Breakdown of Debt Forum

[hobie2515]

Good morning everyone. I have created a spreadsheet which some people may find useful. Essentially it breaks down and compares student loan amounts, calculates interest and shows how long it would take to pay the balance off, depending on a few variables. The highlighted cells are variables and can be changed to your own situation.

For example, just looking at the numbers I have entered, you can see "School A" requires around $44,000 in loans each year while "School B" requires nothing (however you pulled it off). School A has a starting salary of $70,000 while School B is $55,000. I entered an estimated 3% in annual salary growth and then allocated 25% of the annual salary to pay of the loan balance. Obviously everyone and every job is different so you can change them to your own hypothetical situation. The spreadsheet then takes that allotted money and begins to pay off your loan balance, starting with the highest interest loan, moving on to the next highest loan rate, and paying them off until all your loans are paid. Once they are paid off it just takes your entire salary and counts it as net revenue. So you can see in the example School A takes 12 years to pay off, but after 32 years of work end up making a higher net than School B.

Obviously there are shortcomings to this spreadsheet so please don't rip me apart. If you have constructive criticism or thoughts on how to improve the spreadsheet, I welcome your thoughts. I am aware these are all broad estimations and that there are numerous other components (cost of living, job situation, etc.) that are not factored in. This is just to give you a very basic idea of student debt, paying off loans and how it all affects you in the long run. Hope this helps a few people.

https://docs.google.com/a/elon.edu/spre ... odXc#gid=0

[dingbat]

Nice. Mind if I add it to this:
http://www.top-law-schools.com/forums/v ... 1&t=202470

[hobie2515]

Yup go right ahead.

[hobie2515]

Here is the file in case anyone wants it to have for their own to play around with. Might be better since Google Docs is a little more difficult to work with.

http://www.filedropper.com/budgetnumbers

[North]

Nicely done.

[lawhaus]

What's the difference between un-subsidized and subsidized stafford loans.
I thought the latter doesn't exist anymore

[hobie2515]

What's the difference between un-subsidized and subsidized stafford loans.
I thought the latter doesn't exist anymore

You are correct there is no difference anymore. I created this last year when I believe the subsidized was still available. What it does in this spreadsheet is the total loan balance for the subsidized loan balance doesn't accrue interest for the first 3 years. Rather than go back and change this I just left it because a) I'm lazy and b) it's just and additional $3500 in initial interest so it's not going to severely affect the point at which your loans would be paid off.