The Best and Worst States for Student Debt

The Best and Worst States for Student Debt

REUTERS/Steve Dipaola
By Suelain Moy

Where you go to college and what major you pick can have huge financial consequences, but where you live after graduating can also have a big impact on how much your diploma is worth — and how well you can handle your student debt.

How likely are you to land a good paying job? How high will your living expenses be? The answers to those questions and others like them go a long way to determining how burdensome those monthly student loans payments are.

Related: The Best Investment the U.S. Could Make—Affordable Higher Education

To ensure your loan doesn’t break you, experts suggest that your payment should not exceed 8 to 10 percent of your monthly income.

Unsurprisingly, the personal finance website WalletHub says, “Student-loan borrowers will fare better in states that produce a combination of lower college-related debt levels, stronger economies and higher incomes.”

To find those states, WalletHub looked at seven metrics, with special emphasis given to student debt as a percentage of average income, the local unemployment rate for people aged 25 to 34 and the percentage of borrowers aged 50 or older. Here are the 10 best and worst states for student debt. You can click on your state on the map below to see where it ranks.

Related: Private Student Loans: Everything You Need to Know

10 Best States for Student Debt

  1. Utah
  2. Wyoming
  3. North Dakota
  4. Washington
  5. Nebraska
  6. Virginia
  7. Wisconsin
  8. Minnesota
  9. Colorado
  10. South Dakota

10 Worst States for Student Debt

  1. Mississippi
  2. Rhode Island
  3. Connecticut
  4. Maine
  5. Georgia
  6. South Carolina
  7. New York
  8. Alabama
  9. West Virginia
  10. Oregon

Source: WalletHub

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GraphicStock
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The leading candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination have all proposed increasing taxes on corporations, including raising income tax rates to levels ranging from 25% to 35%, up from the current 21% imposed by the Republican tax cuts in 2017. With Bernie Sanders leading the way at $3.9 trillion, here’s how much revenue the higher proposed corporate taxes, along with additional proposed surtaxes and reduced tax breaks, would generate over a decade, according to calculations by the right-leaning Tax Foundation, highlighted Wednesday by Bloomberg News.

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Reuters
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By The Fiscal Times Staff

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