my debt situation
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my debt situation
| Thu, 08-25-2005 - 11:36pm |
Hi everyone, I am lurker on this board and read just about every message that is posted, however I think I've only posted once or twice here. I wanted to actually give a formal hello and let you all in on my debt situation. First of all, I am 22, a recent college graduate and have a bf of six years (fiance if we could get our finances in order). Right now I am 45K in debt from student loans, 25 is federal loans which I consolidated, and the rest is private loans that I intend to consolidate through CFS. I have been unable to find a job in my field (elementary education) so I am still working my crappy job that got me through college (12k a year) and this year I will also be subbing in local districts. I am also attending graduate school and although I have a good chunk of the money I need for my first semester tuition I still do owe them 1300 dollars on top of what I have saved just for this first semester. School bills aside, I have two credit cards, one is my target card and it is at 21% but I only owe 247 dollars on it. My other card is a lower interst visa card, about 9% interest. My current balance is 4200 dollars. It's been sitting in the 3400 range until recently when my bf's new job in real estate caused us the need to buy him a laptop. I also have a car loan and owe 2300 on that. That's just me...then there is of course my dbf's bills. I am doing ok...make all the payments on time even if it's only the minimum. My poor bf however is drowning. He owes 35K in student loan debt, which equals 310 dollars a month in payments (not even counting the money I will be paying out soon for student loans) plus a car loan, credit card, debt to dell computer company, cell phone, etc. Overall the situation is really awful and I feel like my life is screwed over without even having started. WE are 80K in debt just from student loans, not counting all the other debts. We are only 22. He just got set up in a real estate job so we are praying that he gets some sales just to get caught up on his bills...he is drowning...everything is late and it's a question of paying whichever one is the latest when he does get some money. I keep trying to help but I can only do so much and still protect my credit by keeping my head above water. Any advice would be appreciated. I just don't know how we will ever get out of debt or ever get a home, have kids, etc when we are so in debt at such a young age. They say school debt is good debt but as an elementary school teacher I will only make 34K a year....was it worth it to be 45K in debt plus graduate school costs...? AGh! 600 a month in student loan payments between the two of us seems like so much. And they will be around until we are like 55...how will we ever afford to have a normal life or a home?

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Is working in a program that would discharge some of the student loans an option? I know I've heard of programs where you work in a less desirable school district in return for some student loan pay-off. I don't know anything about that process (radio/television undergrad) but you might look into it.
One advantage of being young is you might find it easier to move/find a cheaper cost of living and area with more schools now than you will later on as well.
Taleyna
I'm a teacher too, so I thought I'd give you some ideas.
Where we are, school doesn't start until labor day. So if your schools haven't started yet, I guarantee that some of them are scrambling to find last minute teachers (even if they have started they may have open positions that subs are filling for now). People often sign their contracts for the next year to keep their options open, but then they decide to move or have a kid or something. Call the local districts every day and tell them to please call you if they have any last minute openings and that you will be ready to interview and take a job at any time. I would even go to the district offices and ask to speak to the person in charge of elementary school hiring in person. Give him or her your resume in person and ask him or her to please call you if there are any openings. This will make the chances much greater that you, and not somebody else who submitted a resume, will get the call if there is an opening.
Also, are you long-term subbing or just day to day subbing? Try to get a long-term sub position if you can. Teachers are always taking maternity leave. That way you'll be at the same school for several weeks and they'll get to know you. We have hired several people who were successful long-term subs (why hire an unknown person if you already know your long-term sub will do a good job?).
Or, look for a job as a secretary at an elementary school. We hired a teacher who was a secretary first. That will probably pay in the low to high $20k's and give you benefits and a foot in the door with the district. Are you certified to teach up to 8th grade? There might be more middle school openings than elementary right now, so you could start out in middle school and then transfer to an elementary school (in my district you have to wait 3 years to transfer, but with special permission can transfer after 1 year, which is what I did -- went from a low-income, poorly-run middle school to your average high school).
I don't know if this helps, but if you pay $100 a month on your 9% credit card, you'll get it paid off in 4 1/4 years. If you can manage $200 a month (ouch, I know), you'll get it paid off in less than 2 years! I would at least make it a goal to pay $75 a month (pay it off in a little over 6 years). $50 a month will take over ten years. So the point is, the more you pay now, the less interest will accrue, and the faster you'll get it paid off. Of course, you can just pay the minimum for a few months while you're targeting the high interest card and looking for a teaching position, but it's good to know how much you have to pay to get it paid off by a certain date.
Is your current $12k/year job something you can do at night, on weekends, over Christmas, or during the summer? If not, you can find some other part time work when school's out. Summer school will usually pay an additional $2k or so, and some after school activities will pay a stipend ($1k or more to be a coach -- you can coach at a middle or high school if there's nothing like that at the elementary level).
Why are you getting a masters? Carefully compare how much more money you would make with a masters (maybe $1k to $3k more a year) with how much it will cost you to get the masters (take time, not just money, into the equation). Is it worth it? Maybe you should just focus on getting a teaching position.
