College Leaves Many in Debt
It is fascinating that the one thing that is supposed to get you a leg up in life is also the thing that can give you the most financial problems. Across the country there are millions of students taking out student loans as they cannot afford the rising costs of getting a college education.
Most families can not afford to send their child to school and pay all of their bills. Students then have to look for alternate ways of financing their education – which falls to grants, scholarships and loans. All of which leave the student with a nice amount of debt to contend with.
About two-thirds of all students graduate college with a student loan, and the average balance is $19,237. Many feel that college should be free here as it is in many other countries, but as of yet that dream has not come true.
The government says that once students have exhausted all other means of getting “free” money, they should look to the federal student-loan program for their loans. Unsubsidized federal Stafford loans have a fixed rate of roughly 6.8%.
Private student loans can range from 6% to 14% - which obviously ends up giving you much more debt than you had originally envisioned on having. One more hurdle for many students is that they are not informed of their choices – and therefore do not make good ones when it comes to their education.
Schools say that parents know more now than they did then – but they still don’t know enough. Once they get ready to graduate there are programs that will help them with their debt consolidation, and depending on the school you can handle it through the US government fairly painlessly.
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