<prompt> Human: The title of this post is pretty harsh, but its true. Ive been frequenting this subreddit for years. Every time I come on here and see an OP post about student loan debt, pretty much everyone swarms and says something like, You dont deserve cable, vacations, or going out. Be a slave to your debt until its paid off.In truth, it always seems like 80-90 of people have never investigated IBR or PAYE because it doesnt apply to them and thus dont understand the benefits of these programs. To summarize IBR, for example, no matter what your debt is, your student loan payment will be 15 of your discretionary income, which is determined solely by your adjusted gross income i.e., it doesnt matter how much your debt is, if you make 50k your loan payment will be the same, whether your debt is 60k or 200k. And, after 25 years, the debt is forgiven and you pay income taxes on the forgiven amount. The biggest benefit, to me, is that these programs allow you to begin investing, saving, etc. while paying off your loans. In other words, by not being a slave to your debt, you can begin investing and enjoy the fruits of compound interest later. To illustrate my point, lets take an example. Lets say a 26 year old grad school student graduates with 150k debt average 6.8 interest and makes 50k salary. After contributing 10 to his 401k and other deductions, his AGI is 42k. He takes home about 2600 per month. His ten year payment is 1711 per month, every month, for ten years, meaning there wouldnt be any room for substantial investing if he stuck to this plan. However, his IBR payment is just 325 per month. That will rise as he makes more money, but he can always keep his AGI low to keep his payments down. Then, if he so chooses, he can pay extra towards particular loans with the highest amount to keep his tax burden later lower. So lets say he were a slave to the debt and paid it off under the standard plan. He would have paid approximately 205k over the life of the loan. However, because all of his money would have gone to his loans instead of investing and saving, he wouldnt have a house and, more importantly, wouldnt have started contributing to his Roth until he was 36. Even if he maxes this out until he is 65, his Roth assuming a 7 return is worth around 541k when he retires. But lets take the IBR guy. He has an extra 1400 to save and invest EVERY MONTH. He chooses to max out his Roth at 26 while sticking to IBR. He also saves for a house and buys a 200k house at 31-32. At 52, according to the student loan repayment estimator, he has paid 160k on the loans, and there remains 165k on the loan balance. This is considered income that year, so he pulls 60k from his Roth to pay this income tax. Total paid towards loans: 220k, or just 15k more than if he was a slave to his debt. But lets get back to the Roth. Even after pulling the 60k to pay his income tax burden, his Roth is worth 346k at 52. He continues to contribute the max and, at 65, his Roth is worth 951k, or more than 400k than the guy who took this subreddits advice and paid off his loans because it was an EMERGENCY. Oh, and he would have paid off a 15 year mortgage at age 46-47 as well. Of course, there are some drawbacks. IBR means youll have to pull from your retirement accounts when youre in your 50s and, more detrimentally, if your spouse makes a decent income, you may have to file taxes separately to keep your payments down and thus you may have to back door funds into your Roth every year. But to me, the benefits of IBR and PAYE which only takes 10 of discretionary income significantly outweigh the detriments. So why are these programs never discussed on here? Why does this otherwise extremely helpful and knowledge-filled subreddit consistently fail to acknowledge the benefits of these programs? I hope this turns into a good discussion. Cheers.  <response>: IBR has been discussed 10 times this weekI think most on PF recognize that the autonomy and freedom that come with being debt free as soon as you can has such outsized benefits that it is worth sacrificing to get there. In your example, the student is in debt for 26 years and stuck with a penalty for pulling money from the Roth to pay the income tax, plus has lost that money from retirement savings. Thats not where Id want to be. Additionally your scenario does not account for unluckiness - serious illness for the student or the students family, a natural disaster, job loss could happen and blow this plan out of the water. One of the advantages of having gray hair is that one develops a certain caution around such possibilities.Thanks for raising the topic and playing out the math to show the option might be viable for some; robust discussion here helps folks see different sides of such issues and Im glad you raised the topic, even if we disagree. 