SoFi Blog

What do Tina Fey, Justin Timberlake, and Ellen DeGeneres have in common? Aside from being excellent and hilarious entertainers, each of these influencers has done an exceptional job with personal branding.

Though the meaning has fluctuated over the years, what I mean by “personal branding” here is your unique promise of value. That is—your personal brand is the story only you are able to tell. It’s the one that makes you stand out from the rest of the pack.

I left college with about $35-$45K in student loan debt. But my biggest loan—which was originally around $18K—had accrued so much interest, that even after paying the minimum for five years, it was actually at a little more than $20K. By the time it hit that amount, my husband and I realized we had to do something drastic to pay it off once and for all.

As an HR professional, you’re likely aware that many of your millennial and Gen X employees struggle with student loan debt. The average 2016 graduate has student loan debt of $37,172. Nationally, that debt is now over $1.4 trillion, which is more than the total credit card debt of all Americans.

Last summer, we surveyed 1,000 working professionals for The Impact of Student Loan Benefits, SoFi’s most recent white paper outlining the effect of student loan debt on employee recruitment, engagement, and retention. And what we found was telling: Employees want help alleviating the financial pressure of their student loan debt balances. In fact, just over 60% of respondents said that student debt is one of the top two most stressful financial burdens in their lives.

Luckily, student loan refinancing exists, and many millennial and Gen X employees are taking advantage of it. But what is it, and how does it help?

If you’re looking to take out a student loan to pay for an undergrad or grad degree, you’re about to join the club of Americans also carrying large amounts of student loan debt—$1.4 trillion total across the U.S., in fact. While taking out the loan may be the right move to pay for school, that decision is also paired with another one that could have impacts down the line on your long-term financial goals: your student loan repayment terms.

Student loan repayment terms can factor heavily into how long it takes to back your student debt, so you’ll want to make the right call out the outset. To make sure you can pay off that debt faster later, steer clear of these four common mistakes when choosing your loan terms:

As anyone who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area will tell you, it is truly a place like no other. The tech industry beckons with its surfeit of good paying jobs, the restaurant scene rivals that of any world capital, oh—and where else can you ski in the mountains one weekend, and then kayak with sea otters the next?

So while it’s not hard to understand why so many people are clamoring to buy a home in the Bay Area, those incredible perks are offset by one major drawback—a sky-high real estate market.