By Eliza Haverstock, NerdWallet

Graduate school can boost your career prospects and earnings — but it can come at a steep price. Nearly half of grad students take out loans, with an average balance of $77,300, according to a 2023 report from the National Center for Education Statistics.

That debt can be tough to manage — it adds up fast. All grad school loans, whether federal or private, accrue interest while you’re in school, says Brittany Brinckerhoff, a Chapel Hill, North Carolina-based certified financial planner and certified student loan professional.

You also have fewer repayment options than you do with federal undergrad loans, says Brinckerhoff, who’s worked with attorneys and medical professionals repaying hundreds of thousands of dollars in grad school debt.

If graduate school loans are holding you back from achieving your financial goals, consider these expert-approved strategies.

Understand your debt — and your full financial picture

The first step is understanding your debt. Your loan type can determine what repayment plans are available, says Glenn Sanger-Hodgson, a Tallahassee, Florida-based accredited financial planner and certified student loan professional who specializes in medical school debt.

Log into your StudentAid.gov account for federal loan details, including balance, loan type, interest rate and repayment plans. The Education Department’s loan simulator can help you understand federal repayment options. For private loans, check your loan documents or contact your lender.

Once you understand your debt and repayment options, it’s time to choose a path forward. Use the rules of thumb below as a starting point. But also run the numbers on all available repayment plans to find the one that best fits your financial goals and career plans, Sanger-Hodgson says.

If your debt is double your income, consider forgiveness

If your student debt is about twice as much as your income, you’re a good candidate for Public Service Loan Forgiveness (PSLF) or income-driven repayment (IDR) forgiveness, Sanger-Hodgson says. Consider the full list of student loan forgiveness programs.

Forgiveness is usually time-based. For example, you can get forgiveness after 10 years of payments while working a public service job, or after 20 to 25 years of payments on an IDR plan.

So if you aim for forgiveness, choose the repayment plan with the smallest monthly payment. That way you maximize the amount of debt forgiven when you reach the finish line.

For most borrowers, that means signing up for an IDR plan. The IDR plan called Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is the only IDR plan that’s not going away in 2028 as a result of the recent budget reconciliation bill.

“Your goal needs to be paying as little as possible over the life of the loan,” Sanger-Hodgson says. If you put extra money toward your debt while on a forgiveness path, “you’re just throwing money away that would have been forgiven otherwise.”

If your debt is equal to or less than your income, aggressively pay it off

If your student debt is roughly equal to or less than your income, you’re less likely to benefit from a forgiveness program. With an IDR plan, you could end up paying off your debt in full before achieving forgiveness.

Related Articles

8 major student loan changes from Trump’s budget bill: Next steps for borrowers

For some employees, education benefits such as tuition assistance prove life-changing

Ready to retire in 5 years? Here’s your checklist

The 7 mistakes I made when refinancing my mortgage

Average long-term US mortgage rate eases to 6.74%, keeping home loan borrowing costs elevated

Instead, assuming you’re on track for other financial goals, try “aggressively throwing every financial resource [you] have at getting those student loans paid off as quickly as possible,” Sanger-Hodgson says.

Consider a few key strategies to pay off grad school debt quickly:

Stick to the standard 10-year repayment plan for federal student loans.
Make additional lump-sum payments. If you have federal student loans, call your servicer and ask if you can apply extra payments toward the principal, rather than interest. And if you have multiple student loans, tackle the ones with a higher interest rate first.
Refinance, if you qualify for a lower interest rate.

Carefully consider the decision to refinance if you have federal student loans. They will be replaced with private loans, and you’ll permanently exit the federal student loan system. That means forfeiting access to income-driven repayment plans, forgiveness and other relief.

If you refinance, “you’ve got to be 110% certain that you’re gonna be paying off your loans in full and that you’re not going to need forgiveness at any point,” Sanger-Hodgson says.

Stay informed about your student loans

Government policies, including the recent budget reconciliation bill, are poised to reshape student loans repayment and forgiveness options. Keep an eye on the news and official Education Department announcements.

“There are tremendous changes on the horizon for student loans,” Sanger-Hodgson says.

Eliza Haverstock writes for NerdWallet. Email: ehaverstock@nerdwallet.com. Twitter: @elizahaverstock.

The article Grad School Debt Holding You Back? How to Get It Under Control originally appeared on NerdWallet.

By MATT SEDENSKY, Associated Press National Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — As a child, Heidi Barley watched her family pay for groceries with food stamps. As a college student, she dropped out because she couldn’t afford tuition. In her twenties, already scraping by, she was forced to take a pay cut that shrunk her salary to just $34,000 a year.

But this summer, the 41-year-old hit a milestone that long felt out of reach: She became a millionaire.

