Student loans and SAHP-ing

[whoisjohngalt]

WV - I hope you get what you want out of your job, bc let's face it, suffering in MD better have some major reward, right?

[Waffle]

I think I went to college in the dark ages. I graduated with a whole $1500 in student loans. I never went to grad school and I just can't imagine having that kind of debt for school. It's mind boggling.

As for the original question - If I were the working spouse I'd resent the non-working one. But as long as both partners are happy with the situation - it doesn't matter to me.

[wvugurl26]

May 10, 2012 21:24:28 GMT -5 whoisjohngalt said:

WV - I hope you get what you want out of your job, bc let's face it, suffering in MD better have some major reward, right?

Oh yeah I pay for it some days! And other days it can be ok. At least I have some family and friends around here and I'm close to a few other friends. And BWI for when I need to escape lol.

[Deleted]

My DIL is a SAHP with student loans. I don't think they are huge (her first degree was paid for.) She could never find a job in her first field, and then she finished the degree but didn't take the licensing exam in her second. She was 9 months pregnant at the time and never found time. It is eight years later so I don't think that's a possibility anymore.

They are comfortable with it. I don't think my son could work as hard as he does if my DIL wasn't at home taking up all the slack. He works most Saturdays and a lot of evenings. Their choice makes his advancement possible. Also, she probably earns what her payment is since she does work a little part-time doing stuff like keeping a church nursery.

It's really a "to each his own" kind of issue.

[resolution]

I think we are making hypocritical statements on this again. One the one side we are saying to keep those low rate student loans as long as possible so we can earn more with the money. One the other side we are saying don't have kids/SAHP while you have the loan. Anyone following both sets of advice is going to be too old to have kids by the time they are allowed to. By the time I am old there will be no one to care for me in the nursing home.

[Deleted]

It is 2012. Both parents should work. Kids should be raised by iPads.

[lurkyloo]

May 10, 2012 22:32:02 GMT -5 @mmc said:

It is 2012. Both parents should work. Kids should be raised by iPads.

That would be quite an app. I suppose the suckers who went with Droids are SOL?

I think the key aspect is that the supporting spouse has to be really and truly on board with the plan.

[wvugurl26]

I thought YM loved to be hypocrites!

Seriously though if she's 27 she is my age. We took our loans out after the interest rate was fixed at 6.8%. There is no 2.5-3% for the life of the loan student loans for us. If I weren't eligible for public loan forgiveness, I'd be paying those suckers down as fast as possible.

Most of the people I have seen with those low interest rates have $20-30k or so in loans, not $100k. Low interest rate federal loans are one thing. Some of Mrs. C's had to have come after the interest rate change and some of them must be private to have that kind of a debt load. I doubt private loans come with a 2.5% interest rate.

What Phil would do may not be the best option for others. And his wife worked!

[Deleted]

A couple of things has me thinking. I've read that unemployed women are not getting hired back as fast as men. I've also heard that the unemployment rate is dropping in part because people are dropping out of the work force..

So could this mean that more women are opting for SAHM status either because the SAHM can't find employment or because families dumped debt/refinanced debt and now the option is financially viable?

[Phoenix84]

"I just can't fathom having $100k in loans and not being a pharmacist, lawyer, nurse practitioner, doctor, engineer something with a higher earning potential."

There's another part to this equation than just student loans. Getting educated in a difficult and sought after career and then not pursuing said career is a waste in it's own right. Many of the graduate programs for those professions you mentioned are very competative and only take so many candidates a year. If you don't go on and practice in the field, you essentially took a spot from someone else who really could have been a doctor, lawyer, or PA.

[Phoenix84]

"She works for the feds. She needs to stay near DC and kiss every ass she can find higher in the chain of command. She's in the paying her dues phase, but it'll all be worth it later."

Of course it will be all worth it later, you'll be a big hotshot SES'er in no time .

