Student debt has become a big deal politically. President Obama declared during a visit to North Carolina in May that he had just finished paying off his own student loans eight years ago. A 2011 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York places outstanding student debt just shy of $1 trillion. Meanwhile, the average college student attending a public university racked up $22,000 in student debt in 2010. Those are big numbers — and if even the president struggled to pay off his student debt, what chances do today’s college students have? Do you know how many cold beers you could buy with $22,000? We thought it might be a little less depressing to think of loan debt in terms of toilet paper, cold beers and ramen noodles, so we made a calculator that does just that. (But really, what we’re calculating is how many beers you won’t be able to buy, so maybe this is still pretty depressing.) See how screwed you are with the interactive below.
