Tame Those Student Loans

For people still saddled with federal student loans (the average debt these days is a hefty $23,000, a 24% increase since 2004), there’s a new program that could save you a huge chunk of money. The Income-Based Repayment (IBR) plan which became available last July, offers payment caps based on income and family size. For most borrowers, that amounts to less that 10% of their income.

“It’s a sliding scale based not on how much you owe but on what you can afford,” says Beth Kobliner, author of Get a Financial Life: Personal Finance in Your Twenties and Thirties (Fireside).

Right now IBR is best for couples who file their taxes individually: A husband and wife each making $30,000 a year and owing $30,000 in student loans would have to shell out only $170 a month per person. That’s about half of what they’d be paying under a standard repayment plan, freeing up more that $4,000 a year for the family.

But the plan gets even sweeter come July, when the same provisions will be extended to married couples who file jointly. To learn more, check out ibrinfo.org or finaid.org. They also offer program where you could qualify to not have to pay off any remaining debt after 25 years—or just 10 years for teachers, government employees and nonprofit workers.
(Jean Chatzky, author of Money 911: Your Most Pressing Money Questions Answered, Yorur Money Emergencies Solved (Harper Collins).

John Wooden Quotes

• "It's the little details that are vital. Little things make big things happen."


• "Young people need models, not critics."


• "It is what we learn after we know it all that really counts."


• "Don't let what you cannot do interfere with what you can do."


• "For an athlete to function properly, he must be intent. There has to be a definite purpose and goal if you are to progress. If you are not intent about what you are doing, you aren't able to resist the temptation to do something else that might be more fun at the moment."


• "The most important key to achieving great success is to decide upon your goal and launch, get started, take action, move."


• "Consider the rights of others before your own feelings, and the feelings of others before your own rights."


• "If you're not making mistakes, then you're not doing anything. I'm positive that a doer makes mistakes."


• "Be more concerned with your character than your reputation, because your character is what you really are, while your reputation is merely what others think you are."


• "Failure is not fatal, but failure to change might be."


• "Ability may get you to the top, but it takes character to keep you there."


• "Don't measure yourself by what you have accomplished, but what you should have accomplished with your ability."


• "If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?"Adopted From www.basketball-plays-and-tips.com