I am looking for some advice. I (30) just learned this week that my GF (30) of nearly 2 years has $211,000 (edit: at 6.5%) in student loans. She currently earns ~$60,000 working for a non profit in marketing. Her degrees (undergrad and masters) are not in exactly high paying/high demand fields.
I knew she had significant student loans, but had been under the impression they were ~100,000. We have been talking about marriage, looking at rings. I quite a bit upset by this. Unhappy that she hid it and sad about what this would mean for my (now our) plans. This amount wipes our more than a third of my own net worth. She wanted to tell her if I want to break up by then end of the week. With this and other issues I am honestly conflicted... If I had known about this much earlier in the relationship I definitely would have bailed.
I understand why she hid it (I have asked about her loans and finances in general in the past). She says she has been dumped twice before because of it. She also feels very ashamed about it, "like a complete failure". I think she has been ignoring it, pretending it didn't exist, as looking at it straight in the face was to overwhelming and she did not have the financial skills and understanding to truly mitigate it or its impact (since googling around after confessing she has found several missed opportunities in her past which would have relieved or significantly reduced the impact of the debt).
On the other hand. Before this she made a very brave move last month to get rid of her clown car luxury SUV (2015 Nissan rouge with almost all the options, bought used), which I had been unable to believe she had when we first started talking general money/earnings and have been encouraging her to get rid of, and move to commuting to her job via electric bicycle (used from craigslist). I helped with this by covering the gap between the cars value and the loan and purchasing the e-bike with the understanding she would repay when she could. She also has completely come around to the FI mindset after largely resisting with many of the usual arguments (what would you do with time, work is example for children, would be bored, impossible to do, etc).
In looking at addressing this it looks like there a could of ways forward but we could really use some help analyzing which way is the correct way to jump.
As I mentioned she currently works for a nonprofit and currently earns ~$60,000 and was just turned down for a raise or promotion after working a lot of overtime for the org on the technicality of she has not worked there long enough (convenient excuse due to lack of budget in my opinion, her missing the time requirement was due to screw-ups in their HR departments on-boarding) despite having been promised this promotion upon satisfactory performance when hired. This is while she was managing 5 contracts in comparison to her direct superior's single less valuable contract, She was hired directly into the org after working as a temp due to her performance. Unfortunately from her perspective they have also hired another temp to perm empl. into a higher pay band recently with less education and skills (because that was the open spot available). In my opinion this is unfortunately common in work, but even more so in the non profit do good for the world jobs (particularly with many of my generation looking for meaningful work).*
She has recently been accepted into the federal student loan forgiveness program and has 6 months into the 10 years you have to be in working in non-profit in to get the loans forgiven. Unfortunately only approximately half the loans qualify, however apparently she can reroll them so that all of them so that they are eligible, but the timer will have to restart for 10 year period. The disadvantage of following this path is that it limits her salary and job selection for the next 10 years.
The other route would be for her to pursue the highest paying jobs she can and re-consolidate the loans into private ones which offer lower interest rates (but less forgiveness/flexibility in hard times).
Another would for me to shoulder the loans and pay them off completely when we get married, but the capital gains from sales of enough stock would be significant and it would wipe out most of my non tax sheltered investments, likely preventing a house purchase in the near-to-mid term.
There are other options like the income based repayment program, which will forgive loans after 20-25 years of payments based on your
HOUSEHOLD income (which would put us in the top 15% of income per year payment bracket), but they do not seem particularly well advised for those attempting to save for FIRE.
Does anyone know of any or have the skills to make a spreadsheet to answer the question of the best path forward for quickest FIRE and highest net worth. I.e. take all the variables, salary, 401k match, expected investment earnings, salary increases and spit out which is better, non-profit with minimal payments and forgiveness, or highest salary and with that path should the loans be paid down as quickly as possible (back of the napkin I believe this would be the correct approach with high salary)?
I found this spreadsheet when googling for solutions and it is is a good start but stops short of answering these questions.
https://millennialmoola.com/2016/08/29/student-loan-analysis-tool/Sorry for the book. I can maybe make these calculations myself eventually. I guess with no real family or social network who can effectively comment I am reaching out here for guidance from a community of like minded people.