pfft. better to pay student loans until your 60 and go bankrupt because of a broken health insurance system than switch to the metric system.

Metric for the win.

$150,000 in loans is still $150,000 in loans. Even if you lower interest to say a generous 2 or 3%, there's still $150,000 principal to pay off.

The problem is ridiculous tuition hikes.

It's not the student loans that are bad for your credit score, in and of themselves. I've had a perfect credit score for decades, and had some pretty hefty loan balances in the early years. Student loans indirectly affect your credit score if they make the ratio of your debt to your income too high - and of course any late payments will directly ding your score. In your case Rick, basically any type of debt is going to hurt your credit score because you have very little if any reported income. But for most people with a reasonable salary at a full time job their loans won't be enough to drag down their credit score, even on top of a mortgage, and paying their student loans on time helps raise their credit score both because they're developing a history of utilizing credit, and because they're adding to their record of on-time payments.

My credit score didn't drop when I took out student loans. I've been in the low to mid 800s since before I started college (because I'd worked full time for a few years first, so had time to build up a few years of credit history.) I spent 7 years in college and grad school and my score didn't drop then either.  Once I reached 800 the only time I ever dropped below it was once when I accidentally missed a payment to the gas company for over 60 days. It took about a year to rebound from that. But student loans, car loans, mortgage - all no problem, no dent in my score. It's partly a balance of having and utilizing credit. You can't get a really good score unless you've had debt, had several credit cards with relatively high limits, actually utilized at least some of those cards on a revolving basis, etc. People with scores in the "exceptional" range usually have at least 35 accounts on their record. If you want a high score you have to use credit.  It doesn't mean you need to keep a revolving balance on your credit cards - but you have to use them.  I pay my balances in full every month and haven't paid a penny in credit card interest in over 20 years - but my score wouldn't be high, hence my borrowing power wouldn't be high so I'd be paying higher rates on my mortgage and car, if I didn't have the long-standing high-limit credit card accounts and a good history on all my loans.

Buildings are way more complicated today then 100 years ago. Your idea is fine for people who want to do houses and strip malls, but real architects need a lot of knowledge, not that schools really teach anything of use....

Let's split the difference. There's no reason for an architecture education to be more than 4 years.

I'm good with that

I agree with the 4 years. Although, I'd be happier if every state allowed an alternative path that valued experience. My state still has this. I'm not sure how many people use it but that fact that its available is pretty cool.

There is a reason for architecture to be 5 years. It is so that idiot academics can make their moolah milking students.

Architectural education should be no more than 3 years - like any vocational course.

If you divide that monthly, that's close to $1700. Depending on cost of living and other bills and what is most likely lower initial salaries, it does become a struggle. Alternatively, loans can now be income-based (smaller monthly hit but compounds longer) and can be written off in 25 or whenever years at the cost of one big tax hit at the end on whatever was left.

Even the public service forgiveness band-wagoners aren't so sure they will get anything back. 

Thanks, forgot to answer the first comment.... Been working for about 10 years, with a long break
for m.arch and unemployment.

In other words, completely unrealistic for 98% of students just graduating. Thanks for the tip.

I disagree, I spent about 5 years paying the absolute minimum before deciding to make it a priority.

My point is that yes, it's easier to pay off much more than the minimum, once you're out of school for 5 or 10 years. But when you've just graduated, it's not reasonable to be paying back $1700/ month with an entry level paycheck.

I was making about 55k when we started making big payments, my wife made about the same. My pay has gone up pretty quickly since getting licensed, but my wife keeps cutting back so our combined income has been pretty steady.

i agree, best to keep living like a poor college student and get them out of the way fast. Once people start letting expenses pile up it'll get real hard to make the big payments. Hardest part is to start to process

The existing burden of student loans is a problem, but most folks did not go to schools with tuition in excess of 20K per year.

^^ I tried to edit this but I guess it didn't go through.

Was trying to say that I'd up that 20k estimate to 30k.  The state school I graduated from was 14k with in-state tuition - no books/housing included - and the 4-year program required a summer abroad which is not included in that 14k.

Where are you finding $200 per credit in an NAAB architecture program? Even when I started (80s, I guess I'm one of "ye old farts") the per credit hour cost at my state university was around $300. Today it's close to $700 per credit hour at that same public university.

My state university's in-state tuition is $664 per credit, and $1674 for out of staters. There's a huge range across the US.  Most of us aren't in Oregon.

Yes, as I said, there's a huge range. So what's with "bullshit unless there's something else included..."? Your experience is too limited for you to call bullshit on anything.

Balkins my point was not that NAAB accreditation directly affects tuition. But many of the lowest-priced degree-granting public colleges in the US have no NAAB programs. In most states throughout the middle of the US if you want to go to an in-state NAAB program the only one available is at the highest-priced in-state university - not at a lower-tuition state college. There are also many states that have no NAAB-accredited option at all in their state's public colleges or universities. Only a few of those states have reciprocity agreements with other states, allowing their students who want to study majors that aren't available in that state to go to the other state's institutions at in-state tuition. If you're not in a state with one of those deals, and your state doesn't have an NAAB program, then you're looking at out of state tuition unless you go live somewhere first and jump through the rest of the hoops to qualify as in-state.

