You CAN maybe Afford Pricey Grad Schools

This is a decent video that explains how the Public Loan Forgiveness Program (PSLF) and the Income-based Repayment Plan (IBR) can work in tandem to reduce your school loans.

In their example, Lee takes out $150,000 in loans to go to law school.  He graduates and gets a job making $40,000 a year in some nonprofit.  Without PSLF and income-based repayment plan, he'd pay $1,742 a month for 10 years, or 52% of his annual income.  But with PSLF/IBR, he'd pay $297 a month for 10 years, only 9% of his annual income, and when he makes 120 payments, he's done.  I hadn't realized in my previous post that income-based repayment would apply to a salary like $40,000.  Instead of paying back $150,000, he only pays back $35,640!  That's more than 75% off!  Let's ALL go to law school!  Because we can't find jobs.

If you don't work in public service but don't get paid much anyway, you pay into IBR for 20 or 25 years and then the rest is forgiven.  Much longer.

Again,"PSLF only works on federal "Direct" student loans. These are loans with the federal government as a lender. To participate in this program, you will need to consolidate your loans from Sallie Mae or other loan companies into Direct Loans. See http://loanconsolidation.ed.gov/ to learn more about Direct Loans. It doesn't work on Perkins or parent PLUS loans."

For more number crunching good times: finaid.org loan calculators.