Savings Account & MMA Rates
CD (Certificate of Deposit) RatesYou need to consider whether the career you’re studying for pays enough to warrant all of the money you’re borrowing for a college education.
Check out this PayScale College Salary Report on how much the typical grad can expect to make.
If, for example, you take out $100,000 in loans at 6.8% interest and plan to pay that off over 10 years, your student loan payment will be $1,150 a month, or $13,800 a year.
You can probably afford that if you’re on your way to becoming an aerospace engineer, one of the most lucrative jobs in the study, with an average starting salary of $60,000 a year and mid-career income of $100,000.
But that’s not the case if you’re going to be a social worker or elementary school teacher, where the average starting pay is $33,000 a year and the mid-career salary is $42,000.
This student loan calculator shows how much you must earn to keep up with post-college payments.
Trust me. You don’t want to graduate with student loans you’ll spend the rest of your life trying to repay.
Too many kids I know got hooked into that “no price is too high for your college dream” bull****.
A recent column in the New York Times detailed the problems of Cortney Munna, who graduated from NYU in 2005 and has no idea how she’ll repay her $100,000 in student loans.
In “an eerie echo of the mortgage crisis, tens of thousands of people like Ms. Munna are facing a reckoning,” Ron Lieber wrote. “They and their families made borrowing decisions based more on emotion than reason.”
If you’re already burdened with college debt, take a look at our post on how Lily’s List can help.
Loading ...