, what’s cash gifting and how does it work? In essence, cash gifting is simply receiving and giving gifts that are in the form of cash. Certainly, though, there is a lot more to it than its simple definition. The business of cash gifting is an undertaking that involves a lot of intricate components. Giving and receiving money is one of them, but it definitely is not entirely dependent on such little effort. Some other components that play an important role in the business of cash gifting are marketing and advertising, lead generation, and organizational tactics.

On top of that, because cash gifting is primarily based on leadership and teamwork, it will be more advantageous if you can practice these traits. Cash gifting programs are usually in the nature of membership programs. When people join, they’re entitled to give cash gifts to other members while they get to receive cash as well. The growth of an individual’s earnings will rely on the people he or she will recruit to the membership.

It’s very important to do your due diligence prior to going into any form of investment. The business of cash gifting is just as prone as any other business venture and should thus be explored with caution. Most of the time, because people think that it is an effortless way to make money, they try to deceive the newcomers by promising them amazing rewards and benefits. It is a good idea to search for a lot of cash gifting programs and see them firsthand before making decisions. This is a good way to get to know more about the business while protecting yourself from being a victim of a cash gifting scam.

Investing In Gold As Part Of Retirement Plan

It has been hundreds of years since people have realized the importance, and value of gold around the world. As it is a component in several industries, the demand for gold has actually increased with the passage of time. Now it is also considered a good store of value with more, and more investors opting for gold. This option is worth considering for anyone who is retiring.

The recession and economic downturn have de-motivated the investors; everyone is doubtful about making any investment. However, gold has maintained and even increased its value during this recession period. It is the least affected, and recession-proof investment for retired people, who can maintain a stable, and wealthy living conditions in their old age.

The stock market did collapse, and many big investors dropped from billions to pennies. Any person, near to retirement, is now frightened to make any investment in the stock market. On the other hand, the prices of commodities are rising day by day, and inflation rates are likely to go higher.

Gold is the wisest investment now for the people, especially for retired people who do not have many options to try. Any quantity of gold can contribute to a good saving at the end of the year. Gold bullion value rarely depreciates and makes it an ideal choice for the masses.

All precious metals, including gold, are very smart choices of investment, as they bring a measure of stability to the investment of an individual, or retirement plan. It brings a degree of security to the plan. Other avenues of investment like mutual funds, stocks, and bank deposits are not recommended, as they may deteriorate in value with the changing rates of interest. This is the reason why gold is considered valuable by all as it only increases in its worth with time.

The security, protection, stability, and profitable value of gold cannot be challenged by anyone, even today when prices are increasing. Currencies such as the US Dollar and Pound Sterling may depreciate, but gold never does. Investment into gold is a part of the contingency plan of many investors, and especially those looking forward to retirement.

Different ways by which, you can add gold to your retirement investments are as follows; Gold coins and bullion can be bought from a dealer, but for this, you must have an arrangement of a safe place. You can buy shares of an exchange-traded fund, or you can own individual gold mining stocks. Investing in precious metals mutual or exchange-traded funds is also an option for investing gold. Finally, you can invest in commodities funds, as part of your overall asset allocation strategy.

Those people who invest in gold do not turn all of their wealth or life savings into gold stocks; they simply do it as part of their plan to safeguard their assets to have a lucrative income in the future. This can only be accomplished if a sensible retirement plan has been designed. The fluctuations in the market can never be predicted. Whenever the market looks to be in a position where the demand would increase, the smart investors start to invest. In simple terms, investment in gold is a secure move that is likely to get for you a steady flow of profits in the future.

The Differences in Debt

Debt is one financial matter that fills me with dread. The prospect of owing someone else money is like a crushing weight on my soul. But that being said, debt can, at times, be a good thing.

I classify debt into three categories:

Debt that does not add value.
Debt that adds value.
Debt that does not add directly add value, but is necessary, or has the potential to add value.

First, let me clarify that by “value,” I mean some intrinsic financial worth. Not the kind of value that you get when seeing the joy in your kids’ eyes while opening Christmas gifts.

Debt that does not add value is destructive. That new car is not increasing in value; it is depreciating. I know what you’re thinking, “Dude, I love my car, and I need it to drive to work, so it does have value!” Consider my ₹8,00,000 car loan that I took out last year. I’ve diligently been making payments every month, so my liability has decreased. Unfortunately, cars don’t last very long, and the resale value is decreasing even faster than I’m paying it off! This means that even if I were to sell it today, the best I could hope for is to make enough to pay off my loan.

