38.0% of all Boston University students have some sort of federal loans at the end of college. Knowing that the total population at Boston University is approximately 32,000 – that reaps a total of 12,160 students who will graduate with an average of $40,000 of loans. That’s a little terrifying.
Student loans and student debt are terrifying. It’s something that you may not think about that much, up until you graduate. These numbers are just numbers that came from federal amounts, when many people are borrowing private loans as well, with even higher interest rates. These numbers are also exclusively for Bachelor’s, and everyone knows that a Bachelor degree is only equal to a G.E.D. these days.
Many people claim that if there was one thing that they could go back and tell their younger self not to do – they would tell them not to take loans out. Especially private loans. It’s cost many people the chance to buy a house. In fact, a recent study found that the major reason why many millennials are not buying houses is that of student debt – and shockingly not avocado toast. It’s stopped people from getting married because they can’t afford the wedding, since who is going to pay for the two $1,000 loan installment every month then? Getting married – at least in the legal framework of things – affects your monthly repayment amount, because your annual household income goes up.
The national average for defaulting loans is 7.2% (Note: defaulting loans means to not pay your loans for about three years). To me, that’s a little concerning, because it shows that 7.2% of people cannot pay their loans within three years of graduating (this excludes grad-school).
Another thing – many people have mentioned that they decided not to go and pursue grad school after undergrad because of loans: “I can’t take on more debt for years to come out with a shitty paying job.” It’s true that even after a Ph.D. you still don’t make as much money as you would have expected to make after nine years of post-secondary schooling.
Even with a steady income, and a steady repayment plan, the interest becomes ridiculous. Each month you can literally watch your loan growing by the 7% interest rate – your loan could go down by only $1K even if you’re paying $10k.
Repaying loans for some people it all goes back to being able to save money and cut corners – live in a rent-controlled apartment, or live at home, and make your own food instead of eating out. It might suck, and it might take about 5 years to pay off around $160k, but in the end, it’s possible. Accept that the loans are an expense and that you need to budget around them every month – and if you want to decrease your stress levels keep them on auto-pay. Also, don’t do minimum payments – just try and pay them all off as soon as you can so that the interest doesn’t build up.
As much as this article seems to cast a foreboding sense of doom on post-college life and the fact that all of a sudden everything – the 3.2% increase and the unemployment – seems to crash in all at once, there is always hope. People can turn to their family, their significant other’s and get help with paying off their loans. Being able to move back home after college may actually be the best thing you could do – pay off your loans for the few years in between undergrad and grad school (if you so may wish to go).
Some people are happy even if they are over 100k in debt. They know that going to college got them out of the cycle of poverty. They struggled throughout childhood, and college – albeit expensive – was the one way they could get out of the place that their family had always been in. Their key advice to being happy, irrespective of everything that student debt can take away from you, is to stop measuring your life’s trajectory with everyone else’s.
“Be happy with where you are, and everything will fall into place”.
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