The Best and Worst States for Student Debt
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
- Utah
- Wyoming
- North Dakota
- Washington
- Nebraska
- Virginia
- Wisconsin
- Minnesota
- Colorado
- South Dakota
10 Worst States for Student Debt
- Mississippi
- Rhode Island
- Connecticut
- Maine
- Georgia
- South Carolina
- New York
- Alabama
- West Virginia
- Oregon
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The issue is more than just a matter of funding levels. “What hurts more is the erratic, unreliable and downright harmful federal budget process,” which has forced the Army to plan based on stopgap “continuing resolutions” instead of approved budgets for nine straight fiscal years. “A slowdown in combat-related training, production delays in new weapons, and a postponement of increases in Army troop levels are among the immediate impacts of operating under this ill-named continuing resolution. It’s not continuous and it certainly doesn’t display resolve.”
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The Pentagon has taken over cost-cutting efforts for the F-35 program, which has been plagued by years of cost overruns, production delays and technical problems. The Defense Department rejected a cost-saving plan proposed by contractors including principal manufacturer Lockheed Martin as being too slow to produce substantial savings. Instead, it gave Lockheed a $60 million contract “to pursue further efficiency measures, with more oversight of how the money was spent,” The Wall Street Journal’s Doug Cameron reports. F-35 program leaders “say they want more of the cost-saving effort directed at smaller suppliers that haven’t been pressured enough.” The Pentagon plans to cut the price of the F-35A model used by the Air Force from a recent $94.6 million each to around $80 million by 2020. Overall, the price of developing the F-35 has climbed above $400 billion, with the total program cost now projected at $1.53 trillion. (Wall Street Journal, CNBC)
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Quote of the Day - October 5, 2017
"The train's left the station, and if you're a budget hawk, you were left at the station." -- Rep. Mark Sanford, R-S.C.