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What are some budget planning tools?

I am a full time student with a mortgage and family. I am currently a junior and plan on trying to get a Master's degree. What are some tools that are out there that can help me change my budget to include my impending student loans?

Mark Dennis, Resident Financial Planner

@MarkDennis 04/05/16

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A good first place to start is obtaining an estimate of how much your monthly student loan payments will be. If you do not yet have this information from your student loan servicer, StudentLoans.gov has a student loan repayment estimator that can help you calculate the amount. Insert this item into your monthly budget to see how it will affect your cash flow and to determine if you will need to adjust spending in other parts of your budget to accommodate the new expense. Free budget tools are available in many places online, and Mint.com is a popular choice.

Learn more about how to pay back studentloans and similar personal finance topics in our new book What Your Financial Advisor Isn’t Telling You

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