I’m in a full on crisis and I don’t know what to do…

I hate to say it but a lot of us are in this position right now. Accruing 591 a month and we will start paying in January… wondering how we are going to make it work but have to. Hang in there. I’m sorry.

What is your PhD in? What will you be doing for work after? How much longer do you have to finish?

Will you have good job prospects somewhere like Dallas?

What interest rate are your loans and why are payments not suspended while you’re in school? Are they private loans?

What is your part time work right now and how much does it pay? What does your wife do?

I mean, having that debt sucks, don’t get me wrong, but option B really doesn’t seem too bad to me. If you become a college professor you should get a pretty decent salary, and 10 years of payments isn’t that bad in the long run. Not to mention college professor is consistently ranked as one of the best jobs in the US. Take a deep breath; things are rarely as bad (or as good) as they seem in the moment.

What field are you in? And how soon until you finish the PHD? If it’s only a year or so I would stick with it and finish, but if you just started the program you should really consider a leave of absence to deal with this especially if you are in a field where you can get an industry job without the advantaged degree.

This amount of student debt at the interest that it is at is an emergency. You can’t discharge these in bankruptcy and need a big shovel. I also find it hard to believe that your household income is only $60k with two members working (even one in a PhD program – I know plenty of PhD students since I live in a college town, they all get $45k stipends; is your spouse working full-time?)

Since you’re married, the loans are a joint problem and you both need to do as much as you can to up your household income to deal with them. Obviously pay off the highest interest rates first. If you’re able to get it to where you only have loans at 3%-5%, that’s when you can start making minimum payments only.

This is by no means an insurmountable problem, but you need to at least double your household income to effectively deal with it. That might even mean delaying the PHD if that makes more sense.

There is not enough information posted to give much input. $60k for 2 people (less than 2x minimum wage in CA) is not going to go far in almost any major metropolitan area. The better long terms strategy is to increase income, rather than find ways to keep expenses even lower forever. As such, one important factor is how much longer it will take to complete the PhD program and employment prospects after getting PhD. In many PhD fields there are many times more PhD grads interested in professor positions than there available professor positions, so it’s important to have a backup plan. And that backup plan may or may not have high expected earnings, depending on field. You didn’t mention what your wife does for work. Also consider whether she has a way to improve her income trajectory.

Do you have any idea how hard it is to become a professor at a university even with a PhD?? You make it sound like it’s a settled event. I think you’re in for a rude awakening.

Finished my PhD in July 2024, with $160k in student loans. Haven’t found a job yet, currently deferred until April. Good luck.

If you are smart enough to complete a PhD you should be smart enough before starting said program if the increase in income was enough to justify the opportunity cost of the degree.

Look up the average salary for an Assistant Professor in your field. Then go and see how many jobs were posted to higher Ed jobs and other academic job post websites. That will tell you something about how likely it will be for you to find a job and what it will pay.

Some professors make very modest incomes. Liberal arts, fine arts, etc. Others make more, but not a lot make 200k.

My wife and I moved to dallas for 4 years to focus on paying debt. It’s not the worse place I lived, we got financially under control and were able to move back to where we wanted

Young man with that much issues with your finance, my advice to you is join the military when you finish for an enlistment and have them paid off half of it for you if not the whole amount. You might go in as an officer for about 6-8 years. Do the math and see what’s the best options.

Finish the masters degree and start working in advertising. Think of what you’ve learned and how it could be used to persuade folks to buy things. Read books on the subject and start to think of ways to market yourself to employers.

I don’t know much about personal finance, but I know a lot about what it takes to be a professor. I’m a professor at a medical school.

The pathway to the professorate is harder than it has ever been. Have some serious conversations with your mentors about whether you are seriously on track to become a professor. Your own mentor might have rose-tinted glasses, so talk to the Chair of your Department. Ask them what qualifications they look for in new professor hires. Ask them what qualifications the last person they actually hired had. Ask them how many PhD graduates from your program have obtained professor positions. The Chair will have all this information under their fingers. This will give you a realistic picture of whether you are on track to compete for a professor position at the end of your training.

A Master’s degree in social psych is not the dead end you think it is. There are plenty of career options in the public and private sectors where this would be an asset. Start looking seriously at those alternatives so that you’re making apples to apples comparisons between career choices.

C) Finish your Masters and take a break from your degree. Work full time (plus maybe even a part-time job too) and start tackling the debt. You may be able to find something that your degree is useful for but that isn’t a typical job for it. For example, I have my AAS in Paralegal Studies and my BAS in Business Administration and I’m sticking to legal but am looking in different avenues that aren’t strictly a typical paralegal job. I worked in personal injury for a while and hated it, but there are a lot of jobs where my degree applies that are way more interesting.

If a move makes sense for you, do it. I would branch out to more than just Texas. CA is insanely expensive and you should have options as to different Ph.D programs in other areas later one when you’re not so financially overwhelmed.

Depending on your occupation you can apply for HRSA or some other kind of student loan forgiveness program. Put your loan on forbearance until your PhD program is complete. VA and public service for a couple years after that. Lots of PSL forgiveness programs out there. Keep hope. The universe has a plan for you.

