This may sound like a silly question but do people paying off their student loans in the States have to pay off the interest as well?
As currently written, you can get yourself on an income-adjusted plan, make minimum payments, and then forgive the whole stupid thing after 360 of them. Granted, that's a 30-year millstone and requires an appalling amount of interaction with a bunch of shifting lenders and agencies (and they've gotten real good at losing your paperwork, if you know what I mean). But it's worth it. My wife took out $150k in loans to get a medical degree. At the end of 30 years, at our current rate, she'll owe the government $3m. 45% of our clients are on medicaid. Fuck that shit.
It actually depends on the loan. However, in most cases the answer is yes. There are some government loans where you do have to pay the interest but none accumulates (or what accumulates is forgiven) while you are in school. I believe there is another type (again, through the gov’t) where the total lifetime interest can be forgiven if certain conditions are met. This is based off recollection so I might be a little wrong on some details but I know for sure there’s a type in line with the first because I had some like that.
Ouch yeah that'd be a millstone. Mine, thankfully, has the interest written off so I've been happily whittling it away for a few years and am now halfway through. As of 2006 our student loans have their interest written off provided you stay in NZ, after a certain amount of time overseas the interest will kick in. I think it's over a year as I spent a year in Australia and never incurred anything extra.