I had some credit card reward money and wanted to make an extra student loan payment to try and hit my January goal. This is the Direct Loan where they switched over their site last year and it has seemed messed-up ever since. For instance, I estimate the monthly interest to be about $50 per month; it's difficult to tell because the loan is in deferment and so when I make a payment, sometimes it comes out of interest and sometimes principal. I just combine the two totals to come up with what we owe, because we will have to pay the interest eventually.

I sent a $70 payment earlier this month, but it didn't change the interest+principal amount at all, so I figured maybe somehow $70 of interest had been added since the last time I checked and I just broke even.

But then earlier this week -- and just a few days after that other payment -- I sent a $75 payment to them. Now I'm showing interest+principal to be $22 less than after I sent my $70 payment. I refuse to believe over $50 of interest built up in just a week, since that's usually what we average per month. We did borrow some more recently, but just a fraction of the total principal. So what's going on? Who knows. They're really hard to get in touch with and supremely unhelpful when you do get them to respond. None of my payments from September through December 2012 even show up in the "past payments" section, though a phone rep has assured me they show up on their end. I'm just going to log $22 of progress. So $2017 down, $168 to go on the January debt goal and $2089.35, $139.65 to go on the big-picture goals for January.

I don't think I'm going to borrow any more from them, even if the interest rate is preferable when next year's financial aid package arrives. I just want this crap paid off and forgotten about. Nothing makes me feel more unmotivated than not having a grasp on actual financials.

In other news, in reference to my last blog entry, my lawyer got back to me with a referral to an immigration lawyer, and I shot that guy an email asking for a consultation. I'm thinking it'll be $250 or $300 to talk to him for an hour, but we'll see; I asked him for a price quote. Hopefully I can get in with someone before too long so I can figure out what to do about our tax filings. It'll hurt a bit because that's $250 or $300 we'll have to divert from our big-picture goals, but I think it'll be well worth it in the long run to gain some clarity at this early stage.