[Cause]

I was recently speaking to a former colleague of mine and had considered him to be doing well financially. He makes 6 figures, recently bought a home worth slightly north of 500k USD (With a mortgage but I considered this a normal kind of debt to achieve home ownership). However he mentioned to me recently he has ~85k USD in student debt and that the debt had grown rather then go down over the past few years. This struck me as a huge financial red flag. I question the judgement of taking on such a large mortgage when he has such a large student debt unpaid and growing.

Now I have been lucky in life in the sense that so far I have never had debt. Student debt is not as large an issue in South Africa and I have so far not taken on a mortgage. In part because I have not yet decided to put down such strong roots in a particular city in the USA and in part because I want to make sure that I have a sufficient down deposit and savings reserve to continue mortgage payments even if I found myself unemployed or under some other financial hardship.

Now the main question I have if anyone is willing to discuss is I cant imagine the emotional toil or stress such a debt would have on me. I feel like I would struggle to enjoy life or spend money on a vacation for example if I knew I had tens of thousands of dollars in debt in my name. Especially if it was growing rather than shrinking. I also realize the strain of living on ramen noodles and pausing life for several years as I pay off such a debt for years would be unfeasible as well.

Ramping up such high debt as a student in college or as a young professionals, I cant imagine. So this post isnt meant to debate student debt, the sytem etc I am just wondering for anyone who is going through it or went through it how it effected your mental health or day to day decision making.

[amphibian]

HoosierDaddy has told his story of law school debt here. It is very worth finding.

Mine is a bit different in my path after law school. My parents thankfully paid for my undergrad degree and paid that off quickly. I took out about 3/4s of the maximum loans possible for law school. I graduated with about 210k of debt in 2011. It is now about 300k.

I started up a business with my father while I was in law school and we had very little money for a long time. I decided over and over to just not pay the loans for a few months to allow us to sink everything into the business. Then I consolidated the loans and started paying them back based on my low income. The business took a few years to really get going and it's quite successful now, employing ~25 people.

In 2016, I started volunteering at a non profit and found that I loved it. I made the jump from what I was doing at the business to working as a lawyer at the non-profit in 2017. I then entered the Public Service loan forgiveness program, which allows the entirety of the loans to be forgiven with 10 years of service and payments based on income. I work for the state government now. I'm a bit more than halfway done with my 10 years.

The pandemic suspension of the loan payments were an enormous boon and investment in the American people. It allowed so many people to either financially stay afloat or not financially drown so quickly.

I never really worried about the debt's financial effects on my life because in the worst case scenario, I just go live in Nepal and nobody's coming after me or mine there. I foolishly figured that even with the terrible decision to not pay for a while, things would still work out. They did, but it could have been better. Buying a house wasn't something I wanted to do early, so the hit to my credit wasn't a big deal for me. I do want to buy one next year and I will - because I have a fantastic job that pays pretty well. The emotional experience of having the debt was odd in that I didn't really think that buying a house was something I wanted, so that didn't matter.

But having that much debt was absolutely a stress factor and I had some rough times thinking about this for months. I still found ways to enjoy life and build a better life too - without depriving myself of everything. Life is too short to live worrying about debt and to a large degree, debt is a fantasy that right wing people put too much credence into. I was stressed, yet I budgeted ok, had fun, had a full even if small life.

I will say that the debt did freak out my now-ex, but then-gf (later my wife), when we had a talk about our finances. She reacted in a way that was frankly odd and over the top - days of crying and melting down about how our lives were ruined and that we would never own a house. We were living in a $355k 2000 SQ ft house in a very nice area that she owned and never wanted to move out of unless the future family grew to like 5 people. She came from a wealthy family that paid for everything beside her masters in business (she paid off those loans last year).

She continued to be low level bothered by the debt the entire time, yet did not help me pay it or do anything that would allow me to save/pay more towards it. She didn't want anything to do with the property my family owns in Nepal or my family's property here or my family at all really. Having something to flip out in terms of finances seemed to be what she wanted. She refused to have serious conversations about the finances. When we split because she no longer wanted to be married (didn't want to confront the abuse she was putting us both through), I had sunk about $50k into the house upgrades she wanted and spent a bunch on international vacations she wanted too. I walked away from everything in terms of house equity because I wanted to be done with her fully - and we made agreements that our debts were our own and our individual retirement accounts were our own. The decision to walk away fully and quickly was the right one for me, even if I lost a big chunk of money. She threatened to bring a dead rabbit to my home at one point because she was mad at me. Things were that bad with her and I think she was bold enough to say and do these things because the debt in her mind pressured me to make things work.