And you're generalizing again. There are HUGE differences in many states between tuition for state colleges vs. the same state's state university - in some cases the university is almost twice the lowest price state college.

Here:  lowest priced in-state public college tuition + fees = approx 11k.  Highest priced state public university tuition + fees = approx 18k.  This does not include room and board.  So almost 40% higher.

for example the only NAAB public school in Michigan is University of Michigan. The other 3 schools are private. I believe at least one public school is working on accreditation tho.

The median architect's salary has increased by over 600% since 1972. The average year of college tuition nationwide increased by about 250% during that same time frame.

You're looking at just one school, and extrapolating that as if it were the case for all.  That's what I've been saying all along: stop generalizing.

I'm basing the 600% increase on US DOL figures. Median architect's salary in 1972: approx. $13,700. Median architect's salary in 2017: approx. $89,000. Increase: 650%.

My state university's in-state tuition was already about 5 times Oregon's in 1972. Was the situation that Oregon was supporting their university system with massive tax appropriations, and has cut back on that drastically over these decades? I don't see how else they could have run a university on $500 per kid. Even in the 70s the cost to operate a university was estimated at over 5k per student - and your out of state tuitions weren't anywhere near enough to support that either. If the state was paying for it through taxes and isn't anymore now then that could account for much larger rates of increase than some other states have seen.

Are you saying you pay extra AND save up to pay off a big chunk too? Just trying to understand. I've paid off 15k in the last 5 years; just started ramping up my payments about two years ago when I finally was able to move around some things in my life and afford to make larger payments. I pay about 600 extra to my smallest loan. I don't think I could do that AND save up a chunk to pay off at the same time.

I paid the absolute minimum for each loan and then made pretty big payments periodically. I felt a little better having money in case something bad happened vs keeping my savings account empty.

paying off the smallest loan is nice to free up cashflow, most important thing is to make progress. I liked to do simulations to show myself how much I was saving too.

You can only take that if your income is less than about 80k (if filing singly).

i think that's taxable income.

Better than nothing

b3ta, It's your MAGI (modified adjusted gross income). 

I'm sensing some cognitive dissonance here as we generally complain about not making enough but then are quick to shoot down using a tax break because we make too much. If recent graduates (those just starting out paying back their loans and thereby paying more toward interest in their monthly payment) are making more than 80K MAGI ... good for them. The deduction probably isn't going to matter as much to them anyway because they are raking it in. 

FYI, the AIA salary calculator is showing that you have to get to around Architect 3 before you might be making enough to worry about breaking the 80k threshold. That's a licensed architect with 10 or more years of experience. Most repayment plans try to put the borrower on a 10-year path to paying it back. Even if you get above the 80k threshold and you're still paying back your loans, you should be close to finishing at that point and you'd be paying less in interest so the deduction may not have been that much anyway.

I assume that most of those complaining are on the 30 year repayment plan? there are no pre-payment penalties so its a good idea to maximize flexibility. I agree, only a fool would turn down the interest deduction.

Everyday, I wasn't shooting down the tax credit - it's good for those who qualify. I was just adding that there's an income limit (and it phases out starting well before that anyway). The income limit has been raised slowly over the years. I didn't qualify for it for the last 5 of the 10 years that I was paying loans. I just wanted people to be aware of the fine print.

Formerlyunknown, sorry about my misunderstanding then. There should be plenty of fine print to spell it all out for people at the original link I shared if anyone is looking for more.

Assuming you're talking about fairly recent loans with low interest rates, you may come out ahead by paying the minimum while investing other available cash. Maybe. But by "the minimum" you'd need to mean the minimum on the original plan, not the minimum on a longer income-adjusted plan. Lots of people these days pay very little in their early working years because they put their loans in income-sensitive plans - but if you let there still be a sizable balance when you hit the forgiveness year of those plans then that amount that's forgiven is taxed as income in that year. So it isn't just that you've been paying "the minimum" all this time and racking up interest, now you get taxed on whatever the balance is that paying "the minimum" didn't take care of. For someone who never manages to make a lot of money in their career and keeps their payments low all along, the chunk forgiven at the end can be huge - in the hundreds of thousands of dollars for some - and the tax hit on that forgiven balance is all due at once.

Good point. If I'm not mistaken, even the loan forgiveness options can end up putting the balance that is forgiven in your taxable income. It's a big chunk of taxes if you aren't prepared for it or otherwise able to reduce the burden. All the more reason you should talk to a professional with a fiduciary duty rather than some anonymous people on the internet. Also a reason you shouldn't take on more debt than you can reasonably repay.

I believe you're correct. I don't know what most people's loan interest rates are, the one's that I focused on were 6.5%. I really struggled with the question of weather it was better to pay the debt or invest that money. Coming out of the great recession it was reasonable to assume that returns would be very good vs. the guaranteed "return" on debt. In hindsight, investing in the s&p 500 would have been the smarter option in strictly dollar figures. However, I like the freedom that paying off the loans offers. When I started my spreadsheet in 2012, the required payments were almost $900! Over time the req. has gone down and is now $260. I had many long discussions with my dad (a financial advisor) and the advisor that I actually use on this very topic.