Related Articles

Wall Street gains as investors eye US trade talks with China, Fed rate decision and earnings reports

Gunman who killed 4 at Manhattan office building was targeting NFL headquarters, mayor says

Federal Reserve likely to stand pat on rates this week, deepening the gulf between Powell and Trump

Today in History: July 29, USS Forrestal accident

Gunman kills 4, including police officer, in shooting at New York City office tower

A surging number of everyday Americans now boast a seven-figure net worth once the domain of celebrities and CEOs. But as the ranks of millionaires grow fatter, the significance of the status is shifting alongside perceptions of what it takes to be truly rich.

“Millionaire used to sound like Rich Uncle Pennybags in a top hat,” says Michael Ashley Schulman, chief investment officer at Running Point Capital Advisors, a wealth management firm in El Segundo, California. “It’s no longer a backstage pass to palatial estates and caviar bumps. It’s the new mass-affluent middleweight class, financially secure but two zeros short of private-jet territory.”

Inflation, ballooning home values and a decades-long push into stock markets by average investors have lifted millions into millionairehood. A June report from Swiss bank UBS found about one-tenth of American adults are members of the seven-digit club, with 1,000 freshly minted millionaires added daily last year.

Thirty years ago, the IRS counted 1.6 million Americans with a net worth of $1 million or more. UBS — using data from the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund and central banks of countries around the globe — put the number at 23.8 million in the U.S. last year, a nearly 15-fold increase.

The expanding ranks of millionaires come as the gulf between rich and poor widens. The richest 10% of Americans hold two-thirds of household wealth, according to the Federal Reserve, averaging $8.1 million each. The bottom 50% hold 3% of wealth, with an average of just $60,000 to their names.

Federal Reserve data also shows there are differences by race. Asian people outpace white people in the U.S. in median wealth, while Black and Hispanic people trail in their net worth.

Barley was working as a journalist when her newspaper ended its pension program and she got a lump-sum payout of about $5,000. A colleague convinced her to invest it in a retirement account, and ever since, she’s stashed away whatever she could. The investments dipped at first during the Great Recession but eventually started growing. In time, she came to find catharsis in amassing savings, going home and checking her account balances when she had a tough day at work.

Last month, after one such day, she realized the moment had come.

“Did you know that we’re millionaires?” she asked her husband.

“Good job, honey,” Barley says he replied, unfazed.

It brought no immediate change. Like many millionaires, much of her wealth is in long-term investments and her home, not easy-to-access cash. She still lives in her modest Orlando, Florida, house, socks away half her paycheck, fills the napkin holder with takeout napkins and lines trash cans with grocery bags.

Still, Barley says it feels powerful to cross a threshold she never imagined reaching as a child.

“But it’s not as glamorous as the ideas in your head,” she says.

All wealth is relative. To thousandaires, $1 million is the stuff of dreams. To billionaires, it’s a rounding error. Either way, it takes twice as much cash today to match the buying power of 30 years ago.

A net worth of $1 million in 1995 is equivalent to about $2.1 million today, according to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

A seven-figure net worth is, to some, as outdated a yardstick as a six-figure salary. Nonetheless, “millionaire” is peppered in everything from politics to popular music as shorthand for rich.

“It’s a nice round number but it’s a point in a longer journey,” says Dan Uden, a 41-year-old from Providence, Rhode Island, who works in information technology and who hit the million-dollar mark last month. “It definitely gives you some room to breathe.”

No other country comes close to the U.S. in the sheer number of millionaires, though relative to population, UBS found Switzerland and Luxembourg had higher rates.

Kenneth Carow, a finance professor at Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business, says commonalities emerge among today’s millionaires. The vast majority own stocks and a home. Most live below their means. They value education and teach financial responsibility to their children.

“The dream of becoming a millionaire,” Carow says, “has become more obtainable.”

Jim Wang, 45, a software engineer-turned finance blogger from Fulton, Maryland, says even if hitting $1 million was essentially “a non-event” for him and his wife, it still held weight for him as the son of immigrants who saved money by turning the heat off on winter nights.

Jim Wang, a software engineer and finance blogger, records a video in his home office, Thursday, July 24, 2025, in Fulton. (AP Photo/Stephanie Scarbrough)

The private jets he envisioned as a kid may not have materialized at the million-dollar threshold, but he still sees it as a marker that brings a certain level of security.

“It’s possible, even with a regular job,” he says. “You just have to be diligent and consistent.”

The resilience of financial markets and the ease of investing in broad-based, low-fee index funds has fueled the balances of many millionaires who don’t earn massive salaries or inherit family fortunes.

Among them is a burgeoning community of younger millionaires born out of the movement known as FIRE, for Financial Independence Retire Early.

Jason Breck, 48, of Fishers, Indiana, embraced FIRE and reached the million-dollar mark nine years ago. He promptly quit his job in automotive marketing, where he generally earned around $60,000 a year but managed to stow away around 70% of his pay.