I will be out from under the debt in about 4 years - 2027. I will likely stay in the job I have or similar job for life. I am very good at what I do and it's immensely rewarding. On the whole, the only thing I wish I did differently was that I should have done hardship suspension of payments when there was no money rather than just not deal with it for a while. I was doing that thing where one carries a heavy burden solo so that nobody else has to carry it and eventually that burden got to a point where I would rather have dodged it than effectively dealt with it. That was an awful experience - wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I think I chose in part to marry my ex because she made 100k+ and we would have a good life no matter what assuming one of us kept a job earning that much. I shouldn't have ignored the physical abuse, emotional abuse, and drug abuse signs that she gave me in great big heaps prior to the marriage in the hopes that she'd continue getting better and be happy with a life with me. I do think my debt and low sense of self worth connected to that contributed to that series of decisions over the years. I was also making bad decisions due to my faith in my ability to fix anything if I tried hard enough. Ugh.

I put years into rebuilding myself in terms of confidence, saying No appropriately, and it's been very worthwhile. I now earn 110k and I'm respected in my field of work + volunteer endeavors + personal life. I openly talk about my student debt and how I believe that there should be zero undergraduate student loans in the US because it should be guaranteed by the federal and state government. Graduate school should be scholarship, loans, and/or private pay. I am all for as much student loan forgiveness as can possibly be achieved because I've seen the immense public good that resulted from the pandemic programs and the enormous joy people got from being free of that debt. Forgive everyone - I don't give a fuck. We can collectively afford it.

The interest rates on big debt are so high as to easily create debt that grows even with appropriate for income payments. That part is dumb and undergraduate education should be federal and state provided rather than the mix of scholarships, loans, and private pay that we have.

This post has been edited by amphibian: 07 November 2023 - 03:13 AM

[Macros]

Student debt in the US seems funking horrific.


It's gotten worse here with top up fees etc, but the loan company is backed by the government and you will never get such a low interest loan anywhere else, so its very manageable for most.

Being self employed when I do my tax return a chunk is taken out of wn6 tax back i claim, so I don't notice it. When I dropped out I had about 10k Sterling in debt, I could have had it paid years ago, but like I said the interest was so low I wasn't bothered by it, will likely clear the last little bit next year.

But I know plenty of my friends wh9 cleared theirs several years ago.

One thing I will add, as this is purely anecdotal, I was the last year before the new fees came in, an average degree with full loan is more likely to leave you with 20-30k over the 10-12.

However yo7 only make repaying you earn over the tax threshold so as far as I cam see its never the terrifying burden it is in the US, and interest rate is bottom scraping its so low

[worry]

I still have student debt just from undergrad, at a public university, whose costs have only ballooned since I finished. And I'm -- by quite a wide margin -- not one of the horror stories that are unfortunately common. My monthly has (generally) been manageable, and fortunately my debt has always gone down, however slowly. Still, the tipping point (only in the last few years) where the proportion of my payment going to principal rather than interest became really noticeable was a big relief. I can actually see being done on the horizon. Of course I would prefer it if we collectively eliminated all student debt, which would be among the single biggest positive investments in the future our country has ever made. I suppose certain powers that be have a different future in mind though. Wonder what it could be.

[Tiste Simeon]

I finished uni about 15b years ago and I still have debt but it's not vast and the interest rate is not too bad . I've got extra problems because I moved to somewhere technically not in the UK but still kind of linked (it's a crown protectorate and most of our laws are just slightly tweaked version of UK ones etc) so I have to do extra paperwork once a year but it's not horrendous.

And I have a mortgage. It's recently nearly doubled because of the interest rate nonsense arising from the Tory enabled corporate greed crisis they're calling the cost of living crisis. I'm still paying a lot less per month than people I know who are renting and have a lot less space than me. It's bonkers.

[HoosierDaddy]

Evidently I've written about this before. I don't recall doing so, but was probably still in the depths of addiction so that'd make sense.

Long story short: It was a terrible mental burden that caused horrible depression, anxiety that became panic attacks, and eventually alcoholism. All because I decided to NOT practice law and make the money that would have allowed me to pay off those loans as expected. It's a terrible trap.

