Student loan debt woes

Student loans bite. Specifically those blasted private loans that I got suckered into at the University of Central Florida. Oh yes, I am calling you out Financial Aid Office People at UCF. Argh!

If you do not have any private student loans, let me share the pain of them with you for a moment. Private student loans have a variable interest rate. Private student loans do not come with that whole ability to defer them like you can with regular student loans. If you want to defer your private student loans for any reason (job loss, attending school again, etc) you have to cough up $150 for the deferment. You also cannot consolidate private student loans without going through this whole process of applying for a new loan where you get a hard pull on your credit report and so on. And you are not guaranteed that you will get the consolidation as it is based on creditworthiness.

I can think of only two pluses to private student loans. One, if you declare bankruptcy you can declare these unlike regular student loans. Two, thanks to the Fed lowering the rate I have seen a rate decrease on these loans.

I currently have a total of 5 private loans with Sallie Mae. And the average interest rate is 7.8% right now. And that total amount is currently around $31,500. That sad thing is looking at each of those loans and seeing that I owe more than the original loan! The smallest loan has a balance of $3,437 but the original balance was $2,000.

It gets worse though. When I look at my payment plan it shows that I will end up paying something like $40,000 in interest by the time I get them paid off. My payment plan has them paid off in October of 2028.

Wow, that means that I will be 51 years old when my student loans are paid off. If that is not sad, then I do not know what is.