Part of a series on young people and financial literacy

For many high school and college seniors, graduation is a time of new beginnings and harsh realities. Their thoughts are turning to money — for tuition, rent, and credit card bills. Three Illinois students have already made decisions about debt and finances that will be with them for years to come.

Depending On School Loans

Brandon Smith, 24, is a journalism student who started school at a community college in Ohio, transferred to a four-year Ohio university, then moved to Chicago, where he now attends Columbia College. In all, it’s meant six years in school. For the past couple of months, Smith has worked part time at a downtown Chicago sandwich shop. “I’m a barrista, cashier, a prep cook, and I work in catering,” he says.

Although he’s worked some of the time to finance college, Smith depends mostly on government and private loans.

“I watch the interest rates on the loans I take out,” he says. “But it’s not like I have an option. If a student loan company wants to give me a loan at 10 percent and there isn’t any other company that gives me a loan, I take it at 10 percent.”

Smith says he didn’t learn much in school about personal finance. At home, the emphasis was on minimizing debt. But when it came to education, the message was get the best you can and a good job will follow — pay the loans off later. After recently checking his credit report, Smith found out he’s mired in student loan debt. “It’s sitting at [$98,000],” he says. “By the time I pay it off it will be much more than that.”

Smith doesn’t know what it will take to pay it off. He says, “I have no idea what the future holds and that’s scary.”

Starting To Budget

Another student, Brittany Langmeyer of Indiana, just graduated from Loyola University in Chicago. The 23-year-old is a double major in theater and journalism and a double minor in political science and dance.

This past school year, she lived off campus with three roommates — all of them penny pinchers.

Langmeyer says she learned how to keep utility costs low after she boosted the heat during cold winter nights and was shocked by the subsequent bill. She and her roommates work to keep each other in line. “We talk about ‘OK, we can’t go out this weekend because we went out last weekend and we already spent that money,” she says. “Or ‘let’s cook pasta and share it’ or ‘you buy this and I’ll buy that and we’ll eat that for the next two days.‘”

Yet Langmeyer only recently started to budget, and she’ll leave college deep in debt. Her mix of private and federal school loans totals between $60,000 and $70,000. Plus, her father took out about $50,000 in loans on her behalf.

“My mom has always said, ‘You know Brittany, paying a student loan is a way of life, just get used to it. Don’t hinder yourself because of money,’” she says.

Langmeyer hasn’t figured out how many years it will take to pay off her portion of the debt. She plans to work that out with her father. But she says she didn’t begin thinking about the consequences of her finances until late in the game. “I feel like I started to be concerned about, ‘Oh my gosh, I need to pay these loans,’” she says. “How many loans do I have…and I don’t know why I never took more interest in it early on. I think it made me nervous.”

Learning The Basics

At Bradley University in Peoria, Ill., 20-year-old Skyy Calice lives with three of her sorority sisters in a house off campus. She says as a freshman, she relied heavily on her parents for money.

“I would spend any money that I made on my own…on what I wanted to and I would go back to them and say, ‘Oh, I need this for a book’ or ‘I need this’ and they were OK with that,” she says.

But Calice says when she decided to move off campus her junior year, her parents said she was on her own. “I had to get my act together financially,” she says.

Calice is a double major in criminal justice and sociology. She says when it comes to finances, she knows the basics. Living on her own has taught her to budget, but she has made some missteps.

“I actually got caught up spending a little too much—doing a little extra shopping when I should have been paying bills,” she says. “But I’ve never been in any serious financial trouble. I’ve never had any credit cards just because you know I don’t want to take that path.”

At this point, Calice says her school loans are enough to think about. She’s received $24,000 in scholarships and grants each year and funded the rest of her education through loans. Her loan debt when she graduates this December will be slightly more than $30,000.

Calice doesn’t think that’s so bad. “I talked to other people—their loans are that in one year,” she says. “So I’m really not excited about paying them back, but I’m glad that it was such a low number.”

And while dreading the loan payback, Calice says she’ll manage. She’s has a job now at a juvenile detention center and later plans to become a police officer. Copyright 2011 National Public Radio.