Strategic bankruptcy? I mean, it’s not like you’re gonna buy a house or anything on credit anytime soon with your salary. As a budding lawyer, you should make a project out of looking at the legal and fiscal implications and then make a decision.
You can’t get rid of student loans by declaring bankruptcy, which is yet another reason to rethink the go-to-law-school plan.
Exactly what I was thinking. As a parent, no way would I continue to pay those loans.
Unless I was the one who demanded he go to the expensive private school.
To be fair, he said that until recently he made $30k and now is making $38k.
When I first went to work out of University, my student loan payment was only about $250 but my daycare expense was $400 a month for my two kids. I managed that with no other help on $24k a year.
I don’t see where he said he lives at home. And there’s no reason his parents shouldn’t pay for his education; it’s what parents are supposed to do.
I disagree with you. I don’t think parents are “supposed to” pay for their kids’ education. It’s nice if they can afford it, but I don’t think they should be expected to.
And obviously the OP’s parents disagree with you. Sorry you and Cubsfan are so hard up for cash that such a thing makes you vocally envious.
Obviously, if they can’t afford it, they shouldn’t be expected to. But the OP’s parents can afford it, and Cubsfan is giving the OP a hard time for letting them do their job. I wonder if he holds it against people whose parents paid for college outright.
The point is that saying “I know a guy who went to Harvard law and now works as a Wal-mart greeter” is not much of an argument about the OP’s likely prospects because post-graduation success is dependent on a whole host of factors.
I believe there’s no pre-payment penalty. However, you may be able to consolidate at such a low rate that it’d be nuts to pay early. For example, my loans are consolidated at around 2%, so I’m paying the minimum forever even if I win the lottery.
I am totally baffled how you got “vocally envious” from my post. 
How do you know the OP’s parents disagree with me?
To clarify, I don’t hold it against anybody who wants to pay for their kids’ education, or anyone who gets lots of scholarships, or anything else. I just don’t think parents are obligated to pay for their kids’ education.
You said:
and
Well, the OP’s parents are paying the bills, aren’t they? Nobody’s forcing them to do that? I ordinarily presume that a person’s mental state (including their beliefs) may be inferred from their longstanding, deliberate, and voluntary actions.
What other reason could explain why you and Cubsfan were motivated to come in here and make derogatory remarks?
(And to stave off the oh-so-innocent “How were my remarks derogatory?” wonderment: Cubsfan’s questions were rhetorical, obviously. And “Pretty charmed life, kiddo :rolleyes:” speaks for itself, doesn’t it? And you ratified them, along with the derision they contained, entirely by saying “Exactly what I was thinking.”)
Then how was it that Cubsfan expressed “exactly what [you were] thinking”? Because he was holding it against the OP that he accepted his parents’ offer to pay down his loans.
The federal government expects them to, which is why Uncle Sam includes an “expected family contribution” based on income when awarding financial aid.
You’re right, I shouldn’t have said “exactly”. You will note that later in that post I clarified about the $30k/$38k vs. the $40 k.
The agreement I’m speaking of is that parents are “expected”. We don’t know why the parents are doing it. Perhaps they do think it’s “expected”. Perhaps they are full of the milk of human kindness. Perhaps they think they’ll be cursed with bad mojo if they don’t. Perhaps they are doing it grudgingly. My point is, we just don’t know.
RNATB: I’m aware of that, as the parent of four grown children. I disagree with the government too. 
These are student loans, not family contributions. I don’t recall if my parents were required to sign anything on my student loans but they were clearly my responsibility, not theirs.
You’re kind of missing the point. The reason the OP had student loans is presumably because his parents didn’t pay for him to go to school in the first place.
Has the OP read some of those links posted on the first page? I realised things weren’t entirely rosy for new lawyers in the US but it’s far worse than I ever imagined. Some highlights:
- $40,000+ per annum tution for bog standard schools (‘Third Tier Toilets’). Oh and don’t forget your living expenses.
- Around a million practicing lawyers, but 90,000 new grads a year.
- Qualified lawyers scrabbling to get $20 an hour document review contracts for a month or so at a time.
- A flat or declining market for legal services so no prospect of growth in the industry to clear the back log.
So it comes down to this - do you want to give up your current job incur a debt of $120,000 plus to enter a profession that is at best saturated and may well be in decline? Personally I’d steer well clear.
If all of this stems from the power that the parents’ hold on the apron strings, I say figure out a way to cut them and fast!
They are kind to be paying your college debt. But it seems like they’re obligating you to go to law school in exchange for this. Well, bump that! I don’t know where you live, but $38K should be enough to work out some type of arrangement that doesn’t leave you homeless but still gives you some more slack on that leash. You really can’t do $600 a month? How about $500 or $400? Your parents can still make the payments to the lender and you could pay them back on whatever schedule you all agree to.
Going to law school to get out of this mess sounds like a very bad idea! Sounds like the way to get out of this bind is to be a grown-up and sing the words, “It’s my life. Don’t you forget!” Pay your parents off and keep doing what feels right to you. Not what people say you should do (and that includes our advice in this thread).
I don’t know enough about your profession to know if it’s bleak, but you just got a good job, right? And $38K isn’t that bad for someone who’s just starting out. Hell, when I graduated with a PhD I started off at $35K in one of the most expensive places in the country (Miami). I didn’t have student debt, but I did have an embarrassing amount of credit card debt that seemed to take forever to pay off. But I did. By making $600/month payments. I didn’t have a car from the 21st century and didn’t whoop it up on the weekends, but I did it. Maybe $600/month is cutting it too closely for you, but I would still sit down with the folks and strike up a deal.
If you go to law school, you might like it. You might be a fabulous lawyer and get a $80-$90K job right out of school. But it seems more probable, based on what I have read, that you’re more likely to face more stress and hardship than what it’s worth, if your heart isn’t 100% committed to it. And after it’s all been said and done, will you be able to go back to journalism? I don’t know. But I know I wouldn’t want to take the risk of being out of the game I love for four years. Instead, I’d stick with that and evolve with the changes rather than bailing out completely because Mom and Dad said so.
My parents paid for a good chunk of my college, and I had student loans. I’m not sure I see the connection.
As I remember, “expected family contribution” is the amount that your parents were expected to contribute, in addition to any loans or scholarships you might get. When I went (over twenty years ago), things broke down almost precisely so that each of three (the scholarships I received from the school, the family contribution and my loans) paid for about a third of my college expenses. And I graduated in 1988 with about $20,000 in loans.