Student Loans:

Student loan patter:

Student loans are worth the investment.  You will earn a lot more money, with your degree, and it will be no problem to pay back.

These are just a couple of the lies, or at best,  mis-leading statements about student loans.

In this article, in the “Wall Street Journal”,  Mary Pilon reports the case of a student loan, that had ballooned to $555,000.  Yes, that is a cool 1/2 million plus.   The loan belongs to a family doc, so what’s the big deal, they are all rich aren’t they??

Well the average salary for a family practitioner is $145,000 bucks a year-great salary, way above the national average for salary.

However, with a loan that size, with interest accruing, even if half her salary went to pay back the loan, it would take more than 10 years to pay that back.  So great salary, ain’t so great if half of it goes to pay back your student loan.

Do I think it is evil to borrow money to go to college.  No, of course n0t.  Do I think it can be stupid to borrow $100,000 to pay for tuition, room, board, and beer, for a degree that pays on average 40, or 50 grand a year or less-yes!

So, before having a  knee-jerk reaction and borrowing money to go to school.  Check out ways to decrease your burden:

• Go to a less expensive school.
• Go to school part-time.
• Drive a clunker, and use car payment money to pay for food, or books.
• Join the service, and let them pay for your education.
• Get your employer to help pay the bill.

The good news is that you can get an associates  (which usually takes 3 years)  RN degree at a public institution for very little investment.  Even a four year BSN at a public school is a good investment-but it can be a great investment, if you limit your borrowing.

So before you call Aunt Sallie Mae, to borrow a hunk of cash, think about it.  Make sure there is not a better way.

And if you do borrow, there are ways to help pay back the money-see this post about one of the federal loan repayment programs -(NELRP)-  for working in an under-served hospital or clinic-as a nurse.

Tags: avoiding school loans for nursing, borrowing money for nursing school, student loans, student loans for nurses

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 16th, 2010 at 11:53 am and is filed under Personal Finance 101, Uncategorized, student loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.