Agree with the paying dues phase, but there are lots of federal jobs outside of DC. I've been employed by the feds for years and not worked in DC, and I never plan to if I can help it. WAAAAAY too expensive, even if I got a higher grade it would still be a pay cut.

But Darkhonor is right, there are more 13's-15's out in DC.

If you really want to advance in the federal workforce, you have to move and change jobs frequently. I'd say after your first year you can start applying for new and better jobs. I got a job at a higher grade after my being in my first job about 1 year and 8 months, and I got a even better job after being at the second also 1 year and 8 months. So I went from a GS 5 to a GS 12 in 3 and a half years.

Personally, I haven't seen too many openings in my field in DC, but DC is kind of a paper pusher town, not a beacon for scientific research and development.

[Deleted]

My view is you run your own family however it works and makes sense to the both of you. If you desire a SAHP and have the means to do so and want to then why not?

[Deleted]

May 11, 2012 0:00:50 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

"I just can't fathom having $100k in loans and not being a pharmacist, lawyer, nurse practitioner, doctor, engineer something with a higher earning potential."

There's another part to this equation than just student loans. Getting educated in a difficult and sought after career and then not pursuing said career is a waste in it's own right. Many of the graduate programs for those professions you mentioned are very competative and only take so many candidates a year. If you don't go on and practice in the field, you essentially took a spot from someone else who really could have been a doctor, lawyer, or PA.

You didn't "take a spot" from anyone. You rightly earned your own spot. I think a doctor who goes on to spend his life injecting botox into rich women's lips is a waste of a doctor too. His spot could have been used for someone who wants to fix serious medical problems not make a fat living off of rich people vanity. So, you can make that argument in a lot of ways.

[973beachbum]

May 10, 2012 23:16:44 GMT -5 wvugurl26 said:

I thought YM loved to be hypocrites!

Seriously though if she's 27 she is my age. We took our loans out after the interest rate was fixed at 6.8%. There is no 2.5-3% for the life of the loan student loans for us. If I weren't eligible for public loan forgiveness, I'd be paying those suckers down as fast as possible.

Most of the people I have seen with those low interest rates have $20-30k or so in loans, not $100k. Low interest rate federal loans are one thing. Some of Mrs. C's had to have come after the interest rate change and some of them must be private to have that kind of a debt load. I doubt private loans come with a 2.5% interest rate.

What Phil would do may not be the best option for others. And his wife worked!

We are in the exact same boat as WVU. DH went back to school and all of his SL's are Fed and at 6.8%. He had $80K total for his undergrad and masters in engineering. The loans were taken out about half and half. Before the icome based repayments his payments were $650 a month. I can't imagine that SL's that include private and over $100K are less than $1K a month. And I don't think unless the grad degree is a JD or an Dr you can even get that much in Fed SL's for an undergrad and a masters. So in my mind some of them have to be private which is a whole 'nother ball of wax.

I guess each family needs to do what works for them. COLA probably has a lot to do with it. Where I live part time preschool costs $250 a week for 3 half days. That is your thousand bucks a month right there and you can't get a FT job with that. So in that case, lots of families have one person stay home till the little ones are in kindergarten.

[Deleted]

May 10, 2012 22:32:02 GMT -5 @mmc said:

It is 2012. Both parents should work. Kids should be raised by iPads.

Hardly- but why would someone who aspires to be a SAHP get a horribly expensive education for which they have to borrow money? I understand that sometimes priorities change- you plan to go back to work but a special-needs child makes it impossible, for example-but if you start out from the very beginning wanting to be a SAHM when the time comes, then don't borrow gobs of money for some poor spouse to pay back later. Heck, why get a college education at all if all you want is an MRS degree? You and your husband would be better off putting money in a large EF and in life insurance to cover him if something happens, than in paying off student loans for an education you're not using.

And don't give me the old saw about the education making you a better parent. My SIL, my mother and my grandmother never saw the inside of a college classroom and raised 12 kids with a total of 5 advanced degrees.

