College Loans

[DisneyFan06]

I was just wondering if anyone here has any College Loans. Are you in college or are you out and paying back now?

I was just intrested in finding out. I am in college and I do have to take out loans to complete my education. It is something that has to be done, to complete schooling.

 

[Miss Jasmine]

I've been out 10 years and I am nearly done paying back. I did a graduated payment so it tacked on a couple of years. I'll probably pay it all off in the next six months though. I only had to take out loans my last 2 years so it really wasn't that much.

 

[DisneyFan06]

I've been out 10 years and I am nearly done paying back. I did a graduated payment so it tacked on a couple of years. I'll probably pay it all off in the next six months though.

Excellent, may I ask how much yours were for?

 

[Miss Jasmine]

I edited my post to say I only had to take out loans my last two years. My mom made up my shortfall my first two years (I had grants and work study) and I took out loans to cover my shortfall the last two years. I think combined I had $13,000 to $15,000 in loans. My lat two years I went all three semesters (Fall, spring and summer) so that was really six semesters worth.

 

[DisneyFan06]

I edited my post to say I only had to take out loans my last two years. My mom made up my shortfall my first two years (I had grants and work study) and I took out loans to cover my shortfall the last two years. I think combined I had $13,000 to $15,000 in loans. My lat two years I went all three semesters (Fall, spring and summer) so that was really six semesters worth.

Yeah, I think by the time I am through I will have about the same, maybe alittle less.

 

[Kimberly815]

I am out of college. . . have been for about 5 years now, and I am paying them back. Very very slowly. I think my estimated final payment date is sometime in 2017! What a long time from now! Not much to do except keep chipping away at it!






By the way, this is my 1000 post! How exciting!!

 

[barkley]

when dh decided what he wanted to major in we purposely had him do it part time while he worked in an entry level job in the same industry. although they only did a minute reimbursement for the tuition, because of the way his job was written up and it's eventual educational requirements (if he progressed up) we were able to write off most of the cost of attendance, books and supplies on our taxes (after we checked it out in detail with a good cpa). the tax savings for us balanced out the expense of attending. we initialy set up the loans at a longer term but a much more affordable payment than what we could handle. we ended up paying them off way ahead of time but it was nice to know that if we got cash strapped we could easily make the minimum monthly obligation.

i've known others that have gone into a job knowing the company/agency had programs that paid not only for their total educational costs but provided a living expenses stipend as well (they went full time and only had work obligations during summer breaks). in turn they had to committ to working x number of years in the capacity in which they would be educated in-but what might be lower wages initaily more than balanced out vs what it would have cost them out of pocket.

 

[Hedy]

I graduated in May, and at the time of graduation I owed about 17K-15K with one loan, and $1.5K with the other (it makes more sense *not* to consolidate this loan for potntial forgiveness reasons). I pay around $214 a month on both of them combined.
One of my loans is through AES via Upromise, so I get $ for that by online shopping, groceries, etc. I've paid $90 off so far doing that.

 

[tikilyn]

I'm in college now and have to take out loans to pay for it. I've only taken out 3300.00 for fall,spring, and summer. I'm going part time at a Tech school. I think when I'm finished with school I'll have about 15000.00 total. But its so worth it for me. When I finish and actually start working my pay will double our yearly income.

Thing is I just got my first bill. Is is a good thing to start paying the interest part now?

 

[EthansMom]

DH had roughly $70,000 in student loans to pay for his undergraduate degree -- a B.S. in Engineering. He deferred the loans while he got his M.S. in Engineering, which was paid for by work-study. He consolidated the loans when the interest rates started to drop and we've worked hard to pay down the principal as much as possible. It took about 9 years, but we just paid off the last of the student loans this summer.

 

[DisneyFan06]

Thanks for sharing!

 

[Lisa loves Pooh]

I have been out for 9 years...We finished paying it back a few years ago (I don't actually remember when though). I had about $15K in student loans. I think it took about 5 years. The payments were reallly really cheap on the 10 year plan. I think towards the end we were just sick of the darn thing and finished it off.

ETA: I had a state scholarship that off set tuition and at some point I think I qualified for a $500 grant here and there (only happened once or twice). And I worked a job..FT at the very end.

 

[AKLRULZ]

Very fortunate enough to have had college paid for me by my parents and thankfully my wife had the same blessing.

I know a lot of friends who had loans that were crazy to pay off.

 

[Towncrier]

Times have certainly changes. My college loans (back in the 1970's) were at 3% rate and the government subsidized them by paying the interest until I graduated. I was forced to pay my loan off early to qualify for a home mortgage in the mid 1980's. It killed me to pay off that 3% loan when the mortgage rates at that time were around 12%.

Now my son is starting pre-med studies and he has taken out a non-subsidized student loan at around 8% and we have taken out a parent plus loan at the same rate. The funny thing is that, even though he has received monies for the first semester tuition bill, we have not received a payment book for either his loan or our loan. When we called, we found out that, even though we are paying interest on the loan, we won't start having to pay back the loan until the spring semester monies are disbursed.

I guess it's the price we have to pay for a better education for ourselves and for our children.