Jason Breck and Daravy Khiev work in their home, Wednesday, July 23, 2025, in Fishers, Ind. (AP Photo/Darron Cummings)

Now, Breck and his wife spend several months a year traveling. Despite being retired, they continue to grow their balance by sticking to a tight budget and keeping expenses to $1,500 a month when they’re in the U.S and a few hundred dollars more when they travel.

Hitting their goal hasn’t translated to luxury. There is no lawn crew to cut the grass, no Netflix or Amazon Prime, no Uber Eats. They fly economy. They drive a 2005 Toyota.

“It’s not a golden ticket like it was in the past,” Breck says. “For us, a million dollars buys us freedom and peace of mind. We’re not yacht rich, but for us, we’re time rich.”

By PHILIP MARCELO and ERIC TUCKER, Associated Press

NEW YORK (AP) — New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Tuesday that a gunman who killed four people at a Manhattan office building was trying to target the headquarters of the National Football League but took the wrong elevator.

Investigators believe Shane Tamura was trying to get to the NFL offices after shooting several people in the building’s lobby but accidentally entered the wrong set of elevator banks, Adams said in interviews on Tuesday.

A New York police officer talks with a woman as she exits a Manhattan office building where four people were killed including a police officer, Monday, July 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

Four people, including an off-duty New York City police officer, were killed. Police said Tamura had a history of mental illness, and a rambling note found on his body suggested he had a grievance against the NFL over an unsubstantiated claim that he suffered from chronic traumatic encephalopathy. He had played football in high school in California nearly two decades ago.

The note claimed he had been suffering from CTE — the degenerative brain disease that has been linked to concussions and other repeated head trauma common in contact sports like football — and said his brain should be studied after he died, a person familiar with the matter told The Associated Press.

It also specifically referenced the National Football League, the person said.

A motive has not been determined but investigators were looking into, based on the note, whether he might’ve specifically targeted the building because it is home to the NFL’s headquarters.

The shooting took place at a skyscraper that is home to the headquarters of both the NFL and Blackstone, one of the world’s largest investment firms, as well as other tenants.

A New York police officer stands watch on 52nd Street outside a Manhattan office building where at least two people were shot, including a police officer, Monday, July 28, 2025, in New York. (AP Photo/Angelina Katsanis)

A message sent to Blackstone employees, and obtained by The Associated Press, said a staff member at the private equity firm was killed in Monday’s shooting, but their identity was not immediately released.

Surveillance video showed the man exiting a double-parked BMW just before 6:30 p.m. carrying an M4 rifle, then marching across a public plaza into the building. Then, he started firing, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch said, killing a police officer working a corporate security detail and then hitting a woman who tried to take cover as he sprayed the lobby with gunfire.

Related Articles

Today in History: July 29, USS Forrestal accident

Gunman kills 4, including police officer, in shooting at New York City office tower

2 kids killed at Miami sailing camp after barge collides with their boat, authorities say

2 customs officers plead guilty to allowing drugs to enter the US through their inspection lanes

Suspect in Michigan Walmart stabbings is charged with a rarely used state terrorism count

The man then made his way to the elevator bank and shot a guard at a security desk and shot another man in the lobby, the commissioner said.

The man took the elevator to the 33rd floor offices of the company that owned the building, Rudin Management, and shot and killed one person on that floor. The man then shot himself, the commissioner said. The building, 345 Park Avenue, also holds offices of the financial services firm KPMG.

The officer killed was Didarul Islam, 36, an immigrant from Bangladesh who had served as a police officer in New York City for 3 1/2 years, Tisch said at a news conference.

“He was doing the job that we asked him to do. He put himself in harm’s way. He made the ultimate sacrifice,” Tisch said. “He died as he lived. A hero.”

By KEVIN FREKING, Associated Press

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s become tradition. Congressional leaders from both major political parties blame each other for a potential government shutdown as the budget year draws to a close.

But this year, the posturing is starting extraordinarily early.

The finger-pointing with more than two months to go in the fiscal year indicates the threat of a stoppage is more serious than usual as a Republican-controlled Congress seeks to make good on its policy priorities, often with no support from the other political party.

Democratic leadership from both chambers and the two panels responsible for drafting spending bills met behind closed doors recently to discuss the strategy ahead. The leaders emerged demanding that Republicans work with them but were careful to avoid spelling out red lines if Republicans don’t.

“We are for a bipartisan, bicameral bill. That’s what always has been done,” said Senate Democratic leader Chuck Schumer. “The onus is on the Republicans to help us make that happen.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., looks over notes as Senate Republicans work to cancel $9.4 billion in previously approved spending targeted by DOGE, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 15, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

On the Republican side, lawmakers describe the Democrats as itching for a shutdown. Senate Majority Leader John Thune said Schumer had threatened a shutdown should Republicans pass a bill to roll back $9 billion in public broadcasting and foreign aid funds. Republicans subsequently passed those cuts.

