Melanie Lockert of Los Angeles, California tells about the jolting student loan debt wake-up call she had right after completing grad school.
Lockert’s jolting student loan debt wake-up call
Lockert had wisely worked multiple part-time jobs throughout school, and for five years had made consistent monthly payments on her student loan debt. Yet, when she left grad school, she still owed a whopping $68,000 on her $81,000 student loan bill.
She’d worked so hard, and paid so faithfully—yet she still owed a staggering $68,000? How could this be?
The insidious nature of student loan debt interest
As Lockert dug into the “why” behind what had happened to her, she uncovered the reason. For five entire years, she’d paid only the minimum each month.
“When I graduated from NYU, I started to do the math and I realized I was paying $11 a day in interest,” she says. “That just really woke me up.”
Lockert was paying $11 a day in interest on her student loan debt
No wonder she wasn’t getting ahead.
Now Lockert warns others.
“When I was 17/18, I signed up for student loans not knowing how interest worked,” she told CNBC Select. “I subscribed to the idea that everyone has student loans, that it’s good debt. It wasn’t until I graduated from NYU when I was more broke than before that I realized the only way I was going to get out of debt was by paying more than the minimum.”

Continue Reading »