If you had student loans, how long did it take to pay them off?

[Anonymous]

Seven years. It was a long time ago and now the payments seem so low!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What is the interest rate? It will end up taking me 15-16 years, but I have a ridiculously low interest rate so I have no incentive to pay it off quickly.

Ours were 6.5% and we weren't allowed to consolidate if we wanted the 10k work gave us. Ridiculous interest rate to give 18 year olds who can't even discharge them in bankruptcy

[Anonymous]

Had $105 after law school. Paid off in 3 years. Started out paying 1500/month - while working for not that much $$. Just prioritized getting rid of this debt. Moved to a higher paying job after 1 1/2 years. Still paid max monthly and put ALL bonus money to paying off the loan. Done and relief.

Without putting all the bonus $ toward it, I'd still be paying I think.

[Anonymous]

I had 70k (mixture of some undergrad and law - full tuition scholarship but had to take out loans for living).

Took 7 years. Probably could have done it faster but got married and bought a house in that time so there were some tight years in the mix.

[Anonymous]

Graduated with $115 for undergrad and law school. Took me 11 years to pay it off. My starting salary was $75k didn’t break 100 until 4 years (very rough market when I started).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:73k. 12.75 years. It was a 30 year loan at 2.875%. While I did pay them off "fast" (because I didn't keep it going for 30 years), I was never in any real rush to pay them off. Even during my 9 year stint in biglaw, while I made double monthly payments, I NEVER put my bonuses towards the loans. I wanted to walk out of biglaw with a sizeable net worth -- so in an environment where the market was returning more than 2.875% per year (and many years FAR more than that), I was more interested in investing my additional cash rather than paying more to the lender. No regrets.

Honestly I don't know why more of my biglaw peers didn't do this -- focus on investing rather than paying loans as fast as humanly possible esp. since we graduated 11-12 years ago with sub 3% rates. Admittedly I should have invested even more. But most of my friends at the firm were determined to pay off debt in 4 years or less -- that means every dollar of savings/bonuses etc. went to loan payments rather than 401ks or investment accounts. Then at year 4 when the debt was gone, many of them bounced out of biglaw voluntarily or bc of the recession; so then they landed jobs often paying 100k or 150k -- a fraction of what they used to be paid -- and are trying to save on those salaries, which is obviously doable but much much harder esp here in NYC.

[Anonymous]

250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

Holy shit. Do you mean you're 10 yrs post med school or 10 yrs post residency? What specialty/area of practice? Do most drs. defer loan payments for the 4+ years of residency?

[Anonymous]

Mine was at something like 2.5% so I never really prioritized paying it off. I only borrowed $20K so it was something like $100/mo from 2003 until I paid it off last year.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

Holy shit. Do you mean you're 10 yrs post med school or 10 yrs post residency? What specialty/area of practice? Do most drs. defer loan payments for the 4+ years of residency?

10ys post med school. Deferred loans for 3 ys of residency (most people have to unless married with another income or can live with parents/family for free), so I have been paying toward them for 7 ys. I am primary care physician so at low end of pay scale for MD. Luckily most of what is left is very low interest 2.25%. Because of that, I have been maxing 401k rather than throwing that money to the loans since I am way behind in retirement savings after all the years of school and residency.

[Anonymous]

I had 100K, DH had 200K.

It will take me about 19 years to pay off.

DH will never pay them off. He's on IBR.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

Wow! My son had almost $200K in student loans when he finished his residency about 18 months ago. He has paid off all but $20K which he expect to pay off by June. He is single and lives well but keeps his spending down because he wanted to pay it off within two years of completing residency.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

Wow! My son had almost $200K in student loans when he finished his residency about 18 months ago. He has paid off all but $20K which he expect to pay off by June. He is single and lives well but keeps his spending down because he wanted to pay it off within two years of completing residency.

I don't know how this is possible. You would have to have a ridiculously high net pay in order to pay $180K in 18 months.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:250k in loans after medical school. I am 10 ys out and have 180k to go. Depressing.

Wow! My son had almost $200K in student loans when he finished his residency about 18 months ago. He has paid off all but $20K which he expect to pay off by June. He is single and lives well but keeps his spending down because he wanted to pay it off within two years of completing residency.

I don't know how this is possible. You would have to have a ridiculously high net pay in order to pay $180K in 18 months.

He earns approximately $450K gross annually ......

[Anonymous]

I had 12k on a 5-year repayment from grad school. Paid it off a year early. DH had over $50k from his BA and we paid that off when we sold our condo and bought a house. He had refinanced and we still had 20 years left. Made more sense to do that than to put more $$ down on our house since the interest rate was better.