hey guys it's Joseph and Tasha from one big happy life today we are going to
talk about how we amassed over $400,000 in student loan debt and whether it was
worth it and what we would do differently if anything
as many of you
know we're both attorneys which means we went to law school and we racked up some
debt there we also racked up some undergrad debt
before that in this video we're walking through our decision-making process at
the time and whether we still think it's worth it now and it's especially
pertinent because we have Alexis getting ready to go to college in just two years
so we're actually going through this process with her now because she's
starting to get college mail so we're gonna do a separate video specifically
targeted at kind of you know the decisions that we would make now with
our own child so stay tuned for that and be sure to a thumbs up and subscribe for
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as well alright so let's talk about where we were kind of before undergrad
so I was in the Marine Corps and I wanted to get out of the Marine Corps so
I initially chose a major I also already had Alexis and I was married so I
needed something practical that was going to make me money like right out of
undergrad so I decided to go to nursing school I got my associates degree in
general studies and then transferred to a which and I came away from that with
no debt which I highly recommend and then I transferred to a BSN program but
then decided I wanted to go to law school and so then I switched my major
to economics and American Studies because I read that that would look good
for law school admissions I now know that it really doesn't matter I on the
other hand did not have a job out of high school I graduated pretty high in
my class so I had pretty good applications but I kind of flounder
didn't really know exactly what I wanted to do and so it's just well you just
kind of go to college and so I went to college
and I majored in accounting economics and finance and just kind of racked up
as much information as I could and in doing so I had to take out the kind of
the maximum loans that you're allowed to for undergrad and my parents paid for
the remainder oh I guess I should also specify that I used my GI Bill to help
me pay for undergrad also I was married and my husband at the time worked so I
ended up coming out of undergrad with $20,000 in subsidized loans that
honestly I did not absolutely have to take out and if me now if I was in that
position I would not take out that debt because obviously I'm better at not just
completely spending money willy-nilly I have nothing to show for that $20,000 of
debt so yeah I did not need it to actually get my degree so that was kind
of bad yeah I think so mine were 15,000 now was it worth it undergrad well
coming out I did have job offers and I did have expectations for what I would
have been able to make somewhere between fifty and sixty thousand starting and so
so that's I mean that's pretty good coming out of undergrad I mean I did
didn't have a triple major and and so there's that and Finance business majors
tend to be pretty lucrative right out so yeah but it also it depends whether or
not is worth it depends on what you actually want to do so if you want to be
a lawyer you can't be a lawyer right out of undergrad you have to keep going and
get your law degree so that's exactly what we did now I think a lot of people
got the impression from our million dollars in that video that you know we
did not actually put some thought into the amassing of our debt especially our
law school debt and so in this video I want to make sure to clear the air and
explain just how much planning went into especially me in particular deciding
where to go to law school and how much debt I was going to take out so I you
know I went to Yale for Law School and part of the reason why I went there
was because of the job prospects after Yale which is something that you should
always be considering when you're taking out loans for school
the loan repayment program that Yale offers for people who go into less
lucrative legal fields and then also how Yale compared to the other law schools
that I got into so I did budgets based on whether I took advantage of public
service work between public service loan forgiveness and Yale's loan repayment
assistance program or if I ended up going to a law firm which at the time
the starting salary for a first-year associate was a hundred and sixty
thousand dollars so I compared both budgets before deciding where I wanted
to go and how much I wanted to spend on law school so I did similar kind of
decisions but not to the detail that she did for sure so I I got in to several
different schools and looked at some that were much more expensive and at
first I was going to go to this the very best school whatever it was and do
whatever it took to go there but I backed out of that and right at the last
second and I tried to look for the best value and so I decided on Ohio State
because it was it was a state school so it wasn't as expensive as a private
school yeah in comparison Yale's tuition was twenty thousand
dollars more a year than Ohio State's right
and so that that was a big factor to me I had a little bit of scholarship there
actually not a little bit I mean I have a substantial scholarship there and so
that really helped out I only graduated with a hundred and twenty-one thousand
from law school and that includes me going to some summer sessions and I also
was able to study abroad at Oxford by the time I graduated from law school I
had a total of a hundred and ninety thousand dollars worth of debt from law
school and undergrad and as of tomorrow because I have a big payment going
through I'm going to have a total of a hundred and ninety five thousand dollars
and I graduated from law school in 2011 and I'm currently repaying my law
student loans and I always have been using income based repayment so I don't
actually pay the full interest or even any of the
principal in my regular monthly payment after law school my loans totaled a
hundred and sixty four thousand dollars now that was a hundred and forty nine
thousand from law school and then fifteen thousand from undergrad now that
was a lot and because I am also on income based repayment it has grown to
