My Debt Blog

A lot of students, not all students, graduate college with student loan debt, and I knew my wife took out a lot of loans to pay for her school. Since she is done with college, those student loans are going to require regular payments starting in July. When I started my career it was nice to have a decent income, until I realized I had to pay all my own bills with it leaving not so much money. I started making payments on my student loans in December of 2005 and have made some progress from their original principle balances since. Now we have to consider my wife’s student loans.

Rather than sugar coat it and give the run around, I’ll use numbers because it is a lot. Check out this table:

From what I calculated out, her monthly payment will be around $700 and mine is only $175 so it wasn’t a huge impact. I want to get my credit cards paid off so I can focus the roughly $300 I pay on them per month to help destroy my student loans with larger payments.

I realize that there is no way she will quickly (less than 30 years) pay off these loans on her income alone. The big issue I have is she needs to at least cover her minimum payment and contribute to our household income to pay those normal bills the mortgage and utilities. Teachers do not make a whole lot of money either, so the road is going to take some time. It’s going to take additional income and bigger payments to get rid of these loans.

Student loans cannot be bankrupt no matter what happens, the principle must be paid. Sometimes lenders can reduce the fees and interest on them, but the original principle must be satisfied. Credit cards have to get paid off too while we’re at it because those balances are lower and the APR is higher. It feels like we have two houses, one in debt and the one we live in.

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