A Financial Literacy Blog for All
A reverse mortgage can be a valuable financial management tool for seniors and their families. However, if misunderstood or misused, borrowers and their heirs can encounter any one of a number of different challenges. In this post, I’ll define “reverse mortgage” and provide illustrations of …
The All Seasons Portfolio reports amazing statistics about its returns. I’d never heard of the All Seasons Portfolio, so had to check it out. As I’ll discuss in more detail, it is an asset allocation strategy with more than 50% of the portfolio allocated to …
Choosing the right type of life insurance policy and its death benefit can be confusing. Not too long ago, I published a guest post from Baruch Silverman of The Smart Investor on the different types of life insurance. In this post, you’ll learn how to buy life insurance. Specifically, I’ll help you evaluate which, if any, of those types of policies fit your situation and how to select your death benefit.
The first thing you want to consider is why you are buying life insurance. Three common purposes are:
If your primary purpose for purchasing life insurance is the death benefit, you’ll want to focus on term and whole life insurance.
Some people use life insurance similar to other financial securities (such as stocks and bonds). Variable life and universal life have investment components to them. In simplified terms, the total amount you pay as premium for these types of life insurance is split between the amount to cover the cost of a whole life policy and the excess which can be invested. As such, the life insurer doesn’t invest the portion of the premium related to the death benefit. Further, the life insurer reduces the excess to cover its expenses, a risk charge, and its profit margin before investing it.
Variable and universal life policies include the cost of whole life insurance. Thus, only people who want the coverage provided by whole life insurance might consider using life insurance as part of their investment portfolio. Even then, the returns may not be as high as other investment vehicles with similar risk because of the additional costs charged by the life insurer.
Sheltering gifts to your heirs from income taxes only applies to the very wealthy (those who have more than $11 million in assets). I’m assuming that the vast majority of my readers aren’t in this situation, so won’t address it here.
All types of life insurance can have an indirect impact on your investment portfolio. If you purchase life insurance in an amount that will cover your dependents’ basic living expenses, it allows you the option to invest your portfolio in riskier assets in anticipation of getting higher returns. That is, the death benefit itself could be considered a low-risk investment. It reduces your overall portfolio risk when added to the other assets you own.
If you are more concerned about outliving your savings, annuities can protect against the opposite risk from life insurance. Certain types of annuities provide a stream of income from a stated start date until you die. If you are concerned about this risk, this post about annuities might help.
Some people don’t need the death benefit from life insurance. In that case, it doesn’t make sense to buy life insurance as an investment security either. In the last section of this post, I provide the details of estimating your target death benefit. People whose target death benefit is zero are those who don’t need life insurance. Briefly, characteristics of people who have a target death benefit of zero are:
If you aren’t sure if you meet these criteria, keep reading!
If you’ve decided that you are buying life insurance for the death benefit, you need to decide whether term life or whole life insurance will better meet your needs. The primary differences between the two options are the length of time you need the insurance and the cost.
If you think you will need life insurance for a limited period of time, term life insurance is likely better for you. For example, you might have dependents who aren’t currently able to cover their living expenses and the cost of any debt. In that case, you might want to buy life insurance that will pay off your debts and support your dependents until they are independent. If your needs change, many insurers will let you convert a term life insurance policy to a whole life policy without having to provide medical information or have a physical, one or both of which are often pre-requisites for purchasing whole life insurance.
Term life premiums are constant over the term of any policy you purchase. However, if you buy a policy when you are older, the premium will be higher than if you buy the same policy when you are younger.
If you think you will need life insurance for your entire life, whole life insurance is likely better for you. For example, if you have a spouse or disabled children who will never be able to support themselves, whole life insurance could supplement your savings to help make sure they are able to live more comfortably, regardless of when you die.
In addition to the death benefit, whole life insurance gives you the option to borrow money. As you pay premium, life insurers designate a portion of your premium as the cash value. The cash value is always owned by the insurance company, but you are able to borrow an amount up to the cash value at any time without prior approval, any collateral or impact on your credit score. The interest rates on cash-value loans are less than many other sources, particularly credit cards. If you die before the loan is re-paid, the amount of the loan will be deducted from your death benefit.
