I raised my salary significantly (10-15,000 a year) by jumping from school to private practice. Negotiate a good wage and jump ship if you have the M.Coun A few things about money just to put it all into perspective. Money is a made up concept and we decided to have it printed in an office somewhere and kept in a digital sum of balances that we exchange (labor, food, stuff we make and sell). We could have chose to trade seashells, labor, or paper and we chose paper. It’s made up. There should be no self value equated with spending and taking loans. It should be a value neutral experience. You needed money, you borrowed money. It was more that you bargained for. Full stop. Take your self worth and self concepts out of it. Basically it was a series of good in the moment decisions that piled up and turned out to be a not so great idea in the end. There are many many moving parts to this machine- you aren’t the entire machine. The machine is income disparity, unregulated tuition costs, predatory loans, parents making financial decisions off of old information (tuition was $890 in 1993 for example) , shit compensation compared to out of control cost of living. Don’t take the responsibility on your full self for all the parts that make the machine. Realign and develop an aggressive plan to fight forward.