I'm married with two kids. My husband works - I used to before I went back to school. In undergrad, I took out max stafford loans (sub & unsub) and needed nothing more. It paid for my schooling, daycare for my son, all my expenses for school, and a little bit for household expenses (my husband also worked and covered most expenses at the time).
Now I'm in med school. I took out stafford loans and private loans to the max cost of attendance (COA) allowed. It includes some funds for housing, food, travel, books, utilities, etc. Certainly not enough for an entire family, but enough for a single person. My husband took an enormous pay cut to move to where I go to school - almost 50%. And we were just making ends meet before I got into school. Where I'm in school, housing is more expensive. So with the student loan money, I pay the mortgage and he pays the rest of the bills. It works and there is enough loan money to do it. (I suppose you could say I pay half of all the bills and mortage if you want to look at it that way - bottom line, loans pay for about half of all our living expenses for a family of four). We don't have enough for vacations to Disney Land - but we do have free picnics and hikes. We go window shopping and don't buy anything (but do dream of what we might buy "when Mom's done with school"). We rent movies rather than see them in the theater. We don't eat out except for MAYBE once a month. We cook from scratch whenever possible - it's cheaper. We look for sales. We buy in bulk. We buy meat from the farmer and put it in a chest freezer in the basement. We look for the free day at the museum. It's doable.
Oh - and I do pay the interest on my loans while I'm in school. That adds up FAST if it gets capitalized.
