Student Loan Auto Debit Lowers My Sallie Mae Payment
I haven’t written about my student loans in a little while. I’ve made some changes that are really helping me save money.
I’ve written many times about ways to lower monthly student loan payments. The one I hadn’t tried yet was utilizing benefits from my lender.
Honestly, Sallie Mae doesn’t offer many benefits to those of us with private student loans. I did find out that two of my loans were eligible for an interest rate reduction of 0.5% if I signed up for auto-debit of my bill every month. Since my monthly income is finally consistent, I decided to go ahead and sign up and see what kind of relief that reduction would bring me.
Now that my first auto-debit payment has been processed, Sallie Mae emailed me to let me know that my monthly payment has now been reduced from $1024.70 a month to $1012.95 a month. That’s a difference of $11.75. Not huge, but over the next 163 months of repayment, that’s a savings of $1915.25. And, of course, I’m going to continue using the money I have budgeted to pay my student loans to make extra payments each month to help pay down my principal balance faster.
Hopefully soon my monthly payment will be lowered again, and I’ll be just a few steps closer to my goal of eliminating my student loan debt.
Patio Gardening 2011: Week 2 – Scaring Birds Away
This has not been the best week in patio gardening history. This time last year we had seedlings popping up. Sadly this is not the case this year. Instead we just have pots of dirt.
Why is this? Who knows. I have a few theories.
First, once we planted the seeds last weekend the weather here in Chicago was just awful. Temperatures were in the 30s and it was cloudy and rainy almost every day. Even though we’re starting most of the seeds indoors, the lack of sun and cooler weather has probably effected them. So this is what we have:
We’re not discouraged yet. We plan to wait patiently for our little seedlings to (hopefully) emerge. In the meantime, the boyfriend is starting a back up plan to germinate some of the seeds in ziploc bags. Either way hopefully something will grow! This is super frustrating since we had no trouble starting seeds last year and actually had more seedlings than we could plant.
In other not so great news, we’re having problems with birds this year. We didn’t really have any problems last year because we started all of our seeds indoors. This year, apparently, our patio is a birds paradise. For about a month now, sneaky birds have been stealing bits of our coconut fibers from some of our planting baskets to build their nests. I’ve caught several in the act.
I wasn’t too worried about this–mostly just annoyed. Then today they really pissed me off. A few hours after I went out to water the strawberries and the spinach seeds, I came out again to get ready for today’s plantings, and I saw the birds had dug holes in all of the spinach pots and the strawberry pot too. (Unfortunately I was too mad to take pictures.)
Now we’re building bird scaring away devices (using strings and old CDs) and hopefully that will help keep them away for awhile. I think we’ll also look into getting a fake owl or something.
Today, in addition to replanting the spinach, we did a pot of carrots (we plan to do a second planting in two or three weeks) and a basket of mixed greens. Still on the planting agenda: basil and (a new addition) dill. Maybe that will happen next week. We’ll see what the weather is like.
It’s going to be warmer this week (40s and 50s), but another week of rain in the forecast, so hopefully the little seedlings will get enough sun to get going. If not, then I don’t know what will be the next step in our plan.
Anyway, check out our video for this week (where you can get a glimpse of the boyfriend’s ziploc bag system):
Free $20 Credit for New Members of Rue La La
I’ve posted about this before and it’s back. Sign up for Rue La La and new members will get a $20 credit. This credit can be used towards shipping as well and I was able to get a free gift for a friend with my credit last year.
Rue La Le features different Boutiques each day so you can get name brand items (clothes, shoes, house wares, etc) at a drastic discount. With the $20 credit you could get a great deal.
Thanks to Mashup Mom for posting about this on her blog, otherwise I had no clue the credit was back.
Patio Gardening 2011: Week 1 – Planting the Seeds
We’re off to a good start this year. The weather was pretty cold and windy today, not exactly making for the best gardening weather, but we wanted to get started so we have seedlings ready to go out when the weather finally gets nice.
Our gardening adventure for the year started last week when we picked up three tiny strawberry plants from a local nursery. Originally we planned on growing them from seeds, until I did a little research and found out it could be a couple years before they’d produce fruit. So we splurged and bought some plants to put in our window box. So far they seem to be doing pretty well.
As far as the seeds go, we planted most of them today. Since we have limited space indoors, the carrots and the basil will have to wait a little bit longer for the weather to warm up a bit (yes, we’re doing carrots this year! Very exciting).
This is what we planted today:
- Cherry Tomatoes
- Spinach
- Oregano
- Cilantro
- Green Onions
- Eggplant
- Habanero Peppers
- Jalapenos Peppers
I didn’t bother to take any pictures, because who really wants to look at a pot of soil? If we’re lucky there will be some tiny seedlings next week.
For now here’s our first video for this season:
Spring Time Container Gardening Links Round Up
Spring is here! (Though it may not really feel like it outside yet…) I’ve already started thinking about what I want to grow in my garden (and finally purchased all the seeds). In my research for this year, I found a lot of interesting links with creative and thrifty ideas for container gardening.
Here’s a collection of links perfect for the springtime planning of a container (or traditional) garden. I tried to gather a range, from advice for beginners to ideas for seasoned pros.
Check them out:
What to Grow
- The Best Fruits, Vegetables and Herbs to Grow for Beginners
- 20 Plants to Grow in Your Container Garden
- 12 Vegetables You Can Grow in a Pot
- Container Water Gardens
- Growing Carrots in a Container
Starting Seeds Indoors
- How To Make Seed Starter Pots Using Toilet Paper Rolls
- Starting Seeds Indoors
- How to Start Seeds Indoors
- Common Mistakes Growing Seeds Indoors
- DIY Self Watering Seed started for Container Garden Seeds
Creative Ideas of Where to Grow
- Recycled Soda Bottle Herb Garden
- Turn an Old BBQ Grill into an Herb Garden
- Gardening with Self-Watering Containers
- DIY Vertical Garden with Reclaimed Gutters
- Vertical Vegetables (“Grow up” in a hanging pocket shoe rack)
- Container Gardening with milk jugs
- Where to get Containers for your Container Garden
- Wine Box Turned Balcony-Sized Raised Bed Garden
And Everything Else…
- Easy, Cheap Garden Tags From Disposable Spoons
- The $1 Garden (Growing as much food as possible for as little money as possible from beginning to end)
- How to Amend the Soil in Your Container Garden
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About Tiffany
I'm a 20-something living in the big expensive city of Chicago. I'm post-college and bouncing between underemployment and unemployment, while trying my best to be thrifty, save money, pay off my 6 digit student loan debt, and still have fun and enjoy life. I live with my boyfriend, a rabbit, and a chinchilla. Read more.
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