I woke up this morning and thought I was the most brilliant person. My student loan has been with me for some time now and its at that pesky stage where it is almost paid off. By August 15th to be exact if I stick to my budget. Well ahead of it's payment schedule.
So how does this make me the most brilliant person? Well I figured that since I was paying it off on August 15th anyway why not pay it off next week with my CC. Thanks to my friend (also named Chris) I now have a USAA CC that pays me 1% on all my purchases. Basically if I pay my balance monthly and never get hit with a finance charge I can effectively "earn" (as Chris puts it) 1% of whatever I spent that year. Literally having the CC pay me for its use. Plus saving the interest it earns over the next 30 days brings my grand savings up to almost $40. By paying next week with the CC I will be well within my 30 day "grace" window and not earn a finance charge. This is absolutely brilliant!
Except that Sallie Mae doesn't allow you to pay with a CC. I could take the cash advance but then a grace period doesn't exist and there is a fee which negates any savings that I would have otherwise made.
I'm really frustrated at this point and usually I hang up on the surveys after the call but this time I left a disgruntled remark about how its unacceptable to not accept a CC payment. I should of said its downright un-American to not accept CCs. Come on perpetuate the cycle of debt. In retrospect its probably best they don't allow a person to pay off debt with other debt.
They also won't allow you to pay off the loan in total online either. If you want to pay off the loan you have to send in a check with 10 days of interest all ready calculated. So if I wait till the 15th to get the pay off amount it will have another 10 days of interest added.
However, not wanting to be defeated I've concocted another plan. Since August 15th is pay day and the day with which this plan all revolves around. I'm going to make the payment for all but $1.00 online. It should take 2-4 days to pay it and that's roughly .50 a day so my balance should be anywhere from $2-3. Then for the next 15 days 4% on $3 is negligible. I have an auto-pay on the 30th so if it takes it out it only gets $4 max. A little less then if I sent them in a check because I cut the 10 days of interest down to 2-4 depending on how fast the payment is processed. But the best part is that the woman on the phone said for balances below $5 the system won't even register a payment. It may be written off. I will then have cut the amount of interest I owe them for a pay off in half, saved an envelope, a check, a .39 stamp, and best of all stuck them with the last $5.
It's all about the small victories.
Cheers,
Coop
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