If I had my masters, I would make $1700 more a year, which is less than 5% more. I did the math and figured out that spending a year getting my masters would cost my tuition and also cost me the money I could have earned without a masters. So I wouldn't have earned $32,000 that first year and would be in debt for the tuition. An extra 5% a year isn't worth it for a long time. Instead, I oversee the school newspaper, which actually takes very little extra time (since I now teach a newspaper class instead of an English class that period) and which pays $1500 more a year.
Maybe you could do Teach for America for two years (it will be tough, but maybe it's better than no teaching job). You would receive a forebearance on your loans during the two years you would be teaching through them, and then they would give you $4725 each year ($9450 total) towards paying your existing or future student loans.
Has your boyfriend been hired by a local real estate firm? That way he would get some leads with walk-ins. I know that is a really tough business to get into. He might need to consider doing something that isn't commission based while you two get on your feet. It is a good idea to have some money saved up before entering a commission based business where it might take a while to start making money. Or maybe he can get a job at night and on weekends and do both?
Don't despair! Your situation is very common, so don't think it's something you did wrong. You and your boyfriend have each other and good heads on your shoulders. I know you will chip away at it little by little.
Edited 8/26/2005 1:07 pm ET ET by phoenixgirl12
Edited 8/26/2005 1:08 pm ET ET by phoenixgirl12
You might also look into research assistantships or teaching assistantships in those fields. I did my MA and now I'm working on my Ph.D. I have a 5,000 student loan and DH has more (13,000) for the experience. We could have done it with no loans but we bought a house at the end. My assistantship covered tuition plus paid me a stipend and then we lived on campus.
Taleyna
OK, for some reason I can't figure out how to link websites (maybe I have to be a paying member or something?); it keeps adding all this stuff to it. If you go to the PA department of education website, click on teaching on the top and then job vacancies on the side, there is a service called tips (teaching in pennsylvania schools) that you can sign up for. You have to register to look at the openings, so I didn't go that far.
It's great (well, maybe not for you, but for your checkbook) that you are living at home right now. That makes your expenses much less, so a lot more of your paycheck can go toward debt without having to worry about next month's rent.
If psychology is what you want to do, then go for it. But if all you really want to do is teach elementary school and you're just in grad school because you got in and your grandma is helping you, then maybe you're sort of getting off track. I don't know you at all, but you made it sound like you were going for other people, not necessarily yourself.
I also found a website called (add the http and www to the front, I'm hoping I can type the link without it changing it this way): pa-educator.net but the closest to your area listed were Schuykill and Lehigh counties . . . those are probably really far away, right?
Anyway, there have to be some openings in your area. A lot of the baby-boomers are retiring, and people move and stop working to have children. The problem is just getting the district to call you when they have a zillion applicants. To do that you need to be persistent. I never once got an interview through sending in a resume. Basically, other than one interview that I got because I knew the pricipal, all the other ones were opened up to me because I asked the human resources person that day if there were openings, and then she'd say, "Oh, I have an opening at this school you can interview for." She was never ever going to call me on her own. They hire whichever people magically make it to the top of their pile by having good resumes or interviews at job fairs, and whichever people keep bugging them for interviews.
Another opening:
kindergarden teacher, Elk Lake School District in Susquehanna County (contact Dr. Bush today) elklakeschool.org The listing asks teachers interested in transfering to send a letter of intent by today, but if somebody is transfering, that means a position is open where that teacher came from. So there's an opening there somewhere.
OK, I am not too impressed with the PA school websites. Here in VA every district has the same address (county.k12.va.us) and is required to post their job openings, even though sometimes they cheat and just say, "elementary school teachers" instead of specific openings. I had to search everywhere to find the district websites, and then very few of them even listed any openings. But that doesn't mean they don't have them!
:) LOL . . . you know what's funny, in VA our state standardized tests are called the SOLs (standards of learning). Didn't anyone realize that was a commonly used acronym for something else?
It's true, a lot of people use personal connections to get jobs. My first year, I worked on a team with a guy whose mom did all the hiring for the county. He did such a bad job (graded about three things per marking period, kids totally out of control, etc.) that they hired somebody as a "tutor" and made him take over this guy's classes. But they still wouldn't fire him because of who his mom was, so he got paid until the end of the year and then "resigned"! (It was so bad that one time a kid yelled through the wall, "Miss Phoenixgirl!!! You can suck my hairy . . .!" and his room was so noisy that he didn't hear it. I had to march over there, identify the kid, and send him to the office myself.) Another teacher at my school has parents who work at the central office, and she got emergency certification to teach Spanish. Well, she failed the licensure exam . . . three times (OK, maybe the first time you weren't prepared, but you study, study, study for the next one) and had to be let go. So guess who we hired as a long-term Spanish sub for somebody on maternity leave? That's right, the idiot who couldn't pass her exam! I've heard her speaking Spanish, and I think I could do a better job even though I'm an English teacher and barely remember my Spanish.
Sorry, not helpful, I know. :) But hopefully if you sub, you'll get to know people, and then you'll be the person with the connections.
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