When she graduates from Georgia State University this year, her entry into adult life will begin with a slow crawl from student loans to solvency.

"I feel like that kind of hinders everything - where I'm going to live, how I'm going to live," says Ingram, who has delayed plans to attend graduate school. "It's having this burden of dishing out this money for something that I really hadn't expected."

Nationwide, 20- and 30-somethings such as Ingram are surprised to find that early debts can have a far-reaching impact on the quality of their lives. And while all young people are struggling, experts say, young women between the ages of 18 and 34 may be suffering the most.

Debt in America is nothing new. For education and homes, cars and personal items, we have always borrowed our way to the American dream. What has changed is our level of dependence on debt to make those dreams come true. In 1983, the median consumer debt for 25- to 34-year-olds was $3,989 (in 2001 dollars). By 2001, the median consumer debt for households under 35 had tripled to $12,000, according to Tamara Draut, author of "Strapped: Why America's 20- and 30-Somethings Can't Get Ahead."

For young women, the trouble often begins with student loans. As they enter the workforce making less money than their male counterparts, young women trying to balance loan payments with burgeoning social lives sometimes turn to credit cards to fill in financial gaps. They spiral further into debt, and all too often parents have left their daughters in limbo, with little or no financial training to figure it all out.

Draut says the country's "debt for diploma" system has made borrowing one's way through college the norm. "A generation ago, student financial aid was grant-based; now it is debt-based," Draut said. "You could work through the summer and pay for a whole year of college. That's not the reality anymore."

In 1977, college students borrowed about $6 billion (reported in 2002 dollars), compared with $28 billion in 1993, according to Draut. A decade later, she said, that number had doubled to $56 billion.

Meanwhile, more women are attending college than ever before - they made up 56 percent of undergrads in 2000, according to the U.S. Department of Education.

But that also means more women are graduating with student loan debt, an average of $19,360 in 2004, based on data from the Project on Student Debt, a nonprofit organization dedicated to finding cost-effective solutions to expand educational opportunity.

Ingram, saddled with that $27,000, had hoped graduating from college would give her a boost; instead, she ended up in a hole. After spending two years at De Anza Community College in Cupertino, Calif., she transferred to Georgia State. She unexpectedly had to take out loans when the school denied her request for in-state tuition, even though she was living in a house owned by her parents.

"It's difficult," Ingram said. "I don't want to be the type who is just trying to pay my bills in a job I don't like, but I'm afraid I will be that person."

And Ingram is in better shape than many women: She has always been a saver, a lesson her mother taught her. When she arrived at GSU, Ingram was unmoved by the credit card offers - she had already been told about the perils of plastic. "Those automatically go into the trash can," Ingram said. "I have one credit card, and I only use it once in a while."

A recent Smith College study found substantial differences in the way men and women handle their finances, and a lot of it has to do with credit cards.

"Women on average have more credit cards than men," said Mahnaz Mahdavi, professor of economics and lead author of the study, conducted with two colleagues. "People with more credit cards tend to have more debt."

Women are also more likely to use their credit cards for personal items or to pay bills such as phone or Internet service, she said. They are less likely than men to pay balances on time or pay in full.

Women between the ages of 25 and 34 earn 85 percent of men's salaries, according to the U.S. Department of Labor, and the gap widens with age. As a result, women devote more of their incomes to paying off debts. In 2004, among workers ages 25 to 34, 23 percent of women with bachelor's degrees spent more than 10 percent of their income repaying student loans, compared with 16 percent of men.

The disparity wasn't lost on Michelle Werner, 35, of Savannah, Ga., who, despite having a full scholarship to graduate school, took an additional $20,000 in loans to make ends meet. Though her income improved when she took a postgraduation job as an assistant city administrator on the Georgia coast, she was met with a surprising realization: "Men in the same position make more than I do. I thought the whole glass ceiling was fading."

But it was a lack of financial know-how in the Smith College study that troubled Mahdavi most. Fewer than 1 percent of respondents, male or female, could answer simple financial questions about topics such as interest rates and federal savings programs. Women, she found, were more likely to not have that basic knowledge.

"What I see out there is a lot of fear," said Jennifer Wilkov, a certified financial planner and author of "Dating Your Money," a step-by-step guide to money management for women.

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