So I am kind of in a bind here. I am a journalist and make about 38K a year. However, I went to a private undergrand and my student loan payment is $615 per month. For the last few years, I’ve paid about $50 of that and my parents have – thankfully – picked up the rest.
Obviously, journalism prospects dont look good so I explored other options – one of them being law school. I’ve been accepted and am about to register in one of the schools. My parents want me to take this step; so much so that they’re kind of forcing me to do it in a way since htey said, if I don’t go, they will stop paying my loans.
While that would put me in a big-time bind economically if I don’t go, with about half of one paycheck going solely to loans, I’m not sure the alternative is any better. Say I go to law school and make a decent 80K salary; well my loans will be about $250 (undergrad and law school) and I will be swamped by debt in the same fashion I am now.
I just don’t know which situation is better; I feel screwed either way.
Job prospects for graduating law students are pretty poor right now. I don’t advise anyone to go to law school who doesn’t feel a strong call to the profession. Law school is difficult, and it will take you 6mo to a year to find work, probably paying very little more than you make already.
Yes there are jobs with ultra-high salaries. Unless you plan on being in the top 10% of a highly prestigious law school, or one of the top two students at a middling school (top 100) those jobs don’t exist. And “I’m at law school cause mommy told me I had to” is not exactly a recipe for high academic achievement.
Attorney pay distribution, class of 2009:
" The left-hand peaks of the graph reflect salaries of $40,000 to $65,000, which collectively accounted for 34% of reported salaries."
Sounds like he is rightly wary of more student loan debt, while his parents just think that more school is the answer.
My understanding is that a law degree hardly guarantees a high-paying career. There are big salaries at the top of the profession, but most recently graduated lawyers aren’t making so much money that five or six figure debt is no longer a burden.
Still more education isn’t necessarily a horrible idea. Perhaps the OP can consider cheaper options, like master’s programs from a less-expensive state school. He might even be able to find scholarships or assistanceships of some sort. It’s even possible in some programs to get teaching assistanceships that cover tuition and include a small stipend.
I assume by “journalism prospects don’t look so good right now” you’re referring to the impending demise of print media? You’d be much better served by looking for ways to transition your skill set in a way that will allow you to ride out the sea change. Journalism isn’t going to die, but it is going to be very different. If that means a small investment, you’d be much better served spending your money there than by going to law school. It really won’t pay off in the long run. You’d be better off trying to convince your parents (and if you google there are tons of articles about how oversaturated the legal field is by now) and if that doesn’t work, suck it up and deal with the debt now rather than quadrupling it.
Definitely the way to go. If you haven’t already consolidated all of your federal loans together and gotten onto an income-contingent repayment plan, you need to.
If you have a lot of private loans, those are much more tricky.
I agree. Think long and hard before planning to attend law school. And first read this article from the New York Times: Is Law School a Losing Game? Or this one: Law Students Lose the Grant Game as Schools Win.
Huh? Where are you going with this? If I’m reading between the lines correctly perhaps you mean to argue that $38k should be plenty to live a modest life?
Well… I agree with that to an extent. A young single person can live fairly comfortably on that kind of salary, assuming they don’t live somewhere with a very high cost of living. But $615/month in student loans takes a huge bite out of that. And the OP is probably going to be lucky to keep that job over the next decade, let alone advance his career and earn any more money. So I can’t blame him for not wanting to live on $1800 per month (if he’s lucky enough to keep his job) until he finishes paying his loans sometime in his late 30s.
You may want to look at finding another job that requires an advanced degree but doesn’t care about the specifics of the degree instead of going back to school for more education.
I graduated college with a degree in radio/television production. I loved every minute of it and I really thought I could do that with my life…that is, until I started applying for jobs in that field. Apparently because radio and television are fun and exciting people lined up around the block to do those jobs for free or very close to free and the best job offer I found was $7/hr to drive around a 300 mile radius and hang up posters and stuff for a radio station. I thought long and hard about what was more important to me, money or actually working with my major.
I determined that money was the more important of the two and took a job working at the bottom of the ladder at a Fortune 500 company for $11/hr. It wasn’t fabulous but I got to have regular hours, better pay than was available in the radio/television industry, and I built up experience working in corporate America. A couple years later I took a job in the insurance industry and never looked back. My current job is great, I have a great salary and benefits with a lot of room for advancement. I’m not doing what I loved when I graduated from college but I’m living debt free with my husband and a baby on the way, secure in the knowledge that I do an excellent job of providing for my family. Unless journalism is truly your passion you may want to consider trying to do something similar and jump into a new industry with better pay.
That depends heavily on geography. In Boston, new associates are still hiring on at $80k; in the South, many are lucky to start at a higher salary than their (experienced) paralegals. The one who can find jobs at all, that is.
I’m a current law student. The only reason I’m taking on the debt is that I already work at a mid-sized law firm, and my partner boss has offered me a job once I graduate.
I’m at a fourth-tier school, and the majority of my colleagues will be hard pressed to find jobs paying $40 grand. On the bright side, because it’s a fourth-tier school, it’s really cheap.
None of this should discourage the eager law student. All of it should discourage you, since it doesn’t sound like you’re very eager at all - and especially since your major reason for going is that the future of your current field looks pretty bleak.
Law school is hard, even at the shitty ones. I’m the smartest guy in my class - or at least among the top five - and I have yet to see an A on my end of semester grades.
If your parents demand that you go, let them pay for it. Not pay a portion of your student loans, but actually pay your tuition. If your chosen school offers a part-time program, think about doing that.
You say you “explored other options”. Were you just looking at degree programs that you could enter, or were you also looking for other jobs you can get with the work experience you do have? A key point here is that you do have work experience, you don’t have to go back to school to switch fields. I do know a few journalists in their 30s/40s, through my SO and a few other places. They are not all still working at newspapers but they had fairly steady careers and AFAIK none of them ever went back to school to stay employed. For example one guy does communications/media relations stuff at a bank. That sort of thing. (Actually “What can I do with X years experience in journalism?” might make an interesting IMHO thread.)
But I don’t think you’re screwed. $38K really isn’t a bad starting-out salary so you must be doing something right.
I really do not think it is a good idea for most people nowadays to go to law school. ESPECIALLY not someone who is already struggling to pay their student loans. And DOUBLE ESPECIALLY not someone who doesn’t even really want to do it but is just doing it because their parents have the outdated idea that law school is a golden ticket to big bucks.
Which one depends on how much you’ll make. The Times has had several pieces on lawyers not making much because they went to shit schools. Law school is not a ticket to a good life anymore unless you’re attend a top 40 school and arguably entrance into a 130k/year position is only available to the best at top 25 schools.
Have you considered looking in to advertising, branding, marketing, or PR?
I have one friend who parlayed a J degree and a cub news radio gig into a PR job for a local nonprofit, followed by a career in political and government communications.
My wife has an English Lit degree. After years of working in fine arts periodical publishing, she got a job doing copy writing for a branding agency. Though it’s full time freelance (hence, the benefits aren’t that hot), the hourly rate beats the pants off of anything she ever made working in magazines.
Damn, I thought we could bitch about our massive student loans here. I owe ~$32,000 and at my current salary level, I will be paying those loans off for approximately the rest of my life.
