<prompt> Human: Hi rpersonalfinance,I am a Physician Assistant who took a large number of loans out in 2009-2011 to get my degree.The initial loan total on graduation was about 149,000.For the last 5 years Ive been slowly working from entry level to experienced level positions. Ive made about 4 years of payments over this timeframe.The original 10 year plan would have cost over 2,000 a month and I was struggling to get by at all at my first few jobs. I ended up switching to an income based repayment plan IBR which made loan payments possible the lowest monthly payment I ever had was about 750month, and this increased as my income increased to about 1,000month. Unfortunately, these payments didnt even meet my interest on the loans! Not only that, I repeatedly had to go on forbearance due to financial difficulties, and the interest built up from those periods too.I am now at a point where Ive paid 24,000 in interest on a average 7.9 APR across all of my loans, and my principal has INCREASED up to 172,000!Ive still been getting by on the IBR plan, hoping to just make it 25 years and have the rest of the loans be forgiven. Unfortunately, Im looking at this all again now because I just got married, and if we want to file jointly for tax benefits, my IBR jumps up to over 2,000 a month which we simply cannot afford.Im really not sure what to do. The interest on these loans is suffocating. I dont know how I can pay off the interest, and the principal, and still support my family. Ive been thinking about possibly consolidating all of my loans into a new 30 year plan... but I dont really know what the best option is here. Does anyone else have any experience with this sort of problem?Thank you so much for any help.  <response>: How much do you make annually?The 25th percentile of PAs make about 83,520 from some brief internet research. When my household was making just under that we were paying 2000 a month on my student loans. Paying 2k a month on loans should be doable unless you are making substantially less than that...It sounds like you have been doing the minimum. If you are making 70-80k 2k a month should not be a stretch. If you are making less I recommend changing jobs.Not only that, I repeatedly had to go on forbearance due to financial difficulties, and the interest built up from those periods too.What happened? 