Paying Off Student Debt

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Dear Goodbudget,

I am excited to announce that I have made my final payment on my student loan debt (hurrah!). I just need some help entering it into Goodudget. I hope you can help.

According to the National Student Loans Service Centre (NSLSC), I owed $1,190.68. I paid that amount out of my chequing, and the NSLSC website confirms that the payment was received and I now owe them $0.00. (See screenshot.)

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.32.44 PM
Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.32.44 PM2294Ă—244 9.75 KB

In entering the information into Goodbudget, I used the information from my loan statement. (See screenshot.)

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.34.51 PM
Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.34.51 PM2286Ă—364 50 KB

I entered the information into Goodbudget thusly:

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.36.41 PM
Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.36.41 PM926Ă—1416 90.7 KB

The strange thing is that instead of my debt standing at 0.00 (like it does on the NSLSC website) it shows up like this:

Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.37.29 PM
Screen Shot 2021-02-10 at 12.37.29 PM778Ă—164 9.05 KB

Can you let me know what I’m doing wrong?

P.S. Sorry for the multiple screenshots. My intention was to make it easier, not harder!

2

My guess is that the interest was calculated for the full month but the payoff was off by a few cents. I’d probably adjust either the amount of the final payment, or the balance due (account balance) to offset the difference.
Congratulations! (From a jealous Yank with $80K+ in student loan debt) :grin:

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Thank you! Sorry if I seemed to be gloating. I don’t think I would have paid it off as soon as I did without Goodbudget, so thank you for making this possible! :grinning:

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@michaelandfarah

Congrats on paying off that debt! Yeah, I think Tiffany’s right that it probably has something to do with interest and your starting balance. The 0.98 as your Debt’s starting balance is curious to me. When you record a Debt Payment in Goodbudget, the portion you pay in interest won’t reduce Debt’s balance. So that’s why you’re not seeing it go to zero. But, Goodbudget should have accounted for that, and that’s why I’m thinking your starting balance was off.

Anyway, adjusting your Debt Account’s current balance down to zero should do the trick.

Hope that helps!

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Thanks, Karisa! Thanks too for rescuing my account yesterday! :slightly_smiling_face:

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@michaelandfarah According to your last screenshot it showed an ending balance of 0.49. That’s because GB took off 0.49 of your total payment of $1190.68. See your second screenshot where the Principal field is $1190.19 and the Interest field is 0.49.

Personally I would’ve just entered 0 in the interest field and then GB would’ve applied the entire payment to principal and in turn would’ve made your debt balance 0.

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Noted for next time!

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@wrbird I had to chime in and say I agree with you. Considering the interest in any debt payments has always thrown my totals off, so I ignore the interest and pay everything to the principle. I haven’t quite figured out why I struggle using these fields but I ignore them and it works fine because I enter interest as a separate transaction when it occurs.

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@mystery_of_me Yep, exactly. What GB calculates and what my lenders calculate are never the same. I do exactly what you do - interest as a separate transaction. It always balances that way :blush:

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