Skipping gifts, some Maine families choose to pay down student debt

For Anne Bouchard, a nurse and Topsham resident, this holiday season will play out like others before it: instead of gifts, she gives her four children some money to pay down their student loans. Whether it’s Christmas or a birthday, she doesn’t expect anything else in return. …

While they’ve done a “pretty good job” making their loan repayments, her children have on occasion had to return home in order to save money. Her two sons, both aspiring homeowners who graduated into well-paying jobs, felt the strain of student debt as they tried to pay both rent and their loans, with interest rates ranging from 6 to 10 percent.

A recent Maine Center for Economic Policy report found that, like Bouchard’s sons, a full 42 percent of Mainers have had to delay buying homes because of student debt.

Click here to read the full story, published December 20, 2018, on Beacon.