Fear the Crab

I’m looking at loans, and creating a payment schedule. Of course, my math skills aren’t the best, so I don’t know if I calculated the appropriate interest on top of the principal. For example, interest of 6.3% should equate to 0.525% per month, right? And I’d add that to the amount for that month?

The reason I want to work this schedule out is so I can pay off loans faster. If I end up getting something like $80,000 at 6.3%, and I wanted to pay it off in, let’s say 5 years.. well it should be $1,558 a month. Can I afford it? If other monthly expenses total $2,500, that’s $4,000 I am spending. Paying it off in 10 years makes the loan payments only a little over $900, but that’s 10 years.

I suppose I would have a better idea once Maile gets a few paychecks and we can see how much her net income is.

I wonder what the average recommended amount is for setting aside some money? I was always under the impression that you save 10% of your income and let that sit and build up for emergencies. I guess that implies you live within your means and assumes no inflation, as I can’t see 10% of any lower- to middle-class household income being able to pay for ANYTHING these days.