I'm probably adding gasoline to this fire... (Page 3)

I looked at the graph and didn't read anything else, so this point may have already been made....my wife and I continue to pay on student loans....and we may for our entire lives....267.00 per month, total.  Those loans provided us with an education that allows us to make a combined income of over 200K per year.....that's not a good deal?  Really?  Oh yeah......it doesn't snow much where we live either.   

3200.00 deducted from our yearly income that wouldn't have been possible without the loans.....we're good with it......really good.

Flame on!!! 

It's such a novel concept: a service actually paid for by the person who benefits most from it.

The first thing I wonder is why you don't just pay off the loans? Surely with the income you have, you could pay off the loans within a year or two. I pay north of $1k each month, and that is s significant reduction from 10 years ago, when it closer to $2k/month. 

The second thing your post reminds me of is how screwed up the tuition system is in this country. Mrs gearboy and I attended med school at the cheapest school in PA - and still paid (at the time) around $20k/year. Our neighbors in residency established Texas residence for med school and paid about $600/year. They got the same education, and the people of Texas whose taxes supported that education got no benefit, since they ended up returning to PA for residency and establishing their practices. 

One of my fantasies for when I am in charge of everything is that med school is free, and docs are committed to working where they are needed for the first 4 years after residency. The military already does offer some people this opportunity; some people can do it under NHS funding (going to designated underserved areas in exchange for loan forgiveness). The beauty of a system like that is that you have a steady stream of docs going to where they are needed (and undoubtedly some of them will end up staying there) and you remove the pressure of unreasonable loan debt that makes some people choose specialties based on ability to pay back loans rather than areas of need (you can make a lot more as a surgeon in a city than a primary care doc in rural Montana, for example - but we need more of the latter).

We've got 5 kids......the extra 733.00 per month that you pay allows us to have alot of fun with our kids.   

We meet our obligation that we agreed on when the loans were given to us.....I'm good with it. I'll show my wife your post.....maybe she'll go pay hers off and you'll feel better.   

I know for ours the rate was so low that it was smarter for us to pay off other loans first.  Cars, Home, etc... 

I think I only have about $1500 left on my student loan though, but my wife's is still around $15k.

I think it's pretty ironic that people who lean right are buying things they technically cannot afford (that's why you have loans), because their government subsidized loans are allowing them to do so. Yet when we talk about government funding of services, it is seen as wealth redistribution and socialism.

Generalize much?

I don't think you can hardly say my student loans are financing much of anything in my lifestyle.  The amount of interest the government is subsidizing is probably less than $10 a month.

Also, for me personally I will fight as much as I can to get rid of entitlements and stupid tax practices that penalize success.  However, until they are overturned I will take advantage of every program that I am legally able to because its called being smart to even out my tax burden.

If you take a step back and look at all the programs and tax breaks that I am able to take advantage of (even as a fairly wealthy guy) wouldn't it be better if I just wasn't taxed more in the first place so I didn't have to jump through hoops and pay accountants a lot of money to give myself the lower effective tax rate?