[Deleted]

Well, what difference does it make one way or another? If a SAHM wants to get a PhD, what of it? Yes, there might be better uses of money but you can say that about a lot of things that people do.

But, i understand what you are saying. If you dont' really intend to use the degree, why spend so much time and energy on it and put yourself in a bad financial position? But, then again, some do aspire to be SAHMs and wind up divorced or in a position where they have to work anyway so they at least have a fall back position.

[constanz22]

I don't mean to hijack, but what happened in/to the divorce thread!? I looked at it briefly when I got home last night and saw about 20 new pages and didn't have the time or energy to catch up. Went to look at it before bed and it was gone...

[resolution]

People started sexting each other and turning it into an EE thread so it got locked.

[Deleted]

Dang! Nobody ever "sexts" me!!

[quotequeen]

Intellectually, I understand that (setting aside loan forgiveness) the student loans are a sunk cost and a couple should do what is best for the family unit going forward without regard to where the debt came from. But I don't think I could accept that my spouse took on that kind of debt and put our family in that kind of a hole for no good reason and it wound up being a complete waste. I would want the person to work at least long enough that savings from his salary exceeded the amount of the debt (independent of whether we chose to actually pay it off) before quitting. So in my case I have greatly exceeded that and the student loans would no longer be a reason for me to feel guilty about not working or taking a lower paying job. But if I were married to somebody who'd for some reason thought it was a good idea to take out 125k in student loans to get a 45k a year job, it would be a much bigger problem. And really, it's not just the amount of the loans, it's whatever the cost was to our family finances. So if we were able to cash flow tuition for my husband to go back to school, I would expect him to work long enough to save up that difference as well.

[Waffle]

May 11, 2012 6:42:29 GMT -5 constanz22 said:

I don't mean to hijack, but what happened in/to the divorce thread!? I looked at it briefly when I got home last night and saw about 20 new pages and didn't have the time or energy to catch up. Went to look at it before bed and it was gone...

It's not gone - it's just locked and Moonbeam said she was going to unlock it again sometime this morning.



Now back to SAHP/student loans. . . .

[quotequeen]

May 11, 2012 6:45:14 GMT -5 resolution said:

People started sexting each other and turning it into an EE thread so it got locked.

Also WWBG came in with his "all women are crazy biatches like my wife" BS and there was some fighting about that.

[Deleted]

May 11, 2012 5:34:04 GMT -5 @shooby said:

May 11, 2012 0:00:50 GMT -5 Phoenix84 said:

"I just can't fathom having $100k in loans and not being a pharmacist, lawyer, nurse practitioner, doctor, engineer something with a higher earning potential."

There's another part to this equation than just student loans. Getting educated in a difficult and sought after career and then not pursuing said career is a waste in it's own right. Many of the graduate programs for those professions you mentioned are very competative and only take so many candidates a year. If you don't go on and practice in the field, you essentially took a spot from someone else who really could have been a doctor, lawyer, or PA.

You didn't "take a spot" from anyone. You rightly earned your own spot. I think a doctor who goes on to spend his life injecting botox into rich women's lips is a waste of a doctor too. His spot could have been used for someone who wants to fix serious medical problems not make a fat living off of rich people vanity. So, you can make that argument in a lot of ways.

I think most plastic surgeons see just enough kids with cleft palates, burn victims, wounded vets, etc to justify their existence. It's like the Seinfeld where he is dating the dermatologist and forgot that she also treated skin cancer.

[happyhoix]

I think this is an individual family thing.

However, couples need to be perfectly up front about this. My youngest sister got a four year business degree and got a very good job right out of college. Worked two years and decided she hated the corporate world. Decided to go back to school to get a masters in education. My parents paid for her BA degree, she got student loans for the masters. Graduated but refused to work in a 'poor' school and complained that all the 'nice' schools weren't hiring, so she did a part time job in a day care a few days a week until she got pregnant. At the time, she said she was planning to go back to work as a teacher once her kid was in school. Well, kid's in middle school now. She claims she doesn't want to be a teacher anymore, she wants to go back to business, but has to have a job that will let her take summers off so she can be a home with her son, so she's gone back to the part time day care thing again.

