Hi EnLifers! I’m SO excited to share that my student loan is PAID OFF!! No more student loan debt for us!! We originally paid off my husband’s student loan back in 2018, so here we are three years later and mine is finally a done deal! After 19 years, it feels good to be completely done. I know 19 years seems like a long time, but for some, it’s just the reality of circumstances.
For me, my student loan journey started in 1994 when I decided to attend a four year university 2-3 hours from home, but still out of state. I received an academic scholarship, however it covered tuition only, and little did I know (first college graduate in my family), there were other things like room and board, fees, etc that needed to be paid as well. The school roughly cost about $25,000 per year, however between my academic scholarship and federal financial aid, my cost per year in the form of a student loan would be $2000 – a total of $8,000 at the end of college (instead of $100,000). Seemingly manageable right? Well, life threw some curveballs and I made decisions that in hindsight, I’m not sure I would make if I had all of the information I have now. The first was a round of summer school, which at the time, I thought was cost neutral because I had dropped a class and thought I had a credit to take it in summer. Not so. Lesson learned and it set me back about another $8000 if I remember correctly. The second, I probably would do again-it was for foreign study. However, it cost an additional $10,000 in tuition that was NOT covered by my scholarship and I took out a private loan to cover it which is probably what I would’ve changed if anything. THEN I decided to stay a 5th year which was NOT covered by my scholarship, so I racked up another $20,000 in student debt. I was able to save a little money by living off campus. So at the end of college, instead of owing $8000 in student loans, I owed roughly $46,000.
I took a gap year to work and figure out my career trajectory. I was working in healthcare and always wanted to open a clinic for the uninsured, so I decided to pursue a career in healthcare administration by first attending graduate school. Cha-ching! More debt. This time, I was able to get graduate assistantships that reduced my tuition a little, but by this time, I had real bills like rent, a car, and paying my grandmother’s health insurance. Oh and those first two student loans, but at least the federal one was deferred while I was in school. The private one demanded I pay them, so I had that bill too. To help afford living expenses in addition to tuition, I took out an additional $ $25,000 in loans for graduate school.
If you’re counting with me, that’s about $71,000 of student loans. My first professional job – $39,000. Which to me was great! But not so great, when the student loan bill came in for $600/month! That was only slightly less than what I was paying in rent. As a result, I forbore my loans based on low income. After a couple years, my income increased some, however I still couldn’t afford the payments. To make the payments more manageable, I consolidated the loans (undergrad and grad) into one loan and put it on a 25 year graduated payment plan. Unfortunately, the private student loan company started applying variable interest rates to my loan making the payments unpredictable (maybe I’ll write on that lesson later), so I used one of my credit cards with a 0% balance transfer to absorb that loan and stop the volatile money hemorrhage. So in reality, I started paying my loans on a consistent basis in 2004 and the amount due increased over the years as my income increased.
In 2018, I’d paid the loan down to about $25,000 and my employer approved a performance and retention based student loan repayment for the balance in exchange for a service agreement that I’d stay in the position for three years. My employer made the payments directly, so I was able to delete the payments from my monthly spend plan and increase cash flow in other areas for three years. The three years ended in early 2021 and due to interest and taxes, I still owed about $1700 which I gladly paid in one lump sum. And now, I’m done!
I hope my student loan journey resonates with you or someone you know. Please know that it is possible to get it paid off even amidst non-ideal circumstances and there are options available to help-that’s another post. Have any of you paid off your student loan? How did you do it? EnLifers want to know!
Until Next Time….
MK