Graduating from college is so exciting, you’re officially an adult out in the world making grown up decisions and starting to make your own living, and then you quickly realize that college is still haunting you every month in the form of a student loan payment.
When I graduated I was extremely motivated to pay off my student debt as quickly as I could because I hated the idea of accruing interest EVERY day! If you’re not familiar with what that means, basically every day that you have an outstanding balance interest gets added on top of that based on whatever the rate was at the time you took out the loan. Student loan interest to me was a total waste of money, and I was determined to get rid of it.
I had about $30,000 of student loan debt after graduating college, and while living alone for two years in an expensive Seattle scene, AND paying for a wedding, I was able to pay it off in under 3 years. There’s no hiding that in order to pay off your student loans quickly, you’re going to have to pay more than your monthly payment.
How I did this was I decided to start saving money on the side in a separate place so that once I had a few thousand dollars I would pay off one of my loans in full, and I also put every tax refund toward my loans. There are 2 apps that helped me effortlessly save money, without really having to think about it. These apps are Qapital and Chipper.
Chipper
This app is specifically created for paying off student loan debt faster, and uses the similar method that made Acorns (simple investing app) so popular. The idea of Chipper is that it rounds up all your purchases every week, and at the end of the week it will make that payment toward your student loans. So if you buy a drink at Starbuck’s for $3.50 – 50 cents will then be added towards your weekly payment.
This will obviously vary depending on how much you spend per week but my payments were about $10-$16 a week, which was manageable for me. What I also love about this is that it’s making payments every week so that your balance is getting smaller, even if it’s just a little, so there’s less interest accumulating week to week.
The app also has different features such as looking at different repayment options, setting up another one-time payment, and also a pooling function so you can ask friends and family to contribute toward your loans as a birthday or Christmas gift.
I only used this app for the round up features, and all in all it helped me pay off about $1,000 toward my loans without having to lift a finger.
Qapital
This second app I still use now because not only did it help me save toward my student loans, but it’s where I saved money for my wedding, and currently stash money for my vacation fund and a big purchase fund (basically if I ever need to get something more expensive that I’m not prepared for now).
Qapital is an app where you can set up different savings goals and then create all of these fun rules in order to save! You can do things like round ups, setting monthly, weekly, or daily savings like putting away $100 every month, specifying a percentage of your paycheck to save, using the 52 week rule which is savings $1 the first week, $2 the second week and so on until you’ve saved for a year, or we get into the fun ones.
You can save for a rainy day fund by saving a certain dollar amount every day it rains where you live, you can set goals to sync with your apple watch activity so saving a $10 for hitting 10k steps for example, you can even save a certain dollar amount every time you pin something to a board on Pinterest, every time I saved a wedding pin I saved $2 towards my wedding!
I used this for about a year and a half and saved almost $6,000 for my student loans and this is what funded my final pay off when I paid off my last $10,000 all at once!
Here’s and example of the savings rules I have set on my current goals:
Vacation Fund:
- Round up rule to the next $2
- Set and forget $60 every month
- 52 week rule
- $2 when I track 60 minutes of workout on my apple watch
Big Purchase Fund:
- 52 week rule
- Round up rule to the next $2
- $2 when I track 60 minutes of workout on my apple watch
- $1 when I get 10,000 steps
If you’re interested in starting an account you can use my referral link and you will get $25 (as will I) and you’re already on your way to paying down your student loans faster or saving up for any big purchase you’re trying to make!
I hope going over these two apps has been helpful for you on your journey to paying off your student loans, drop a comment below if you’d like a dedicated blog post on all the other tips I have!
