ABSTRACT
My student loan debt (SLD) currently sits somewhere around $250,000. That’s how much five years of undergraduate study, one year of certification, and seven years of graduate school cost me in North Carolina. When I tell people the total, their eyes widen in bafflement and I usually make some lame joke about my brain being “kinda pricey.” I figure it this way: the everyday, run-of-the-mill thoughts in my head cost me $432 each month, the equivalent of a car payment—but a really nice car, much nicer than the eight-year-old Toyota hatchback I currently drive around town. And that SLD payment is the reduced, income-based repayment (IBR) plan that I still can’t really afford—because it is based on the joint tax return that my ex-husband and I filed the year before. Turns out that separating your finances is way more complicated than separating your family.
