You guys have it easy... Dental school is running me 70K+ per year, just for tuition and housing. Im in my fourth year, so when I graduate in May, I will be roughly 280K in the hole. That doesnt even include a future mortgage or buying a practice. Thats why dentists charge so much.
wow, i see why less people want to go to college because of hefty college loans! i had a free tuition except for the books. My guy has probably 10-20k in student loans.
I know what you're saying, and in theory you're more or less correct. However, it's all dependent on actually being able to make your payments. People often don't see a house as debt until they lose their job or get sick and suddenly can't keep up with what they owe. Now I'm not in any way condemning home owners. I hope to be one in the near future and I realize that very few people can buy a house outright. But while I realize that it's necessary and that it can ultimately be very beneficial in the long term, I still see it as debt.
I'm going to go out on a limb and say the majority of people with hefty student loans in this thread also have a graduate degree of some sort. An undergrad degree should rarely leave you with big debt.
Looking at the site, it looks really tempting. I'm always looking for good budgeting tools. Still a little uneasy about the login info though. Convince me that I shouldn't worry.
I have zero debt. However, I now have my wife's med school loans which totals to around $130K. Luckilly $115k of it is at 1.5%...
About $150k on my mortgage. $7-8k in student loans. I pay off my credit card every month, but I keep using it cause it's convenient and I still get rewards from it.
Hmm...so lets say (for ease of math sake) that you paid 10K in interest last year...you'll take that off of your income taxes and get about $3,300 back. If you like that, then why don't you pay off your house, send Me $10,000 and I'll give you $3,300 back.
We've got $116K on our mortgage (worth $133K) and 30K in the wife's student loans (yes, a Masters' degree). We're currently paying more than a double payment on the student loan each month so we can pay it off as quickly as possible. Both cars have been paid off for several years and no CC debt..paid the wife's off earlier this year. We no longer have credit cards at all, but have a small emergency fund instead. We make a monthly budget and use only cash to buy groceries, gas, clothes and other things. it forces us to Not spend past a certain amount. We've also already saved almost $900 for Christmas. A monthly budget is the best thing you can do for your finances.
Being disciplined enough to stick to you monthly budget is the best thing you can do for your finances.
http://www.mint.com/privacy/ Granted, it's from Mint advocating their own security, but informative nonetheless. I think the gist is that Mint is read-only, and you can't move money around in Mint. So if somebody broke into your Mint account, they'd only be able to see your pattern of spending. And Mint doesn't ask for any identifying personal info like name, SS#, except for your email address. Neither does Mint store your financial login info. All that aside, they still use quite a bit of security which you can read about on the link.
Is this service free? (honest question). I think Mint's appeal is to those who are just entering the working world or just getting their finances together and need a relatively simple overview of how they spend and how to maintain a budget. Plus, it's free
You guys really should have been more economical during school. I had jobs during undergrad, then my tuition was covered for grad school. I still had to get loans but not even close to what you guys have and I started paying them off in grad school.
I had a job too. But working for minimum wage and going to school sucks. Just borrow the money and pay it off with your high paying job after. Focus on your studies.
