Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

+1. This is what you have to do.

In comparison, we make 450k HHI and we stayed in our 800k house with an old car so we could pay 150k off in loans.

Oh no - an $800k house? Wow - was the neighborhood pretty safe at least? That must have been so hard!

Make fun of me alll you want. ON our salary, OP would have a $1.2 million house and a newish car or two. AND student loans.

The bolded is true though. OP thought if she and her DH attended the right kind of graduate school they would be entitled to a certain lifestyle, regardless of whether or not basic math supported that or not. She did not get the sympathy she was hoping for which is why she has not come back.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

+1. This is what you have to do.

In comparison, we make 450k HHI and we stayed in our 800k house with an old car so we could pay 150k off in loans.

Oh no - an $800k house? Wow - was the neighborhood pretty safe at least? That must have been so hard!

Make fun of me alll you want. ON our salary, OP would have a $1.2 million house and a newish car or two. AND student loans.

Stop being a jerk. Yoi don't have money problems.

Also it is arguable that OP should have some lean years and pay off the loans on schedule and invest once childcare costs go down. Also a house is an investment. They are building equity and not throwing money away on rent. Difference is they wont have a longchamp bag or fancy vacations. They will eventually. I sometimes find it strange that everyone is chompingvat the bit to use all of their income to pay off loans and not invest and then let the interest earned fro. investments pay off the loans for you, especially if you have a low interest rate on said loan.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

+1. This is what you have to do.

In comparison, we make 450k HHI and we stayed in our 800k house with an old car so we could pay 150k off in loans.

Oh no - an $800k house? Wow - was the neighborhood pretty safe at least? That must have been so hard!

Make fun of me alll you want. ON our salary, OP would have a $1.2 million house and a newish car or two. AND student loans.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

+1. This is what you have to do.

In comparison, we make 450k HHI and we stayed in our 800k house with an old car so we could pay 150k off in loans.

Oh no - an $800k house? Wow - was the neighborhood pretty safe at least? That must have been so hard!

Anonymous wrote:Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

+1. This is what you have to do.

In comparison, we make 450k HHI and we stayed in our 800k house with an old car so we could pay 150k off in loans.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why this has turned into a weird IVF thread. I had IVF. We paid hardly anything because our insurance covered it. If you are griping about imagined IVF costs, move to Maryland or work for a company based out of a state like IL, TX, or MA. It isn't productive to discuss delaying kids and finances. The truth is unless you are making 300k and have no debt it always sucks in some way. You figure it out and a have a few lean years but then daycare costs drop exponentially and quality of life improves.

I think the real point of this thread is the financial pressure that people who are supposed to be well off feel. It is a strange place to make 200k a year and have a 400k mortgage and 400k in student debt. Everyone expects you to be rich or something and you aren't. I am having this issue with my parents actually. Both my dh and I have great jobs and advanced degrees and have a lot of student debt in addition to our mortgage. My parents refuse to buy anything for our kids because they think we are rich. My sister on the other hand owns her house outright, has little to no student debt, and has four kids. She makes a very good salary but her spouse stays at home so they only have one income. My parents think of her as poor. But the 80k she makes is hers since there is little to no debt or mortgage or child care costs. There really is a difference in having and not having debt.

It turned into an IVF thread because people who make poor financial choices always have an excuse for their behavior. In this case, they had to go ahead and have kids and pay thousands in childcare costs because of infertility.

Really OP should have lived for 3-4 years in a studio rental without kids or even cars and paid 75k off of their loans each year.

They paid thousands in childcare costs because of infertility? What does that mean? Fertile people pay the same childcare costs last time I checked. There are no extra childcare costs because of IVF.

You are missing the point about the thread. People believe that X job and Y house indicate a healthy financial situation. That is not always the case. This person was asking of it ever got easier financially. The answer is yes. As you pay off debt and your kids get older, it does get easier.

No. They paid thousands in childcare that should have been or towards their student loans. Duh. Once you have kids you have less money that can go towards savings and loans.

I’m not missing the point at all. OP made poor life choices which is why he/she has such an extreme amount of debt. You can’t have kids with loans like these and you also can’t purchase a house before paying most of them down.

Three of my relatives graduated medical school and worked off their debt in two years, Two cousins and 1 spouse, rented my basement apartment and lived pretty frugally for two years and worked off approx 200K of loans each. In fact, they lived more frugally when they were in medical school. In retrospect the two years went by fast. I think they also were so busy that it would not have mattered if they lived in a more expensive place. They were home mostly to sleep and do chores.

There are many poor people who have kids and also pay childcare. OP has kids and there will be costs associated with it. She can still live in a very austere manner and save money to pay off her debt. The problem is that she has to first quit thinking of herself as UMC. She is poor, but she has a chance to not be poor in 5 years.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why this has turned into a weird IVF thread. I had IVF. We paid hardly anything because our insurance covered it. If you are griping about imagined IVF costs, move to Maryland or work for a company based out of a state like IL, TX, or MA. It isn't productive to discuss delaying kids and finances. The truth is unless you are making 300k and have no debt it always sucks in some way. You figure it out and a have a few lean years but then daycare costs drop exponentially and quality of life improves.