Whole life insurance is much more expensive than term life when you are young, but eventually becomes less expensive.
The graph below provides some initial insights into the difference in cost between whole life and term life, as it shows the probability that you will die at each age. I calculated the values based on 2016 data from the Social Security web site.
Not surprisingly, the probability you will die increases at each age. If you buy whole life insurance, it will cover the entire portion of the graph from your current age until you die. As such, there is a 100% probability that the life insurer will pay your death benefit (assuming you continue to pay your premiums). It is just a question of when.
If you buy a 20-year term policy and you are 30 years old, only the deaths that occur in the portion of the graph below highlighted in green would be covered. That is, you will receive the death benefit if you die between ages 30 and 50 and will get nothing if you die after age 50.
The probability you will die is much smaller in this narrow window than the 100% probability you will die at some point.
There are many factors that determine the premium for term life and whole life insurance policies, but the most important component relates to the death benefit. Actuaries (who help price life insurance) usually base the portion of premium related to the death benefit as the present value of the death benefit expected to be paid, on average, in each year.
The chart below shows the present value for $1 of death benefit for several sample policies. For illustration only, I have calculated the present values using a 3% interest rate and the probabilities of dying from the charts above.
The easiest way to see the impact of the increasing probability of dying is to look at the present value of the death benefit for a 1-Year Term Life policy. You can see it increases from almost zero (actually $0.0015 per dollar of death benefit) at age 25 to $0.042 per dollar of death benefit at age 70 which corresponds exactly to the increase in the probability of dying at each age.
There are also increases in the present value of the death benefit for the Whole Life and 20-Year Term Life policies as the age you first start buying the policy increases.
You can also see that the present value of the death benefit at age 25 for the Whole Life policy is much, much larger than the present value for either of the two term life policies. This relationship corresponds to the graphs above which compared the probability of dying in a 20-year period as compared to the 100% probability that you will die at some point.
The difference between the Whole Life and 20-Year Term Life policies is fairly small at age 70, because there is a high probability that you will die between age 70 and 90 – the period covered by the 20-Year Term Life policy. In fact, almost 80% of people age 70 will die during the 20-Year Term Life policy period. As such, the present value of the death benefit for a 20-Year Term Life policy at age 70 is very roughly 80% of the present value of the death benefit for a Whole Life policy.
The insurance company collects premium over the full life of the insurance policy to cover the present value of the death benefit. That is, you don’t pay all of your premium to the insurance company in one lump sum, but rather on an annual or monthly basis.
Unless you die during the policy term of the Term Life policy, you will pay premium for more years under a Whole Life policy than under a Term Life policy. Therefore, the differences you see above are larger than the differences in premium payments.
The chart below shows the annualized amount of the loss costs. That is, I divided the present values of the death benefits by the average number of years an insured is expected to pay their premium. For example, for the 20-Year Term Life policy, the denominator was calculated as the sum of the probabilities that the insured would be alive in each of the 20 years and therefore able to pay his or her premium.
Although these relationships are not precise, they are roughly representative of the differences in annual premium you might pay for the different types of policies at different ages. At age 25, the annual cost of a Whole Life policy in this illustration is roughly three times the cost of either of the Term Life policies. By age 70, the annual cost of a Whole Life policy is less than the cost of 20-Year Term Life policy because, while the present value of the death benefit isn’t all that different between the two policies, people who buy Whole Life policies make more premium payments, on average.
It is important to understand that I prepared these examples as illustrations to help you understand the differences between Whole Life and Term Life insurance premiums. In practice, life insurers use different tables showing the probability of dying and different interest rates than I used for illustration, as well as using more sophisticated methods for calculating the present value of the death benefit and including provisions for expenses, risk and profit.
In practice, I’ve seen estimates that Whole Life annual premiums are anywhere from three to fifteen times more than Term Life premium at young ages. As you are looking at your options, you’ll want to get several premium quotes, as they vary widely depending on your age, location, gender, health and many other factors.
