By Hank Russell
A recent study has shown that New York is one of 10 states with the highest student loan payments.
According to WalletHub, New York ranks seventh in the nation, with the average monthly payment being $242. Vermont was tops in student loan payments, paying $258 a month, while Wyoming had the lowest monthly payments at $160.
But when it comes to student debt, New York is in the bottom half. As previously reported in Long Island Life & Politics, WalletHub showed that New York’s overall student debt load was the 18th-lowest in the U.S. Mississippi had the highest student loan indebtedness rate, while Utah had the lowest. However, New York ranked 16th in having the highest average student debt (New Hampshire had the highest, while Utah had the lowest).
Data from the Education Data Initiative showed that the student loan borrower in New York has an average balance of $40,666, which is 2.61% above the national average, as LILP also reported.
According to WalletHub analyst Chip Lupo, if someone had $40,500 of student loan debt and was paying it off on top of an interest rate of 6.52% — the rate for federal undergraduate loans — at $302 a month, that borrower would be able to pay off the debt in 20 years.
“Monthly student loan payments vary quite a lot across the country,” Lupo said, adding there is a $99-a-month difference between Wyoming and Vermont’s payments. “In either case, that leads to extremely long payoff timelines.”