If so how long did it take to pay off ? If not what did you decide to spend your money on that would've gone to paying loans ?

Why do you ask?

I'm fortunately going to graduate in May with no debt. Besides finding a job looking to plan ahead financially is my next biggest time consumer

No. Bought a small house

What do you want to do with your life? That would affect my ideas for what to do with extra income.

No debt and actually had money in savings account. But, during my time at A&M, tuition was peanuts.

So, my reward for that will be writing massive tuition checks for my daughter in a few years.

I got it in the bag

azulAg said:

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I got it in the bag

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Figured you did. Good luck with everything.

No debt. Allowed me to pursue an Internship then grad school and marriage. That took most of my money.

Edit to add, the only reason I didn't have debt was the free food from working at Rudy's that I hoarded. That was a life saver.

I had debt from both A&M (approx $12,800) and flight school (approx $58,000). It took me almost 10 years after I graduated A&M to to pay off both sadly. Flight school lasted 11 months and sadly you make jack squat in aviation to start out with (especially during this past decade). The bright side is I'm in my mid 30s but still live a fairly frugal life.

About 100k debt after 8 years at A&M (none from undergrad). Paid off about 4 years after graduation.

I graduated with $34,000 in federal debt. It took me six years to graduate since I got an associates degree in something unrelated to my bachelors degree, and when I transferred to A&M one damn English credit transferred. It's been about 5 years, and I'm down to $7,000. I was actually down to $12,000 after 3 years, but I realized I was prepaying too much cheap debt around 4%.

Looking back, I would have added the amount I'd prepaid after 3 years onto money I was saving for a house down payment. I'd been able to buy much sooner.

Thankfully no. I had a full ride at A&M and for medical school. We are now quite a bit head financially than most of our colleagues. I passed on more "elite" schools that I would have paid for and am very happy with that decision

Between scholarships, working, and living fairly frugally, I graduated with a very little debt (less than $3,000) but also no money. That first paycheck came in with days to spare.

My biggest financial mistake was gambling too much money on a compete flyer of a stock right out of school. First it doubled, then it went to zero. That cost me more money than I should have been willing to lose, but also turned me off of investing. Unless you count buying a house that was a bit of a fixer upper and contributing to my 401k, I didn't start investing seriously until about a year ago. Fortunately that meant I had tons of cash to play with, but it also means I missed out on a pretty great run up over the last 8 years.

For my goals, I've decided on a mix of diversified dividend income funds, yield stocks, and risky growth stocks with the last two categories focused on an industry in which I have an information advantage. I know things about the underlying industry that are hard for even a well-connected New Yorker to replicate, I also spend a lot of time trying to figure out how the funds think about things, and I can move faster. So far it has served me well; I've outperformed the sector and broader market dramatically over the last year.

When planning for retirement, I ignore my 401k, pension, SS, and Roth IRA for several reasons. The 401k and IRA are loaded with low risk funds, so by treating my brokerage accounts like they need to get me to my retirement goal by an early age it pushes me into taking on higher risk/return investments... I want that. Second, the 401k, SS, IRA, and pension won't be available until long after i intend to be able to retire anyway, so it makes sense to treat them like a fallback option/safety margin. Last, i believe there is a high probability that I'll end up losing some or all of my SS due to benefit reduction and means testing.

TL;DR
1. Don't do anything too stupid
2. Know your goals
3. Build a safety margin into everything
4. Diversification means giving yourself a sturdy base AND upside, not simply spreading your money across a bunch of funds that all do the same thing
5. If you choose to invest in individual stocks, pick a specialty to understand really well. You can't be an expert in everything and if you try you'll eventually get pantsed. You'll still get pantsed, but hopefully less often.

I had loans, but only made maybe 6 payments until I qualified for student loan repayment via employer. Is that even a benefit offered these days? I screwed the pooch on taking a low wage job in a high-cost city & the CC debt I racked up outpaced my student loan repayment benefit. Lesson learned the hard way.