That being said, I simply pay my Income Driven Repayment loans (which is entirely determined by what I am currently making and not the expected salary of someone 16 years out of law school) and live with it being a cloud hanging way in the background.

It has not stopped me from getting married, from owning my own cars, from having a house (although, that is because my wife purchased it well before we were married). She was concerned, but we simply have to file for taxes as married filing single person and her income isn't included in my Income Driven application.

We take regular vacations, are going to China next year (she was born in China, lived there until 8 years old, and almost all of her family is still there) where we will celebrate our wedding, are planning a Europe '25 trip, etc.

Not great, but not life destroying NOW. It was at first.

[amphibian]

A note of levity - Tiste finished university 15 billion years ago!?

[Tiste Simeon]

amphibian, on 07 November 2023 - 02:10 PM, said:

A note of levity - Tiste finished university 15 billion years ago!?

Hah! Well spotted, and while it feels like it sometimes, I suspect this was nothing more than a case of sausage fingers...

[Slow Ben]

amphibian, on 07 November 2023 - 02:10 PM, said:

A note of levity - Tiste finished university 15 billion years ago!?

Username checks out.


I don’t have any loans, but my wife does.

Started out just shy of 100k. And after a decade of income driven Payment plans, it’s closer to 130k.

But like Amp, she’s 7 years into the 10 years for forgiveness, thank Zorp.

This post has been edited by Slow Ben: 07 November 2023 - 02:20 PM

[Maark Abbott]

Hahahahaha my sector pays so badly that I've been out of Uni for thirteen years and never made enough to start paying mine back.

Doubt I ever will.

[Cause]

Appreciate everyone sharing. I will respond in more detail when I have more time.

One brief note that stuck out to me was Amphibian and HD mentioning how their significant others freaked out and were concerned. I recently began dating a women who told me she had student debt when making a joke about something near the topic. I realized later that evening that I began to consider that if we got serious that debt would become my debt or at least certainly apart of my life.

[Mentalist]

I had 30k when I finished undergrad. My parents paid off half of it.

I picked up about.... 40? I think (?) in law school? Mind, I went to the second cheapest school in the country, and I worked part-time while there to cover my living expenses (primarily pizza and alcohol).- So my loans went entirely to tuition and rez, and I never took more than the bare minimum I needed.

Once I finished, it took me about 2 years to get my license and start practicing, but I've started working in the field basically same month after I came back from school.

It took me about 7 (I think) years to pay off my debt, but I've made repayments over the min amount each year to bring down the principal amount. I was also able to get my first mortgage with the debt still there, because my overall expenses were low (living at home, being single and having a limited social life meant I could bank a decent chunk of my salary on a rolling basis).

So yeah, it wasn't a huge deal. But it still felt nice to get that off my back.

[amphibian]

Cause, on 07 November 2023 - 03:39 PM, said:

Appreciate everyone sharing. I will respond in more detail when I have more time.

One brief note that stuck out to me was Amphibian and HD mentioning how their significant others freaked out and were concerned. I recently began dating a women who told me she had student debt when making a joke about something near the topic. I realized later that evening that I began to consider that if we got serious that debt would become my debt or at least certainly apart of my life.

The way taxes are filed in the US allow the spouse of a student loan debt holder to be relatively unaffected and to avoid the income of the spouse being counted in the income-related determination of how much the debt holder pays each month.

Basically if married, file as married but independently, rather than married and filing jointly.

At no point did my debt materially affect the financial prospects or capabilities of my ex.

Now, there is some small effect in that the debt holder is going to be paying some portion of income towards that debt and that's money that would otherwise be available. At the same time, are you not going to be with a person who is financially responsible and is paying, living a life, and gets along well with you?

My best friend just finished their 10 years of public service and got their loans forgiven. The reaction of their partner prior to their marriage to the loan was "You're handling this and paying .Yeah, let's go do this thing." When it was paid, it was basically "Hey, we can afford a nicer car and save up for a sweet vacation." The partner has loans too and will pay them off pretty soon too (private employer).

[Vengeance]

Both my wife and I have student loans. Hers got forgiven during the first round, although she didn't owe very much and her rate was very low. The loans have been a low cloud for our lives. I have treated it like a mortgage that you just have to deal with. They haven't stopped us from going on vacations every year, having a house, kids... But we have been lucky and I have had decent jobs for a long time. I think I might owe slightly less then I did when the loans were taken out. That is frustrating for sure.