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Read the news of the day in less than 10 minutes — not that we’re counting.
A Philadelphia-based bank wanted to know how much young people are spending to pay off their student loans and just how much those same people know about the loans they have.
And the results are a bit jarring.
Nearly 60 percent of those surveyed admit they have no idea when their loans will be paid off and more than a third said they don’t know what their interest rate for their loans is. Those same people are spending some 20 percent of their salary on making student loan payments and the majority plan to be off their loans well into their 40s.
Citizens Bank conducted an online survey of 501 college graduates across the country between the ages of 18 and 35, all of whom currently have student loan debt. The Millennial Graduates in Debt survey released this week found three quarters of the students had received federal loans while a third had private loans.
They found that a whopping 57 percent of respondents regret taking out as many student loans as they did while more than a third say they would never have gone to college if they would have known how much it was going to cost them.
Citizens also found that young people are making significant tradeoffs in their personal lives in order to pay down their student loan incurred post-college. Here are some of the trade-offs they made:
- 54 percent have limited their travel
- 50 percent have limited their shopping for clothes, shoes and accessories
- 46 percent have limited their spending on entertainment and social events
- 45 percent have limited their spending on eating out
- 40 percent have limited the amount they can spend on rent or mortgage payments
Pennsylvania and Philadelphia are no exception. More than 70 percent of Pennsylvania college students graduate with an average of $32,528 in debt, according to the Project On Student Debt. In Philadelphia, average debt for students is highest at Villanova, Philadelphia University, Temple and La Salle. Average debt is lower at Penn, Bryn Mawr and Swarthmore where a higher percentage of students have financial need met by the school.