With no debt, you should considered maxing out 401k if offered & also maxing an IRA on your own. Pay yourself first, before you go and buy a bunch of fun depreciating assets.

Yes - my debt was my agreement with my dad that I'd pay for my kids' college education. I'm on the Pay It Forward debt plan.

My dad's family was poor and he was the first to go to college. And he scrimped and scraped to do it. He'd hitch-hike to get between college and home. And at 77 years old, he's still ashamed to talk about it, but there were times when he spent some nights in a homeless shelter (at times between semesters when he was between boarding houses). I found this out from a relative after I was an adult. My dad had never told me. So he was committed to paying for me and my sister, with our agreement to pay for our kids.

Less than $3k in credit card. Foolishly got in my last year thinking I could easily pay it off when I graduated and was making good money. Well when you start paying bills and all that, money wasn't flowing. Took me a few years because I didn't buckle down hard.

Worked 40+ hours throughout college, had a few scholarships and graduated 25k in the hole to the government and $1000 to my now wife and $1000 dollars (maxed) on the stupid credit card with TAMU branding and you get a free crappy shirt for.

I worked every summer and every Christmas break. Had some scholarships and also was an R.A. I graduated in 3 years with a couple thousand dollars of debt. My parents gave me $20 for college (a crisp Andy Jackson one Thanksgiving to fill the car with gas). So that also helped.

No financial help for med school, finished with $50,000 of debt. All of it was paid off in a few years after I started with a real job, because I hate debt.

I don't want my son to feel that he has to work every minute he's not in school, so I have a 529 plan for him. I wonder how others who got no financial help from their parents but who are now able to help their kids feel about paying for their school.

My parents paid my tuition and room/board until my last year and a half which I funded with internship money. It made a huge difference in my financial future post college and so grateful every day.

Yes about 24k. Paid it back in about 8 years.

Wife Graduated with $115k and we paid it back in 3 to 4

I paid mine off first then we paid off hers. She has an MD and I am an engineer. Once we got married we decided to get rid of the student loans.

Got married with a semester left in school and though the budget showed us being ok until I started work it was going to be tight so I took a $10k student loan basically as an insurance policy. Paid it off at my first paycheck 6 weeks after graduating. Never ended up spending a penny of it.

140-150k with both of us combined, most of it from me. Down to 35k and will be done in 9 months!

had maybe 60k in loans, and i bought a brand new truck right before graduation (another 30k). not the smartest financial decision.

finally paid the loans off a few years ago (they were under 1% interest so i took my time).

Very fortunate that my parents paid for my education. Graduated with about $40k from internships allowing me to max my 401k my first 6 months of work. My parents set me up financially by paying for my college education and I could not be more grateful. I repaid them by being smart with my money upon graduation instead of blowing it on stupid things that I don't need.

No debt from a&m
Tons of debt from med school
Wife had a lot from Southwestern
Had kids in med school
1st real job started last summer

Zero debt

No debt from college.

Wife's father died so we have the mortgage on that but it's also rented out so pretty much a wash.

Planning to pour money into it and get it paid off and buy another rent house after that.

Between my wife and I we graduated with about 100k in student loan debt. Felt good to get it paid off. I think it took us a few years. Mostly because of everything that came with marriage. Buying a house, vehicles, etc..

I had about 15K in debt, not too bad. It was only at like 2.1%, so I wasn't in a hurry to pay it down. I think I finally paid it off after about 8 years.

I'd had most, but not all, of mine paid for and graduated with about $10k in debt. This was working at least two jobs during the semester and picking up a third over the summer.

Moved home, got a real job, lived on ramen, and paid it off in 4 months after I graduated. I plan on paying for my kids but will probably insist that they get a part time job(<20hrs week) while I'm school.

No debt from A&M and got a free MBA at TCU (grad assistantship).

Plan to provide 4 years of public undergrad for each of my three sons.

Just graduated in May with no debt of my own but also just got married and wife brought $44,000 of debt into the marriage. So we're aggressively trying to pay that down right now. Expect to have it cleared out by this time next year, maybe a month or two earlier if we can really buckle down.