Question for Americans

I’m watching tv and there’s a woman who has $100,000 student debt.

I have heard that size student debt is fairly common in USA. How do people manage that and also what if the had to pay medical debt too? How do they manage?

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OlderSometimesWiser · F

I’m guessing someone’s been watching Happily Ever After. 🤔

Jenny1234 · 56-60, F

@OlderSometimesWiser no I don’t know what that is. These are just usually news articles or books that I read. For example, I read that Meghan Markle’s University Tuition was something like 200K. I don’t know if that could possibly be true Since she’s definitely not a doctor or anything like that. I also know that my former son-in-law who lives here in Canada went to university in New York and his parents paid 75,000 US for his four year tuition Which sounds insane to me. But I definitely understand international because it is much higher here for those students from other countries

OlderSometimesWiser · F

@Jenny1234 Lol……. please forgive my guessing games. Happily Ever After is one of my guilty pleasure reality shows where a husband recently found out about his wife’s 100k student loan debt. 🙂

Anyway yes, tuition, especially for private universities in the US, has gone completely insane. Both my nieces went to a private university for business studies, luckily four years apart so two tuitions weren’t being paid at once. However, their tuition was 60k per year, so their 4 year degree totaled 240k.

But again luckily, they each got a 20k per year scholarship bringing their tuition down to “only” 160k for the 4 years. Hard working parents and very generous grandparents were able to cover that cost so both girls came out without any student loan debt.

How those with limited resources are able to manage is a mystery to me. Graduates with lots of repayments for lots of years. And, given my family’s experience, Meghan Markle’s 200k tuition for just an undergraduate degree is entirely possible.

One the smart things my nieces did was pick a business oriented university with a great reputation so both landed high paying jobs right out of school with just their Bachelor’s degrees. Another factor taken into consideration by their parents and grandparents when making that investment in their education.

SomeMichGuy · M

@Jenny1234 She attended Northwestern University, so that might be the total for 4 yrs. Let's see...yes, from https://admissions.northwestern.edu/tuition-aid/#tuition

Tuition for the 2023–24 academic year is $64,887.

Note that this is tuition ONLY; from the same page:

Total expenses (including fees, books, room and board, transportation expenses and transportation) are estimated at $91,290.

So the total includes just over $26,400 ($26,403) in expenses BEYOND the tuition.