Sallie Mae VS. Shiremans

 I received a swift punch in the gut this morning when I was checking the Sallie Mae account to ensure our payment went through correctly.  I saw a notice that said our minimum payment doubled and that we were one day late with the payment.  Of course neither GJS nor I knew anything about this rate increase.  All right Sallie Mae, you may have won round one but I am not going down without a fight in round two.

 GJS has been tasked with the calling of Sallie Mae (never fun) and finding out exactly what happened.  I'm hoping this is all a big mistake but I fear we're in for a big pile of Murphy poo that will derail our mortgage payoff efforts.  I'm trying to wrap my brain around the idea that we'll be going from $294.33 per month on student loans to $588.66.  That's more than our minimum mortgage payment.  And if that's our new reality, we'll have to scale back on extra mortgage payments. 

This is extremely frustrating since we're already struggling to stay on budget this month and next month.  The one little ray of hope is that this is just a temporary increase.  We previously faced a bump up in student loan payments for the AES student loan that lasted about 5 months before going back down to a reasonable minimum.  If Sallie Mae is going that same route we should be able to make up the difference with GJS's August 3 paycheck month.  Maybe not the whole thing, but a large chunk should be covered with that bonus money.