As with any financial decision, there are two conflicting factors that will influence the amount of the death benefit you buy on a life insurance policy – your budget and your financial needs. In the section, I will talk about how to estimate the best (i.e., target) death benefit for your situation. Once you’ve selected an amount, you can get quotes from several insurers to see whether the premium for that death benefit will fit in your budget or whether you will need to find the best balance between premium affordability and death benefit for you.
Not surprisingly, there are some rules of thumb for guiding your selection of a death benefit. Some of the ones I’ve heard are:
Rules of thumb like these can provide some insights, but they, by definition, can’t take into account your personal circumstances.
A better approach for selecting a death benefit is to analyze your own finances and goals for buying life insurance. I suggest calculating your target death benefit as the total of the amounts needed to meet your goals, considering the following components.
If you have debt, you’ll want to consider whether your dependents will be able to continue to make the payments on the debt out of their own income. For example, if your spouse’s earned income is high enough to continue to make your mortgage payments, along with all of the other expenses he or she will need to cover if you die, then you might not need to include the remaining principal on your mortgage as a component of your target death benefit. On the other hand, if you are concerned about your dependents’ ability to continue payments on any debt, you’ll want to include the outstanding principal on those debts as a component of your target death benefit. I’ll define this amount as “Debt Principal to be Pre-Paid.”
When you die, your dependents will incur some one-time expenses. These expenses can include your funeral or memorial costs and professional expenses to settle your estate. I’ll call the amount of these expenses, “Final Expenses.”
The next component of your target death benefit calculation is the amount you need to cover your dependents’ future living expenses.
Start with your household’s total expenses from your budget. This amount will include monthly expenses for everyone in your household, the amounts you are setting aside each month for your designated savings and any amounts you are setting aside for your spouse’s retirement. To be clear, it will exclude any amounts you are saving for your own retirement.
You can eliminate any monthly expenses or amounts for designated savings for things that are only for your benefit. For example, if you spend enough money on clothes for your job to include it in your budget, you can eliminate those expenses. Similarly, you can also eliminate any expenses related to a vehicle that only you drive or designated savings to replace it.
You then need to calculate your dependents’ monthly earned income. This amount may be calculated in two parts – current monthly earned income and future monthly earned income. For example, your spouse may currently work part time as you are relying primarily on your income for support. If you die, your spouse may be able to work full time to increase his or her earned income. Alternately, your spouse may need some education (discussed below) to get the qualifications needed for his or her desired profession.
Next, you’ll need to calculate the amount of any expenses that your household will have because of any changes in your spouse’s availability to provide household services. For example, your spouse may work part-time while your children are in school and provide childcare after school. If your spouse starts working full time after your death, you will need to add after-school care expenses to your budget.
The last factor that goes into this calculation is the length of time until you think your dependents will become self-sufficient. For children, you might assume that they will become independent after they turn 18 or graduate from college. The ability of your spouse to become self-sufficient will be a function of his or her skills, education and/or need for more education and household responsibilities (e.g., childcare or elder care).
I suggest splitting the calculation of this component of your death benefit into three time periods – short-term, medium-term and long-term. For each time period, you’ll calculate your net living expenses as expenses minus income. For any periods for which income is more than expenses, set the difference to zero.
You also need to estimate how many months each of these three time periods will last.
Your Net Future Living Expense amount for each time period is calculated as the number of months it will last multiplied by monthly net living expense amount. You can then calculate your total Net Future Living Expenses as the sum of the three amounts you calculated for the three time periods.
For those of you who like to see formulas instead of words, you will calculate:
You could refine this amount by considering inflation and investment returns. Depending on your investment strategy and the time until the funds are used, your investment returns, on average, can be more than inflation. As a conservative first approximation, I suggest using the total without adjustment for inflation and investment returns.
