How much student loan debt do you have?

[yeahright1991]

We don't talk about that.

 

[evanrick]

well with all the money people throw at me for school and ive yet to get any degrees, im either incredibly smart or incredibly stupid.

 

[unloadonme]

Nowt. I left university with a BSc and a bank balance in the black.

 

[rareboy]

Who here has student loan debt? How much, and what is your level of education? How has it been paying it off? How much do you pay for month?

I'm about 14k or so in student loan debt (federal stafford loans) from my undergraduate Bachelor's degree. Not too bad. My payments are around 50 per month. I think I am only paying that low because I told them I plan on going back to school.

My degree is a humanities degree but actually I was able to find decent work with it. Decent as in enough to pay the bills and have some extra money... routine boring office-work, but a little specialized to my area of study.

Still though, it really wasn't what I wanted to be doing. I'm 24 and, besides writing, there is nothing I really want to do job wise. Copywriting was okay but I couldn't do that forever. I'm not trained in journalism so I can't go there, nor would I want to. The only thing I think I would enjoy would be teaching at a college level or teaching English as a second language. Office work was soul draining.

So I applied, and got in, to a fancy NYC private art school to do an MFA in writing. If I ever want to teach at a university level in my field, a masters is required. Plus it gives you a lot more credibility and connects you to networking opportunities for things like publishing. I have work coming out in two journals so far, but I think even more doors would open with this degree.

Only drawback is, even with the above average funding they gave me, I still need to borrow about 19k to pay tuition this year, and another 19k next year if I don't get a T.A. position. So combined with my undergrad debt, I could be in as much as 50k debt by 26 years old. I'm a little worried about that. But all of my loans are government, not private. And I would qualify for an income based repayment plan.

But will this degree actually help me land a better job? Not necessarily. It'll definitely help my writing though, and possibly finding a wider audience for it, more opportunities.

But I wonder if I could eventually do that on my own without having to go to graduate school and plunge myself into all this debt.

So I'm seeking some advice from people that have been through undergrad and maybe grad school too. Was it worth it? What's it like living with the debt? Is 50k even that much? I won't have a car, house, or credit payment, if that makes a difference. (I rent, use public transit and I don't pay for things using credit - well, unless you consider tuition, since it has an interest rate).

Just do it.

It is about what you'd pay for a good car.

Calculate your likely earning capability over the next 40 years and look at it as a percentage.

 

[ixthrock]

I dropped out of my BA during a mental breakdown nearly ten years back (Creative Writing - sigh). Went into repayment, then default, while checking my mailbox maybe once in two weeks. I'd pile all the bills and ignore them. Now, thanks to Obama, my student loans are good again - though they've been recapitalized. I now owe about 20G, paying 120/month 'til I'm dead, I expect. I'm not using my education to earn$. If I wanted to make a living as a writer, I'd not go back to school to do it - I'd join local workshops for the connections and to keep my skills honed and for the peer review that seems to be the main method of "teaching" creative writing, and simply write and submit, write and submit - and create more of an online footprint than I have now - something publishers look at these days.

 

[refujiunderground]

24k and growing strong with interest. i would pay it back but i'm living check to check and trying to find a better job.

 

[Ninjato]

I owed 21k when I graduated four years ago and now it's down to 12k. My loan payments started at $230 a month but I they kept decreasing and now they are $186 a month. I have the 10 year repayment plan but I paid more than the minimum before I bought my car so it should be done sooner. I owe like 35k on my car . I pay $630 a month but I love my A5. You'll probably get a longer repayment plan. My tuition was 10k a year. 19k seems like a lot though. I hate having debt but on the bright side I'm building credit. I'd be looking at how much I'd make afterwards. My friend was going to NYU to be a teacher but he believed the tuition was too high to go there for a teaching degree so he left.

 

[Sigma-taylor-E]

Zero. Second year of college....And I'm gonna keep it that way.

 

[hungkee]

I agree with others who are reminding the debtors that $12-25-50k is what many people can expect to pay for a vehicle.

