My husband has $300,000 dollars in debt (that includes the interest for the private debt, not the federal!). He owes $150,000 to SallieMae for undergrad, and $150,000 in federal for a masters that could not get him a job, so now he is getting a teaching certificate.

Many people ask how did he do this—the answer is 5 years of undergrad (including a study abroad trip and summer semester with housing all paid for by student loans) and 4 years of graduate due to pure laziness. Of course, I didn’t know this when we got married.

I myself have $90,000 of debt for graduate and undergraduate and I work at a non-profit now (although my degree is in strategic communications, so there is at least potentially more money to be made).

I know we can’t file for bankruptcy—even though we had to apply for food stamps last time we started paying off his loans (which we were denied because we made too much and they don’t take student loans into consideration when calculating if you qualify!). His SallieMae loans alone are $1400 a month, or $800 a month interest only. I’m not sure how the teacher loan forgiveness or public service loan forgiveness work, or if we have any options. Any advice would help.

Teacher loan forgiveness has some very specific requirements.  Read more about that here: http://askheatherjarvis.com/blog/teachers-dont-need-lip-service-they-need-cash-money

Find out more about Income Driven Repayment plans!  And evaluate whether or not it makes sense to file tax returns separately.  Check out the repayment estimator at studentloans.gov for some sense of options.