<prompt> Human: TL;DR Take home per month on my own is 2,656. My paycheck is for my loans totaling 182.5K; husbands paycheck is for everything else. Husband wants to add to the payments but wants to make it count. What are our options?nbsp; Hello everybody,I have lurked in PF on several occasions trying to get a grip on my situation and thought I could figure it out but need some guidance at this juncture. I currently live in an inexpensive city with my husband in a house. He got a new job making 100K at the end of last year and has asked me about my loans because we will want kids in the near future. nbsp; I had undergraduate loans from 2009 124.5K of the overall total is from that and I had gone back to school and got my masters in 2015 the added 58K. I had amounts and interest rates in spread sheets and I was paying them down very slowly. Due to all of the loans having daily interest accrual, I learned on PF that if I paid them weekly, it would drastically cut down on the interest I would pay over the life of the loan. Before April 2016 I had set up all payments to automatically deduct from my bank account to get that 0.25 interest rate deduction. After I read that here, I calculated the payments to manually pay weekly between the 3 loans and have dropped the private loans from 97K to almost 92K since then. nbsp; Monthly billsloan amounts: Take home per month, just me: 2,656 Work matches 50 of my contributions between 1 and 6 of my 401K, Im currently contributing 6 Federal loans total approx. 86.5K, private loans total approx. 96K, overall total: 182.5K Federal loans Based on my income alone, I qualify for the income contingent based payment plan so for all of these I pay 234 a month. The principal, however, is not being reduced at all. Ive put all my attention into the private loans with the highest interest rates. Direct Subsidized Stafford loan: 14.5K 5.875 fixed Direct Unsubsidized Stafford loans: 14K 5.875 fixed 14K 6.55 fixed 22K 5.16 fixed 22K 5.96 fixed Private loans - Chase turned AES: I was paying 838 per month until the weekly thing caught my attention, now its 212 per week. The interest rate deduction is gone but Im definitely paying it off quicker now. 20K 9.56 - 220 25K 7.06 - 233 47K 7.5 - 385 Discover: 4K 8 - minimum payment is 60, it was originally a 5K loan in 2008, now paying 150 per month and am paid ahead until 718 and its not moving very much which is ridiculous. If Im paid ahead, why does that not mean Car payment: 430.65 per month, 28K Refinanced 3.24 for 72 months LA Fitness: 21.30 per month on a friends family plan Rewards credit card: Was using the rest of my paycheck to pay this off, husband went ahead and used some savings to pay off the 5K on it and now I just use it to get groceries and pay it off every month. Now its around 300 - 400 per month. Points credit card: 1K left on this one, used this for weddingbirthdayChristmas gifts and lately its been sympathy flowers unfortunately that I cant afford at the moment. Yeah, I know, its not ideal. Overall Im paying 2,084 out of my paychecks per month whatever is left over to paying down balances on credit cards Have 300 in savings just so I dont have to pay the maintenance fee. Husband keeps his savings over 5K and anything over that we can use for extra things, like my credit card he paid off or house stuff like the fence we had to install after it was taken out by a hurricane or a new air handler in the future.nbsp; More info:When we got married in 2015 after I graduated, we decided that since he was making 65K which would cover all the bills: the mortgage he bought a house before we were married and I moved in, internet, his car payment, electric, water and dog, I could focus my paychecks on paying down my loans and since I wanted to contribute I would buy our groceries every month. I also bought a car for graduate school because some classes were at a campus 3 hours away one way. I put 18K miles on that car in a year, it turned out to be less per month than maintaining my gas guzzler. What really had my credit score down was the 90 days late for each of these private loans when it was through Chase in 2011, so next year it should fall off and my credit score will jump Im hoping. I sent a goodwill letter a couple years ago, after I had a steady job and was paying more per month, to remove the late payments, and they flat out denied my request even though they sold it to AES and AES told me they couldnt remove it as they werent the original lender. nbsp; So anyway, my husband had some thoughtssuggestions that maybe you guys can help us out with. 1. Buy a bigger house now we were going to upgrade anyway for kids, take the equity from the increased market value on our current house Valued at just over 200K, hes paid 40K and the original mortgage was for 140K to pay the 20 down on a max 250K house and the remaining chunk hed put towards