Stuck With $170,000 of Student Loans

Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. I guess I'm just kind of asking for a little bit of advice or what my husband and I should do next. So he has a lot of student loan debt. However, not all of it is in his name. Part of it is in his father's name and part of it is in his mother's name. So with that being said, in total, it's probably about $170,000. And so we're paying the loan in his name as well and those of his parents' name and it's just it costs so much a month we cannot afford to live so i was just seeing maybe what your thoughts were on what we can do to pay it off quickly but also to maybe make that payment a little smaller what was the was the plan because it sounds like Parent Plus loans was the plan initially for him to pay back his parents or did they say hey we'll take out these loans so you can go to school like what was the plan um so i think it was just to take them out so he could go to school. Honestly, I've asked and they've never really given me an answer. They have, not only his, he has five other siblings that they have in their name, so we can't consolidate. Right. So are his parents broke? Is there a zero chance they're actually going to pay these loans? They would have to if we didn't pay. However, we feel guilty like, you know, these are his loans. So we just don't know what to do. They're trying to refinance them in our name. However, we aren't We can't do that. His interest rates are so low. That would be ridiculous to do. So there's a lot circulating here that needs clarity. The first thing is, and listen, you're talking to someone who has been exactly where you're at. Exactly. And so the first thing is let's get clarity on the story. And for him, it's probably a little uncomfortable because he's sitting in the middle of the two systems that he loves most. He's sitting in between your family, you guys, this family system and the family system he came out of. And he's just in the middle feeling like he's probably not doing well for either of them because of this debt. Right. So let's kind of recognize the, probably the guilt and shame that he's feeling. And when you talk to him about it, just say, Hey, I don't think we can move forward effectively until we can really understand what's going on and what the expectation was and what it is today. So if he can have that conversation with his mom and dad and say, what was your expectation? Because here's the way I viewed it. And if his expectation, I'm not trying to put words in his mouth, but if he thought, hey, my mom and dad are covering this and I'm covering this portion, he needs to assert that and say, you guys said that you were going to cover those loans and I was to cover these. And so for my family, I need to do what we said and cover the ones that i'm on the hook for now if that's not the case then we can talk about if you don't think that was the case and the case was no no matter what he's supposed to pay back all of them even the ones that aren't in his name fine we just need to figure out what it is yeah what do you think what's your gut telling you i do think maybe initially they were probably thinking they could help him out um and then each sibling decided they wanted to go to school and so now they can't afford to pay for, you know, five, five kids, college loan debt. So, um, I think even if that was initial plan, they would never see it that way, if I'm being honest. That's fair. And that's their choice by the way. So the second thing becomes owning what's yours and what's not yours. So today, what portion of the loans are his in his name? About, um, if I remember correctly, I do have a thing, but it's on my phone. So I can't look at it. It's 60 to 68,000 would be the realm that's in his name so i'd be focused on those i'd be very focused on knocking those out and i wouldn't be making payments on the other stuff because you got to pay off the stuff that's in your name because you guys are out here trying to have a life have a family and we do have a child so that makes it even more um you know we have to pay for daycare we have to pay for a lot of other things and it's just we're actually living with family because we can't pay rent right now wow because of his loans i'm guessing it's different family actually it's the same so it makes it harder because they are helping us with living um i'm screaming for you there's some toxic codependency here i mean isn't breakfast awkward yeah i mean it is awkward so before um we just moved back so that is why we were with them i was without a job um we moved back to this state i was without a job for a couple months so that is also why when we were not in this state We could afford to live and save a little, but that was it. So you're both working currently. We were still barely scraping by. I'm about to start my new job. It took a couple months. What's your new household income? So our new household income will probably be about $90,000 a year. We were a little higher beforehand, but that's where we are now. Why is it so low with all these student loans? What did he pursue? So we both have a master's degree. However, his is in aesthetic management. so finding a job kind of in that with only a few years of experience has been a little hard getting a higher paying job but it took almost 200 grand to get through undergrad and the master's for him yes okay there's a lot that has to be unraveled here and sorry yes what i'm here here here's here's the reality you guys got to get out of that house with the quickness because as long as you're living there you won't feel like you have the cojones to have the conversations that you need to have which is mom and dad or mom and dad-in-law you guys made a choice and it adversely affected you and it adversely affected us and the truth is you were the adults when the choice was made and we were the minors and so because of that it really was your choice and we cannot pay for that and that's a very hard conversation to have when you're living in their home because if you stop paying you're going to overhear the phone call with the collections place calling your parents calling his parents so this is this is just a dark situation all around so the key is you asked us how do you get out of this well you're going to have to up the income and then it's smallest to largest debts let's knock this out using the debt snowball and i agree with Jade i would focus on your debts for now the debts that are in his name only to knock those out then we can figure out the rest down the road because that sounds like it's going to take a couple years just to knock out his debts yes so this might be a five to six to seven year journey at this rate if you're lucky so that's where the income really needs to go up okay so yeah i think and there's no shade on that you guys you're not wrong you can't even afford to live you certainly can't afford to pay off debts that they signed for um as the adults so this is tough gosh i can't say it enough you know if you're a parent and you're in the situation where you have kids going to college you've got to be realistic and you've got to be the one to draw the line in the sand and say we we simply can't afford that and you can't either because it would be debt so this is you guys's chance to kind of change the story here and just start on a new path and do it the right way and not indict your children on down the line and two thousand dollars a month and just minimum payments that is soul crushing it's soul crushing and i hate it for the parents too because you know they had good intentions it's just that's not enough the can down the road said future us will figure this out let's just take the loans out and here we are it doesn't work that way my friends unfortunately create your free every dollar budget today the simplest way to budget for your life