Answer: Your eagerness to pay off your student loan debt is admirable and is particularly appropriate when it comes to your private student loans. Unlike federal student loans, private loans have variable interest rates, limited repayment options, no forgiveness possibilities and fewer consumer protections. Using private student loans to pay for education is a lot like using credit cards, except that credit card debt can be erased in Bankruptcy Court. Private student loans typically can’t be discharged that way.

You needn’t be quite so anxious about paying back your federal student loans. The interest rates on these loans are relatively low and fixed, plus you have a number of repayment and forgiveness options. Often the best approach is to consolidate your federal loans into the longest payback period offered. That will reduce your required payments on the federal loans, freeing up more money to pay down your private loans. Once your private loans are paid off, you can apply the payments you were making on those toward your federal loans and speed your way out of debt.

There are a number of programs that offer stipends to help pay down student loans, and some that offer at least partial forgiveness of federal student loans. Serving in AmeriCorps or the Volunteers in Service to America can generate a $4,725 stipend to pay down your loans. Volunteers in the Peace Corps may apply for deferment of their federal loans and partial cancellation of Perkins Loans (15% for each year of service, up to 70% in total). Those who serve in the Army National Guard may be eligible for up to $10,000 to pay down their student loans. There are also debt forgiveness programs for those who teach or practice medicine in certain communities. You can find a more complete list, including links, at the FinAid website. People with jobs in public service fields (teaching, emergency services, the military and others) can qualify for forgiveness of their remaining federal student loan debt after 10 years of payments, while those in other jobs can erase their debt after 25 years (the time period will be cut to 20 years starting next year).

By the way, you shouldn’t stint your retirement in your enthusiasm to get out of debt. You really can’t make up for lost time when it comes to retirement savings, so try to contribute at least 10% of your income, and preferably 15%, to your workplace retirement program or to an IRA.

Answer: Mortgages are secured by a piece of property that can be sold if the borrower fails to pay. Student loans are essentially unsecured, although collectors can pursue borrowers until they die since there is no statute of limitations on this debt.

The 6.8% rate on federal Stafford loans may seem high in this low-rate environment, but historically it’s a pretty good rate for an unsecured student loan. What’s more, the rate is fixed — unlike rates on private student loans, which are variable and can rise to 18% or more.

Your son probably won’t be able to find a lower rate unless you become his banker. If you’re financially able, you could pay off the loans and then charge him 4% or so to repay you.

Otherwise, he should focus on paying off his private student loans as quickly as possible, because of the risk that the rates will climb higher. To free up more cash, he should consider consolidating his federal loans to get a longer payback period — 15 or 30 years instead of the standard 10 years — and thus a lower monthly payment. If his income is low and the amount he owes is substantial, he also should investigate the income-based repayment option on his federal loans, which could further lower his required monthly payment.

Answer: Don’t go back to school to “try” for a degree. Go to get one. A college education is economically useless if you don’t get that sheepskin.

The financial aid education site FinAid.org is a great resource. You’ll find an “estimated family contribution” calculator that will predict how much you’ll be expected to pay for your education and how much financial aid you can expect. You also can learn about federal student loans, which are available to just about everyone and which have reasonable, fixed rates and numerous consumer protections, including income-based repayment plans. Try to avoid private student loans, which have variable rates and few of those protections.

Answer: It’s never too late to go back to school — but it is possible to spend too much doing so.

The good news is that occupational therapy is a fast-growing field with many job opportunities. The bad news is that you typically need a master’s degree to be an occupational therapist, and master’s programs (as you know) aren’t cheap.

Plus, your age is a factor to consider. Getting hired after 50 is tough, regardless of your field.

So rather than invest a ton of money in a master’s program — or, worse yet, borrow to fund this education — consider becoming an occupational therapy assistant. This field is relatively high paying and usually requires an associate’s degree, which you can get at a low-cost community college.

Before you begin, though, you should research the job opportunities in your area to make sure demand is high enough that your age will be less of a factor.

Answer: Bankruptcy could wipe out your credit card debt but probably won’t erase your student loans. Student loan debt usually can’t be discharged in bankruptcy unless you’re totally and permanently disabled. Since you’ve been looking for work, that doesn’t seem to be your situation.

Besides, filing for bankruptcy costs money that you probably don’t have. A Chapter 7 filing can easily cost $1,500.

What you might want to do instead is discuss your situation with a bankruptcy attorney to find out if you might be “judgment proof.” If you are, your creditors can still sue you, but they’ll be unable to collect — at least until your circumstances improve.

Many bankruptcy attorneys offer free or discounted initial sessions. You can get a referral from the National Assn. of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys, or find an attorney through its website at http://www.nacba.org.

In the meantime, you can visit DebtCollectionAnswers.com for strategies on how to deal with collection agencies when you can’t pay.

Answer: Income is not a factor in calculating your FICO credit scores, so your debt-to-income ratio wouldn’t affect your scores. What you may be referring to is your credit utilization — how much of your available credit you’re using. While high utilization of credit cards and other revolving accounts can hurt your scores, it’s unlikely that high balances on installment accounts would be enough of a negative to make your scores so low.

What you need to do is pull your credit reports and examine them closely to see what’s wrong. You may have late payments or collection accounts you don’t know about, or you could be the victim of identity theft.

Answer: Please rethink this plan, because your family probably cannot afford this education.

Federal student loans would allow your son to borrow, at most, about a third of this school’s cost. If he were to borrow the rest of the money, he would have to turn to private student loans, which have variable rates and none of the consumer protections embedded in federal student loans. Private student loans are like using credit cards to pay for college — except unlike credit card debt, student loan debt can’t be discharged in bankruptcy.

