When I went to grad school the only way I could afford to do so was using a loan. I’d used government loans to supplement my scholarships to get through my bachelor’s degree also.
My employer had said that they would reimburse me for the cost of my grad classes, but they didn’t, through combinations of them having confusing paperwork and neglecting to tell me that they didn’t have all the information I needed, in the end all I got back from them was the $70 for the software I needed for my courses, the rest had to come out of my pocket, and there was no way I could afford that so I wound up with a loan through Sallie Mae.
I hadn’t really wanted to take out seven thousand dollars worth of debt considering I was still paying on twenty thousand from my liberal arts college, but it was either that or languish at the bottom of the food chain at my job, or so I thought.
By the time I was done with two semesters worth of courses at graduate level though my loan was practically doubled. It blew in some ways because there was no way I was finish my coursework knowing that my work wasn’t going to follow through with the promotion they promised be.
At least with the loans when I got married I was able to go ahead with consolidations. We combined all our loans together and just have one payment of $130 rather than three payments of about $90 each, so that saves us some money.