Interesting thread. I just finished college with about $18k in loans (State school + Working) and the consensus is pretty much the plan: Live spartan and pay off loans within 1-2 years.
Good call.
[quote]Joe84 wrote:
To the OP 60k isn’t too bad, you can pay that down in 2 years, I just paid my loan off, it was in the low 40s and I did it in 8 months and I don’t have no big paying job either. But I had saved through school by working over the summers and living cheaply and managed to save 20k or so to put on it, that was a huge help. The best thing you can do it when you finish is to keep living like a student and put everything you make to the loan, you will pay it off quickly and be 10x further ahead then dragging it out over several years. [/quote]
60k in two years? Even if he came out of school making 60k, which is possible, but unlikely with just a BA in Business Administration, it would be near impossible to pay that off in 2 years. A 60k salary equates to roughly 40k take home after taxes, SS, medicare, ect. I would like to see someone live on 10k a year that doesn’t have free housing, owns a car and needs to eat.
I still don’t think 60k is that bad, It can be reasonably payed off in 5-6 years assuming you don’t do something like buy a house or a new car.
[quote]Steel Nation wrote:
rugb328 wrote:
The education is not so superior that it justifies the higher cost.
It’s easy to say “spend the extra money” when you’re not the one spending it.[/quote]
Totally depends on the school. I transferred from a SUNY school to RIT after my second year. The caliber of teachers and students was easily twice that of SUNY. At SUNY I got strait A’s without doing anything. At RIT I had to bust my balls. I think it does justify the higher cost not mention that the name alone will open more doors.
I know how you are feeling. I was lucky enough to get a full scholarship as an undergrad, but come next year I will be 80-100k in debt.
You will pay them of quicker then expected when you graduate. If you are a business major you should have decent prospects. Just keep the expenses down after school and start paying them down hard.
LOL at people who go to 4 year colleges right after High School
28k for me, so not half bad. BTW, don’t get hurt and lose that scholarship or get cut, that would blow.
[quote]Pemdas wrote:
Joe84 wrote:
To the OP 60k isn’t too bad, you can pay that down in 2 years, I just paid my loan off, it was in the low 40s and I did it in 8 months and I don’t have no big paying job either. But I had saved through school by working over the summers and living cheaply and managed to save 20k or so to put on it, that was a huge help. The best thing you can do it when you finish is to keep living like a student and put everything you make to the loan, you will pay it off quickly and be 10x further ahead then dragging it out over several years.
60k in two years? Even if he came out of school making 60k, which is possible, but unlikely with just a BA in Business Administration, it would be near impossible to pay that off in 2 years. A 60k salary equates to roughly 40k take home after taxes, SS, medicare, ect. I would like to see someone live on 10k a year that doesn’t have free housing, owns a car and needs to eat.
I still don’t think 60k is that bad, It can be reasonably payed off in 5-6 years assuming you don’t do something like buy a house or a new car. [/quote]
Well if you would like to see someone then look no further cause I’ve done it. Here is what my exact expenses were for my last 2 years of undergrad:
food - 90/week = 4680/year
rent - 350/month = 4200/year
phone - 25/month = 300/year
total living expenses- 9180
Now I had tuition on top of this which was ~7k per year, and I paid this with summer earnings,and used loan money to live off, so total expenses were 16k, BUT remove the tuition and you see it’s under 10k no problem. Some important factors here were I did not own a car at the time, I purposely moved a <5 min walk from school so I wouldn’t need one, I never ate out, never, never drank, and didn’t but any clothes or shoes or anything ever, zero period.
I just got a basic land line, no long distance, if someone wanted to talk to me they had to call. You might say 350 rent is unrealistic but I didn’t rent apartments, I kicked it at a rooming house one year and the YMCA another year (free gym at the Y, both places had internet included and were tiny rooms, the rooming house even had cable, but it also had 11 people with one shared bathroom, one shared kitchen, and no common areas…the Y had one shared kitchen for 30ish people and a common bathroom and shower for each gender).
Once I got into grad school and made some money (stipends, grants, etc) I picked up some wheels, but kept everything else the same, insurance and gas increased costs by about 2000 for the year. Right now working, I am somewhere around 15k/year expense wise.
Here’s a pic of of my room from the rooming house, the “closet” is steller no?
here’s the room from the opposite angle.
bottom line is you can sacrifice some things and be done with it quickly or spend several years paying it off, paying more interest, and feeling burdened.