What is the best financial/tax situation for us? Kid on way, financial aid eligibility concerns. Me: grad student for 2 more years, on a teaching assistantship (this covers tuition, fees, health insurance, and gives me a $1600/mo. stipend) and with some student loans on top (less than $10k/year). I also work in the summers, but make less than $5k. I also receive research grants sometimes ($5k-$15k). In 2008, I will only have been in the country for 2 months and will have an income of less than $5k. In 2009 and 2010 I will be be back on the normal track with $1600/mo. and some loans with perhaps 2-3 months of a travel grant of ~$6k.

How do you figure out daily interest from an APR on student loans due monthly? I have about 100k USD in student loan debt, at a fixed APR of 5.75%. I wanted to work out what the monthly rate was, but my debt holder tells me that the interest is actually calculated daily, though the payments are due monthly. Then they sent me twenty pages of amortization tables, I suppose imagining that it would help me somehow. Aside from seeing that 75-80% of each month's payment goes to interest before any of it goes to principal, the tables don't help me. I accrue and pay off a small amount of credit card debt each month, mostly in grocery bills. This is deliberate, since it's a monthly expense I'd have anyway, and paying by credit instead of debit is (I think) at least a slight help to my credit score.

Does a student loan in deferment count as debt for the purposes of figuring debt to income ratios in an FHA loan? We're looking at applying for an FHA home loan. I had a lender tell me that my student loans, currently in deferment until graduation in May, then in grace period for six months after that, would be counted against my debt to income ratio now. The lender says that in order to not have them counted against my debt to income ratio right now, I would have to provide documentation from the student loan lender that they would be deferred from one year of closing date of the mortgage. At best, I think I could only document the current deferment and subsequent grace period (six months after I graduate). As to applying for a forbearance, I don't think I can apply for that until I'm actually in repayment and even at that most lenders, apparently, only grant forbearances for 6 months at a time. It seems weird to count this as debt now, especially since my future income from my full time job which will kick in the future won't be counted.

Should we save for down payment or pay off our student loans? and what about retirement? My partner and I want to buy a house soon. He is a young professional and I am a grad student. We are both recent university grads and are working towards paying off our school loans. The interest rate on these is about 8% (it?s a private bank loan). I am confused as to how to divide up the little money we have between paying off the education loans, saving for retirement and saving for the downpayment. What is most logical money-wise? Not to save for either retirement or downpayment until we pay off the loans in full, because we are not likely to make more than 8% in anything else? But then it may take a while to pay them off (approx. $25,000 to go).