There are two types of education expenses that you might want to include in your target death benefit calculation:
You can now calculate your target death benefit as follows:
Debt Principal to be Pre-Paid
Plus Final Expenses
Plus Net Future Living Expenses
Minus Savings in excess of your real estate and personal property assets, emergency fund, designated savings and spouse’s retirement savings
Plus Education Expenses
Minus Amounts in existing college funds
Minus Any amounts included in your Net Future Living Expenses designated for college
If you are single with no debt, this amount could be zero indicating that you might not need to buy life insurance. If you are married with no children, don’t have a lot of debt and have a spouse who can increase income or decrease expenses to be self-sufficient fairly quickly, you may need only a small death benefit. At the other extreme, if you have several children and a spouse who won’t be able to be financially independent for many years or ever, your target death benefit could exceed $1 million. As you can see, the specifics of your financial situation are very important to setting a target death benefit and a rule of thumb may not work for you.
Note from Susie Q: When I published my post on Social Security, I promised my Canadian readers a similar post about the Canada Pension Plan. It took a while, but here it is! Graeme Hughes, the Money Geek, was kind enough to write it for …
I wrote a guest post for The Smart Investor about deciding if you need a budget. Here is the start of it, to read the entire post, click here. Budgeting is critical to your financial health, especially when you are just getting started handling your …
Once you know how much you want to save for retirement, you need a plan for building that savings. Your annual retirement savings target depends on your total savings target, how many years you have until you want to retire and how much risk you are willing to take in your portfolio. In this post, I’ll provide information you can use to set targets for how much to contribute to your retirement savings each year.
There are several variables that will impact how much you’ll want to target as contributions to your retirement savings each year. They are:
Some of these variables are fairly straightforward. For example, you can check the balances of any accounts with retirement savings that you already have and you can estimate (within a few years, at least) how many years until you retire.
Other variables are more challenging to estimate. For example, I dedicated a whole separate post to the topic of setting your retirement savings target.
Your risk tolerance is a measure of how much volatility you are willing to take in your investments. As indicated in my post on risk, the more risk you take the higher your expected return but the wider the possible range of results. My post on diversification and investing shows that the longer period of time over which you invest, the less volatility has been seen historically in the annualized returns.
Here are a few thoughts that might guide you as you figure out your personal risk tolerance.
As can be seen, the more risk you take, the higher the average return. As you are estimating how much you need to save each year for retirement, you’ll need to select an assumption about your average annual investment return based on these (or other) insights and your personal risk tolerance.
In addition to considering your risk tolerance, you’ll need to adjust your investment returns for any taxes you need to pay between the time you put the money in the account and your retirement date. For this post, I’ve assumed that your savings amount target includes income taxes, as suggested in my post on that topic. If it does, you only need to be concerned with taxes until you retire in estimating how much you need to save each year.
In the previous section, you selected an average annual investment return. The table below provides approximations for adjusting that return for Federal income taxes based on the type of financial instruments you plan to buy and the type of account in which you hold it.
|
US – Taxable |
Canada – Taxable |
All Tax-Deferred & Tax-Free Accounts |
|
| Money Market |
Multiply by 0.75 |
Multiply by 0.75 |
No adjustment |
| Bonds and Bond Mutual Funds |
Multiply by 0.75 |
Multiply by 0.75 |
No adjustment |
| Equity Mutual Funds |
Multiply by 0.85 |
Multiply by 0.87 |
No adjustment |
| Equities and Index Funds |
Multiply by 0.85 |
Multiply by 0.87 |
No adjustment |
You’ll need to subtract your state or provincial income tax rate from each multiplier. For example, if you state or provincial income tax rate is 10%, you would subtract 0.10 from each multiplier. For Equities and Index Funds, the 0.85 multiplier in the US-Taxable column would be reduced to 0.75.
The assumptions in this table for equities and index funds in particularly and, to a lesser extent, equity mutual funds, are conservative. Specifically, if you don’t sell your positions every year and re-invest the proceeds, you will pay taxes less than every year. By doing so, you reduce the impact of income taxes. Nonetheless, given all of the risks involved in savings for retirement, I think these approximations are useful even if they cause the estimates of how to save every year to be a bit high.
