Hi, folks. I was hoping you could give me a bit of advice about which way to proceed in order to best avoid future trouble. This might get a little long, as I am going to try to provide all information even remotely relevant the first time around.

My partner and I are 25 and 28, with at this point pretty average to maybe above average credit. (He had some problems pre-2000 through early 2000/1, dealt with them, and they are getting ready to roll off his report.) His credit score is somewhere around 811 according to the free eval from his monthly WaMu credit card, and I don't know mine, but it was in the mid 700's before I started taking out student loans.

We have both left the work force to finish our degrees. At this point, we have 1 year left each, with planned graduation in May, 2009. We are both planning to enter technical/computer/information security related fields, and expect to be very employable, especially with prior job history before we returned to school. (This is relevant, I expect, to the concept of repayment. We don't expect to have any problems there.)

Right now, we're at a decision making point. Up until now, we have been living with his parents, which has kept our costs very low. We cannot continue to do this, and will have to move. We live in a pretty expensive part of the Country, and anticipate when we move (on or around July 10th), we will be paying about 1400/mo in rent, so probably 1750+/mo after utilities are concerned.

• We both have paid off cars, so there are no car loans to factor in.
• We both have credit cards with adequate limits for emergency purposes. ($14,000 USAA mine, $3,000 Cap1 mine, $15,000 Amazon him, $16,500 WaMu him). Our CCs are kept at 0 as often as possible, but we filter bills through them to take advantage of cash rewards. We got these CCs with limited credit history, so our interest rates on them are somewhat high.
• We both have already exhausted Federal options. (Stafford Sub and Unsub are at their max, and we have Pell grants and grants from our state - this only covers the actual tuition costs, though.)

Anyway, the decision we have to make is to either deviate from our plan to finish by May 2009, go back to work so we can afford to pay rent on our own again... or enter the frightening world of Private student loans. Both have obvious drawbacks... We are so close to being finished, so we really would like to power right through to the end and get "our lives" back. The thought of going into debt on private loans in order to pay for living expenses is rather worrisome, however.

I do not question that we could pay them back once school is finished. But Private lenders have always worried me after some of the horror stories I've read here. My side fear is that we won't be able to find a place to live if we're not working... because our debt to income ratio won't be very good at all with a current (albiet temporary) income of zero.


Opinions from those of you wisened in these situations will be very helpful. The financial aid office doesn't seem very interested in offering advice; just links to places where we can apply for more aid.

If we should go with private lenders, are there any that you all would suggest over others for an unmarried couple in our circumstances?

Let me know if I've left out anything important.


Best regards,
Teri

Did I offer too much or too little information? Is my question unanswerable? Let me know if there's something I can do to help you help me.

You are going to have to use your crystal ball and determine your employment prospects in May of 2009. From my vantage point statement of "We are both planning to enter technical/computer/information security related fields, and expect to be very employable, especially with prior job history before we returned to school." are dubious as the IT job market at least in the SF Bay Area is extremely depressed. Check your current IT job market VERY CAREFULLY as many statements saying "IT is great" are from biased sources.

try to avoid private loans. the interest rates are higher and there is no "rehab" or "consolidation" or other provisions if you get into trouble years from now.

my .02

Thanks to you both for your replies.

Over here in the DC/Metro area, IT jobs are still very good. We have tried to remove our resumes from places we distributed them previously and do still get occasional calls/emails regarding jobs. Furthermore, my focus is actually Security/Information Assurance, and that is a very big "government" thing around here right now.

yellorose, you say to avoid private loans if we can. To this point, that has been our major strategy. Is there another type of loan we have not yet considered, though? As I mentioned, we will have exhausted our Stafford loan availability and will still have a considerable gap between cost of living+attendance and aid received.

Unfortunately the financial aid offices aren't very well motivated to help you with your problems, especially while nestled so comfortably into the university bureaucracy. I have almost no credit score so I have a lot of trouble finding loans myself right now. I saw another post in these forums on America One, which is a company that helps people find loans. Amone basically finds the loans for you and gets you the best possible rates so you don't have to deal with all the frustration you're going through. You might want to check them out at amone.com.

I feel your pain.

I worked full time in NYC to get through 3 years of graduate school with loans only covering tuition, it was really hard and honestly, almost killed me. I had no help and no spouse or partner. and I still have 40k in fed loans to pay back now that I'm working.

If you really feel you could get jobs with no problems a year from now once you've finished and you really feel like you'd be stable, then private loans are an option, but I worry.

I took out a private loan for a course of study I wanted to do and life was great for a while, then a disaster came and now I have a lot of problems, but that's not you.

sounds like you've done your research and the course of study you're going for will pay off in the end with some nice job opportunities.