Are loans worth it?

happymomof1
Wed, 13 Apr 2016 01:38:24 +0000

You can’t take out the Parent Plus Loan. Your parents would need to borrow that.

Why aren’t you accepting work-study? Do you have a better-paying part-time job that you plan to keep while you are in school?

You have been awarded the maximum Stafford loan, plus some Perkins for a total of $7,000. This leaves you with an overall gap of $2,600. How much work-study were you offered? How much can you make with a different part-time job or with summer jobs?

You need to ask your school about the Perkins. Will you get that same amount every year, or will they phase it out as your Stafford loan amount increases each year? If the Perkins stays at this level, you would end up with $6,000 more than the Stafford maximum, for a total of $33,000 (instead of $27,000). Run the calculators here to see what the payment difference would be: http://www.finaid.org/calculators/loanpayments.phtml

For some majors, $33,000 would not be hard to pay back. For others it could be. What do you plan to study?