How much student loan debt do you owe?
Just a hair below $6K.I started out at the local community college where I worked as close to full-time in retail as possible. Each paycheck I set aside funds for school so that I wouldn’t have to take out any loans.Doing that for my Associate’s made a huge difference later on down the road! Once I got to university, the bills were absurd. I had to take out loans if I was going to finish before turning 30, so that’s what I did.I finished school in 4 years with a pretty modest amount of debt. It was about $13k at the highest, but I made payments the entire time I was in school to help keep it down.One of my siblings and their spouse took a much longer route. It took about 8–10 years for them to graduate with their Bachelor’s degrees, but they paid for it completely out of pocket. No debt!I’m impatient, so I probably wouldn’t go back in time to do the longer route.And considering how much the cost of community college has gone up in recent years, I’m not sure I could get away with the method I used if I started over today.
How much student loan debt is too much?
I am a junior college student and I have began estimating how much money in student loans I would have accumulated by the time I graduate. I will graduate a 5th year senior and will have an Associates of Science degree and a Bachelors of Science degree. I'm estimating I would have accumulated about $40,000 in student loans. My projected income upon graduating will be between $40,000 and $50,000. Is $40,000 in student loans too much debt?
Is $70,000 too much student loan debt?
As others have stated it really depends. For an undergraduate degree alone that is quite a lot. For undergraduate plus a graduate degree that may not be so unreasonable.The main thing to look at is what kind of salary you expect to be able to make when you get out of school. In general you would want to have a starting annual salary that is at least as much as your debt, ideally a lot more. But be realistic about it. You may have heard of someone with your degree is earning half a million. But that does not mean you will. What does the average person with your degree in your specialization typically earn starting out?Some people do take bigger gambles accumulating debt that is two or even three times their salary. That is a very shaky way to start out your career. That sort of thing backfires on a lot of people.One other thing to consider. Be careful about thinking that because you are planning to go to graduate school (eg for a medical degree) that it does not matter how much debt you accumulate for undergrad. A lot of people planning to go to graduate school rack up a lot of debt getting fairly useless bachelor's degrees. The problem is plans can change. Maybe you don't get into the graduate program you had planned on. Maybe a close family member gets sick and you end up having to take care of them for a while. Maybe you simply fall in love and re-examine your priorities a little. The point is don't foolishly overspend on your bachelor's degree because of all the money you think you will be making once you become a doctor or a JD or whatever.
IS 25,000 a lot in student loan debt?
my student loans are around $50,000 and that is just half of my bachelors degree. Thats what I get for not going to a community college and then transferring into a bigger one. I would love to have $25,000 in debt right now. By the time I graduate I will most likely be $120,000 in with interest- and thats only my Bachelors. I attend a private school and really messed up my credit... so not only am I stuck with a $50,000 student loan... but I never got a degree. And I do not have a co-signer to help me get back in school. If you decide to move forward with $25,000 for a degree... maintain very good credit.. so that if something did happen. And you had to quit school for a little bit you would be able to get back in-with a good credit rating. Also, something to consider... once you graduate my loan company allowed me to pay $50 per loan... and I was able to push it back up to 12 months after my grace period ended. So it bought me some extra time. If your serious about college- Just stick it out... if you didn't finish your homework... still show up to class, but I do recommend having your homework done before you want to go out and party. (If thats your style idk.) It just makes college a better place to be and less stressful. Find a group of friends that you can do homework with even to make sure you hit all your goals and learn at the same time. Good luck!!!
How much student loan debt is too much?
Ok, so I'm a little more than a year into my college degree and I just sat down to do the math to figure out how much in loans I'll have before I graduate with my bachelors in Mechanical Engineering. It's looking like it's going to be about $55k that I would end up owing after graduation. Now what I'm wondering, since this has got me completely discouraged, is it worth it given that the average income for ME is $84k a year? I know it's a lot more realistic to be able to pay it off compared to say spending that kind of money on becoming a teacher, but is it a manageable student loan debt for being an Engineer? Any Engineers out there that have experienced this before?