I think the real point of this thread is the financial pressure that people who are supposed to be well off feel. It is a strange place to make 200k a year and have a 400k mortgage and 400k in student debt. Everyone expects you to be rich or something and you aren't. I am having this issue with my parents actually. Both my dh and I have great jobs and advanced degrees and have a lot of student debt in addition to our mortgage. My parents refuse to buy anything for our kids because they think we are rich. My sister on the other hand owns her house outright, has little to no student debt, and has four kids. She makes a very good salary but her spouse stays at home so they only have one income. My parents think of her as poor. But the 80k she makes is hers since there is little to no debt or mortgage or child care costs. There really is a difference in having and not having debt.

It turned into an IVF thread because people who make poor financial choices always have an excuse for their behavior. In this case, they had to go ahead and have kids and pay thousands in childcare costs because of infertility.

Really OP should have lived for 3-4 years in a studio rental without kids or even cars and paid 75k off of their loans each year.

They paid thousands in childcare costs because of infertility? What does that mean? Fertile people pay the same childcare costs last time I checked. There are no extra childcare costs because of IVF.

You are missing the point about the thread. People believe that X job and Y house indicate a healthy financial situation. That is not always the case. This person was asking of it ever got easier financially. The answer is yes. As you pay off debt and your kids get older, it does get easier.

Anonymous wrote:I don't know why this has turned into a weird IVF thread. I had IVF. We paid hardly anything because our insurance covered it. If you are griping about imagined IVF costs, move to Maryland or work for a company based out of a state like IL, TX, or MA. It isn't productive to discuss delaying kids and finances. The truth is unless you are making 300k and have no debt it always sucks in some way. You figure it out and a have a few lean years but then daycare costs drop exponentially and quality of life improves.

I think the real point of this thread is the financial pressure that people who are supposed to be well off feel. It is a strange place to make 200k a year and have a 400k mortgage and 400k in student debt. Everyone expects you to be rich or something and you aren't. I am having this issue with my parents actually. Both my dh and I have great jobs and advanced degrees and have a lot of student debt in addition to our mortgage. My parents refuse to buy anything for our kids because they think we are rich. My sister on the other hand owns her house outright, has little to no student debt, and has four kids. She makes a very good salary but her spouse stays at home so they only have one income. My parents think of her as poor. But the 80k she makes is hers since there is little to no debt or mortgage or child care costs. There really is a difference in having and not having debt.

It turned into an IVF thread because people who make poor financial choices always have an excuse for their behavior. In this case, they had to go ahead and have kids and pay thousands in childcare costs because of infertility.

Really OP should have lived for 3-4 years in a studio rental without kids or even cars and paid 75k off of their loans each year.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They have $575K in student loans between the two of them. There are cheaper degrees, or better jobs. But there is no argument that justifies a $300K loan that you will never pay off. They'd have been better off not going to college.

+1 there are lots of trade jobs out there that need workers, this is what the lower and middle classes should focus on for now.

If they were making a salary of 28K before law-school they should have continued living on that amount after law school to be able to pay off their debt.
It would have been a few years of deprivation but they would have been free and clear. I think their mentality was that they will should live better because they were making mega bucks. There is NO REASON that they cannot become very frugal and break the cycle. They need to be free of debt so that their children have the advantage of not having to pay for college.

28K is hard to live on and get to and from work and dress professionally. In DC, I'm not even sure how you could afford rent + food + commute + clothes for two people on 28K. But they could have done it on 60K, and still made HUGE dents in those numbers.

Of course it’s hard. The point is that they should have kept their lifestyle the same as prelawschool so they could pay off the loans. No mortgage or kids.

Ok but the kids are here now. So add childcare for two kids to the list above, and you think that’s feasible on $28k? No way.

Well they shouldn’t have had them yet. Sorry truth hurts.

Delaying having kids can also be financially risky depending in age.

Not really. I assume you’re talking about needing fertility treatments because of age? That’s kind of extreme. We are talking waiting 2-3 years post lawschool after the loans have been paid off. Not waiting until OP was 40. He most likely graduated around age 25-26. They could have had kids at 30 had they both buckled down and worked their butts off to pay off their loans.

It’s really hard to get ahead when you have kids and childcare costs and require a larger apartment/home. By not having kids, they could have lived in a cheap studio rental. Kids require more space than that and thousands in childcare expenses and who knows what else. IVF is on average 25k. It’s actually cheaper to have IVF. IVF is about equal to one year of childcare around here.

I don’t think we know enough about OP’s situation (age, etc.) to judge here. I also think it’s rather optimistic that they could have paid off that amount of debt in 2-3 years. I do think taking on a mortgage was a bad move at this point however- even if it makes financial sense long term, there are just too many unexpected expenses that can come up with owning a house. Live in a small apartment for a few years until the loans get paid off. My sister and BIL both still have undergrad loans and are in less lucrative careers, but they’re in their early 30s and just didnt want to put off kids longer. But they understand their financial limits, which means renting and living frugally for the time being.

