Making Sense (Hopefully) out of Crazy Student Loan Numbers

Over the weekend I read an article in USA Today on the iPad that said the outstanding amount of student loans today tops 1 Trillion dollars. I'll repeat that the outstanding amount of student loans today tops 1 Trillion dollars. That's TRILLION not billions and not millions. For comparison sake the outstanding amount of credit card debt is only 796 Billion.

Honesly I can't wrap my head around a trillion dollars so I found a web site that was able to explain it to me in a way that made sense so I thought I'd share it with you. It goes like this:

• If you have a stack of one thousand 1 dollar bills then you have a $1,000.
• If you have one thousand of those stacks of 1 dollar bills then you have 1 Million dollars (1000 x 1000 = 1 Million)
• If you have one thousand stacks of 1 million dollars then you have 1 Billion dollars (1000 x 1Million = 1 Billion)
• If you have one thousand stacks of 1 billion dollars then you have 1 Trillion dollars (1000 x 1Billion = 1 Trillion)

In Mid-2011 the population of the United States of America was 311 Million people. Ignorning the fact that not every person in the United States has a student loan that still comes out to an average of $3207 per person (1 Trillion / 318 Million). For some student loans the interest charged is 6.8% no wonder companies are doing everything in their power to get students to take out loans. That's big business for them!

Donna and I are part of that $1 Trillion in outstanding student loans and interestingly enough our outstanding amount is $6800 so we're close to the national average. When Donna decided to go to school and become a dental assistant we decided to take out a student loan to pay for her education. We elected to take out the student loan instead of having our daughter, Steffanie take one out. I have been blessed to have parents (though my dad is no longer alive) that have been very generous to their children. It seemed everytime Donna and I were getting to the bottom of our savings account mom would come through with a gift for us. Through her gifts and our own savings we were able to put Steffanie through college without taking out a single student loan. Yes we struggled and did without but for us anyway it was worth it. The best part is no that we no longer have to shell out money for tuition and books we can take that money and use it to knock out our consumer debt.

So how about you? Do you have a student loan or loans? If show how much and what's your plan to pay them off?