I am very familiar with American student loans. I paid my 40k off in about 11 months by keeping my spending down that year. It was easy. I don't want to pay 15% of my income forever just because you can't budget. Also frankly your kids should be paying their own way through college. That's a nice gift you're giving them but it's 100% a discretionary expense and is basically you saying "I have so much money I can simply gift it to my kids". Shit I wish I had that.

> That's a nice gift you're giving them…

I never said I was - I'll certainly try to help where I can. I don't have that kind of money; see aforementioned healthcare costs! They're gonna need loans, it's probably gonna be quite a bit more than $40k, and I'm pretty dubious in the current job market that they're gonna have $40k in discretional annual income on the other end.

> I don't want to pay 15% of my income forever just because you can't budget.

And I don't want to go bankrupt from ever-rising medical costs, but here we are.