Also, the tax rates for bonds and bond mutual funds could also be conservative depending on the types of bonds you own. The adjustment factors shown apply to corporate bonds. The tax rates on interest on government bonds and some municipal bonds are lower.
From the table above, it is clear that calculating your after-tax investment return depends on both the types of investments you plan to buy and the type of account in which you plan to hold them. The table below will help you calculate your overall after-tax investment return.
| Investment Type |
Account Type |
Percent of Portfolio | Pre-tax Return | Tax Adjustment |
Product |
| Money Market, Bonds or Bond Mutual Funds |
Taxable |
0.75 |
|||
| Equity Mutual Funds, Equities, Index Funds |
Taxable |
0.85 if US; 0.87 if Canada |
|||
| All |
Other than Taxable |
1.00 |
|||
| Total |
There are three assumptions you need to enter into this table that reflect the types of financial instruments you will buy (i.e., reflecting your risk tolerance) and the types of accounts in which you will hold those assets in the Percent of Portfolio column. These assumptions are the percentages of your retirement savings you will invest in:
For each of these three groups of assets, you’ll put the average annual return you selected from the Risk Tolerance section above in the Pre-Tax return column. You also may need to adjust the multipliers as discussed above.
Once you have filled in those six boxes, you will multiply the three numbers in each row together to get a single product in the last column of each row. Your weighted average after-tax investment return will be the sum of the three values in the last column.
I have created an illustration in the table below. For this illustration, I have assumed that you will invest 50% of your portfolio in bonds and 50% in equities. You are able to put 60% of your portfolio in tax-deferred and tax-free accounts. Although not consistent with my post on tax-efficient investing, you split your bonds and stocks between account types in the same proportion as the total. As such, you have 20% of your portfolio in taxable accounts invested in each of bonds and equities. The 60% you put in your tax-deferred and tax-free accounts goes in the All Other row.
| Investment Type |
Account Type |
Percent of Portfolio | Pre-tax Return | Tax Adjustment |
Product |
| Money Market, Bonds or Bond Mutual Funds |
Taxable |
20% | 3% | 0.75 |
0.5% |
| Equity Mutual Funds, Equities, Index Funds |
Taxable |
20% | 8% | 0.85 if US; 0.87 if Canada |
1.4% |
| All |
Other than Taxable |
60% | 5.5% | 1.00 |
3.3% |
| Total |
5.2% |
I’ll use a pre-tax return on bonds of 3% and equities of 8%. Because the All Other category is 50/50 stocks and bonds, the average pre-tax return for that row is the average of 3% and 8% or 5.5%.
I then calculated the products for each row. For example, in the first row, I calculated 0.5% = 20% x 3% x 0.75. The weighted average after-tax investment return is the sum of the three values in the product column or 5.2% = 0.5% + 1.4% + 3.3%. The 5.2% will be used to help estimate how much we need to save each year to meet our retirement savings target.
By this point, we have talked about how to estimate:
With that information, you can now estimate how much you need to save each year if you don’t have any savings yet. I’ll talk about adjusting the calculation for any savings you already have below.
I assumed that you will increase your savings by 3% every year which would be consistent with saving a constant percentage of your earnings each year if your wages go up by 3% each year. For example, if you put $1,000 in your retirement savings this year, you will put another $1,030 next year, $1,061 in the following year and so on. In this way, your annual retirement savings contribution will be closer to a constant percentage of your income.
The graph and table below both show the same information – the percentage of your retirement savings goal that you need to save in your first year of savings based on your number of years until you retire and after-tax annual average investment return.
