University in the US is very expensive. My school started at $40,000 a year and went to about $58,000 by the time I finished in 4 years. I got a number of scholarships privately, and some grants from the government because my family was not rich. But I also got some government backed loans also to help cover these costs. After school we were always told we should consolidate those loans because they were a number of smaller loans put together to make it happen. When you consolidate you basically roll the loans together and a private company buys them and you pay the company over the course of time you can pick the time frame based upon your income. I was not earning a lot after school so I put my over 30 years.

I say it was a mistake to consolidate my loans because since doing that there have been a lot of loan forgiveness programs that would reduce or forgive the federal loans only if they were still held by the feds and not in private hands like mine. After school I was working for a non-profit hospital, I worked there for 8 years. If I would have worked there for 10 years and my loans were still held by the government I could have had half my debt erased.

As for buying out the loans my dad gave me the money left in the balance of the loan so I payed it off completely, so now I am paying him rather that same balance just at a lower percentage of interest for another 6 years. There was a time where I made extra payments on my loan when it was with the company but this never lowered my overall payments just reduced the amount of time I would be paying my loan. This came in handy when my dad stepped in because I was able to reduce my payment and still keep the over all loan term less than the whole 30 years I would have been paying it to the private company.