As far as taking on loans, I was fairly certain (because you never can be 100%) that soon after graduation I’d be a stay at home mom. My husband and I were married between our soph. and jr. years and we jointly decided that we’d take out some loans. So although the loans were in my name they were essentially ours since we both agreed it was a good choice. So, I was never really bothered by the fact that it was my student loan that he was working to pay off.

Congrats on your socialized medicine and awesome tuition rates. I take back what I said during those pillow fights. You really do win.

1) Scholarship — I got one for about half my tuition in my first year. It was not renewed.

2) RESP — my parents saved about a years’ worth of tuition for me. That got used last year. Or two years ago? Sometime.

3) Government loans. I got a fairly large one* my first year (half my tuition) and a smaller one my second year. I’m in debt but I won’t have to pay anything back until six months after I graduate … and by then I’ll probably have saved enough to take care of it in one fell swoop, or nearly.

4) Government grants. These came packaged with my loans.

5) Work! I’ve worked every summer and the past two semesters I also worked part-time while studying. I was a bit apprehensive at first, but it’s been fine — and I really liked having more money coming in during term. I’ll make enough this summer to cover next year’s tuition, plus books.

*Note: when I’m throwing around terms like “half my tuition” and “next year’s tuition” remember that Canadian tuition is quite low (I pay about $5500 a year for tuition and auxiliary fees). I’m not a working wonderkid who’s pulling in $20,000 a summer!

My grades in high school had been abysmally bad (juvenile delinquency) so I had no scholarships and I didn’t want to go into debt, so working full-time it was. After a couple of years, I got a few scholarships which paid my tuition, but things were working out well so I continued to work. After four years, I graduated having made a small profit by going to school. (I do have some small student loan debts that I took out in the beginning just in case things didn’t work out, but all that money got banked. I still haven’t paid off the debt because I locked in ridiculously low interest rates. In any event, my net worth was about $22,000 after graduation compared to about $3000 before I went. Most of that didn’t come from scholarships, though.)

Note that I do not recommend such a path to anyone. I had a job which afforded me an hour or two of study time per day while I was working. I had a wife who agreed to take on all the household chores while I was doing it. I have been blessed with an extraordinary constitution (I have never taken a sick day in more than fifteen years) and an enviable reading speed (with comprehension – I’m not talking about skimming). My job allowed me to work weekends, so I had only three weekdays when I needed to both do my job and go to classes. The other four days were half-days. Even so, that schedule almost killed me. There were some weeks where I literally spent every waking hour studying, working, or going to class (though most weeks I did have time for leisure). I had absolutely no social life. There were many times when I would tell my wife, “I just can’t do this anymore.” She would smile sympathetically at my complaining and know that I’d still drag myself out of bed and to work and/or school every day and I’d be fine once my half-days started. As another negative, you’d think this would look impressive on my resume, but I didn’t find that to be true. I don’t think many people really grasp what it means, so I don’t believe it had very much impact on my initial job search (and none whatsoever since).

Still, it’s an experience and an accomplishment I’m very glad I have. To this day, my wife still regards me with a kind of awe, since she saw exactly how difficult it was, and I wouldn’t trade that for anything. My life since then has seemed almost absurdly easy, no matter how difficult things get. I was always good at time management, but that experience made me really good at it.

By all means, though, I don’t resent or look down on those people who didn’t have to work through school as long as they are appropriately grateful for their good fortune.

After my fourth year (I wasn’t quite done yet), I had to take on all my expenses myself. I worked full-time that summer, and everything I made after paying for rent, food, and transportation went to my savings…. which I wiped out paying for just TWO classes (all I needed, thankfully). Paying for those classes myself (and working ~24 hrs/week while taking them) gave me a much higher appreciation of what my parents gave me… and made me REALLY glad I didn’t need to work during the previous four years.

My husband is pretty much the opposite – everything that wasn’t covered by need-based grant, he had to cover himself, through loans and working. He worked at least 20 hours/week all through school (and up to 80 hours during breaks)… and he failed a lot of his classes anyway; he just wasn’t taking his classwork seriously enough. He eventually turned it around, and actually had his best grades when he was taking a double course load AND working 30 hrs/week…. but that was an exception to the rule.

All of that said, I doubt we’re going to do much saving for our own children’s education; because of DH’s student loans, we really can’t afford to.