SQUISH! COMPRESS! CONSOLIDATE!

[azurite]

The verb is up to you, but come July 1st, 2006, all student loans will have their current interest rate kicked up to a new minimum of over 6%. To all the "broke" college students out there, I highly recommend you consolidate NOW! You have only 14 days left...

Yes, consolidation means you waive your 6 month after-graduation grace period, but depending on your lender, you may still get a short grace period. You may also be deferred due to unemployment, financial hardship, or other reasons (Peace Corps, AmeriCorps), but don't count on it (kind of like getting out of jury duty, really...).

My lender has some great benefits for consolidating while I'm still in school -after 30 consecutive on-time payments (after-graduation; I can still make sporadic payments while I'm in school with no penalty or change to my incentives) my principal will be reduced by 3.33%! Taking care of the process electronically also means I can have the money automatically deducted from a bank account of choice, so I don't have to worry about things lost in the mail, signed, or sent to the right address.

Lock in the low interest rate NOW if you have any federal student loans!

Comments

[apollymi]

This has nothing to do with your post, but this is just the quickest way to get in touch with you regarding the challenge you offered to help me judge on.

In light of the whining on ygo_rants regarding my contest, which has since been deleted, I have come to a decision: if I have received no notifications gen/het entries by Wednesday, I will be closing the category.

Only half the reason I had not opened it before was that I had no judge for the category. The other half of the reason was split between a rather annoying overbearance of Mary Sues and OCs in the gen/het categories and fear that something just like this would occur.

If the gen/het category does manage to stay open, this will be the only year I will host it. Just as a forewarning.

[azurite]

I must have missed that rant entirely! I was also not aware that the contest deadline was so soon, else I would have been encouraging more people to join the gen/het category. I'm hardly one to tell people what to do on their own communities or websites, but as I did see it advertised and found it interesting, that's why I brought the gen/het thing up, myself being one of those from the non-yaoi/shonen-ai persuasion. I wondered if it was a matter of preference or fairness involved in NOT having gen/het categories.

It's not something that bothers me horribly, but I certainly wouldn't be adverse to opening a community/having a contest focused on what's not offered via ygo_novella(s?) and perhaps affiliate with you instead?

Thanks for letting me know, at any rate.

[apollymi]

A little calmer now, but I'm now keenly interested in this affliates idea. Is there any way I can get in touch with you to discuss this further? Email, AIM, MSN, Google Talk?

[azurite]

All of the above!
AIM - Meriellen5 (I'm on now), but if any of the other options are preferable to you, I'm on those now as well, and I can give you my SN for those if you like. But as AIM seems to be the standard, I'll stick with that for now. :)