Adam Larsen paid $37,000 to play in the ISU marching band.

At least, that’s how he puts his student loan debt in a lighter context.

Larsen, a December 2004 ISU graduate originally from Illinois, is a member of the 74 percent of graduates from that year who graduated with student debt from a public Iowa university.

At the time of Larsen’s graduation, the average student loan debt in Iowa was $24,206, according to the Iowa College Aid Commission Annual Survey of Financial Aid. The average debt a student graduating has today is nearly $29,000, an increase of about 20 percent.

Though taking out loans was the only way Larsen, who graduated with a bachelor’s in psychology and a minor in music and could pay for his education, doesn’t see his as a hindrance. He thinks of it as more of an investment he’s repaying.

“I always saw it as an investment to myself,” Larsen said. “I always looked at it as, ‘I need to go to college to learn some way to make money to pay this back.’”

From the time Larsen enrolled in fall 2001 to his graduation in December 2004, state support for higher education decreased and tuition for out-of-state students increased by 54 percent from $9,346 to $14,404, according to Board of Regents records. Tuition for residents had increased from $2,786 to $4,702. In 2000, the regents received about 15 percent of the state’s appropriations. In 2012, the regents received about 8 percent, according to Iowa Fiscal Partners.

With the interest, Larsen pays $200 to $250 each month on a 20-year plan, he said.

“To know I have paid $7,000 in interest already kind of makes me feel sick,” he said. “Even though the interest rate is still nice and low, it’s still money that I’m wasting.”

That is 240 months of paying money that, if he were to put away the same amount of money for the same amount of time, he could pay for a 2014 BMW.

Roberta Johnson, director of the ISU Office of Student Financial Aid, likes to put debt repayment into this context — forcing students to think about how many thousands of dollars in debt will cost them on a monthly basis.

Johnson has been with Iowa State for 32 years, and said the biggest trend she’s noticed is the amount of students taking out student loans.

In 2005, when she became director, the average indebtedness of an ISU grad with debt was $32,000, and the percentage of students taking out loans was at 74 percent. Today, the average amount of debt a student graduates with is $28,880 and about 62 percent of students are graduating with debt. Iowa State, though, still has the highest amount of student debt per student in the state.

Johnson said the drops come from a number of factors, including the three-year consecutive tuition freeze for resident undergraduates that the Board of Regents passed, ISU financial counseling services, ISU grants and students’ desire to be more educated.

A few tips Johnson gave were to attend loan entrance counseling, either online or with a financial counselor, seek part-time employment and scholarships first, use the ISU student loan repayment estimator to calculate individual payments and if students must take out loans, start paying during the six-month grace period after graduation.

“It’s interest-free during that six month grace period … if you make any payments during grace, it goes straight to principle. That can help reduce the amount of debt they have,” Johnson said.

Larsen used his six month grace period before he started paying off his loans for about two months until August 2005, when he started grad school. His loans were deferred for the next three years because he was in grad school, but he had to start making payments on them as soon as he graduated.

The only time his student debt really affected his financial decisions, he said, was as soon as he graduated with his undergraduate degree, when he got married, started a new job and had to start making payments all at the same time.

“It’s one of those things you have to budget and plan for,” Larsen said. “It hasn’t really delayed or made me have to think really hard about can I do this?”

Larsen went into the debt knowing what he would need to do to repay the loan, but said he also understood why people are hesitant in getting loans.

“You signed a document that said you’re going to pay back [the debt],” Larsen said. “Part of the agreement was, you’re going to educate yourself, learn how to do something and that’s going to make you some money, and I don’t know if people quite understand the agreement they’re entering into. The problem is you’re doing it at 18 years old and you don’t know a whole lot when you’re 18, so it’s tough to understand the agreement you’re entering into.”

He and his wife were able to get into a financially stable situation to start paying off loans.

“Careful planning and cautious spending got [my wife and I] into a place early on where we were able to make all payments and save money, which is not necessarily true of all students today,” Larsen said.

ISU alum and Iowa native, Marissa Marshall, who graduated with a bachelor’s in apparel, merchandising, design and production in December 2008, had to be a bit tighter with her spending when she first graduated. Her monthly student loan payments come into consideration whenever she needs to make a purchase, she said.

“It has gotten better since I got more out of college and gotten further in my career, but it was right after I got out for a year and a half or two and it affected decisions where it came to food or pay off school loans,” she said. “If I wanted to get something, I couldn’t, so I had to choose. What was the priority? The school loan was up there.”

Marshall’s parents agreed to help her a little, she said, but the majority of paying for college was up to her. She said she didn’t have enough saved up from working throughout high school, so loans were her only option.

She is now working on a standard payment plan of 10 to 15 years to repay her $20,000 in private and federal loans.

“If I would have realized how much I would be paying off now, I wish I could tell my high school self, ‘you really should work hard to get more money to save up for college,’ so I wouldn’t have to take out as many loans,” Marshall said.

Johnson said she hears that statement the most from seniors getting ready to graduate.

“We provide entrance counseling, as well. That information has always been available from the beginning,” Johnson said. “It’s a question of whether or not students would avail themselves of that information.”

Andrea Fellows, originally from Nevada, Mo., graduated from Iowa State in May 2006 with a bachelor’s in marketing international business. She has almost all of her nearly $12,000 in debt paid off. She accrued scholarships and her parents helped her pay for a portion of the tuition. Her debt came from living expenses, she said.

“I was very lucky,” Fellows said of her amount of debt. “I only have federal loans left. I’m going to be finished with them pretty quickly.”

Larsen now works as an assistant superintendent for a K-12 district back in his home state of Illinois, Marshall works with Edwards communications company in Des Moines and Fellows works in Washington, D.C. with the Department of Homeland Security.

Though they all have to pay money they could be spending elsewhere, each said investing in an education was worth the price tag.

“I still don’t regret that decision,” Larsen said. “Even though I have to cut that check every month to Iowa Student Loans to pay off my loans, I still absolutely loved my time at Iowa State.”