Education doesn't really depreciate the moment you drive off the campus, though.

So while it sounds like a ton of money to guys in their early 20s, um, GET USED TO IT! Those amounts, I mean.

Juggle a mortgage and a couple of cars and some kids and buying outdoor patio furniture (its outrageous how a nice set costs upwards of nearly $2-grand today...and you get to assemble it yourself sometimes).

Its not to say that $30k isn't a lot of debt. But I tend to think that those who don't like such debt think, on some level, that the debt ought to be forgiven or that education ought to be free.

But those sorts should have thought about that before attending expensive schools or deciding not to work at all throughout college. Even a job on campus defrays a lot of cost over 4 years.

And its why kids ought to be saving their pennies for school when school is going to be in their future. Skip the thousands of dollars many pay for all the TOYS they enjoy from the 6th grade on.

But never fear a student loan debt. Its the most worth-the-money debt you'll ever have. Its obviously better than any comparable debt in real estate, vehicles or ex-wives & other divorced spouses. And some might even say its better than paying even more for child support because you just had to go try ejaculating in some girl while in college.

I have zero student loan debt, by the way, because I was able to secure a career with my degrees. I do fear that isn't as simple or straight-forward a procedure today. But then, you can chalk up an inability to repay a student loan today the same way you might never qualify for a mortgage, a luxury car loan or a credit card with a limit big enough for more than one person in your family to make reservations at Disneyworld.

 

[blackbeltninja]

I owed about 40k after my Honours, but got some funding from various research agencies and also worked in retail through my Masters and PhD so it didn't increase further and I could save a bit. With a bit of help from my mom I had the undergrad/Honours part of it paid off mid-way through the Ph.D.

So... zero. Huzzah!

-d-

 

[Bradley83]

$12 000, shudder

 

[Ryuukie]

I am so lucky to have had my former employer pay for my education.

 

[oakpope]

None. It's pretty rare in France. Poor student have state given money, and the very poor take jobs to complement it. Difficult for the very poor to get a loan anyway.

PS : an example of tuition cost for a graduate year in a university in Paris : 249 €
PPS : a year of Social Security for a student is 207 €

 

[Penguyen]

15K in debt, but I have a bachelors and a few minors and a lifetime of memories I will never forget. There's pros and cons to going to college, but I would never trade the years I had, meeting my best friends, living in the dorms, partying on Greek Row, going on a cruise to Mexico for Spring Break with 20 other people, etc. If anything, that 15K in debt granted me some amazing perspective for my life.

Yes, you could drop out and go to trade school, you could save a ton of money, you could be more financially secure but it has its faults as well. People regret how much money they spent on college, they don't regret the memories they had there, and those are priceless.

 

[maxpowr9]

None.

I graduated from a private highschool, undergrad and grad school debtfree. Even now I have no debt to my name. Reckon I don't own any property but I did pay off my $21k 2010 Camry I bought in December by May of this year. Slowly working my way to the 800-club (credit score that is).

 

[hungkee]

totally have to disagree with that.... and I think the attitude of "you have to go to university and get a degree no matter what" is how we end up with unemployable art history majors with $100,000 in debt trying to apply at Starbucks.

it really depends on your field. as much as I enjoyed my college experience and it may have made me a more well-rounded person, purely in terms of a financial investment, it was a bit of a wash.

as someone working in the computer industry currently, if I could go back in time and talk with my 17 year-old self, I would have advised me to invest my college money instead, go to a trade school to pick up some technical certifications, and get an entry-level IT job. I'd probably be in exactly the same place career-wise as I am now, but with a 4 year head-start and extra money in the bank.

When or where did I ever say: "you have to go to university and get a degree no matter what"???

You even put that in quotations (and in my mouth...or at my fingertips). I didn't write that anywhere.

I never said that anyone has to go to a university and get a degree no matter what.

So why did you falsely quote me as saying that?

You only have student loan debt once you enroll in school, apply for the loan, are given the loan, accept the loan and apply the loan monies to your tuition.

It only then becomes a student loan debt.

