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I don't think that I will ever pay off my student loan! I'm not sure how it works in the US, but over here the repayments are income based - so as I stay home with DS I don't pay anything towards it, yet it is still growing in interest every year.

I've been paying them for 2 years and I hope it will be about 4-5 years until they are gone.

If my loan repayment incentive at work goes away I have 28 more years then D:

Meh, a long long time. I had two loans, a big one and a small one. The small one is paid off but the big one has about $14,000 left on it. The payment is spread over 20 years and the interest is so low-2%--that I'm just not motivated to pay it off any quicker. It's just $110 a month.

My husband offered to pay it off for me but I said no--I feel like it's mine to deal with.

We only have 4 for DH (very low balance). I never had any so I wasn't really familiar with dealing with them. I kinda wish we paid it off before baby! Now that baby is almost here and I'm on FMLA for 3 months, I don't foresee us having extra wiggle room to just pay them off.

My federal law school loans are on a 30 year repayment plan. However, they're consolidated at 2% and the monthly payment is so low that they are at the bottom the priority list. All the private loans are paid off except for one (about $5000 left), and I really want to take care of that soon. Honestly, my federal loans are at such a low interest rate, I make more money allowing any extra I would send them to accrue interest. I almost view them as cost of living at this point. 20 years to go!

I was on a 30 year plan, but I increased my payments and made a last big lump sum payment. It still took 10 years.

I've been paying for 5 years and still have a few to go. I am going back to work so I'm hoping to put any extra income towards getting those paid off.

Feels like forever...and it's over $500 a month. In reality, probably another 15 years. Thank you NYU grad school.

I don't actually know, but I think we were both on 15 year repayment plans, so... we probably have 7-8 more years to go.

I've been paying off for 4 years, I'm hoping we can have them paid off in another 5 years. (I have 2, DH has 1. Mine are more significant than his, but we both went to the 2 most expensive private colleges in our state.)

Mine are basically a mortgage, so it'll be a good while, probably another 15 years or more. Fingers crossed that I'm done with them by the time LO goes to college himself...

I consolidated so its going to be at least 10 more years

Last time i called, they told me it would be 15 more years. Right in time for LO to be going to college...

In all seriousness, we do plan on increasing our payments at some point, so hopefully that will get it paid down a little earlier.

I'll probably die before they are paid off.

We only have one out of 4 left! We made it a priority before having DD / paying for daycare to pay off the high interest ones, so we knocked off $60,000 in 3 years. The one we have left is like 1% interest and only about $6,000 so I'm not in a huge rush for that one.

I'm with @BlueWolverine:

I'm lucky that I went to school before the worst of the crisis began, and all my loans were federal. I'm down to owning four digits, so that was exciting. But they were all deferred the last couple of years while I earned my master's (thankfully work paid for that).

So I'll have about 7 years left when they pick back up next year after I graduate, but because the interest is so low, we'll probably work on paying off cars before the loans.

Probably forever. I have around $50k and my husband has around $75k I think? Graduate degrees are ridiculous. Also note: do not go to a private school for your Ph.D, go to a school that will pay for you! Poor DH stuck due to me starting medical school before his grad school. We're on income based repayment though and I'm just starting to earn my full earning potential (right now truncated by my - unpaid - maternity leave) and this summer DH will graduate so then his loans will go into repayment. Then it will be a whole different ballgame and we're trying to balance how to pay off 6 figures of loans and save for a down payment on a house. They're all federal stafford loans (and a tiny Perkins one) at least I guess.

Sigh. I suspect mine will be forgiven long before I pay them off. My smaller loan ($22k starting) will be paid in less than 10 years even if I pay nothing extra. My larger loan ($120k+) will likely be forgiven at the 25 years mark and I will have to pay taxes on the rest, as I have it set up on an income-based scale. I'd love to think that someday we'll make enough money to actually pay the larger loan down. Not holding my breath.

Oh yeah, and when my DH graduates this spring, he'll add about $70k in loans. Haven't even addressed that issue yet.

@Sparkler: Well absolutely - I'm glad student loans are available for those that need them! And it sounds like you got an ideal rate and have the salary to afford paying them back which is wonderful.

I hope no one took my statement the wrong way.

I paid mine off 5 years after graduating from undergrad. I had around $17k.