<p>I should say right off the bat, I'm a senior in high school right now. I've already matriculated to the university I plan on going too, and am just waiting for August to get here. That said, it's looking like I'll be going to school almost entirely on student loans plus a couple scholarships. My family is in that situation where we have enough money so that we cannot get aid from the government, but also cannot send me to school without help. Thus, it's looking like I'll be accumulating 60k or so in student loans.</p>
<p>I also have some pretty lofty goals. After undergrad I want to go directly to grad school, but my financial situation is making me reconsider that. I know when going to grad school, you get tuition waived and a stipend to live off of. I need to know though, is that stipend enough to live off of and pay off student loans? These student loan payments look pretty big too, at $400 a month. </p>
<p>I believe you can defer most loans while in grad school. However interest will accrue unless they are subsidized loans. Depends what the cost of living is where you go to grad school, because the stipends don’t seem to be based on how much housing and utilities cost.</p>
<p>You can always pay student loans at any time, even while deferred. But unless you have an extraordinarily generous stipend or live really frugally, it’s not likely that you’ll have the spare income to do so. Grad school stipends are not large, except for a few highly-sought-after disciplines at the best-funded schools. Average stipends are usually in the range of $1,000-$2,000 per month, pre-tax.</p>
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<li>You need to discover the loan programs and understand how to amortize the loan. </li>
<li>Interest starts on the day you receive the loan. You will have unsubsidized Stafford Loan and PLUS.</li>
<li>Concentrate on your freshman year, Then your 2nd year, and then when you are starting your 3rd year, then begin think about grad school. </li>
<li>The answer to the loan is found in Calc AB. How many variables in the loan algorithm, and how many can you the borrower control?</li>
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<p>I’m a fifth-year graduate student in the biomedical sciences. I graduated from undergrad with about $40k in student loan debt (some subsidized, some not, some government, some private), and even though it’s in deferral, I’ve been happily paying it down while a graduate student. I could have it all paid off by the time I graduate, but I may not, as it’s lower-interest than other kinds of debt I could have. </p>
<p>I haven’t lived exceptionally frugally, and it hasn’t ever been a problem for me to pay down the debt. Paying down the loans is a priority of mine, and I’ve simply put aside money to do it every month.</p>
<p>You won’t be rich as a graduate student, but your stipend will be enough for you to pay for the things you prioritize.</p>
<p>When you receive your graduate stipend, do you have to file a federal 1040 tax return? Also how much tax do you have to pay for your graduate stipend?</p>
<p>molliebatmit, how much is your stipend? Biomedical sciences is one of those fields I mentioned where the stipends tend to be larger. In my field, at an R1/AAU flagship, I’m looking at about $1,100-$1,500 per month, and after subtracting taxes and budgeting for rent, food, cell phone, etc., there’s not much left for a student loan bill.</p>
<p>Graduate assistantship stipends are taxable income and yes, you have to file a federal tax return. Payroll taxes (Medicare, Social Security, etc.) have to be withheld and the vast majority of people choose to have some income tax withheld as well.</p>
<p>If you’re lucky enough to be in one of those fields at a big-$$$ university, then by all means pay down those loans! But most grad students don’t make that kind of money.</p>
<p>Well, I mean, my first year in grad school, I was supporting both my husband and myself on my stipend, and I was still paying down loans, putting money toward our wedding, and putting money in savings. That year I certainly lived very frugally, but again, the choice I made was to begin paying down my loans.</p>
<p>I had some 40 or 50K in student loan debt from college. I have been paying on them for years despite being on a grad student stipend. For the uninitiated, that 30K per year works out to about 2K in a pay check each month. I pay about 300.00 bucks on student loans. Parenthetically, I can’t imagine doing that in a place like Boston but when my mortgage sets me back some 550 bucks a month, I can spare the money for the student loan.</p>
<p>I wasn’t in a special hurry to pay the student loan though as the interest is tax deductible and the interest rates are around 4 percent as compared to my car loans at 8 or credit card interest rates at 10. </p>
<p>Since I did my taxes today I can answer chaospaladin’s question. I receive a 1098 Misc form with the stipend I have drawn and how much was deducted for taxes printed on it. This information goes right into the 1040 form along with my wife’s W2 information. The differences between a standard salary and a stipend are that stipends don’t incur fica (social security, medicare) taxes. One more piece of financial planning advice for soon to be graduate students- I didn’t factor in the cost of parking but that has turned out to be about 5% of my take home. This may not seem unusual to you noreasters but I hail from the land of free parking and this blew me away.</p>
<p>It looks like you are planning on majoring in chemistry? Here are some stipends from a few places:</p>
<p>University of Rochester: $22,000
Stanford: $31,546
University of Wisconsin @ Madison: $23,800
Carnegie Mellon: $24,600</p>
<p>Those numbers will probably rise slightly by the time you get there, but that maybe gives you an idea of what you are looking at. You should know that at some places, money is taken from the stipend to pay for school fees (which may include a health fee and/or insurance). There is also often extra fellowship money available for exceptional candidates, and sometimes you can get outside funding to work on certain projects.</p>
<p>From here, you can do some calculations to determine how much PB&J you could eat, and still make monthly loan payments.</p>
<p>Hurts so much that that’s less than half of the rent of the one bedroom apartment I share with my girlfriend. It’s not even that nice of an apartment!</p>
<p>Personally, since I live pretty cheap (cook most of my food, fancy meal out is a taco truck for lunch, don’t drink alcohol, rarely travel, etc) I could probably handle a $400 per month loan on top of my current expenses, but then I’d pretty much have no money in savings or be unable to contribute anything to my IRA.</p>
<p>What do you mean by “tax deductible”? I’ve never filed tax forms before so I don’t know what “tax deductible” means. Does it mean you pay less taxes than you would have? Also is the tax deductible applied towards the income tax, the state tax, or local tax or a different kind of tax? If so, which tax? Also is it tax deductible dollar per dollar? What if you don’t work for 4 years while still paying off the loan with the interest. Do the tax deductibles get “rolled over”?</p>
<p>Also the tax deductibles is only applied to federal loans, right?</p>
<p>Thanks a lot for the help guys, it looks like I’ll be able to go to grad school after all. I just have one more question: for the stipends posted, are those per 9 months, or per year? After doing some calculations with my mom, it looks like I could handle that, even if it was per year.</p>
<p>EDIT: By the way, I have no idea how you guessed chemistry as my future major, but you are completely correct, haha</p>
<p>You’ll need to check with the individual schools to see how they pay them out. Mine was actually paid out over 9 months which meant I really needed to plan ahead, especially since I was a single mom.</p>
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<p>No mystery here . . . I checked your past posts!</p>
It’s not even that nice of an apartment!</p>