SEMINOLE COUNTY, Fla. – According to numbers from EducationData.org, when spread out evenly, federal student loan debt averages $29 billion per state, including DC and Puerto Rico.
Florida's number alone is nearly $101 Billion.
Borrowers across the country are now anxiously awaiting to see how President Biden might help.
Currently, Florida ranks fifth in the country with the highest average borrower debt for a federal student loan. It’s about $38,500 per student.
Over two and a half million student borrowers live in Florida, and of that number nearly half about 48% are under the age of 35. For some, though, when it comes to paying off their student debt, it just seems like an impossible task.
When Julie Jennings went looking at colleges, schools looked at her to play volleyball.
No school would give her a full ride, but her father said going to college was a must.
“My father had offered to start off helping me pay,” Jennings, a mother of three, says from her Seminole County home. “He helped me find the loans, I didn’t really know what that all entailed.”
In 2002, Jennings enrolled at St. Joseph’s college, a small private Catholic school in Indiana. Her student loans at that time totaled $60,000, half of which were federal loans
“It did cover everything,” Julie recalls. “It covered housing, food, the courses, the books that I needed, everything.”
Twenty years and a husband with three kids later, Jennings' loan, which came with about a 10% interest on it now sits at nearly $80,000.
Paul Roldan is the CEO at Allgen Financial Advisors. He says at least a third of their clients have some type of student debt. With recent news from the White House that President Biden wants to help eliminate student debt, Roldan is telling people, don’t bank on it.
“It’s not a game changer because we don’t really feel a lot is going to happen,” Roldan states. “They have been kicking this can down the road, and understand, there is politics involved and there is some promises made but very little has been done.”
Jennings admits this topic is one she watches intently, hoping the Biden administration can help cancel at least $10,000 of federal student loan debt off people like her.
“You know not everyone’s situation is so cookie cutter,” Julie says. “We are all not able to go thorough college and get the good job and do the right thing. A lot of us are trying to pay it off.”
Aside from being a full-time mom, Jennings also works from home. At her current rate of paying off student loans, she is on pace to have them paid off by 2047 – 45 years after she began being a college student.
The average borrower takes less than half that amount of time at 20 years to repay their student loan debt.
“Believe me when I say I wish I could have done that, I really do,” Jennings says.
The Education Data Initiative reports, up to 67.1% of the average borrower’s total cost of repayment is generated interest.
According to Federal Guidelines, 10% of someone's gross income should go toward paying off student debts.
The average federal student loans debt per borrower in the U.S. is about $38,000.
If payments are made in full, and on time, that loan would take seven years and seven months to pay off.