I paid with blood, sweat, and oh yeah federal grants and loan money.  It took me seven years too but I also switched from pre-med to RN after three years.  So my actual degree only took the intended 4 but I came out with a whopping $25000.  Luckily my husband and I made enough to make the payments and then sold a house for a lot and paid off everything.  I promise you I did a lot more studying and was a lot more serious about school than my friends with trusts or mommy and daddy footing the bill.  Although I would like to think I can help my kids through college, I kind of think for them to appreciate it they have to do it on their own.  It didn't kill me or any of my siblings (a lawyer, a vet and a social worker).  

I agree, college takes on a whole new meaning when you are working your tail off to pay for it! I was studying like a maniac when I had to work three jobs to pay for classes! Many of my classmates partied and spent money every weekend, I worked and studied!
I plan on helping my kids with college, but they will definitely be paying for part of it! I think it builds character.
Toni

I have a ton of student loans. It stinks. I had graduated and went right away for my MA in Education and I graduated without finishing student teaching. 4 kids later- I am SAHM with no plans on going back to finish in the near future. When I attempted to student teach while pregnant with my 3rd my mentor told me that I need to stop acting like my children were more important than my students. Um no.

So I have almost $60k in students loans out. I stay up at night worried about them but I know that my education wasn't in vain but that even now it helps my parenting.

If I could go back in time I would not do my MA in Education. I would have had about 1/3 of the loans if I would have just went with my gut.

I am the youngest of six girls and took for granted that I would 1-get a degree and 2- pay for it myself. So I started preparing for college in high school, knowing that an academic scholarship would be the only way to put myself through college.

Wow Chelsea! That is awesome. What a wonderful example you are to so many others including your kid(s).
We are also prepping our kids to be able to receive scholarships as well. I know for me, scholarships really helped out!
Of course my son is considering one of the service academies. Not sure if I am ready for that though!
Toni

I was raised by parents who were "followers" of Larry Burkett's ministry and stood by his principles.  From the time I was 6 I had a job (selling soda to the guys who worked at my Dad's business) and also a budget.  My Dad always told me that I needed to be able to go through college debt free (or fairly close) since I was a woman and I wanted to get married.  I graduated from school a year early and began to work for a year with plans to go to college.  But when my car broke down not once but twice in that year I had no money towards college.  God used that to direct me to a different job where I learned the trade of working in a print shop without having college experience.  It was a great 2 years there and the skills I learned there now help me my everyday life.  I never did go to college and now I'm a Mom of 3 kids with a husband who is a pastor.  He was able to complete his 4 year degree debt free by working on weekends and over the summers.  We married with no debt and money in our savings account the same summer he graduated.  There are some days I wish I had a college degree, but when I start thinking about it...I don't need it.  I'm right where I always dreamed of being and I don't need a degree for that!  Although, there are days I wonder about the degree part!  There have been some baby gear that I think you need a Masters to operate! :-)

Trench Mommy-
You don't need a degree, just proficiency in a foreign language, lol! I am still waiting for baby gear manuals in English. :)
Toni

I graduated from college three yrs ago with roughly $5,000 in loans. I have already paid some of that off. (We just started getting into Dave Ramsey's stuff earlier this year.)

I went to an expensive, private, Christian university. My dad worked there, so I got a 35 percent discount. Other than that, my parents didn't pay for my tuition or books. (I could have gotten a larger discount if I'd lived in the dorm, but then I'd have to pay for food and dorm. Go figure. Anyway, I lived at home and they supported me there. Free food! Yee haw.)

In addition, I qualified for state grants and studied like crazy and got scholarships ($1,500 plus per semester that I attended there). I did college in 3.5 years, so I was pretty busy and didn't really work during the school year (besides one job at a radio station working at minimum wage which wasn't worth my time, pretty much).

During the three summers, I worked in a 10-week sales program selling Christian books (the blue Bible story books that you frequently see in doctors' and dentists' offices). This worked out very well and I sold enough to be able to cover a lot of the school year's tuition and I financed the rest. I ONLY took out loans to cover the remaining amount on my balance, nothing more.

I don't know how I could have done any better than I did. Maybe if I was smarter I would have gotten more scholarships going into the school or something. :-S Sigh...

Now we're facing paying my husband's medical school loans back. (Which would be really daunting if we didn't have a plan.) But he signed up with our denomination to go abroad as a missionary physician years ago. He will be a missionary physician for six years and they will pay off all his medical school loans, which is not a bad deal.

So we're just waiting now for a work permit for the foreign country, and feverishly paying off credit card debt that he racked up during medical school in the meantime, and we will be good to go. Unless, of course, God has a different plan and we stay here. Then we'll be reexamining our financial options. ;-)

I never completed college...I could say a whole lot more on the subject, but maybe I should just blog it sometime.

Anyway, my mom paid for my 1st semester (about $600). I took out loans for a few semesters which amounted to maybe $2500 total...and then I switched my major so my employer would pick up the tab. In 1997, I think I had about $1000-1500 in STLs. It's been long paid off now.

DH on the other hand...he went to Embry Riddle. Between his parents PLUS loans, the GI Bill, & his own personal STLs, we've estimated that his college experience has a price tag of well over $100K...and that's W/O the interest.

Quite frankly, STLs stupefy me (and I used to process them at a bank). An auto loan at $24K, 5.5%, at $466.68 per month, is paid in full in 60 months. But $32K in STLs, 7% at $320 per month takes 20 YRS! Something doesn't "seem" right about that to me, but I've crunched all the numbers & it's still just baffling to me.  

I feel guilty admitting it, but my parents paid for a bunch of my college. I also had scholarship money to help.

I went to UBC (University of British Columbia) for one year and that was fully paid by a scholarship. But then I switched to BCIT (British Columbia Institute of Technology) and thus gave up my scholarship. It was an odd decision to many... but it all worked out in the end.

~Susan