Graduate School: Is It Worth It?

I've been gone for a while, I know.  Sometimes life gets in the way!

Last week I was in Germany for my cousin's wedding.  Happy to visit family and be part of the celebration, when the usual question came up: "When are you going to grad school?" And my usual answer: "Im planning on it...next year" with a big smile... But, it's not completely untrue, grandma, just the "when" part. I have been looking into it and I have an idea of what I want to study.  Two problems I encounter every time: standardized testing and the $$$.  I'll talk about standardized testing in another blog. Right now I want to talk about money (duh!).

It's going to cost a lot...every time I look at the numbers, I wonder why people even think about doing this. But here I am thinking.  One program, that looks really cool (really cool), is going to be $100k.  Of course on their website it says $51k, but that's only for one year and to graduate it's scheduled to take two years. So sneaky!

So I started doing the math in my head.  Say I save $20k and my parents help with $20k, that'll bring it down to $60k.  With my current salary, I could probably afford $500/month, living very cheaply that is...anyways, $500/month is $6000/year.  If I kept it up, I'd have it paid off in 10 years. Oh wait, interest. =( Interest calculations are too hard to do in my head...and even on paper.  So, I found some pretty cool resources online (I'm not going to be a mathematician so it's ok):

• FinAid Calculators: Most detailed calculator. 
• Debt/Salary Wizard: A very simplified calculator.  More of a guideline than a standard, since it assumes how much you are able to pay every month based on your salary, not your frugality! 
• You Can Deal With It: This site has a bunch of different calculators you can use to figure out either how many months it will take, how much your monthly payment should be, etc. 

In conclusion, before you consider grad school, you really need to figure out realistically how you're going to pay for it.  Imagining having a great, high paying job or lots of scholarships isn't going to cut it.  Having both would definitely help, but better safe than sorry.  As for me,  not sure I'll ever have a super high paying job as I like the nonprofit/NGO world, but I'll work on getting scholarships!  Including the interest, my monthly payments would have to be about $540/month to pay off the debt within 10 years.  So for now, I'll just save money like it's going out of style...