Fordham v GW ($) vs Wake ($) [No Retake Advice] Forum

[johnnysacks]

delete

[Johann]

Appreciate all the responses but the crunch IS coming and so are the meteors. The universal consensus is that Fordham at sticker is financial suicide. But I'd like to hear more about WHY that level of debt is so crushing and demoralizing. You have to understand for a lot of wide young eyed students who are either J-KD or have relatively little experience in the outside world, 180K debt upon graduation just sounds like a big number. Its hard to dissuade many of us from taking that leap of faith with the hope of Biglaw when the only thing against you is a seemingly large imaginary number. How does that level of debt impact quality of life and ability to do things? Why is it so soul crushing, defeating, and ruinous as many on JD Underground, Reddit, and TLS lament to hordes of overly optimistic T50 snowflakes. Help me out here guys, I've read many blogs, articles, and posts on this subject but it sounds difficult to fathom why that level of debt isn't worth a 30%ish shot at the big leagues.

PAYE and REPAYE provide good repayment plans that cap your debt payment at 10% of your pretax monthly income for 20 years. I'm not very debt averse if you don't have options outside of law/more school because the education is an INVESTMENT in a 30-year (or longer) career. once you time value of money these HUGE 200k investments over a career, its basically the equivalent of a lunchtime sandwich. So if you consider the sacrifice of making your lunch every workday rather than eating out (not saying you have to do this specifically but just putting the actual debt and investment into context as to alternative options) to be worth the time/annoyance of doing that to get out of your current career, then yeah its not a bad investment.

Because the downsides of the risk are largely taken out of the equation (or at least greatly minimized) by income based repayment options like PAYE and REPAYE, whether the investment is worth it is less about your outcome and what you become and more about what alternative you are escaping.

For reference, when I made ~40k my monthly payments under PAYE were $150. Making $200k, my monthly payments under PAYE have been $1k. I've got tons of friends on IBR that have no noticed zero negative effects of getting housing loans etc (and I just got 1 myself with only the monthly debt payment factoring into the mortgage analysis rather than the total outstanding debt). The year I made 40k I was able to contribute to my retirement, go on a vacation outside the US, and save some money for the future in addition to servicing my >$200k law school debt.

Bottom line, the debt is impossible to be unmanageable under PAYE/REPAYE because it tracks your income at 10% of your income for 20 years.

ETA: other bottom line is if you have a good career with advancement opportunities, you probably should not go to law school unless you absolutely despise everything about your job.