Student loan payments: get advice and actual numbers here Forum

[Anonymous User]

185K or so
4% apr refinanced
7 year
2,200K a month or so.

V10 160K NYC

[Anonymous User]

2L anon. Thanks johann and tiago. I'm leaning towards doing the Roth. My 30k of loans law school have in the 6% range, the $10k of undergrad loans are not accruing interest at the moment, but will kick back in at about 5% post grad. I intend to refinance basically the second I start full time. If I don't get rehired either semester of 3L, my debt will be about 75k total, which is still in "paying the whole thing off" territory in my opinion especially with big law.

[Desert Fox]

I can't do a Roth IRA if I make I me and wifu cleared like 250k last year right

[Johann]

I can't do a Roth IRA if I make I me and wifu cleared like 250k last year right

correct you cannot.

[Tiago Splitter]

I can't do a Roth IRA if I make I me and wifu cleared like 250k last year right

You contribute to a traditional and then convert to a Roth. If you have no other pre-tax IRA money it's foolproof.

[Johann]

I think whatever you do you should also max out your Roth IRA for 2015 before April 15. You've got $15,000 cash just sitting there, so slide $5,500 of that over to your Roth. $9,500 in an emergency fund is still a lot, and A) you don't have to put the Roth money into investments and B) Roth contributions can be taken out tax and penalty-free at any time.

damn B is huge and did not know that. i think this is a must as well then.

[Desert Fox]

Can I stuff money in an IRA and then if I get shit canned, roll it to a Roth and then taken out the money?

[Tiago Splitter]

Can I stuff money in an IRA and then if I get shit canned, roll it to a Roth and then taken out the money?

If you got a deduction you'd have to wait five years to get it out penalty free.

[Anonymous User]

Does anyone who has recently bought a house or is currently shopping have recommendations for competitive mortgage providers? SoFi doesn't underwrite in my state, and I'm not sure where else to look (my suspicion is that neither a big bank like Chase nor one of the aggressive sketchy internet advertisers like erates is the best call here).

FWIW, I should be a good lending prospect -- I have great credit and will have a low DTI.

[gk101]

Does anyone who has recently bought a house or is currently shopping have recommendations for competitive mortgage providers? SoFi doesn't underwrite in my state, and I'm not sure where else to look (my suspicion is that neither a big bank like Chase nor one of the aggressive sketchy internet advertisers like erates is the best call here).

FWIW, I should be a good lending prospect -- I have great credit and will have a low DTI.

local banks and credit unions, or banks where you have your paychecks deposited to generally offer good rates. anecdotally, I have heard good things about guaranteed rate (online mortgage company I think) but I haven't checked them out yet. With big banks, Bank Of America seems to offer the worst rates. chase and us bank are about average

[Anonymous User]

Debt: 120,000
4% refi
Income: 122,000
Payments: 3,000 monthly. Will be increasing payments to $4000/month after wedding expenses are paid for. Hoping to pay this shit off ASAP.

[krads153]

Debt: 120,000
4% refi
Income: 122,000
Payments: 3,000 monthly. Will be increasing payments to $4000/month after wedding expenses are paid for. Hoping to pay this shit off ASAP.

Just elope for cheap. I would have done the same thing, except parents wanted a wedding with family/friends and they paid for the entire wedding. Otherwise, when I had loans I wouldn't have spent anything on my own wedding beyond bare minimum for elopement. And if your family are the ones who want a wedding, tell them to pay for it or else they won't get one.

[Anonymous User]

I kept a loan at 4.5% and set some money aside instead of paying it off. I just got a statement from my lender showing how much interest I paid last year and realized that it was stupid not to pay down my loan because I'm barely earning anything on my conservative investments in this market. Do yourself a favor and reevaluate these things every 3-6 months instead of making a decision and forgetting about it.

It is kind of nerve wracking to use a huge chunk of very liquid cash to pay down a loan that still has 8+ years on it though.

[bdubs]

Does anyone who has recently bought a house or is currently shopping have recommendations for competitive mortgage providers? SoFi doesn't underwrite in my state, and I'm not sure where else to look (my suspicion is that neither a big bank like Chase nor one of the aggressive sketchy internet advertisers like erates is the best call here).

