Help with options for paying off private loans

[Anonymous]

Hello. I'm a musician who made the unfortunate decision to go to school for a plethera of majors in the music field to try and figure out where I belong in the workforce. I went for songwriting, audio engineering, and music education. I spent the last 6 years of my life wracking up my private loans. I recently left college without graduating because I realized that in the field of audio engineering experience is the key to landing a well paid job and I wasn't going to gain much out of being in school except a large bill of interest. I just got my student loan bill in the mail. Turns out I'm going to owe the private lenders (Discover) 232,000$ by the time I'm finished paying them off. I have to pay 1500$ per month while I barely make 1600/month as a teacher's aide for a public school. I live with my parents which they are not exactly happy about and they can't offer me any help to pay back my loans. When I called Discover and Great Lakes they told me that my only options were to defer for 12 months and then at the end of the defferment my monthly bill will go up. I can't claim complete ignorance but if I had known that this was the road I was going to be on I would have never went to college. Does anyone have any idea if there ight be something I can do to get my loan payments down so that I won't have to pay so much ore later on? Any suggestions would be appreciated.

[SCF]

What are the exact balances and interest rates on your loans?  Do you have any federal loans?

If you have federal loans, you should get them on an income-driven payment plan ASAP.  You can contact your servicer, or go on their website to see the different options and apply for the one that works best.  For your private loans, you can look into refinancing them for a longer repayment period and/or lower interest rate, but stretching the payments out obviously increases how much you pay overall.

The hard part of this situation is that you simply have to have more income, and that may mean making sacrifices and working outside your field until this debt is paid off.

[Erick12]

Take the one year deferment. You now have one year to get a better job. Try to at least make interest payments so you're not in a worse situation when you get done with the deferment.

You have private loans, there is no secret way to deal with them. You just have to make more money. Do you owe $232,000 or is that just what the total payment over the life of the loan will be? If that's the case, I'm guessing you have something like 100,000 right now? And you're probably already on a longish repayment term?

You could look into refinancing but as far as I know all the lenders doing refinancing at reasonable rates require excellent credit and solid employment. Doesn't sound like you have the second, don't know about the first.

[Anonymous]

At that point you probably should have finished whatever degree was closest. You are going to want to defer regardless.

The actual principal is what matters, not the long term repayment estimate. How much do you owe?

As others said, you will need a better paying job. You will probably want to consider part-time gigs after hours too. If your parents kick you out there's couch surfing etc. If your income rises, you could look into living with college roommates. You will have to live very cheaply to service those debts.

The risky alternative is to blow it off, start your life like nothing is wrong, then fight when they inevitably take you to court. If your disposable income is basically 0 then there is nothing for them to garnish. I can't recommend this route but a lot of my less fortunate graduate friends are trying it out, knowing their credit is shot for at least 10 years.