Student Loans

These days, student loans are pretty much a given for most young professionals. When I graduated law school back in 2013, I had a hugely negative net worth thanks to $87,000 worth of student loans that I had taken out. That doesn’t seem like all that much when you consider that the average law student today graduates with almost double that amount of debt. I think it’s a testament to just how normalized student loans have become when $87,000 can seem like nothing.

The thing that really stinks about student loans isn’t just the monthly payment. It’s the huge amount that you’re paying out each year towards interest. If you look at my own student loan history, you can see that I paid over $15,000 in interest over the life of the loan. And that’s with me paying off the loan in just two years!

One of the reasons we’re paying so much in interest is because of the high interest rates we’re given. Since anyone can get a student loan, the interest rates are higher than they should be for folks who are going into fields where they should hopefully make a decent income. Regular grad school loans clock in at a 6.8% interest rate these days. Grad plus loans come in at a whopping 7.9% interest rate. Those kind of interest rates are no joke…