Can you get income-based repayment? There's a few factors they base it on, but it'd give you a chance to lower your payments per month and push it out to 25 years (I think). That way you could still pay off $1000 per month if you have it (and work towards getting it done as soon as possible), but if you're short during some month, it wouldn't be the end of the world and you could still make the payment. I think after 25 years, you'd have to pay taxes on the balance if there was one.
Not 100%, I don't know much about it myself, but I have friends with $180k+ in loans but jobs that are like $35k-$55k per year and they'd never have the chance to move out at the standard payment schedule. It's worth checking out?
To answer your question, with house, heating this winter, loans, groceries, etc. there's not much left over for fun or material things...and I tried to take the cheapest 4-year route possible for school. The student loans in this country can't be sustainable, but hopefully someone more in-the-know could touch on some of these things?
We have $1 trillion plus in student loans, with more than 10% 90-days+ late. That's with record #s of people in their early 30's living at home. They give out these loans like crazy. I know girls that I'm pretty sure would take out a $million per semester at 25% interest just to go to school if they offered it. They'd all have designer bags and go on 3 exotic vacations per year too though
. And their parents would say "great job, you'll get an awesome job and pay that off in no time!"
In most cases, it just seems like they're forcing people to start behind the 8-ball. There's basically a $40k fee to even be considered for a job interview, let alone a guaranteed spot. In my high school, even just 15 years ago, 25% went to school, 50% worked in factories, and 25% did a trade or retail. When I graduated, basically my entire class went to college, and 4 years post-graduation most of them work retail or are underemployed.....no more factories either. It's pretty rough and I think more should be talking about it, but most just say TL;DR LOL.