Student Loans Are a Nightmare

Anyone who has kids knows that it's expensive to raise them. But you know what else is expensive?  Education. And I'm willing to bet that there are a number of you, like me, who would find it MUCH easier to provide for your children if you weren't suffocating under the weight of crushing student loan debt.

And I mean crushing.  Between Heidi and me, the student loan debt of our household is six figures.  Our monthly payments combined are more than our mortgage!!

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I'm not suggesting that education should be free - although maybe it should be, I don't know. But I am certain that the costs to obtain a Bachelor's Degree will only keep rising, though the substance of degree programs generally remains the same. And that just ain't right.  (Yes, my expensive education taught me that "ain't" isn't a word.  But sometimes it just fits. So I'm using it anyway.)

It is downright ridiculous that our house payment is less than our student loan payments.  And that's with pretty reasonable interest rates and consolidated loans.  It makes things so tough that I had to forbear on one of my three loans for a year just to afford day care. I still haven't figured out how to repay it in the long term.

The Wren Building. Photo from planetware.com.

At this rate, that loan won't be gone until I'm in my mid-sixties. And I know I'm not alone there.

What does this have to do with parenting, you ask, and what can we do about it? I'll take those questions in turn.  First, this has everything to do with parenting because students increasingly have difficulty getting the financial aid they need on their own. This means that parents are more and more likely to take out loans of their own to help their kids, or to cosign on student loans.

The problem with that is that if the parents have a ton of debt themselves, it makes it harder to be able to help their kids with college because they can't save much money and/or they would have trouble getting new loans.  And if that parental debt has bought you a job that pays well, you're even more screwed.

We're in this predicament with Kelsey now. We can't set aside much money to help her with college expenses, but she can't get the best federal aid because on paper, we make too much money for her to qualify. (The same thing happened to me as an undergraduate too.) She gets some aid, but not enough. And we can't take out loans to help her either. We've looked for help and scholarships but nothing is going to solve this problem for us, at least not now.

Photo from targetwoman.com

Again, I know we're not alone.

If it's tough for us to help Kelsey now, I can't imagine how hard it will be by the time Anna is ready for college. And by then, I'm sure education costs will have skyrocketed again unless there is a major overhaul of the system.

It also may be that, as is starting to be the case now, a Bachelor's Degree isn't enough to land a great job.  Increasingly, people need post-graduate education to have the careers they want.  A regular degree doesn't take you nearly as far as it used to.....and if you can barely afford college, how can you afford grad school?

If thinking about all of this is enough to make you cry, don't.  Our government seems to have a growing awareness of the student loan problem. Recently, someone started a petition for forgiveness of student loan debt which has garnered a lot of attention. The theory is that if so many of us weren't saddled with these astronomical monthly payments, we'd be able to spend more money on other things, boosting the economy. That, in turn, would lead to job creation.

It makes a hell of a lot more sense than garden variety trickle-down economics, I'll tell you that.

President Reagan (Photo from: trialx.com)

If I could save the roughly $700 per month that I pay to my 3 lenders (when I'm not forbearing, anyway), I guarantee you I would be spending that money.  Of course, I'd absolutely save too, which I can't really do now. But there are so many things we need, especially to take care of our house, that we can't afford because of debt. And they can't wait around until we're 60.

I know, I know....it sounds like a long shot. It sounds like wishful thinking, a dream that will never come true.  But we won't know until we try.  So please, whether you have debt or just know someone affected by it, or if you just care because you're an awesome human being, sign the petition here. There's power in numbers. There's no sacrifice involved here. We won't know whether we can succeed until we give it a shot.

Let's do it!

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