##### Optimizing Student Loan Payments
###### 2016-10-15
#python #tool

This is a python script for calculating an optimal student loan repayment schedule. It is called like so:

The shovel.py script reads a coniguration file, config.yaml.

# Notes:

• The engine expects a payment you can afford per-month (startingPayment), and distributes it across the loans, weighted by the potential interest from each loan.
• There is an option (rounding) to round each monthly payment to the nearest dollar, for easier check-writing. True by default.
• There is an option (growth) to inflate each month’s or year’s payment by a constant rate, to track with expected salary growth over the next n years. Zero by default.

# Bugs:

• Values for startingPayment smaller than (???) cause the script to never finish. This reflects the possibility of a desired repayment schedule to never converge; that is, if the amount you pay each month is smaller than the amount of interest accumulated, you’ll never pay off the loans. This could be caught in some user-friendly way.

# Todo:

• Support for staggered loan start dates
• Support for maximum loan lifetime
• Better end-of-life handling / sub-dollar handling

The source can be found on Github.

• View the source code on Github.