Originally Posted by Lemma

I believe it's more in the neighborhood of 1% for federal student loans. With the new legislation that ties student loan rates to the 10 year T note, student loans are a great deal with today's low interest rates especially if your income is low enough to tax deduct the interest, or you can lower it to that level by increasing your contributions to 401k, HSA, etc. The interest rate is fixed for the life of the loan so now's the time to lock in a low rate. When else will you get the opportunity to borrow that kind of money at that low of an interest rate totally unsecured? You're required to use the loan for qualified education expenses, but that rule isn't very restrictive since money is fungible and things like housing and food count as qualified expenses.

Apart from a mortgage, which is obviously not unsecured, requires income and down payment to qualify, etc. student loans are the best opportunity most people will ever get to borrow money at today's interest rates. If your income is low enough you won't even have to pay back the full amount owed because you can do income based repayment for 20 years and have Uncle Sam pay the remaining balance. Leveraged investing isn't for everyone, but if I were going back to school I'd take out as much as they would let me borrow and pay it off as slowly as possible.