|
After-tax Return |
Years to Retirement | |||||||
| 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 |
40 |
|
|
2% |
17.6% | 7.8% | 4.6% | 3.0% | 2.1% | 1.6% | 1.2% | 0.9% |
|
3% |
17.3% | 7.4% | 4.3% | 2.8% | 1.9% | 1.4% | 1.0% | 0.8% |
|
4% |
16.9% | 7.1% | 4.0% | 2.5% | 1.7% | 1.2% | 0.9% | 0.6% |
|
5% |
16.6% | 6.8% | 3.7% | 2.3% | 1.5% | 1.0% | 0.7% |
0.5% |
| 6% | 16.3% | 6.5% | 3.5% | 2.1% | 1.3% | 0.9% | 0.6% |
0.4% |
| 7% | 16.0% | 6.2% | 3.2% | 1.9% | 1.2% | 0.7% | 0.5% |
0.3% |
| 8% | 15.7% | 6.0% | 3.0% | 1.7% | 1.0% | 0.6% | 0.4% |
0.3% |
As you can see, the more risk you take, the less you need to save on average. That is, as you go down each column in the table or towards the back of the graph, the percentage of your target you need to save in the first year gets smaller. Also, the longer you have until you retire (as you move right in the table and graph), the smaller the savings percentage. I caution those of you who have only a few years until retirement, though, that you will want to think carefully about your risk tolerance and may want to use the values in the upper rows of the table corresponding to lower risk/lower return investments, as there is a fairly high chance that your savings will be less than your target due to market volatility if you purchase risky assets.
First find the percentage in the cell with a row that corresponds to your after-tax investment return and a column that corresponds to your time to retirement. You multiply this percentage by your total retirement savings target. The result of that calculation is how much you need to save in your first year of saving. To find out how much to save in the second year, multiply by 1.03. Keep multiplying by 1.03 to find out how much to save in each subsequent year.
Earlier in this post, I created an example with a 5.2% after-tax investment return. 5.2% is fairly close to 5%, so we will look at the row in the table corresponding to 5% to continue this example. I have calculated your first- and second-year savings amounts for several combinations of years to retirement and total retirement savings targets for someone with a 5% after-tax investment return below.
|
Years to Retirement |
Savings % from Table (5% Row) | Total Retirement Savings Target | First-Year Savings Amount | Second-Year Savings Amount |
|
5 |
16.6% | $500,000 | $83,000 | $85,490 |
|
15 |
3.7% | 2,000,000 | 74,000 |
76,220 |
| 30 | 1.0% | 500,000 | 5,000 |
5,150 |
| 40 | 0.5% | 1,000,000 | 5,000 |
5,150 |
The first-year savings amounts in this table highlight the benefits of starting to save for retirement “early and often.” It is a lot easier to save $5,000 a year than $75,000 or $85,000 a year. By comparing the last two rows, you can see the benefits of the extra 10 years between 30 years of savings and 40 years of savings. With the same starting contributions, on average, you end up with twice as much if you save consistently for 40 years than if you do so for 30 years.
The calculations above don’t take into account that you might already have started saving for retirement. If you already have some retirement savings, you can reduce the amount your need to save each year.
The math is a bit complicated if you don’t like exponents, but I’ll provide a table that will make it a bit easier. To adjust the annual savings calculation for the amount you already have saved, you need to subtract the future value of your existing savings from your total retirement savings target. The future value is the amount to which your existing savings will grow by your retirement date. The formula for future savings is:
where n is the number of years until you retire. The annual return is the same return you’ve been using in the formulas above. If you don’t want to deal with the exponent, the table below will help you figure out the factor by which to multiply your current amount saved.
|
After-tax Return |
Years to Retirement | |||||||
| 5 | 10 | 15 | 20 | 25 | 30 | 35 |
40 |
|
|
2% |
1.10 | 1.22 | 1.35 | 1.49 | 1.64 | 1.81 | 2.00 | 2.21 |
|
3% |
1.16 | 1.34 | 1.56 | 1.81 | 2.09 | 2.43 | 2.81 | 3.26 |
|
4% |
1.22 | 1.48 | 1.80 | 2.19 | 2.67 | 3.24 | 3.95 | 4.80 |
| 5% | 1.28 | 1.63 | 2.08 | 2.65 | 3.39 | 4.32 | 5.52 |
7.04 |
| 6% | 1.34 | 1.79 | 2.40 | 3.21 | 4.29 | 5.74 | 7.69 |
10.29 |
| 7% | 1.40 | 1.97 | 2.76 | 3.87 | 5.43 | 7.61 | 10.68 |
14.97 |
| 8% | 1.47 | 2.16 | 3.17 | 4.66 | 6.85 | 10.06 | 14.79 |
21.72 |
Let’s say you have $50,000 in retirement savings, 25 years until you retire and have selected an annual return of 5%. You would use the factor from the 5% row in the 25 years column of 3.39. You multiply $50,000 by 3.39 to get $169,500.
