Is this a stupid schedule?

[Ambush Bug]

I can't really commet on the student loans; my next semester is being paid via the sale of my Ford Escort. Asha and SH have better experience with such loans.

I can say, however, that no matter how you decide to pay for college, you should make certain that you blitzkreig it as much as you can. Knock down the principal as much as you can, even if it means overpaying a bit. My last car loan (before I sold the Escort) was pretty cheap... $165 dollars a month. Now, ideally, I could have paid off the $8K I owed in about two years. Ideally, that is. It was actually set up as a 5-year loan. The rough math for that means that the car (worth about $7900) would have cost me around $9000 or so. That $1100 bucks is pure profit for the bank. Same goes for your collage loans. Look up interest payments on Wikipedia for some basic formulas, and you'll quickly see that overpaying on the interest and the principal is usually in your best interest.

Doubtless, some of my numbers here are wrong. I'm no math expert--give me a Newtonian physics equation and I'll tell you how long a lever you should use to move the Earth one foot. But I have learned through painful personal experience that knocking down the principal on a loan is a very, very good idea.

[XMEN Iceman]

I have student loans. I consolidated my two into one lower interest one a few years ago. I only pay about $110 per month on them. I have about 13k left to pay off. But the degree made my pay at work increase significantly through new job opportunities. Don't be afraid of student loans at all, well worth it.

[Spinning Hat]

There's nothing wrong with student loans. They're a good thing for those of us without trust funds and college savings plans to finance our education. Asha and AB are right in you need to be mindful of how much you borrow. You also need to make that money work in your best interest and take courses that will give you a satisfying college experience, yet make sure those classes move you forward towards a degree, not just mark time and build up credit hours that are nothing more than more electives than you needed to take to get said degree.

I'm really considering going back to school to get my BA, and it's a little daunting, now that I've been out of college for a while. But I know that it'll be worth it My fiancee is working on getting back into college for her MBA. She's worked up in a frenzy like no other right now, preparing for the GMAT, writing her essays, etc.. But that extra 2 years of college will equate into another $50 - $60,000 a year in income. (More on the fiancee thing in my next post.)

[BlackRider]

#1, congrats to Hat.

#2, UC is University of Cincinnati.

#3, I have been avoiding loans like they're the plague. I've been in and out of college since 02-03 (personal reasons) and only have maybe $3500 in unpaid loans. UC is only about $10,000/yr (maybe 11 w/ books and parking). Living w/ the 'rents and making about $12k/yr, I can keep up with tuition. (Though I probably ought to be saving to move out.)

Reading over everything you have said, it looks as though my schedule isn't the wisest one. However I am going to stick with it. Language classes can count for either my language requirements or my cultural something-or-other requirements. So, everything will aid with GenED requirements. Any math outside of required classes will NOT count in any way towards required credits for a UC engineering degree. (Neither will the accounting class I took in a previous quarter... I found that out the hard way.) Also, I've been told by the CoE that, at this point, they are only looking at my GPA. I need to get that up a few more tenths before they will even consider me. If I get those tenths this quarter and they admit me I will still not be able to take any classes out of the CoE until spring quarter. So I can take winter quarter for any business or extra math classes to pad my resume.

I kinda walked away from this for dinner and forgot what I wrote. So I'll just leave it at that.