Student Loans

I went to university for 8 years. Although my parents were amazing and for my first 4 years I only had about $5000 worth of student debt, the last 2 degrees I paid for on my own.

In total, I have 40K of government loans, and approx 26k of private bank loans.

$64,000 of student loans for 4 years of school. That means I lived off $16,000 a year, and that included tuition of about $6,000 each year. I also worked part-time. Needless to say I was frantic about money and I limited my expenses.

Unfortunately now it's time to pay it back.

Although I don't have regrets as to how much debt I took on, I'm wondering what some people's limits are. As an RN I'll be making $50-80,000 a year depending on my seniority for full time work. If I decide to go to NP school I'll make $90-100,000 a year, but that will require another 2 years of school, and a loss of 2 years worth of wages.

I'm going to keep on trying to pay my loans off earlier by increasing my payments each month, but still, I want to be able to start saving for a down payment on a house, and into RRSP's. At what point does debt repayment not supersede savings and financial planning? If anyone in the universe could let me know, that would be great. In the meantime I'll keep working away at my debt, and maybe go to an actual financial person!