Graduation Debt: How to Manage Student Loans and Live Your Life (Cliffsnotes) - Softcover

For a good how-to manual, pick up "Graduation Debt: How to Manage Student Loans and Live Your Life," by financial blogger Reyna Gobel.- Claudia Buck, Sacramento Bee http://www.sacbee.com/2010/06/27/2850627/digging-out-of-debt.html Reyna Gobel has a message for college graduates who, like her, find themselves carrying around student loan debt the size of a small mortgage: Don't wait until you pay it back to start living your life. - Kimberly Palmer, Usnews.com http://money.usnews.com/money/blogs/alpha-consumer/2010/6/18/the-smart-way-to-pay-off-student-loans.html True to the CliffsNotes brand, this compact guide walks you through the student loan labyrinth starting with "know what you owe." - Michelle Singletary, The Washington Post http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/06/05/AR2010060500721-2.html?sid=ST2010060503047 Rather than take a judgmental approach, Gobel acknowledges that young people make mistakes - the idea for the book came from her own botched approach to student loans -- and makes realistic suggestions to fix problems. - foxbusiness.com, Emily Driscoll http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/financial-planning/college-education/break-free-gigantic-graduation-debt/

Graduation Debt is different from the competition because it provides a step-by-step road map for effectively managing student loan debt and having a successful financial life. Yet, it's completely positive. The focus is less on sacrifice and more on not wasting money, so readers can live better lives while paying off debt. The book's content is divided into small subsections geared toward those neck-deep in student debt. The brevity of each section makes the book digestible to those who aren't inclined to focus on their finances. Readers are encouraged to take action steps such as finding long lost student loans that may have gone into default, discovering payment plans they can afford, consolidating loans when it makes sense to do so, saving money on eating out and groceries, improving credit scores, tweaking their debt-to-income ratios that's needed to buy a home, discussing their student loan and non-student loan debt with their significant others. By the end of the book readers will be on the road to managing all their debt and having extra money for vacations and other fun stuff, too.