When I look at my wife and my student loan balances and see that we owe more than $160,000.00, I don’t know what to do. We actually have decent jobs, it’s just we can’t get ahead. Everything goes towards our loans. I make $500.00-$1,000 per month from my side business freelance writing each month, but that’s not enough. I don’t know how we’re going to pay for retirement, or although we’re now in our late twenties ever be able to start a family.
Students and future students: student loan debt has to be repaid like any other debt. All those years my wife and I patted ourselves on the back for not having car loans or credit card debt, yet didn’t think twice when our combined 14 years of education led us to about $200,000 in student loan debt (not counting interest). Be careful, people don’t care about which college, law school, or graduate school you went to as much as you think. If you can get a huge scholarship somewhere, then take it and start out your adult lives without being an indentured servant. We work all day to pay back debt. This may continue for 10-20 years if we can’t figure out a way to pay it off now.
The Challenge
I want to WORK to pay off my debt. I want to have a year of intense work. Working 60-80 hours at my job. My wife working hard at hers. And doing any and all odd jobs we can (particularly the debtpayer challenge, which we really need help on getting the word out about). I will document our successes and more likely our failures here on this blog.
Thanks for all your support. I know we were dumb to get into so much student loan debt. But we’re still asking for your help and hoping we’ll get some–particularly in terms of promoting the challenge.
Best.
Chris Thomas
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Chris Thomas, owner of the online freelance writing and web-copy company, FreelancePF. Chris's interest in personal finance stems from leaving grad school with six figures in student loan debt.
The corporate and other lawyers I know at Wilson Sonini and Davis Polk here in the Bay are making around $160-180,000 base + $25-50,000 bonuses. Are you in a similar field of law?
With two of you, should be able to pay down a good chunk every year no?
My wife works for the schools and I’m most definitely not a corporate lawyer nor making anywhere close to that. Combined we’re not making close to that. Thanks for the well-wishing, though. We wouldn’t be doing this challenge if we could crush the debt on our own, though. We’re living a really modest life, on a modest (for where we live) salary, with enormous debt.