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[quote=Anonymous]My DH and I owe $300k+ combined. Both lawyers, plus a worthless but expensive masters degree thrown in for good measure (his). And, I am a SAHM. And, we have three kids and will probably have another. And, I hated being a lawyer and will never use my degree again. And, we are currently paying only interest because that's all we can afford (this will change after DH makes partner next year). And, my DH didn't graduate until 2006, BUT he was already 30 instead of 25. So we are way behind the curve on saving for retirement. I have to laugh when I see all those posts about people saving 20% of their income and putting $1000/mo in 529s for their kids. That is just so far outside the realm of possibility for us that it's like a whole other universe.

I try not to worry about it too much. Yes, we made mistakes in our lives. Yes, we will be paying for them for a LONG time. Yes, we will not be able to give our kids the material things, expensive vacations, and full ride educations that other people can. But, we decided not to stop living and enjoying our lives because of our prior mistakes, e.g. we decided to have a family even though by the standards of many people on this board, we "couldn't afford it", and we decided it was worth it to us for our kids to have a parent at home. Eventually the loans will be paid off.  We are still very blessed in so many ways. (We do have plenty of life insurance, though, in part because of the student loans, and we are thinking about LTD for my DH as well). If something bad happened to us such that we had to default on our loans, we have wonderful families who would be there for us.

Both of us took out these loans when we were young, and for various reasons neither of us had received a particularly good education in financial matters and didn't really know what we were getting into. And then we got married, compounding the mistake (in a financial sense). Everyone I have ever encountered who mentions law school to me, I try to talk them out of it and really emphasize how the debt is a drag on your future income. At 22, I just had NO idea what real living expenses even were (my parents paid mine during college), much less the cost of raising children. [/quote]

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