Debt that does add value can actually be a good thing. Most people who open a business do so with the help of a loan. Ideally, the business will begin to make money, and the business will be worth more than the value of the loan. There are many examples of this constructive type of debt. But the idea is that you get a loan for the purposes of making money. This is leverage and thus needs to be used with care. However, if you know that you can borrow money at 6% and you know that you’ll make 8% off of the investment, then you’ve just earned 2% on money that didn’t belong to you. Even better is that (at least in India), you can deduct the interest from investment loans!

The third type of debt lies somewhere between the previous two. For example, taking out an education loan does not immediately provide you with a return. For the four years (or two, or ten, …) that you are in school the loan money does not provide you with a fiscal return on your investment. But in the end, when you get your high-paying job, it does reveal its benefit.

I will also place in this category the most common debt, your mortgage. Many people claim their home is an investment, and therefore it is constructive. I disagree;

You make mortgage payments out of your own pocket rather than having the investment pay for it;
You would not likely sell your ‘investment’ because where would you live;
In India and the USA, these payments can be used against taxes. However, this is not the case in many other countries, such as Canada.

Don’t get me wrong; homeownership and mortgages can be a good thing. I simply argue against it being a constructive debt.

So my goals in order of importance to me are to:

Eliminate all destructive debt.
Reduce necessary or non-value adding debt.
Make use of constructive debt where prudent.

I’m sure most people would agree on the first item. However, it is the last two points that will draw a lot of contention.

In the past few years, people have been loading up the mortgage debt to the point where they can afford little else – all in the name of home-ownership. 25-year mortgages have now become almost commonplace so that you can retire in debt.

With the low cost of borrowing, even so-called constructive debt is running rampant (leveraged buyouts, etc., and included in this). Corporations buying another or an individual buying any arbitrary stock with debt simply because it’s cheap will certainly be sorry once rates rise and/or the company’s finances crumble. That is why I say use leverage when prudent

What is Passive Income?

Recently a friend of mine told me that she believed that the term “passive income” is the most over-used and misused in personal investing. From what she told me, a lot of people she meets are working on producing “passive income” streams even if they are not.

The fundamental source of her frustration was that people had confused the term passive income with streams of income. For example, someone who owns a business on the side, which requires some time and attention does not have a passive income stream. They have another source of income- it is a big difference.

Her challenge to me (and, by extension, the readers) was to list valid sources of passive income.

Passive income, as the term indicates, is income you make without doing anything other than owing the cash flow stream itself. For example, dividend income is truly passive income- you receive a dividend cheque every quarter for evidence of ownership. An inheritance or a trust for your benefit, which pays you money on an interim basis for the rest of your life, is passive income (if only we were so lucky).

In these examples, you sit back, and money comes to you. However, what about the grey zones?

Here is my take on what is and isn’t passive income for streams of income that fall in the grey zones- feel free to add your 2 cents since this list falls in the mushy middle of what is or isn’t passive income:

Real Estate Investing:

If you own and manage investment real estate, you don’t have a passive income stream. You have an alternative source of income. What part of fixing the toilet, collecting rent cheques, advertising to fill rental vacancies and to hire trades is passive?

However, this is where I will make the distinction. If you own commercial investment properties and hire a property manager, depending on how involved you are, it is passive income. Business premises and residential rental units with property managers are most likely professionally managed. A commercial lease downloads almost all of the responsibility of managing the premise to the tenant other than significant repairs and common area maintenance, which is carried out by professional property managers. Thus, substantially all of the income flowing from these types of real estate investments are passive.

Granted, there are some minor responsibilities the property manager cannot do for you, such as renewing the mortgage, but this is some work spread out over time. What I would suggest is that real estate is a more natural way to make income given you don’t have to be there for 9-5, but for most self-managed real estate investments, it is not passive income.

Licensing/Franchising:

If you sell a license or franchise your business, it is only passive income if you have no obligation to the licensee or franchisee afterward. For example, you license software with no obligation to provide patches or upgrades. Franchising cannot be considered a passive income stream- the franchise has obligations to provide sales/marketing and administrative support. The franchise is a great revenue source because someone else is paying you for copying your homework (sort of speak), but I would not define it as a passive income source.

Infopreneurship/Publishing:

“Infopreneurship” is a relatively new term to the business lexicon. It refers to the selling of information, whether through seminars, training modules, or blogs. Its the new economy’s version of traditional publishing. This is where things get really murky. Infopreneurship, which involves the constant updating of information from the owner-manager (i.e., a blog), is not passive income.

