Degrees: Master's in Social Work from Boston College, Bachelor's in Sociology from University of California, Santa Cruz
My wife Katherine and I were recently discussing when we're going to have kids. My thought is `Well, we need to be able to survive on our salaries now before we think of bringing someone else into this world.' Why you ask? Because we want our kids to have something she and I didn't have... a college fund.
We both received graduate degrees, hopeful that we could pay off the debt after getting jobs that paid slightly more. When all was said and done, what we actually got was $240,000 in debt.
As social workers, we both love what we do, and we come home with a smile. But I will give you one small example of how desperate our lives are: when my wife graduated in 2007, she owed approximately $41,000 in her private alternative loans.
Three years after we started paying the minimum payments on this loan, you would think it would go down. Instead, we now owe $48,000 because of the interest!
We have done the math -- and not including our private, car or credit card loans --I will be 67 years old before I am "done" paying on my school loans alone.
67 years old... that is too late to have a child!