If your total retirement savings target is $1,000,000, you subtract $169,500 and use an adjusted target of $830,500. Using the same time to retirement and annual return, your annual savings target is 1.5% of $830,500 or $12,458. This annual savings amount compares to $15,000 if you haven’t saved any money for retirement yet.
Having been subject to Actuarial Standards of Practice for most of my career (which started before the standards existed), I can’t finish this post without providing a caution. All of the amounts that I’ve estimated in this post assume that you earn the average return in every year. There aren’t any financial instruments that can guarantee that you’ll earn the same return year in and year out. As mentioned above, riskier assets have more volatility in their returns. That means that, while the average return is higher, the actual returns in any one year are likely to be further from the average than for less risky assets.
As such, you should be aware that the amounts shown for annual savings will NOT assure you that you will have your target amount in savings when you retire. I suggest that, if possible, you set a higher target for your total retirement savings than you think you’ll really need or save more each year than the amounts resulting from these calculations. You don’t want to be in the situation in which my friend found herself at age 59 starting over financially.
The best way to pay off your short-term and revolving debt depends on your priorities and what motivates you. Two of the common approaches for determining the order in which to re-pay your loans discussed in financial literacy circles are the Debt Snowball and Debt …
You can increase your savings through tax-efficient investing. Tax-efficient investing is the process of maximizing your after-tax investment returns by buying your invested assets in the “best” account from a tax perspective. You may have savings in a taxable account and/or in one or more …
From Susie Q: I’m not as familiar with student debt as I am with the other topics on which I write, so was pleased to accept this guest post from Kate Underwood. With Kate’s permission and approval, I’ve interspersed some comments and numerical examples in italics to expand on a few of her points.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’re probably aware that we’ve got a bit of a student loan crisis on our hands. The amount currently owed by borrowers isn’t in the billions…nope, it’s actually past the $1 trillion mark!
Chances are, you don’t want to be saddled with your own student debt forever. Debt can hold you back from buying a home, starting a family, traveling the world, and other exciting parts of life. Don’t let student loans ruin your dreams – it’s time to start slaying your student debt this year.
Think it’s impossible? Check out the following ways to attack your student loans with a vengeance.
A budget is an essential financial tool that gives a job to every dollar you earn. Get yourself on track by making and following a smart budget. Be sure to account for all necessary expenses, including your student loan payments.
Balance out how much you’re earning with how much you’re spending (and don’t spend money you don’t have). When you’re stuck with student loan debt, it’s key to eliminate luxury spending. Put every spare dollar, after necessities, into paying off your loans.
While it’s tempting to overspend when you get your first “real” job, it’s a bad move. Don’t make the mistake of financing new cars or spending too much on stuff you don’t need. Living within – or below – your means could make a big dent in your student debt. Just live like a college kid for a little longer.
Susie Q adds: For a more detailed discussion of how budgets can be helpful, check out this post or start here for my week-by-week guidance on creating a budget using a spreadsheet template I’ve provided.
Trust me, it’ll be worth it! The faster you pay off your loans, the sooner you can get started building wealth and planning for your next big goal!
That little grace period from your lender is appealing, but don’t hang out there too long. The sooner you can begin repayment, the better.
Even during the grace period, interest accrues for many types of loans. So, while you’re allowed to postpone repayment for a time (usually 6 months), it’s prudent to begin repayment as soon as possible.
Susie Q adds: As an example, if you have a $30,000 balance on a 5% loan with 15 years left in the term and don’t defer your payments during the grace period, your payments will be $237 a month. You’ll pay a total of $12,703 in interest over the life of the loan. If you make the same payments and defer your loan, you’ll pay an extra $1,628 in interest payments and extend your loan by 13 months (6 months of grace period and 7 months of extra payments to cover the extra interest).
