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I thought I'd owe 210,000 MAYBE 220,000

At bar was 264,000.

DELTA = 54k.

I was planning on owing $60-75k at graduation.

I was planning on ~ 75-80k. Will probably be around 115k.

Planned on being at 90k, ended up having my housing taken care of my final two years of law school (unexpectedly), and had 15k on top of my summer money for a diversity fellowship. Graduated with 110k. FML.

Estimated - 180k
Actual - 210k

Been working and now net worth positive six figures. Hang in there - but holy shit was law school a super big financial mistake. If I could go back in time, I'd make very different decisions.

Anonymous User wrote:Estimated - 180k
Actual - 210k

Been working and now net worth positive six figures. Hang in there - but holy shit was law school a super big financial mistake. If I could go back in time, I'd make very different decisions.

How long have you been working for?

Anonymous User wrote:Estimated - 180k
Actual - 210k

Been working and now net worth positive six figures. Hang in there - but holy shit was law school a super big financial mistake. If I could go back in time, I'd make very different decisions.

How long have you been working for?

Anonymous User wrote:I was planning on ~ 75-80k. Will probably be around 115k.

I bet it ends up over 120k

To those who have posted, how did you underestimate your debt? Did you underestimate living expenses, forget to factor in taxes or interest, what?

Anonymous User wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:Estimated - 180k
Actual - 210k

Been working and now net worth positive six figures. Hang in there - but holy shit was law school a super big financial mistake. If I could go back in time, I'd make very different decisions.

How long have you been working for?

Midlevel, so that gives you a rough estimate.

If I stayed in my prior career, I'd probably have a higher net worth at this point while still making six figures now (although less than biglawyers do).

Estimated: 250k
Actual: 260k

Phil Brooks wrote:To those who have posted, why did you underestimate your debt? Did you underestimate living expenses, forget to factor in taxes or interest, what?

Because my estimate wasn't intended to be precise and I viewed +/-10k as a marginal difference when we're talking about a quarter million dollars of debt.

bk1 wrote:Estimated: 250k
Actual: 260k

Phil Brooks wrote:To those who have posted, why did you underestimate your debt? Did you underestimate living expenses, forget to factor in taxes or interest, what?

Because my estimate wasn't intended to be precise and I viewed +/-10k as a marginal difference when we're talking about a quarter million dollars of debt.

10k off a 250k estimate is less than a 5% variation. I'd say that's pretty good. In that range you don't need to justify why you went off.

Phil Brooks wrote:To those who have posted, why did you underestimate your debt? Did you underestimate living expenses, forget to factor in taxes or interest, what?

More like all of the above.

People forget the cost of living loans only cover 9 months. So people end up taking loans to do unpaid internships and shit. Or they make some money at the internship but spend it all on cost of living for summer and the next year. I made 15 an hour 1L but that shit didn't go to reducing loans, it went to cost of living.

People ignore origination fees- 4%. A 100k loan is really 104% the second you sign.

People ignore interest. Your first year loans essentially sit there earning 6-7% interest for over three years before you repay. That 70k first year loan is 85k during the first repayment period. This is like 30k on a full boat loan.

People ignore tution and COL increases: year 1 is 70k, but then tuiton goes up 5k and COL goes up 1k. Year two is then 76k, Year three tution goes up 4k and COL goes up 1k. Thats 81k. You end up borrowing 17k more than you thought you would. And that's all got origination and interest.

You won't actually spend a dime of your SA money on loans.

Expected 140k. Attended HYS with a pretty substantial grant.

Wound up with 180k. Grant decreased a good bit for 2L and by way more 3L. Plus, I just wasn't as financially responsible with my summer funds as I should have been (or thought I would be).

After a couple years of clerking, I'm still around 170k.

Law school was great, and I love my friends from there, but hot damn I'd run fast as hell toward my Dillard if I could do it all over again.

I thought I would come out debt free, ended up clearing about 160k. Full scholarship, part time student, full time job. I was eligible for GI Bill. At the time it paid cost of attendance at most expensive state school, regardless of what I was actually paying. So every semester VA would pay school 15k and then school would cut me a check for 15k. Also got paid BAH that I wouldn't have gotten except for being in law school.

