Student debt has officially gotten out of control. I was reading some interesting articles this weekend on student debt and I thought I would share some of the highlights. I am also not providing any kind of solution, but this has to be addressed. It may be too late, but the numbers below are just staggering!
Student loan debt is now the second highest consumer debt category. Student debt is only behind mortgage debt, and it is now higher than both credit cards and auto loans! In fact the student loan debt is $620 billion more than all U.S. credit card debt. Total student debt is $1.52 trillion for 44 million U.S. borrowers, which averages to $37K per student loan debt. That's a 145% increase from the level it was at 10 years ago. This alone shows how serious the student loan debt crisis has become.
Of the 44 million of student loan borrowers, 42 million have student loan debt of $100,000 or less. Most of the concentration is in the $10,000-$25,000 of student loan debt, which accounts for over 12 million student loan borrowers. That may be the bright spot in all of this data as $25,000 is manageable if you start to focus on paying this off right away.
The largest concentration of student loan borrowers is under 30 years old, followed by the 30-39 age group. There are 29 million student loan borrowers under 39 years old, which represents almost 65% of all borrowers. This data shows the problem is only going to get significantly worse if the problem isn’t addressed soon.
If you are a student loan borrower, please use the data to become more informed and start looking at loan refinance, student loan consolidation, repayment plans, and student loan forgiveness.
Would anyone like to share their student debt story?
My wife and I are certainly no exception to student loan debt problem. When my wife graduated from graduate school, we collectively had over $75K in student loan debt. It was a real problem and it caused us to give up a lot of things. However I will say next month we will have paid that off in full! It took over 5 years, and took a lot of sacrifices, but we are very excited for it to be out of the way.