Up until January of this year we were paying about a thousand dollars in student loans for hubby’s law school. One of the bigger monthly payments got paid off in December so now I’m down to a little over 500 a month. Still a lot. These loans are mostly from different lenders as well. Three of them are SallieMae that he got through the school but one is a different branch so at one point we were paying three SallieMae bills until they realized two were from the same department and consolidated them for us. But now I’m still paying four different loans. Of course, since the interest was deferred while he was in school, the amount of some of these loans is higher than the loan we took out since it added up over time. I’ve only been making the normal monthly payments on these but I would really like to start paying down more on them to get rid of them quicker.

I often wonder if I should consider debt consolidation and try to get these four loans combined into one loan with only one payment every month. But I don’t know much about our options and I worry I would not get a good rate. Some of these loans have some pretty good rates, one of them being through our bank. I guess if I don’t ask some banks what my options are I won’t know but it is a hassle at times trying to get a quote without being on the phone with them for a long time since they are usually only open during my work hours.

According to this NY Times article about Student Debt, there is over $1 trillion in overall student loan debt. That is kinda scary when you think about it. So many recent graduates are struggling to pay down their loans and can barely do anything with their paychecks until those are taken care of. Some of these total debt amounts per student are as high as a house mortgage (depending on the housing market in some areas). I think it is a bad thing all around to have to pay so much for a degree to just start out your career. But oh well we just gotta follow the rules of life, right? At least we have a house thanks to my job and we’re able to take care of what we need.