or two of my private loans. I hope I explained that right. Also, since we are married in FL, is he able to buy a house just in his name? Or would they have to use both of us because we are married and therefore have to run both of our credit scores?1. He asked if I could refinance my loans. I have tried with SoFi and earnest and to refinance all of them, I would lose all my federal benefits, especially the forgiveness after 25 years if that is still a thing. I could see refinancing the private loans, definitely. My credit score was under 700 until just recently, so they didnt approve me when I tried last year alone and that total mightve been too high compared to my earnings. He then offered to cosign. Would this be a smart way to do it? Should I do all of them at a 3.92 fixed rate lowest SoFi offers or just the private loans? That would increase the monthly payment but if he helps it would be paid off in 8 years instead of 19 that I have left paying the way Im paying according to my amortization spreadsheet. Also, if we refinance through one of these providers, does the interest accrue daily? And I guess if its paid off in 8 years, the forgiveness after 25 years is not a factor. nbsp; Any guidance would be appreciated. Even doing a combination of the two, would we wait until after a chunk is paid off and then refinance the rest? Or would we try to refinance all of it and then pay a chunk of the refinanced total with the lower interest? Or are there other options like investing in stocks? Were open to anything. There are actually options now with his help. nbsp; Edit Doing yard work and I missed all the fun, so Ill sum up some of the answers to your questions. nbsp; My undergraduate degree was in Oceanography and my masters was in environmental sciences. The undergraduate school was expensive and I wish there had been a class, or even Reddit back then, before signing anything to do with your education. Hindsight is 2020 and I wish I wouldve stayed home and taken classes at a community college first while working full time at the job I had in high school. But that shit didnt happen, I wanted the college experience and to get away from my family. Only recently do I realize everything that I did wrong and thats only by researching what everyone else did. Granted, if I didnt go to the university, I wouldnt have met my husband, so theres that. I will try and refinance again without my husband as a cosigner and will just refinance my private loans to get a smaller interest rate on those, then I could put more into all of them federal and private.nbsp; I showed my husband all these comments and we talked and agreed to really cut back. We were not having kids yet, just planning on the possibility of thinking about it in a few years, so cool your jets. Well give it a few more years beyond that, were still young. I agree that the car is too much, I definitely fell into that trap of the monthly payment vs the overall debt so once our savings gets back up Ill be selling it, paying the difference, buying a much cheaper car. We will not be selling the house to live in an apartment or to buy a bigger house. Well just stay put for now, seems like the best option. Paying for an apartment is just wasting money, at least with a house its an investment and collateral should you need it. Plus, the small 2-bedroom apartment we moved out of to move into this house cost more per month than the mortgage on the house does.nbsp; I have been looking for a new job and we agreed that I should be looking outside my current field GIS Analyst as well to widen the search radius. Even if I had to drive a bit, if the increase in salary outweighs the cost of gas to get there, it could be worth it, just extra time for me on the road. None of the jobs Ive found are in my city, a couple I applied to are 2 hours away and others are in other states. So dont think Im not currently looking to broaden my horizons. Weve played with the idea of a 2nd job for me, but if I did that we would have no time together, so I just have to focus on getting a better job. I was more wondering if the options I laid out were feasible and I got advice on everything but the options except on a couple of posts. I needed to hear it though. Thank you for all of the advice, I do appreciate the tough love.  <response>: Your situation is absolutely out of control and its going to take drastic action to solve it. Its an absolute crisis. Im not sure you grasp how bad it really is if you are considering going into more debt for a house. You cant afford a single cent of more debt. If you cant find a higher paying job, you need to get a second job. Im talking 60-80 hour weeks for 5 years. You need to at least double your income and cut the budget down to nothing if you have any hope of paying this off in a reasonable time frame. Hopefully your post will serve as a warning to others. 