two hundred and seven thousand dollars yeah the reason why mine has not grown
the way Joseph's has is because of Yale's loan repayment assistance program
and so for me let's talk about whether or not it was worth it I'll go first so
when I took out my loans I did it expecting to repay in either one of two
ways so when you take out your student loans if you read the documents that you
actually get it's it's the call the master promissory note and explain it
explains the different ways that you can repay your student loans we only have
public federal student loans we don't have any private loans so in the master
promissory notice it lists the different repayment plans including public service
loan forgiveness combined with income based repayment so I knew that that was
an option when I was taking out my loan so I
calculated two budgets one if I decided to go into private practice and another
if I decided to go into public service and so after law school I decided to go
into public service after trying private practice and just like hating everything
about my life for me like I I know that going to Yale has made it a lot easier
for me to find jobs whenever I need to change jobs like when I had that
horrible loss there was no problem whatsoever with me changing jobs and
because I knew what my repayment terms were because I was familiar with it I
knew what I was getting into in terms of repayment after after law school it
basically turned out exactly the way that I expected it to this was my plan
that I would work in ten... for ten years in public service
and then have the remainder of my loans discharged per the terms of my loan
agreement similarly I think that me going to Ohio State just going to law
school generally it was definitely worth it for me to and it's out for a little
bit different reasons but I mean law school is a versatile degree it's not
exactly about just always becoming an attorney that practices but it's also a
versatile thinking degree and that coupled with my undergrad business
majors that really made me eligible for the jobs that I do now and so it's
really the combination that I needed both and so would it still be worth it
for you like this is like off script would it still be worth it for you
without public service loan forgiveness so an income based repayment so income
based repayment or public service loan forgiveness either one so I still think
that it would be the math still works out that my my job prospects after law
school so they started about the same honestly because I started in public the
public sector and and so it was about 60,000 where I started but the prospects
for going forward were much much higher even if I had started before and just
after undergrad and then going up I probably would have had to go and get an
MBA anyway at some point to then reach the higher levels
you mean the level where you are right now and your income and stuff yes right
which I mean so we're certainly comfortable now and I'm really happy
where we are yeah I mean the one of the things that we have while our jobs are
you know we still get paid very well because we both make six figures but we
also have incredible job flexibility jobs with great benefit jobs with great
retirement plans matching you know that allows us to just work a 40-hour week so
we have excellent work-life balance if something happens to one of our kids we
can be home in a heartbeat all of those things those are very there's
non-monetary compensation that those jobs are harder
to get if you don't you know either advance yourself through education or
you know somehow like just work hard on the job and slowly get promoted within
you know your particular organization so it's not to say that we necessarily
couldn't have gotten here without the degrees but it certainly would be a
toss-up without the degrees well so I would say
that for for where I work and what I do I would not have been able to follow the
same path oh that's true I completely ineligible yeah well not have our jobs
at all like I'm an attorney obviously I couldn't be doing this job if I didn't
have my law degree another thing that I want to say so I asked Joseph the
question if he would do it without public service loan forgiveness and
without income based repayment and so I'm gonna answer that question for me
and the answer is no I wouldn't I would be at a law firm making probably by now
somewhere around three hundred thousand dollars a year I'd be miserable Alexis
would barely know me but my law school debt would be gone and you know so I
don't know that life doesn't sound much more appealing to me
I've enjoyed this life a lot better and so I'm so happy that these programs
exist that allow people to not just go to the not just chase after the money
but to be able to do fulfilling public interest work while also being able to
you know build wealth you know and and provide for their family so I'm glad
that these programs exist because if they didn't we wouldn't be having this
conversation because I would be at a law firm right now billing some hours not
making a youtube video well I think in conclusion we would both do it given the
same circumstances that we experienced kind of for different reasons though
because of course Tasha practices law and I don't actually practice I just use
the skills that that I have but would it still be worth it if things change and
obviously maybe not and so it's a very careful consideration that you have to
go through because not everybody is going to have the
the exact same trajectory that we had like if I didn't have a business
undergrad well maybe my law school wouldn't have helped me as much for
doing to doing the things that I want to do now yeah and if I didn't have you
know a child and a family to consider I may have opted for going with a lower
ranked school for less money but where my job prospects as an attorney might
have been less certain but because I had a child I didn't want to run the risk of
not being able to find a job that could provide for my family after law school
so I chose to go to yes the a more expensive law school but also the law
school that offered me the best jobs prospects alright we hope you all
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comment section cause we love chatting with you guys alright see you guys next
time bye