How much student loan debt is too much?
Tuition is my only concern for college now. I've narrowed it down to 3 colleges. One private, one out-of-state public and one local community college. The private college is my absolute favorite. However, the tuition, after scholarship and merit aid, is about the same as the public college's. My counselor suggests for me to do two years at the local community college first and then transfer over to the private or public later to reduce costs as much as possible. It's just so not fair! I've worked so hard to get good grades, be an officer in several clubs, etc. only to be accepted into my dream school, but not be able to afford it. :-( Teachers and counselors tell you to dream big when applying to colleges, but they wait until the last minute to tell you about the awful side of student loan debt. Basically it boils down to: - 4 years at Private: $60-80,000 in student loans - 4 years at out of state public: $50-65,000 loans - 2 years at Comm. College and 2 years at private or public: $20-40,000 in loans. What's your opinion?
Is 50k in student loan debt too much?
background: getting a B.A. in Computer Science at university that is always usually ranked at least one of the top 50 in the world according to global rankings, sometimes top 30, but a public state university ( ie University of ____) here in america $50,000 i've estimated my loan debts to be this much when i finish this degree. (this is total, for all four years accumulated of course) is this normal? i was hoping to do a working holiday abroad, intern abroad, or find a job once i move abroad right when i got out of college, but i was worried that loans would hinder me so much .. ? i need to gather at least $6000 or so to move safely (airplane+apartment+visa+basic living expenses), and i thought that i could do that by working in the summer. i just want to get right out into the world as soon as i have graduated, start my adult life, and be able to get a job, support myself, and begin to repay the debts , NOT the other way around, and staying local/living with parents until i have repayed the debt
How much student loan debt is manageable?
I would think about it this way:Could you pay it back in 2 years? Livingly very frugally for more than 2 years will probably be stressful, so you don’t want repayment plans that stretch much beyond that.Are the payments to pay it off in < 2 years less than half of your take home pay? It’s difficult to live off 1 paycheck, but doable if you’re targeting careers that will hit $100k in the first 5 years.What other debt do you have? If you have any consumer debt (car, credit card, etc.), I would say forget student loans entirely.You want to be able to live comfortably while saving at least 27% (retire at age 60) of your take home pay before age 30. You’ll need to be saving 50% if you want to retire by age 50. To the extent you decide to hate debt, you’ll force yourself to make more efficient decisions and take jobs w/ better income. College choice is the #1 factor in student debt. Your ability to repay is going to depend heavily on you picking an industry (medicine, tech, finance) w/ lots of money and good pay.
Why is there so much student debt?
There's a virtually infinite demand to provide these loans, as they are afterwards bundled together, securitized into bonds, which are insured by the government, and rated AAA. The cash is flowing from the market, looking for students to borrow. Thus, it's easy to get a loan for studying: there's plenty of offer.On the other side, the income gap between adults with a degree, and these with just a high school education, has been growing. A university degree gets you a better job, and a better wage. So high school graduates are greatly incentivized to keep on studying. The demand for university degrees has been increasing as a consequence, and the price for attending increased in response. Moreover, more and more students wanted degrees, including from less well-off families who did not have the means to go through college without borrowing. This created a demand for loans.There you have it, Economics 101: a lot of offer, and a lot of demand, results in a big market.As getting a loan became easier, the cost of tuition increased further, as students could "afford" anything just by taking out a loan, and think about how to pay it back later. This created a self-sustaining mechanism, where getting loans is ever easier, and as a result, the price of tuition increases, as does the demand for loans.The problem here is that lenders to students bear no risk, because the loans are government guaranteed. This gives the lenders no incentive to restrain from lending always more, or to stop and think about whether the student will be able to repay the loan, given his field of study or the value of his future degree. There is no natural cap to the size of the market from the offer side. From the demand side, students should think about the rationale of their borrowing, do an estimate of what having a degree should bring them, and comparing it to its cost. But the responsibility is on the wrong shoulders here, how can an 18-year-old know what he's supposed to do, how can he know what it means to have ten years of debt repayments in front of you?