The Money Mustache Community

General Discussion => Throw Down the Gauntlet => Topic started by: Taylor on June 07, 2012, 10:01:20 AM

Title: Punched Self for Student Loans, then found a solution
Post by: Taylor on June 07, 2012, 10:01:20 AM
Oh how I wish I could visit 17 year-old me and tell her to go to that State school......alas, I was seduced by the prive liberal-arts school with a small scholarship, then thought grad school was a good investment. I told myself an opportunity to go to an Ivy was worth the loans.........reality check, it's not.

The good news is, if you meet a few qualifications, you too can join me on my 10 year-long journey to getting most of those loans wiped away! If you have all Federal Student Loans, you can consolidate them and get on the Income-Based Repayment Program (IBR), which caps your payment at a small percentage of your income. Also, if you can commit to working full-time for 10 years in the non-profit or govermental sectors, when you're finished the remainder of your loans are forgiven. You can find more info here:

http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/PSF.jsp

The program is saving my financial behind (thanks Obama!)

Anyone else on this path too?
Title: Re: Punched Self for Student Loans, then found a solution
Post by: AJ on June 07, 2012, 10:16:38 AM
With that much education, are you sure it is worth the hit to your income (potentially forever) to go that route? You can make a lot of money in private sector in 10 years time.

Also, was that program instituted by President Obama? I thought it had been around for a while, and the link you cite said that Congress passed it in 2007...
Title: Re: Punched Self for Student Loans, then found a solution
Post by: dancedancekj on June 07, 2012, 10:55:38 AM
I am in a similar situation as you Taylor. I wish I could have told my younger self to have spent only three years in undergraduate before applying to grad school, that would have shaved a good $50K off the bill for me.

I have chosen to work in the private sector as well, since technically the longer I work, the more money I can make as time goes on. The more procedures I do, the better and quicker I get at them. The more patients I see that like me as a doctor, the bigger my patient family gets.  I still am tempted to find a public health job (for the loan repayment as well as being able to provide care for patients in at-risk populations without worrying about my bottom line) but I am doing OK for now. At the moment, my focus is just on amassing as much money as I can and throwing it at my student loans while living as simply as I can.

I did a couple tricks with my student loans through my Dad, including utilizing a home equity loan to lower the interest rate and loaning some money from him to pay off some of my student loans. If I did not have his help (and I make sure to thank him weekly for it) I would have gone with the IBR, or gone to practice in a rural area where I would qualify for loan repayment as well as be the only provider (double whammy - one of my classmates apparently is making $200K annually) Some of my classmates have also taken positions with the Indian Health Services, and with the military to pay off their student loans in a very short amount of time (4 years, I believe).
Title: Re: Punched Self for Student Loans, then found a solution
Post by: velocistar237 on June 07, 2012, 12:08:18 PM
IBR alone doesn't look worthwhile, unless you have something like ten times your salary in debt. Public Service Loan Forgiveness looks like a good deal. One important thing to know is that under both IBR and PSLF, it's always worthwhile to increase your income within the public sector, even if it increases your payment. AJ makes a good point about limiting yourself to the public sector. If you tell us how much you owe and at what interest rates, and what you expect to earn in a public sector job after graduating, maybe I can figure out the salary differential.