The other alternative would be for you to borrow the difference between his federal student loans and the cost of his education using PLUS loans. These are federal education loans for parents and graduate students. As with federal student loans, the rates for PLUS loans are fixed, although they’re somewhat higher — 7.9%, compared with 6.8% for unsubsidized Stafford student loans.

But using PLUS loans means taking on a lot of debt at a time in your life when you should be concentrating on saving for your own retirement. If making the payments would interfere with your ability to contribute sufficiently to your retirement funds, you shouldn’t even consider borrowing the money.

Even if you already have a well-funded retirement plan, you should think twice. Your son may be able to get a better, more affordable education from a public college — particularly if he starts at a two-year community college nearby, allowing him to live at home more cheaply, and then transfers to a four-year school.

For-profit colleges can be expensive, and loans made to students who attend four-year for-profit colleges have twice the default rates of loans made to other college students. Figures provided by the U.S. Department of Education show that of loans that entered repayment in 1995, 30% of those made to students attending four-year for-profit colleges were in default 15 years later, compared with 15.1% for four-year public colleges and 13.6% for four-year private nonprofit schools.

That high default rate should give you pause, even if you were paying cash for this education, because it indicates that many graduates either aren’t finishing their educations or aren’t finding jobs that pay well enough to repay their loans.

Critics complain that for-profit schools often over-promise and under-deliver when it comes to training students for existing jobs. The for-profit schools attribute high default rates to the demographics of their students, who are more likely to be lower income and from minority groups than other college attendees.

You may feel guilty for shorting your son when it came to saving for college. But please don’t compound the problem by blessing an education that could leave him, and you, with unaffordable debt.

Answer: You should put retirement saving first now, even before you pay off your debt. If you don’t get a relatively early start putting away money for retirement you’re unlikely to be able to catch up later. Those who start saving after age 35 have a very tough time putting away enough money to comfortably retire, says Roger Ibbotson, founder of Ibbotson Associates financial research firm and a Yale School of Management professor. The ideal time to start saving for retirement is with your first job.

Prioritizing retirement means you’ll have less money for other goals, so paying down your debt and building up an emergency fund will take longer, but so be it. The amount of extra interest you pay on your debt will be overshadowed by the tax breaks and investment gains you’ll make in the long run in your retirement accounts.

After paying off your credit card debt, your next goals will depend on your individual situation. If all your education debt is federal student loans rather than private loans, then you needn’t be in a rush to pay it off. That’s because federal student loans have relatively low, fixed rates and many flexible repayment options. You also may qualify for student loan forgiveness in 10 years if you work in public service or 25 years if you don’t. An income-based repayment plan would allow you to minimize your payments so you could put money toward other goals. You can research your repayment options at FinAid.org, a financial aid and student loan education site.

If, on the other hand, you have some private student loans, you’ll probably want to make paying that off a priority since the rates are variable and you don’t have as many repayment options. (You probably wouldn’t be able to make income-based payments, for example.)

When to prioritize a home purchase depends, again, on your individual situation. If you’re sure you’re where you want to be for the next 10 years or so and are eager to own a home, you could start a down payment fund as soon as you finish paying off the credit card debt.

Answer: You should be. You’ve borrowed a small fortune to get a two-year degree that would have cost about $5,000 at your local community college. For-profit institutions, like the one you’ve chosen, are coming under increased criticism for using taxpayer-subsidized loan programs to boost their revenue while not always providing valuable or high-quality educations to their students.

The Government Accountability Office was concerned enough about reports of deception that it sent undercover investigators to 15 for-profit colleges and discovered that all 15 misled potential students about their programs’ cost, quality and duration. Recruiters at four of the colleges encouraged the investigators to lie on their financial aid forms. (Most for-profits depend heavily on federal aid in the form of grants and low-interest student loans.)

The GAO study was followed by a report in August from the U.S. Department of Education, which found that nearly two-thirds of the students who borrowed to attend for-profit schools weren’t repaying their federal loans. By contrast, the repayment rate for private nonprofit schools’ borrowers was 56%, while 54% of those who borrowed to attend public schools were in repayment mode.

You might want to talk to your local junior college to see whether any of your credits will transfer and whether you might be able to finish up your education for less. If not, lean on your school’s placement office to help you find a job. You’re graduating into a tough economy with an overpriced degree of unproven value, so you’re going to need all the help you can get.

I finally feel like I’m in a position to start paying down all this debt; however, when I look at it I get anxious because I don’t know where to start. I want to get an apartment within in the next year, and I know my credit will have a major impact on my ability to get a decent place. How should I prioritize my debt when it has all gone to collections?

Answer: You got yourself in a muddle, all right, but the fact that you could save cash for a car bodes well for your future. If you have the discipline to do that, you have the discipline to fix your finances.

Your defaulted student loan probably should be your priority. Student loan debt typically can’t be erased in bankruptcy, and collectors of this debt have the power to garnish your wages and seize your tax refunds.

If yours is a federal student loan, you’ll have plenty of payment options and the ability to “rehabilitate” your loans. If you’re accepted for rehabilitation, your default would be removed from your credit reports after making nine on-time payments. Private loans typically don’t have rehabilitation options, but you may be able to work out an acceptable repayment plan with your lender.

Since the rest of your debt is already in collections, your best bet may be to negotiate settlements. You’ll get the best deal if you can offer a lump sum, but many collectors will accept 50 cents or so on the dollar if you can pay off the agreed amount within a few months. Don’t agree to any payment plan you can’t stick with or that precludes you from paying other debts.

For more help, visit debt expert Gerri Detweiler’s site, DebtCollectionAnswers.com.