Personally, I think you wisely accepted SLs in order to obtain your education. I think education is the best money spent, though all education is not created equal.
However I do think the money spent on the Ramsey course would’ve been better spent bringing the principal down on the student loans.
I think it just comes down to a value proposition, whether or not the education leads to a career path or opens a door to opportunity which has more value than the tuition cost. Like you, I had to pay my own way from the beginning through grad school. I've been blessed to work in my degree field and wouldn't qualify for my position without the degree and certifications. The salary drawn over the course of my career more than justifies the student loan, so I disagree with Chris Hogan about not going to school without the cash to do so. If I hadn't taken the loan I would have missed out on a career.
I do understand Hogan's perspective, however, as there are many who go to an expensive school and get a degree without a specific career goal in mind. I frequently hear stories about students who get a degree and expect a career to just magically happen. The degree is just the qualifier for an interview, it's up to each individual to make something of the opportunity from there. So if someone is going to take on a loan, there should be a specific goal in mind with a general understanding of how the degree field will be practically beneficial.
Of course, all of the above may be secondary to the benefit of an education from a personal efficacy standpoint. Learning and becoming a better person is not measured in dollars.
I don't think that only going to college if you have the cash to pay for it is good advice, since for most people that would mean limiting you job and career choices to those that can be entered and advanced through with only a high school diploma. What really matters is what your income out of college is going to be and how that compares to the debt you took on. $400/mo would have been very tough for me, but I have had a fairly low income across the 15-ish years since I graduated. If the payments aren't onerous on your income and if the loans will be cleared in 10-15 years of regular payments, then I don't think you made a bad decision. When you say that you expect to be paying on them until you retire, on what do you base that expectation?
It completely depends...
College is expensive but not going will put you at a disadvantage in most fields.
$30k in sl is nothing if you got a good education.
There are plenty of glass ceilings without a Bachelors.
The issue with any of the Dave Ramsey advice, is that it often seen purely in black and white with no room for the many greys we actually face in life. While certain things like the debt snowball and avalanche methods are great strategies to paying off debt, much of it needs to be considered as to how it may or may not apply to individual circumstances. Student loans absolutely make sense if it will lead to a career where one is able to repay the loans. Just as it's not always good advice to never get a mortgage and only buy a house when you can pay cash, despite the fact that with inflation in housing costs it will likely cost you much more to buy the same house in the future than the purchase price plus interest if you bought it today (plus you'd be paying ever-increasing rents in the mean time), with tuition rapidly escalating one would likely need to save their entire lives and by retirement still likely not have enough money to pay cash to put themselves through something like medical school. Paying cash for everything is much easier when you're the head of a motivational speaking business raking in millions a year; unfortunately there's not room for all of us to do that.
