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

[Anonymous]

Key words being if you had student loans! First generation to go to college and law school in my family and took on $130K with scholarships (full ride undergrad and 6k law school). Have been paying them back since graduating four years ago and not making a dent. So, I left the govt, now am in private practice, and refinanced out of an 8% interest rate. I’m married with one daughter and maybe another on the way (threatened miscarriage). Anyways, I don’t want to be paying this when I’m 40. I’ll be 31 now, and it’s like a huge ball and chain. Would love to hear stories of people who paid off student loans and lived to tell the tale!

[Anonymous]

DH and I had about $25k in student loans after doing master's programs on the cheap in the mid/late 2000s. Paid it off with a few bonuses from our first jobs in our mid 20s. No regrets.

DCUM would absolutely scoff at the schools we went to (top 100 big public universities; closer to #100), but that's who gave us the most money.

[Anonymous]

10 years for both DH and me. He had 2 different loans and I had one.

[Anonymous]

Graduated with $175k in loans, at rates from 1.5% (bar loan) to over 8%. I paid off two of the highest in the first 3 years, but then got laid off. Paid the minimums even when I was unemployed and when I got a good job again started attacking the highest interest rate loan again. Now I have $80k left in loans, but only $28k that I care about paying off- the rest is 3% or below and it's not a priority. Also got married along the way, bought a house, and paid off $10k of DH's SLs (his was also over 8%).

All in all I'm 10 years out of law school and about 8 months from having the loans that bother me paid off.

Since you just jumped from gov't to private practice, keep living like you're on the old salary and dedicate everything above that to savings/loan repayment. Bust your ass to get a bonus and pay off a huge chunk of the loan with it.

[Anonymous]

80k. 5 years of both dh and I paying them down. We both made about 80k

[Anonymous]

I had 100k in SL from Law School (graduated mid-90’s). I paid that off in 3 years, but went into Big Law right after graduating. Put all bonus money towards it, plus some salary money. DH had $120k from 2 graduate degrees (kept deferring payments so the balance grew) when we married. He was 32 and my SLs had been paid off years before. 15 years later we are still paying it off and it probably won’t be paid off for 5 or more years. He works for the federal government and is on the 30 year repayment plan - didn’t qualify for the 10 year program that wipes out your loan after that.

[Anonymous]

I had $70K in loans (also from law school) when we were first married. I had been paying on them (about $700/mon) for several years.

Once I got married, we used the equivalent of my net salary and paid it down. Took 2 years. We lived off of DH's salary. At the time I was probably making about $60K/yr. (before taxes and retirement were taken out).

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

Paid off $38k in 5 years with mix of aggressive pay down strategy + a federal loan repayment program sponsored by the NIH.

[Anonymous]

I had about 40k in student loans from grad school. Bought a house in DC in early 1996 (with a downpayment gift from DH's parents). DC real estate was very good to us and the loans were paid off when we flipped that house a few years later. Unfortunately, I paid off the loans just a few months before my employer (Congress) started a loan repayment benefit. 19:33 is the smart one here.

[Anonymous]

HaHa...paid them off ?...I think mine will be paid off the year my oldest starts college

[Anonymous]

It's going to take me 15 years to pay off $55,000 at about 3.5%. I've always been in government (state) and didn't qualify for the public interest loan forgiveness because I refinanced.

[Anonymous]

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.

[Anonymous]

$12k in 5 years. This was early 90s. Proud of myself given my starting salary out of school was $23k. Every extra dime I could save went to those stupid loans.

[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.

Btw, I'm not the poster above me - my interest rate is half that.