My brother in law is an assistant professor and it took him forever to get to that point. He did his post-doc for about 13 years before being promoted to assistant. And probably another 7-10 years to become and associate professor.

My wife is a masters level licensed professional counselor with years of experience (working at other entities and the university) but now has her own private practice and her rate is $200/ hr (she’s paneled with a few insurance providers) and sees about 14 clients a week. I would look at that or maybe being a counselor at a university so you can get your student loans waved in 10 years. Good luck!

Bail with your masters, stay on income based repayment, and find the highest paying job you can in any field and any state in the country. You’ll be ok, but staying in for the PhD is a fool’s errand at this point, the earning potential is too low to justify the extra debt.

(Speaking as someone who ran from academia when I saw how much my employed colleagues were struggling to pay rent, nevermind the other 100 people who applied for their spot and didn’t get it.)

I’m going to offer a “c option.” Finish your masters & get a job in sales. I would suggest something with a reward driven income like pharmaceuticals or even financial planning. You can leverage your degree by connecting with people, using what you learned, and convincing them to buy. You need to make way more money to pay off that debt & a sales job would be your best avenue to do this. Start applying now & utilize your college’s career center. The future of universities is not very bright & professors are going to be a dime a dozen. Owns a good time to toggle. Also, it would be nice if your wife could work full time. Good luck!

Tenure track positions are basically dead. 

Get your degree and get yourself into industry where you can actually pay your bills and be with your family on the weekend. 

I feel like my attitudes are in the minority on this sub here so take it with a grain of salt:

I have 140k in student debt with a STEM PhD from combined loans from undergrad (it was the 2000s and we all made dumb choices about loans at 18). 

I’m 6 years in to a govt job eligible for PSLF (likely need to add a year or 2 from weirdness around qualifying payments during COVID). My salary there after 6 years is just shy of 100k, partner and I together bring in around 200k  including our extra income. I don’t even look at my accrued interest or any of that, just pay what they tell me monthly which is income based and work towards the 120 qualifying payments.

A few things – 

-I live in an extremely low cost of living area and did my PhD in a low cost of living area, both still major metro areas (Great Lakes). This has increased my standard of living that would be unheard of if I lived in California or Dallas. I would personally consider going lower than either of those places if you are finding bare bones living to be stressful. 

-I worked during my PhD, especially near the end, almost full time service industry. Yes it sucks, yes it made the process longer. I did not however, intend to live with any more anxiety than I already had about my dissertation. I needed money to not be an issue and have my rent paid every month on autopay so I could have peace of mind for writing and publication. I eventually stopped teaching/TAing when the stipend wasn’t really making sense, and picked up some adjuncting when I was ABD. It was a lot of work, a lot of late nights and weekends. Par for the course. 

-I did not post doc and I gave up on any sort of plan to teach. My PhD is far more regarded in my work place (despite being completely unnecessary for my role) than it ever would have been in a research and grant farm. It is far more rewarding, and I don’t have to pull late night writing marathons anymore or meet deadlines or deal with any other nonsense from a university administration or reviewer number 2. Most of my cohort did the same and left academia, many for government jobs (EPA, USDA, Fish and Wildlife, etc). It was the case at least when I was still around that the first thing you did when landing a post doc was start applying for your next funding. I couldn’t possibly deal with the routine pay lapses and gaps between postdocs that I saw from colleagues. 

– 7 years out, I still work a second, very low intensity service industry job that I stumbled upon and can work 4 hour shifts on a weeknight and weekends. It is where all my fun money comes from and keeps me trucking along as a whittle down the debt I accrued and keeps me up with payments. Between my partner and I, who also has student loans from a masters, we each work our main jobs and pick up a few shifts a week at second jobs. This is just the reality for many folks in our position – so we make it something we enjoy and accept this is the status quo till we are paid off. We could make it without these jobs, but then would be bare bones like you have described. 

-With our work life and cost of living, despite working a lot, we are not in a crisis mode, even if hundreds of thousands of student debt seems like it should be. We take affordable vacations, have hobbies, and discretionary income while also paying down debt.  I call it my second mortgage. Friends my age have vacation homes, I have a PhD. It was an investment in myself and it’s what I chose. Because I am doing PSLF I am not currently in a rush to pay anything beyond what is required. We could definitely be better at saving but it’s a work in progress and a plan for 2026. 

I share this to let you know what financial reality looks like post grad school, because your only comparison right now is probably the post-docs in your department or your committee. For me personally, their lifestyles would have been extreme privilege and possible only with a trust fund. My one advisor used to say the P is  for perseverance. She was right in the sense that you just keep trucking to the end. Then you will indeed have a “oh shit how do I pay for all this???” Moment. But by then you have a PhD, which is empirical evidence that you have a really solid work ethic, can do really hard things and push through them to the finish. Determine what level of income you will need to sustain the life you want, then what kind of career/jobs you will need to maintain to have that that you will enjoy. 

Also – get a therapist. A PhD is not a normal thing everyone does or can do, so takes a very serious mental toll.  My therapist  specialized in graduate students and I couldn’t have defended without his help. I know exactly the type of crippling anxiety you are dealing with right now and I’m wishing you all the best.