I'm a Stay-at-Home Mom Even Though I've Got Major Student Debt
I'm a stay-at-home mom with a mountain of student loans. That certainly was not the plan when I received my diploma.
I had such high hopes. Double major in Elementary Education and Special Ed. Letters of recommendation from every one of my professors, both my cooperating teachers, and the Dean of the Education Department. An offer to start teaching the following semester from one school, or after the holidays in another.
I was going places-until we started pricing out daycare ($1,600) for the kids, if I was working full time. Estimate of take-home after taxes as a first-year teacher? $1,650. I would literally be working my butt off for $50 a week.
So instead of heading places after graduation, I headed home to the kids.
My husband earns enough to cover rent and utilities. But then six months after I walked across the stage, student loans came calling. They didn't care that I wasn't working. Or that if I was working, I'd be earning a measly $200 a month. They estimated my loan repayments to start at $748 a month.
We didn't make enough on one salary to pay that amount, especially knowing that my husband would have to start repaying his student loan a few months later. Our combined total was over 100k in student loans, with an estimated payment of $1,600 a month.
I called to consolidate our loans. No go. Even though we were married, our student loans were separate. They did, however, let us extend our loans, which left us paying slightly less.
How did other students do it, I wondered? How did any student do it? The average student graduating in 2015 owes $35,000 in student loans. With a standard five-year loan, that's over $600 a month. That's a tall order for someone fresh out of college.
We had to come up with a plan to repay them. First, we extended our repayment schedule from five to 10 years, which meant considerably lower monthly payments, but more than half of our payments going directly to interest.
Second, I started freelancing and working from home. Mostly early in the mornings or very late at night. I didn't earn much, but enough to cover groceries and other daily living expenses. By sticking to a very tight budget, we could manage.
And then we did what too many newly graduated students have to do: borrowed money from our parents. As ashamed as I am to admit that, I'm also grateful we had the option. It means that my in-laws now have permission to judge every financial decision we make, but it also means we have a little breathing room.
Unfortunately, these solutions are only temporary fixes to a problem that's going to weigh us down for the next 10 years. It means a decade of skrimping and saving and scraping together every penny we have. A decade of no social life or slush fund. A decade of constantly worrying that someone else will require a large sum of money and we'll literally have no savings to speak of.
Sometimes I wonder if I should have taken the job right out of the gates. After two years or four, I'd have tenure and be earning a good deal more. It would have been a couple years of stress and struggling, tops, and then we could have been debt free.
But that would have meant leaving my kids in someone else's care. Now, I get to see them through these formative years. I get to be there for them every single day.
One day, I'll apply for a teaching position. Maybe when both the kids are in school full-time and the cost of daycare won't be so high. Or maybe I'll wait until the loans are all paid off.
By that time, our oldest will be applying for colleges and my teacher's salary can go right towards paying those loans off.
