Introduction.......

When you first get started college, student loans may have seemed like a

gift to help you get through school. However, your gift was borrowed

money. I knew my student loans were borrowed money, but I never

thought about how I was going to pay them back. I just assumed that

when I got a grown-up job, the money I made would easily allow me to

make the payments every month without affecting my lifestyle in any

way. The debt crept up on me, one semester’s worth of loans at a time.

Some semesters my loans totaled around $1,000; other semesters I

totaled over $7,000 of borrowed money. After a bachelor’s degree and

two master’s degrees, I racked up $65,000 in student loan debt.

Even though it was consolidated at a low 4 percent interest rate,

it will still take 30 years to pay off, at $310 a month.

Those of us with mountains of student loan debt are not alone.

Based on data from the National Center for Education Statistics, there

are over one million graduates who have at least $40,000 in student

loan debt in the United States alone.

If everyone in this predicament who has 25- and 30-year loan terms

waited until these debts were paid off to start families, save for retirement,

or move out of their first apartments, no one would ever leave

their matchbox-sized apartment or get married!

But most of us are not going to wait until middle age to start living

our lives, nor should we. Since we are going to have our student debt

around for up to 30 years, we need to learn to manage our payments

as another bill we have to pay, similar to an electric bill or a rent payment.

You can manage your student debt while maintaining a lifestyle

that is productive in the grand scheme of a financially secure future.