A Third of Millennials Would Give Up an Organ to Pay Off Their Student Loans, According to a Survey

The total amount of America's student loan debt is now over $1 trillion. Student loans are a plague that has united an entire generation.

According to a survey from personal finance site MyBankTracker, almost a third of the people who have student debt would sell an organ to get rid of it. MyBankTracker surveyed 200 people, the median age for whom was 32 and the average debt for whom was $34,500. Forty-three percent also said they would sell half of their possessions and 55 percent said they would participate in a reality TV show if it would help pay off their debt.

Some quick economics: The average student debt among this year's class of graduates was just over $35K. Human organs go for upwards of $100K on the black market—but of course, selling your organs is illegal, which means you lose a huge portion of the sticker price to your organ broker. As a seller, you can only make about $5,000 for something like a kidney. If you had a small amount of debt, then you could probably pay it off by offloading some of your organs (you could also donate eggs for about $8,000 a pop). But if you had a lot of debt, you would probably die before you sold enough organs to get out of the hole.

If you wanted to go the legal-but-morally-degrading route, reality TV stars actually get paid more than black market kidney donors, but not by much (the cast of Vanderpump Rules only makes $5K per episode, according to TMZ). Those with heaps of grad school debt would have to become a Kardashian or one of the stars of Jersey Shore to really make bank.

In other words, there is no magic money-making scheme to make student loans go away. But if you're really panicking, we have a whole trove of articles (below) about how to stay afloat.

1. A Millennial's Guide to Planning for Retirement

2. What Would Happen If We All Stopped Paying Our Student Loans?

3. [Here's What You Should Do if You're Buried Under Private Student-Loan Debt](Here's What You Should Do if You're Buried Under Private Student-Loan Debt)

4. How to Invest Money When You Don't Have Any

5. Dear Class of 2014, You're Fucked

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Photo via Flickr user Quazie