An aggregator site that publishes articles from other sources is passive income only if a program has been devised to find the articles and post them-but it is only passive income after a lot of work has been putting into setting up the program.

Despite the thousands of dollars, Google can pay to a site; sites need constant updating, so it cannot be strictly defined as passive income. However, if you develop a training module, seminar, e-book that can be sold many times over via e-commerce, it is passive income because you don’t have to do anything to get a sale- but again, it comes with the same limitation that you had to put a lot of work in beforehand.

These are just my opinions. It is definitive by any stretch of the definition. Let me know what you think about what real passive income is.

Limiting how much someone can steal from your credit card

I’m sure anyone reading this page has ordered something from the internet if not many things. Every time you make a purchase you’re exposing your credit card to strangers, you might think its just computers talking to computers but at my previous company, I was hired to create a new e-commerce site for them that interacted with an AS400 system they used for phone orders.

Their old method was

1. Someone places an order online
2. Each day it was someone’s job to PRINT out the orders WITH CREDIT CARDS NUMBERS
3. That person would then hand key them into the AS400 system, if they didn’t finish them they left a stack of orders on their desk overnight tech supports, janitors, salesman, etc… basically, anyone could stroll by, glance at the order on top and get your CC number and your billing address, everything they need to use your card. This was at a multi-million dollar e-commerce site too, not just some 5 order a day place, we’re talking hundreds of orders a day, just sitting around.

As a consumer you cannot prevent your credit card information from being stolen in this manner, all you did was key it into a browser now it’s on someone’s desk waiting to be keyed in. Since that experience what I did was contact my bank and get a credit card that I specifically use for the web with a $1000 limit, so the most I could get hosed for is a grand or less if there is a balance. I’m sure a lot of people out there enter their cards with 10, 20, 30 thousand dollars available. Why take the risk, get a small card just for the net, $250, $500, $1000 limits. This is also helpful for gas stations, restaurants, etc.

I know a few people first hand, one waiter and one full-service gas pumper who would copy CC numbers down from customers cards and then use them that night to order whatever they wanted, it worked and they got away with it.

College Debts – Paying Them Off

As if college weren’t hard enough, getting out of those hallowed halls may be the lesser of your worries. Once you leave the grounds you are faced with the challenge of finding a job – or starting a business – in your new career path. This is much easier said than done since most companies want experience and, unfortunately for you, most college training does not count toward that so-called “real-world experience”. It’s a problem because now that you’ve completed school you have something that is common among a majority of college students: debt.

You struggle to create a life for yourself, and the moment you are out the starting gate you’re confronted with immediate hardship. You’re most likely well aware of debt by now in this stage of the game, but credit cards and some utilities aren’t even a comparison to the possibility of several hundred thousand dollars in school loans. Without a job you certainly can’t repay it in a timely manner.

Though you may figure it can wait, your college debt is not going to disappear, so there is no good reason to postpone the process of repayment. It’s important to realize the critical nature of debt repayment. It’s also smart to be aware that many companies have added a policy to check potential employees’ credit records as part of their pre-hire considerations. So beginning to pay off that loan is in your best interest.

Student loans are typically deferred for at least six months upon graduation. This can, unfortunately, motivate the proliferation of “professional students” who are afraid to complete college, fearing the financial trap of their loans despite running up even more charges. Don’t continue in school simply to postpone the repayment of your college loans. Have you begun to pay it or rather, like most, looked at it then casually discard it into the “I’ll pay this later” pile? Granted, having no job means paying is hard if not impossible. However, a college debt, as well as your other loans or credits, impact your credit rating. So even if you can only pay $20, do so. It’s a start.

The simplest way to get to that debt is to develop a budget plan. Make a list of all your fixed bills like car loans, rent, personal loans, etc. and add to that list your variable debt like credit cards. Prioritize the list and compare it against any income you may have. For some bills, you can briefly postpone them or work with a creditor to lower payments over time or even ask them to temporarily stop charging you interest. Whatever money you have left should be allocated, at least partially, to your student loans.

Unfortunately, the time to pay the loan without hardship may be long past. If you’ve ignored your college debt for too long, claims can be filed against you. It would then be prudent to seek alternative methods of paying off your debts, such as a personal loan. The interest will tend to be lower and the bill will get paid.

You need to repay your debts – college included – as soon as you can. You should practice debt-free living at every step of your life. Think about simple things like extra clothing, trips, dining out, and movies – all of which can be scaled back, if not eliminated, to help repay your loans. Before purchasing such items, consider whether you really need them. If not, at least defer the expenses to later. Make the elimination of debt your higher priority.