Once you know what your minimum payment amount is every month, don’t get too comfy with it. If you push yourself to increase that amount by even $25 or $50 more each month, you could destroy those loans much faster! At the very least, round up to the nearest $10 or $50 mark. So, a minimum payment of $62 could be rounded up to $70 or $100.
Just be sure that, if you’re making extra payments, they’re applied to the principal, not the interest. If you’re in doubt, talk directly to your lender or loan provider to find out how you can go about doing this.
Susie Q adds: Using the same example as above, if you don’t defer your loan for the grace period and round up to $250 a month, you’ll save over $1,000 as you’ll pay only $11,676 in interest and will pay off your loan a full year earlier. You can include your student debt in your debt repayment strategy to figure out how much you can pre-pay each month, as discussed in this post.
Another tip: make biweekly payments rather than monthly. After one year, this simple step will add up to having slashed an extra month’s payment off your total. However you choose to set it up, paying more than the minimum will lead to student loan freedom sooner!
One strategy for paying off your loans faster is to refinance your student loans. The general idea is that if you refinance to a lower interest rate, you’ll end up paying less over the life of the loan. Plus, you can pay them off faster, since you won’t owe as much in interest! Win-win!
A couple of factors to beware of: you usually don’t want to refinance if your credit score has taken a recent hit. That will likely only get you a higher interest rate – you definitely don’t want that! Also, if you plan on utilizing student loan forgiveness programs, you typically need to stay away from refinancing. Most of the forgiveness programs will disqualify you if you’ve refinanced.
If you’re unsure about how to go forward with refinancing, Credible is an online loan marketplace that can make that decision easier. Compare interest rates for which you may qualify with different lenders in order to make the best choice.
Susie Q adds: Using the same example as above, if you are able to re-finance your loan at 3.5% and continue to make the same $237-a-month payment, you’ll save over $5,000 as you’ll pay only $7,485 in interest and will pay off your loan almost two years earlier. This savings will be offset by any fees you need to pay when you re-finance your loan.
Now, if you’re such a rock star that you plan to pay off the full balance within a really short time, like 2 or 3 years, refinancing might not be worth the trouble. Just pay those babies off and be done with them!
One of the best ways to pay off any debt fast is to increase your income. I’m a big proponent of side hustles. You can make extra cash to pay down debt and side hustles are often super flexible with your other responsibilities.
If you’re looking to begin your own side hustle, you can check out these work-from-home jobs and see which might be a good fit. The possibilities are nearly limitless, so be creative and think about your skills and things you enjoy doing anyway.
You could start doing freelance writing or blogging from home (our favorites!). Or start selling your to-die-for cakes for special occasions. Try your hand at bookkeeping, photography, or proofreading or any number of other ways people are raising their income.
Susie Q adds: For more ideas about ways to increase income or reduce expenses to help free up money to reduce your student loan debt, check out this post. Also, if you decide to pursue a side hustle, you’ll want to make sure you don’t spend more money than you earn!
Just imagine how much extra money you could throw at your student debt by starting a side hustle!
Some companies are looking to build positive relationships with employees by offering student loan repayment assistance. So, before you decide to take a job, it might be beneficial to ask if it offers this option. If you’ve already signed on to work somewhere, talk to your HR department to see if it’s available.
You should also explore various government student loan forgiveness programs. Though it’s extremely important to follow all of their rules to be eligible, if you’re working in a career field that allows you loan forgiveness, you might as well go for it!
A piece of advice: save enough during your repayment period that you could pay the entire loan balance off just in case the forgiveness doesn’t come through! Most applications for forgiveness so far have been rejected, so those borrowers are still on the hook for the full balance.
Debt sucks. You know you don’t want to keep your student loans around forever, so use any and all of these tips to slay your student debt as fast as you can!
You can increase your savings through tax-efficient investing. Tax-efficient investing is the process of maximizing your after-tax investment returns by buying your invested assets in the “best” account from a tax perspective. You may have savings in a taxable account and/or in one or more …