They have a very nice home, she has a nice SUV, they take two vacations a year, but she's always complaining about how broke they are and how her DH keeps pushing her to go back to a regular full time job but she doesn't want to. So in that case, if I were her DH, I would resent like hell that she quit her well paying job and went back to school for a masters that she never used (and apparently, won't ever use) and now refuses to get a job that would earn enough to pay it back.

But that's their choice. If he really resents is, I guess he'll do something about it.

[Deleted]

May 11, 2012 7:03:53 GMT -5 quotequeen said:

May 11, 2012 6:45:14 GMT -5 resolution said:

People started sexting each other and turning it into an EE thread so it got locked.

Also WWBG came in with his "all women are crazy biatches like my wife" BS and there was some fighting about that.

yeah - he and SF started it!!!


And I was pretty well-behaved on that thread TYVM!!!

Re: the OP - I agree with Dark 100% and others who've said that it's up to the individual family to decide what's best. I feel bad entertaining going part-time or trying to get a medical coding cert. after getting the Master's - and I'm not even paying for it!

[Deleted]

It occurred to me last night (y'all need to get out of my head when I'm going to bed) that strictly from a budget perspective, my student loans are a lot like a kid. I signed up for 30 years of paying almost $500 per month. (They don't even offer the 30 year plan anymore... lucky me). You could totally feed and clothe a kid with that money. (Ideally, the kid would be paid off first)

If I were a single parent, I'd probably look for a partner who would share parenting responsibilities and who would think of my kid as his kid. A kid is a budgetary commitment that comes with the obligation to love and guide that child. Everyone would think you were a terrible person if you just handed off responsibility for your kid when you got married. You can't just say, "I'm married now - you parent him" when parenting is something you signed up for before the relationship even started.

So, when I borrowed all of that money, that was me signing up for a career that would justify the costs. I would hope that a partner would view that monthly obligation as "our debt" and see the $500 a month as a cost to "our family." And while sometimes the best choice for a family would be for one partner to work and the other to stay home, I feel like I have committed to my student loan baby and need to have a career. Leaving the workforce entirely just isn't an option.

(It's not a perfect metaphor, but you get the idea. With any luck, I'll have my student loan baby paid off before she turns 16)

[Deleted]

May 11, 2012 7:21:28 GMT -5 @moneyjenny82 said:

May 11, 2012 7:03:53 GMT -5 quotequeen said:

Also WWBG came in with his "all women are crazy biatches like my wife" BS and there was some fighting about that.

yeah - he and SF started it!!!


And I was pretty well-behaved on that thread TYVM!!!

Re: the OP - I agree with Dark 100% and others who've said that it's up to the individual family to decide what's best. I feel bad entertaining going part-time or trying to get a medical coding cert. after getting the Master's - and I'm not even paying for it!

Don't spend the money unless the job requires it or your employer is paying for it. I'd say 3/4 of my "class" had a hard time finding a coding job after they passed the certification exam. The other 1/4 were already working in the field and were there on their employer's dime.

[Deleted]

Really? The BLS Occupational Handbook says medical coding has an estimated job growth of over 15% for the next decade. Mostly, I want to find a job that will allow me to work on "off" days as well as regular week days so that we can stagger the days caring for DS.

[Miss Tequila]

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"People started sexting each other and turning it into an EE thread so it got locked. "

seriously?? I was trying to help poor SF out since he clearly has some sexual problems...I was certainly not sexting him!

[resolution]

May 11, 2012 7:45:20 GMT -5 Miss Tequila said:

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
&
seriously?? I was trying to help poor SF out since he clearly has some sexual problems...I was certainly not sexting him!

I am sure I missed all the subtleties and got it wrong. I am an old married lady with a husband that won't even use a cell phone, so what do I know?