Can you defer student loans to start a company?

It depends if you have private loans or federal.

You can typically ask for 3x 6 month "hardship" deferments on Federal Stafford loans on top of your 6 month grace period after you graduate. And, those deferments are re-set if you go back to school for a semester. So, theoretically, you could take 18 months worth of deferment and then go back to school for a semester, drop out, and take another 18 months of hardship deferment.

There are also repayment programs available to you if you have limited income. At lest a few years ago, there was a type of repayment program where you could pay a fixed percentage of your income for 30 years, and then your loans were considered paid in full. I remember reading about a Rhode Island School of Design film student who got a $150,000 film degree. That's the repayment program that she was in, so she could make ends meet and still pursue her art.

Now, if your student loans are to private lenders, that's a whole different ball of wax. They usually aren't as understanding.

I don't understand why you're in college at the first place. College educates you to make a good decision and you're not sucking any of those information obviously.

I'm surprised you stayed THAT long (with 150k debt) at school. Obviously you're not into "schedules", "rules", and "disciplines".

I live in Silicon Valley. My spending is actually down slightly from 2003 - that mostly appears due to minor lifestyle changes (eating out less, turned off cable) but is certainly incompatible with rampant inflation. Cost-of-living looks basically flat. I shop at the same grocery store (Draegers .... Mmmmmm) that I did in 2003.

On the other hand, I have noticed a spike in the office vending machine snack prices (to $.80/item!) and, of course, gas looks to have roughly doubled. But neither of those are big expenses for me.

At the risk of engaging of contradiction, that 30% number doesn't jibe with my data whatsoever.

Have to disagree that current mortgage rates have little to do with current inflation rates. Additionally, inflation is such a tricky thing to measure (because the prices of different things fluctuate with respect to one another, and through time, all the time - I can give you a (bad) argument that we're experiencing massive deflation by looking only at the prices of 100GB HDs) that it seems entirely fair to me to point out that someone's inflation statistic is incompatible with the behaviour of many, many people who are paid to get this sort of thing right.