Loan Reduction

Because I didn't work for most of the summer, I may not achieve my goal of paying off one of my private loans by the end of the year. It has a co-signer and no way to reduce interest like my other loans. It's also the mid-range of interest rates. My Federal loan is fixed, which has its upside as well as down; I graduated, consolidated and obtained a fixed rate, however, in the meantime, rates went waaaay down, and are now on an upswing. I know someone with higher rates of interest on a student loan for undergrad who is going to look into automatic payments and find out if that will reduce interest. I don't think it would be possible several years later to consolidate and get a better rate; if it had been possible before the whole banking industry implosion, it's not likely to be possible now.

My targeted loan will likely increase in another month or two, as the associated webpage lists interests rate that I believe are good through September; the trend is upward, so I can expect this loan to increase. My bar loan has been all over the map and my recent payment was required to be about $3 less than the upcoming payment. While it isn't a significant increase, and the difference between that and my private loan, isn't likely to be that much, the private loan is a significantly higher amount of money, so it makes the most sense to put more money on that.

I waffle between targeting the private loan entirely and paying extra on the bar loan so I can get a slight reduction in interest. Which is probably silly; the extra is around $40 and it would be better to direct another $50 to the private loan.

They say you should target the smallest bill or the highest interest rate in order to reduce debt. While I'm deviating from that plan in order to free my co-signer from the obligation, I will still see progress by targeting extra payments to one portion of the loan. Once that portion is gone, my payments to each other segment will automatically increase