I don't know why this has turned into a weird IVF thread. I had IVF. We paid hardly anything because our insurance covered it. If you are griping about imagined IVF costs, move to Maryland or work for a company based out of a state like IL, TX, or MA. It isn't productive to discuss delaying kids and finances. The truth is unless you are making 300k and have no debt it always sucks in some way. You figure it out and a have a few lean years but then daycare costs drop exponentially and quality of life improves.

I think the real point of this thread is the financial pressure that people who are supposed to be well off feel. It is a strange place to make 200k a year and have a 400k mortgage and 400k in student debt. Everyone expects you to be rich or something and you aren't. I am having this issue with my parents actually. Both my dh and I have great jobs and advanced degrees and have a lot of student debt in addition to our mortgage. My parents refuse to buy anything for our kids because they think we are rich. My sister on the other hand owns her house outright, has little to no student debt, and has four kids. She makes a very good salary but her spouse stays at home so they only have one income. My parents think of her as poor. But the 80k she makes is hers since there is little to no debt or mortgage or child care costs. There really is a difference in having and not having debt.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They have $575K in student loans between the two of them. There are cheaper degrees, or better jobs. But there is no argument that justifies a $300K loan that you will never pay off. They'd have been better off not going to college.

+1 there are lots of trade jobs out there that need workers, this is what the lower and middle classes should focus on for now.

If they were making a salary of 28K before law-school they should have continued living on that amount after law school to be able to pay off their debt.
It would have been a few years of deprivation but they would have been free and clear. I think their mentality was that they will should live better because they were making mega bucks. There is NO REASON that they cannot become very frugal and break the cycle. They need to be free of debt so that their children have the advantage of not having to pay for college.

28K is hard to live on and get to and from work and dress professionally. In DC, I'm not even sure how you could afford rent + food + commute + clothes for two people on 28K. But they could have done it on 60K, and still made HUGE dents in those numbers.

Of course it’s hard. The point is that they should have kept their lifestyle the same as prelawschool so they could pay off the loans. No mortgage or kids.

Ok but the kids are here now. So add childcare for two kids to the list above, and you think that’s feasible on $28k? No way.

Well they shouldn’t have had them yet. Sorry truth hurts.

Delaying having kids can also be financially risky depending in age.

Not really. I assume you’re talking about needing fertility treatments because of age? That’s kind of extreme. We are talking waiting 2-3 years post lawschool after the loans have been paid off. Not waiting until OP was 40. He most likely graduated around age 25-26. They could have had kids at 30 had they both buckled down and worked their butts off to pay off their loans.

It’s really hard to get ahead when you have kids and childcare costs and require a larger apartment/home. By not having kids, they could have lived in a cheap studio rental. Kids require more space than that and thousands in childcare expenses and who knows what else. IVF is on average 25k. It’s actually cheaper to have IVF. IVF is about equal to one year of childcare around here.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They have $575K in student loans between the two of them. There are cheaper degrees, or better jobs. But there is no argument that justifies a $300K loan that you will never pay off. They'd have been better off not going to college.

+1 there are lots of trade jobs out there that need workers, this is what the lower and middle classes should focus on for now.

If they were making a salary of 28K before law-school they should have continued living on that amount after law school to be able to pay off their debt.
It would have been a few years of deprivation but they would have been free and clear. I think their mentality was that they will should live better because they were making mega bucks. There is NO REASON that they cannot become very frugal and break the cycle. They need to be free of debt so that their children have the advantage of not having to pay for college.

28K is hard to live on and get to and from work and dress professionally. In DC, I'm not even sure how you could afford rent + food + commute + clothes for two people on 28K. But they could have done it on 60K, and still made HUGE dents in those numbers.

Of course it’s hard. The point is that they should have kept their lifestyle the same as prelawschool so they could pay off the loans. No mortgage or kids.

Ok but the kids are here now. So add childcare for two kids to the list above, and you think that’s feasible on $28k? No way.

Well they shouldn’t have had them yet. Sorry truth hurts.

Delaying having kids can also be financially risky depending in age.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
They have $575K in student loans between the two of them. There are cheaper degrees, or better jobs. But there is no argument that justifies a $300K loan that you will never pay off. They'd have been better off not going to college.

+1 there are lots of trade jobs out there that need workers, this is what the lower and middle classes should focus on for now.

If they were making a salary of 28K before law-school they should have continued living on that amount after law school to be able to pay off their debt.
It would have been a few years of deprivation but they would have been free and clear. I think their mentality was that they will should live better because they were making mega bucks. There is NO REASON that they cannot become very frugal and break the cycle. They need to be free of debt so that their children have the advantage of not having to pay for college.

28K is hard to live on and get to and from work and dress professionally. In DC, I'm not even sure how you could afford rent + food + commute + clothes for two people on 28K. But they could have done it on 60K, and still made HUGE dents in those numbers.

Of course it’s hard. The point is that they should have kept their lifestyle the same as prelawschool so they could pay off the loans. No mortgage or kids.

Ok but the kids are here now. So add childcare for two kids to the list above, and you think that’s feasible on $28k? No way.

Well they shouldn’t have had them yet. Sorry truth hurts.

+1. I waited and plenty of others did too. As a result we are in great financial shape.