So all of those steps and decisions have been made prior to the monies being owed (or requiring pay back).

Therefore a person who has such debt decided to go for a particular type of schooling for his own reasons. And he needed monies he didn't have on hand in order to do so. And he may have agreed to accept such debt amounts over the course of not one but four or even ten years.

That would be the decision/s which a person makes as an adult like any other decisions he may make.

If he decided that such an education was necessary or important - to him - then it was at the time.

If he went along with the program and applied for all that debt and took all those funds and used them - but didn't really want to do such or was only doing so for the wrong reasons, well, then he's a person very likely to also regret buying a house with a mortgage or getting into some car loan, too.

Its all called buyer's remorse to some extent at that point.

And that would be just too bad.

Its one reason that one ought to be very careful when taking on student loan debt. Its perhaps the EASIEST/simplest loan/s in large amounts one will ever "qualify" for or be given with little effort and zero upfront collateral.

The collateral is the "investment" in that education or the degree one is seeking and its potential - only potential, mind you - for repayment based on job prospects (using that degree in the end).

If one has no PLAN of action with one's degree or knows one can't make money with the degree sought, then one ought to figure that into the equation while taking all of the money.

One ought to KNOW how much an art history major might make when he actually may wind up only getting a job in retail after school. "Display" jobs at dept. stores don't actually pay what top curatorial jobs may pay a fraction of !% of people who hold, perhaps, 3 advanced degrees (and who have connections through rich grandparents who have donated Monets to world class museums).

But really a guy ought to KNOW all of those pitfalls while he's going to school and plotting out a career path.

Otherwise, going to school isn't really educating anyone to the real world.

Schooling and education are, after all, often two very different things.

 

[blackbeltninja]

totally have to disagree with that.... and I think the attitude of "you have to go to university and get a degree no matter what" is how we end up with unemployable art history majors with $100,000 in debt trying to apply at Starbucks.
.

Well, there's the mistake. Presumably there are only so many posts at museums and galleries and The Discovery Channel who need someone with this background, so one wonders how these departments take on 300 students to major in it every year.

I don't understand how so many US universities are renowned for their liberal arts programmes which in reality produce graduates with no actual skills or useful knowledge. Instead of having massive endowments and grants and getting kudos from everyone, they should be obliged to update their curricula to generate people with career prospects.

I understand why people take these courses even less than that. I read about a guy who has read for a Master's degree in English Literature and then became a policeman. Why bother with the MA in the first place if that's what you intend to do afterwards? Yet that seems quite common across the pond, to have an advanced degree in a field which is a complete left-at-the-traffic-lights to what you actually do for a living. Or is that a misconception gleaned from occasionally making the mistake of watching American television?

-d-

 

[Knucklehead]

No school debt.No debt of any kind..Every creditor is paid off..

 

[bankside]

Well, there's the mistake. Presumably there are only so many posts at museums and galleries and The Discovery Channel who need someone with this background, so one wonders how these departments take on 300 students to major in it every year.

I don't understand how so many US universities are renowned for their liberal arts programmes which in reality produce graduates with no actual skills or useful knowledge. Instead of having massive endowments and grants and getting kudos from everyone, they should be obliged to update their curricula to generate people with career prospects.

I understand why people take these courses even less than that. I read about a guy who has read for a Master's degree in English Literature and then became a policeman. Why bother with the MA in the first place if that's what you intend to do afterwards? Yet that seems quite common across the pond, to have an advanced degree in a field which is a complete left-at-the-traffic-lights to what you actually do for a living. Or is that a misconception gleaned from occasionally making the mistake of watching American television?

-d-

You don't understand because you're missing 3000 years of academic history. The point of a university education was never to learn a practical skills, but to learn thinking, public speaking, math, music, and how to read the stars. The idea that you should go there to learn how to make things worth selling in the agora would have horrified a hundred generations of professors.

 

[blackbeltninja]

^Indeed.

Remind me to regale you all one day with the hilariously tragic and completely true tale of The Scientists vs The Social Scientists at that Meeting that One Time.

-d-