I'm a 3L. Was thinking 60K max, now thinking it'll be more like 80K, it'll probably actually be like 90K.

I'm afraid to check my loan balance now.

Eta: Yeah it's at 90k now

BigZuck wrote:I'm a 3L. Was thinking 60K max, now thinking it'll be more like 80K, it'll probably actually be like 90K.

I'm afraid to check my loan balance now.

Eta: Yeah it's at 90k now

all abort dat 100k train.

Fingers crossed, I think I'll come in below what I estimated.

I thought I'd have $160k from law school alone + $30k from undergrad for a total of $190k. After taking out all of my 2L loans, I'm at ~$115k between undergrad and the first two years of law school, and I only (only ) plan on taking out another ~$35k 3L year. Should put me around $160kish total. I think it comes from doing the opposite of what others did in that I overestimated how much I would need for COL and underestimated how far I could take what I had coming in and what I made during the summers.

3L. Estimated in the low 80's, will probably be high 80's or 90 when I start cuz I was only half-good with paying down dat interest.

Anonymous User wrote:. Grant decreased a good bit for 2L and by way more 3L.

Any chance you could say more about this? Was this because you made fairly substantial amounts during the summer, or because your school decreased their aid based on some other aspect of the aid formula?

SamuelDanforth wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:. Grant decreased a good bit for 2L and by way more 3L.

Any chance you could say more about this? Was this because you made fairly substantial amounts during the summer, or because your school decreased their aid based on some other aspect of the aid formula?

Not the anon you're responding to but YHS will reduce grant aid based on summer income and changed family financials (for "dependent" students). So if your family has a better year financially and/or you get a paid summer job (or like if you receive an unexpected cash gift/other increase in assets), the grant will change quite a bit. I know I'm anticipating that mine will go down by about 14-15K.

lc39 wrote:

SamuelDanforth wrote:

Anonymous User wrote:. Grant decreased a good bit for 2L and by way more 3L.

Any chance you could say more about this? Was this because you made fairly substantial amounts during the summer, or because your school decreased their aid based on some other aspect of the aid formula?

Not the anon you're responding to but YHS will reduce grant aid based on summer income and changed family financials (for "dependent" students). So if your family has a better year financially and/or you get a paid summer job (or like if you receive an unexpected cash gift/other increase in assets), the grant will change quite a bit. I know I'm anticipating that mine will go down by about 14-15K.

Original anon. Yeah, even though my situation didn't really change from 1L to 2L, grant still fell over 8k. I split 2L summer, and grant fell another 14k or so. So my 38k grant during 1L became a 16k grant come 3L with the only real change being that I got a paying 2L job. Add interest and a lack of financial responsibility and wham you're debt is way more than you expected.

This is a great thread for all 0Ls.

I expected ~ 75K, and ended up at exactly that, but a lot of luck. I had a decent paying 2L summer gig and saved 10K to use as living expenses 3L year. Also, after bar exam + buying a used car I owed ~ 95K when I started my job in September following the bar.

I've been working for 6 months and should have my loans paid off in ~ 18 months. Don't think I'll stay in the law for too long after that. Definitely would go back and do things differently. Taking out loans and thinking about how you will pay them off versus actually paying them off when you are in a job that isn't exactly what you thought it would be are two very different things.

Anonymous User wrote:Expected 140k. Attended HYS with a pretty substantial grant.

Wound up with 180k. Grant decreased a good bit for 2L and by way more 3L. Plus, I just wasn't as financially responsible with my summer funds as I should have been (or thought I would be).

After a couple years of clerking, I'm still around 170k.

Law school was great, and I love my friends from there, but hot damn I'd run fast as hell toward my Dillard if I could do it all over again.

I hope you can share your regret in a constructive way when it comes up sometime. I got talked down to by a Harvard 1L because I said a Hamilton was a great outcome and should be taken over Harvard ( though I didn't qualify that you should also consider need base aid)

He said that the way to know which was best was to talk to 2Ls about their offers and the Harvard 2Ls he talked to were much happier about their SAs than the CLS 2Ls were. That thread has gone crazy waiting for JS2s, so I can't find my posts.
FML.

1 mil.