FWIW, I should be a good lending prospect -- I have great credit and will have a low DTI.

local banks and credit unions, or banks where you have your paychecks deposited to generally offer good rates. anecdotally, I have heard good things about guaranteed rate (online mortgage company I think) but I haven't checked them out yet. With big banks, Bank Of America seems to offer the worst rates. chase and us bank are about average

Guaranteed rate is competitive on fees and is pretty good at shopping your loan to the bank. I also used AimLoan on another property and they were pretty good. But the big reason to use a mortgage company instead of a bank is that they are actually responsible to get your loan done. I used a big bank because they quoted me a good rate and I hated having random fuckwads calling me to talk about my loan before they would even quote me anything. The major problem with using a bank was that my loan contact was worthless and couldn't make things happen on time. My closing got delayed twice and the sellers were pissed (as was I because I had to reschedule my move). Everyone at the closing told me I should have used a company like Guaranteed Rate (or similar local brokers) because they know how to make things happen on time.

[Anonymous User]

n/t

[anon919]

Has anyone heard of biglaw firms offering some sort of student loan consolidation deal with a bank? I heard Latham offers it to its associates. Is this commonplace? If anyone has any knowledge of this, what interest rate is the consolidated loan?

Law firms do this in order to erode any shred of leverage the associate would have over it. Do you really want to be an employee AND debtor to a single firm?

For OP -- It varies. Not sure about current rates but when I applied, 5 year was about 1.95% and 10 years was 2.75%.

[BmoreOrLess]

Can I stuff money in an IRA and then if I get shit canned, roll it to a Roth and then taken out the money?

If you got a deduction you'd have to wait five years to get it out penalty free.

Not a 100% and just pulling stuff off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure the 5 year rule applies to your total conversion amount.

[Danger Zone]

Can I stuff money in an IRA and then if I get shit canned, roll it to a Roth and then taken out the money?

If you got a deduction you'd have to wait five years to get it out penalty free.

Not a 100% and just pulling stuff off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure the 5 year rule applies to your total conversion amount.

Correct. The entire conversion is counted as a contribution, and your contributions are what you can pull out penalty free after five years.

[dailygrind]

Can I refinance my fixed Sofi loan with another fixed Sofi loan? I was browsing their rates again because I've been refinancing in chunks, and they've lowered my estimate by half a percentage point. I don't recall them doing any origination or prepayment fees, so I don't see any downside to just refinancing the entire package of what they've given me.

[gk101]

Can I refinance my fixed Sofi loan with another fixed Sofi loan? I was browsing their rates again because I've been refinancing in chunks, and they've lowered my estimate by half a percentage point. I don't recall them doing any origination or prepayment fees, so I don't see any downside to just refinancing the entire package of what they've given me.

yes. I did this and my interest rates went down from 4.5% to 1.9%

[dailygrind]

Can I refinance my fixed Sofi loan with another fixed Sofi loan? I was browsing their rates again because I've been refinancing in chunks, and they've lowered my estimate by half a percentage point. I don't recall them doing any origination or prepayment fees, so I don't see any downside to just refinancing the entire package of what they've given me.

yes. I did this and my interest rates went down from 4.5% to 1.9%

Holy shit. The variable estimate they are offering for me right now is 2.9. What the fuck on 1.9.

[gk101]

Can I refinance my fixed Sofi loan with another fixed Sofi loan? I was browsing their rates again because I've been refinancing in chunks, and they've lowered my estimate by half a percentage point. I don't recall them doing any origination or prepayment fees, so I don't see any downside to just refinancing the entire package of what they've given me.

yes. I did this and my interest rates went down from 4.5% to 1.9%

Holy shit. The variable estimate they are offering for me right now is 2.9. What the fuck on 1.9.

5 year variable. my loan amount is ~50k at this point so that probably helped getting the low rates

[dailygrind]

Fuck, I'm blown away. I guess I'll refinance these fuckers like every year, then.

[Tiago Splitter]

Can I stuff money in an IRA and then if I get shit canned, roll it to a Roth and then taken out the money?

If you got a deduction you'd have to wait five years to get it out penalty free.

Not a 100% and just pulling stuff off the top of my head, but I'm pretty sure the 5 year rule applies to your total conversion amount.

Correct. The entire conversion is counted as a contribution, and your contributions are what you can pull out penalty free after five years.

I had thought that the non-taxed portion of conversions were not subject to the 10% penalty even if taken within five years, but I can't find anything to support that. If that's the case it's a bit of a knock against the backdoor Roth move. Not a big one but still annoying.

As for regular Roth contributions those always come out tax and penalty free at any time.

[BmoreOrLess]

Correct. The entire conversion is counted as a contribution, and your contributions are what you can pull out penalty free after five years.

Eh this isn't quite precise. I definitely know that Roth Ira's, for tax purposes, consist of three 'buckets': Contributions, Conversions, and Earnings. You can have seperate 5 year periods for contributions (which starts running from your first contribution, and doesn't restart) and conversions, which each individually have 5 year periods. I don't remember all of the distinctions, but conversions definitely aren't considered contributions, despite having similar rules.