This is part one of a five-part series.  Stay tuned over the next few days as I detail each part of the Travel Plan.

As I discussed in the Travel Plan, the first step in the Student Loan Journey is determining just how much money I owe, and to whom.  As fun as it might be to jet off to Europe for a few months without a real idea of where you’re going or what you’d like to see, you can really maximize your time by figuring out just what to see before you leave.  The same goes for eliminating debt–if you create a basic framework from the beginning, you have a better chance of paying it down quicker.

I’m not a huge fan of reinventing the wheel, so I am going to track my loans using the Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator.  It’s a free Excel spreadsheet that tracks all of your loans and lenders.  I also like that it projects how long it will take to pay off your debt.

For the sake of candor, I am going to share my actual numbers throughout this journey.  This is a very real process for me, and I am passionate about paying down my student loan debt as quickly and effectively as possible.  To that end, I want to be honest and open in my approach.  By showing you actual numbers, you can get a glimpse at just how successful I am.  It will also force me to build momentum and keep it up throughout the journey.

If you’re joining me in paying down debt, you will need to collect the following:

• Lender name, website, and contact info
• Principal balance owed
• Interest rate
• Minimum monthly payment

As you collect this information, plug it into the Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator from the link above.  Depending on how many loans or other debts you have,

Using the Debt Reduction Snowball Calculator from the link above, I have entered the following information:

 As you can see, I currently owe $29,819.61 on my student loans.  Wow.  I realize there are a lot of people out there graduating with a lot more debt than I did, but still, that’s a lot of money to owe.  What’s worse, if I continue to pay the minimums each month, I’ll be paying down these loans until 2034.  That’s 22 years from now!

Over the next few days, I’ll talk about the strategies I will use to help get rid of this debt much, much sooner.

I love to travel.  Since I graduated college, a lot of my discretionary income has gone toward taking trips both in the US and abroad.  Because of my love of travel, it makes sense to use travel as a metaphor for paying down my student loan debt: it is a journey that will require some planning.

Even the best plans don’t always succeed, and sometimes the best part of a trip is completely unplanned.  So even though I will do my best to put together a winning plan to pay down my student loan debt, I will be open to other people’s suggestions along the way to get the most out of the journey.

I will do my best to document my process here.  That way, others will be able to follow along if they want to join me in paying down student loan debt.  Also, I will be able to look back in the future to see how I get from point A to point B.  For each part of the plan, I will include a separate post detailing the specifics.

So without further ado, here is my plan to pay down my student loan debt:

1. Collect the following information about all my student loans and lenders.

• Lender name, website, contact info
• Principal balance owed
• Interest rate

2. Determine minimum payment per month

• This is our starting point.  To pay down debt faster, it will be necessary to make more than the minimum payment each month.

3. Sign up for Mint to track spending, payments, etc.

• We can use this to see where our money is going and direct some of it toward our loan payments.

4. Sell my crap

• I realized I have a ton of crap just lying around that most likely holds some real value to someone.  Why not sell it and use the money to help pay down my loans?

5. Create alternate streams of income to help pay down my debt quicker

• Everyone has skills that are worthwhile to other people, and I will use mine to earn some extra cash on the side.
• Some of my broad skills are music, computers/technology, and writing.  I will work to find a niche that utilizes these skills (or perhaps something else) to earn some side income.

So for now, that is the plan.  I am certain it will develop and progress as we move along, but every journey starts somewhere.  Over the coming days, I will write in detail about each of the five steps in the travel plan.

I am fed up with my student loans.  No, I am not in default, and no, I am not missing payments.  I’m just frustrated that I pay a few hundred bucks a month to my lenders, while the loans just don’t seem to be going anywhere.

I graduated from a small liberal arts school in 2009, and since then I have dutifully paid my loan payments on time every month.  In fact, early on I enrolled in automatic payments, which means money is deducted directly from my bank account every month.  A few of my lenders even offer an interest rate reduction for doing so.

So for the past three years, I haven’t missed a payment (my lenders really are quite diligent in taking my money!).  Since my payments are taken automatically, I never really bothered to take a look at how much I owe—I knew what my payments were, so as long as there was enough money in my checking account to cover my payments, why should I worry how much I owed in full?

That was my approach for the past three years, and it was working fine.

But recently, one of my lenders sent a letter saying that they had sold my loan to another lender, and that they would be handling my payments from now on.  This had happened a few times before, but I never worried too much about it.

I decided to log into my new account, and it showed all the payments I made for the past year.  I wasn’t happy with what I saw: each month, I was paying $47.99 to this particular lender, of which $43.38 was going toward interest, with the remaining $4.61 paying down my principal.  What does this mean?  Out of the $47.99 I pay each month, less than 10% goes toward paying the balance of my loan.  The rest goes to the bank in the form of interest.

I checked my other accounts (I have five different loans) and discovered that I pay a whole lot of interest every month and not much principal.  Currently, about 34% of my monthly student loan payments pay down my principal, with the remaining 66% paying interest.  That just doesn’t sit well with me.

Starting today, I am beginning a journey to pay down my student loan debt.  I am going to share my progress on this blog for a few reasons: first, it will help hold me accountable and motivate me to keep going; second, I will be able to share what works for me and what doesn’t so that others can learn from my experiences; and third, I will be able to receive input from others who are taking similar journeys to get rid of student loan debt.

So join me in this journey.  Please share your thoughts along the way, and we can help each other in our paths to being debt free.