4 Creative Ways to Reduce Your Student Loan Debt

Over the past months, we’ve covered many student loan forgiveness options, but those just don’t fit every borrower’s situation. With that in mind, here are some of the more creative ways we’ve seen borrowers pay off or reduce their student loans.
1. Find fives: Abe Lincoln, America’s 16th president, graces the $ 5 bill. He helped abolish slavery, but he may also be able to help abolish your student loans.
One of the more creative savings strategies I’ve seen is a family with a rule to always save $ 5 bills.They go in a jar and, at the end of every month, get deposited into the bank where they are transformed into an extra student loan payment.
With this simple rule the family is able to shave off about four years of their 20-year repayment term – and save thousands in interest.
2. Volunteer: Giving back is good for the soul, and now it can also be good for your student loan balance.
SponsorChange has developed a model where college graduates donate their skilled time to assist with nonprofit projects in exchange for student loan repayment. The concept is fairly new and only available in a few cities right now, but it is expanding daily so it’s worth signing up.
Participants receive between $ 10 and $ 20 an hour in student loan payments, depending on the level of skill needed for the project they participate in. Zerobound has a similar model, but its participants must crowd fund their own student loan repayments.
3. Pay student loans twice a month: You owe one full payment a month and there are 12 months in a year, so by paying once a month you make 12 payments a year. But if you paid twice a month – not two full payments but half your payment, biweekly – that’s 26 half payments,which equals 13 full payments a year.
In this way, you’ve just made an extra payment on your student loan without even noticing. If you get paid biweekly, the extra amount should also coincide with those extra paycheck months, making this strategy even less noticeable. You can save even more in interest payments if you round your payment up to the next $ 10 or $ 100.
4. Find a way to live and work outside the U.S.: If you work in another country, you may be exempt from paying taxes up to a fairly high amount of income – about $ 97,000 in 2013. That savings alone can help you put a pretty big dent in that student loan debt.
In addition, the IRS offers benefits that allow people working and living abroad to either deduct an amount of income used for housing expenses, or have some housing expenses allocated as not taxable. This is all savings that you can contribute toward Education loan payments.
Add in the housing allowance that many international employers offer and the opportunity to immerse yourself in another culture, and this could be a real win.
Source: https://tackk.com/4-creative-ways-to-reduce-your-student-loan-debt