<p>I am just curious about what everyone's tipping point is. I am sure there are 143561 variations of this thread so I apologize. </p>
<p>I am wondering if I will have trouble paying off my student loans after graduation. Basically, I will be graduating from an ivy league school with about $50K loans. My school costs about $60,000 per year, after financial aid I was always expected to pay around ~$12500 a year which I always took out the full amount in loans. From one perspective, I received a $240,000 education for about only $50,000. From another perspective, I wonder if I would have went to a state school...maybe it would have been cheaper. I could have saved money and would have been better off.</p>
<p>The last 3.5 years have been the absolute best years of my life. I have absolutely loved every aspect of my college experience and would not trade it for anything in the world. But I am afraid after graduation my student loans will hit me like a school bus and will haunt me for the rest of my life.</p>
<p>What is your opinion on student loans? Am I absolutely crazy? Am I going to regret not going to an affordable state school?</p>
<p>It’s way too late to do anything about it, so I’d say you need to stop thinking about "what if"s. You made the decisions you did, you had a good time, don’t worry about what it would have been like if you’d done something else.</p>
<p>But one thing that might make you feel better is that it’s possible you would’ve paid about the same if you’d gone to a cheaper school because you might have been less likely to get so much financial aid.</p>
<p>But it doesn’t matter. Just relax. Take solace in the fact that an entire generation is going through the same problem. Enjoy the rest of the school year, before you actually have to start paying the loans back, while you can. Wondering what would have happened will do absolutely nothing to help you.</p>
<p>Agreed, there is nothing that you can do about it now. </p>
<p>For others who may be in this position, as a rule, anything over the federal max is too much (there are, of course, exceptions but an Ivy education isn’t really one of them). There are perks to federal loans that private loans don’t have (forgiveness, deferment, etc). </p>
<p>It really doesn’t matter how much the original sticker price was. Higher tuition doesn’t mean a better education. All that matters is the price to you and your family.</p>
<p>I am assuming your loans are the federal staffords and the rest is either the parent plus loan or private student loans. The best thing you can do is focus on the future (now if you had grad school or law school you may have to rethink or delay this) and work on getting a job to start paying these loans back.</p>
<p>Relax and be grateful for what you have accomplished. You had the personal power to be accepted and graduate from an Ivy league school. You will have the personal power to pay the loans off. </p>
<p>Walk confidently in the direction of your dreams and don’t look backwards. Best wishes for your very bright future.</p>
<p>It’s best to look at the pay off options. Once you have a job, try to consolidate them at a lower interest rate; a cosigner with excellent credit can help lower the interest, if you have someone willing to do that. If your credit is not so good, then I’d recommend trying to get your score up before applying to consolidate. Also, pay more than the minimum monthly payment when you can as this will decrease the amount of interest you pay over the life of the loan. Even while the loan is in deferment try to make some kind of payment, again, to decrease compounding interest.</p>
<p>Another approach when consolidating is to take a longer term loan so that you have extra money each month to invest in an account that earns more interest than your loan’s interest rate is. This is done often with mortgages - take a 30 year mortgage at (for example) 4% interest instead of a 15 year mortgage so that you can invest an extra $500 a month in an investment account that earns, for example, 10% interest. So you can consolidate a loan for 15-25 years (some banks will consolidate as a personal loan instead of a student loan, so the terms can be longer) at 6-7% and then invest the extra monthly payment that you save in another account that earns more interest. The idea is that after 10 years or so you have enough in the savings to pay off the rest of your loan early, since the savings earned more interest than your loan compounded. This approach requires considerable research into different accounts, interest rates, strong budgeting skills, etc. It also depends on the amount of the student loan and how much you can realistically put into savings each month. For someone people, if the loans are high and the savings are low, this approach may not work in the long run.</p>
<p>However, most people do not start saving for retirement at 22 years of age, so paying more now and getting it paid off faster tends to be more popular if your salary allows for it. </p>
<p>I had more student loans than you at graduation and I have since consolidated them through a credit union (with the exception of one that has only a 3% interest rate; no one could beat that). I have a pretty decent annual salary and I am living comfortably - it’d be nice not to have the burden, but like you, I loved my college and would not take back that memory. I needed a small classroom environment to thrive, which my local state schools could not offer me as they were huge campuses and I studied a very popular major. Also, as another poster suggested, I may have paid the same at the state schools because they offered less aid to transfers (I started at a CC). I have no regrets, just a plan of attack to have my loans paid off in a timely fashion.</p>