“It was disturbing to see the Democratic leader implicitly threatening to shut down the government in his July ‘Dear Colleague’ letter, but I’m hopeful that he does not represent the views of Senate Democrats as a whole,” Thune said.

Senate Majority Leader John Thune, R-S.D., joined at left by Sen. John Barrasso, R-Wyo., the GOP whip, speaks to reporters following closed-door strategy meetings, at the Capitol in Washington, Tuesday, July 22, 2025. (AP Photo/J. Scott Applewhite)

Where things stand on government funding

The federal government is operating on a full-year continuing resolution that provided about $1.7 trillion in spending for defense and non-defense programs. The funding expires Sept. 30.

President Donald Trump requested a comparable amount for the coming fiscal year, but the Republican proposed dramatically overhauling how that money is distributed to include more for defense and border security and significantly less for health, education, housing and foreign assistance.

So far, the House has approved two of the 12 annual spending bills. The Senate has yet to approve any, but those bills that have advanced out of the Senate Appropriations Committee are enjoying bipartisan support while the House bills are generally advancing out of committee on party line votes.

This week, the Senate is expected to consider the appropriations bill to fund military construction projects and the Department of Veterans Affairs, generally one of the easier spending bills to pass. One or two others could get added to the package.

Congress got off to a late start on the funding process. Republicans prioritized Trump’s tax and spending cut bill. Most lawmakers agree Congress will need to pass a stop-gap measure before Sept. 30 to avoid a shutdown and allow lawmakers more time to work on the full-year spending measures.

The view from Democrats

Democrats overwhelmingly opposed this year’s funding bill that expires in two months. But in the end, Schumer and nine Democratic colleagues decided a government shutdown would be even worse. They voted to allow the bill to proceed and overcome a filibuster, giving Republicans the ability to pass it on their own on a final vote.

Related Articles

States file lawsuit against Trump administration over efforts to collect SNAP recipients’ data

Court restricts who can bring voting rights challenges in a case involving voters with disabilities

Trump says he ended friendship with Epstein because he ‘stole people that worked for me’

Trump is getting the world economy he wants — but the risk to growth could spoil his victory lap

Trump seeks quick Murdoch deposition in Wall Street Journal lawsuit over Epstein story

Schumer took considerable heat from progressives for his strategy. House Democratic leadership issued a statement at the time saying “House Democrats will not be complicit.” And members of his own caucus publicly expressed disagreement.

“If we pass this continuing resolution for the next half year, we will own what the president does,” said Sen. Adam Schiff, D-Calif. “I am not willing to take ownership of that.”

Some liberal groups threatened to hold protests at various events Schumer was planning to promote a new book, and some of those events ended up being postponed due to security concerns.

The Democratic frustrations have only grown stronger in the ensuing months.

First, the Democrats watched the Trump administration slow-walk or block hundreds of billions of dollars from going out in part through the work of its Department of Government Efficiency. Then they watched as Republicans passed Trump’s big tax and spending cut bill without any Democratic votes.

Finally, they watched as Republicans this month canceled $9 billion in foreign aid and public broadcasting funds when much of it had been previously agreed to on a bipartisan basis.

Meanwhile, Trump’s director of the Office of Management and Budget, Russ Vought, declared that the appropriations process “has to be less bipartisan.”

Democrats complain that much of the work taking place in the House has been a waste of time, since those partisan bills have no chance of getting 60 votes in the 100-member Senate.

“At this point in time, why have appropriations if they can just unilaterally through rescissions whack it all away?” said Rep. Mike Quigley, D-Ill. “I think what you’re seeing is more frustration than I’ve ever witnessed.”

Republicans position for impasse

Republicans control all the levers of power in Washington. That could make it harder to blame Democrats for a shutdown. But in the end, any bill will need some Democratic support to get the 60 votes needed to overcome a filibuster.

“Our concern is that from their standpoint, they want to have a shutdown,” Sen. John Hoeven, R-N.D., said of Democrats. “… The Democrats see it as a way to derail the agenda that we’re putting through.”

Sen. John Barrasso, the No. 2-ranked Republican in the Senate, said Republicans were determined to hold votes on the 12 spending bills. He said that Schumer “had unilaterally shut down the appropriations process” in previous years by not holding such votes, moving instead to negotiate directly with GOP leadership in the House and then-President Joe Biden’s Democratic administration on an all-encompassing spending package.

“If Democrats walk away from this process again, simply to protect wasteful Washington spending,” Barrasso said, “they will be the ones sabotaging the Senate and shutting down the government.”