Damn Student Loans

i know people who consolidated their loans with companies that later went for-profit and jacked up the interest rates to near-usorious levels.

I’ve seen the same thing happen. I had a college buddy who ended up filing bankruptcy over it. As a rule, I’m adverse to consumer credit.

We took our tax return money for a couple of years and paid ours off several years ahead of schedule. Not being able to spend that cash sucked at the time, but it felt really good paying that final payment.

In buying your first house, the loan underwriter will be looking at your total debt in addition to your monthly debt obligations. Student loans will look better than having a massive consumer debt, which will look like credit card debt and make you look like someone who can’t control her spending in the eyes of the underwriter.

I believe in Canada they are as well. Though Im about to find out how deductable.

:(

Failing a lottery win, I won't be free until the age of 30. Fucking hell.

I won't be free until the age of 30.

I was 32 when I got free— and that was ahead of schedule.

So I'd say pay off the bare minimum required for your loans and put some money into savings instead. But I'm not sure how this would effect being approved for a mortgage.

I have been deducting the student loan interest every year. What's this talk about a 5 year limit on that???

I'll research all my figures and try to get a better idea of what I'm dealing with first. I think for now though that I'll probably not consolidate.

Anyway, I think you should try to consolidate with the William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan program -- all of my astronomical law school loans are now consolidated into a low fixed subprime rate, on a note held by the Federal Government rather than a private lender. You can mess with your repayment terms as well, but that's independent of your loan consolidation. Check out http://www.dlssonline.com. It's worth it.

why it took them 25 months to find me, when all they had to do was call my phone number and say "you g, where the money at?" i'll never know! i mean, it was all deferred and that, so no payments, or at least that is what i thought. sending correspondence to an address i dont live at any more isnt great, especially as i gave them a correct address, like wtf?

anyway, they want 25 payments of £44 or something before they take legal action, so i paid them £1100 today:(

that leaves £1400 to pay, but they'll take that out at £40 a month, i'll probably bump that up though and try and pay the fucker off asap. i mean, its not terrible, i knew i had this much to pay off, but its annoying for it to get all final-noticey and that

guess i should try and do some more overtime:/

Can I ask a stupid question about the comments upthread? What is "consolidating" exactly. Looks like I'll be getting US student loans next year, and I'm absolutley clueless on the subject.

I hate my stupid student loans so much. Then one day I'm complaining to a friend of mine about them and he said, "Oh, I just didn't pay mine." Apparently, he simply never gets a tax return, but he doesn't mind just because he doesn't have to deal with mailing checks every month.

consolidation just means you're consolidating all the loans into one single debt, where you send in one check to one place, instead of one check to each lender.. sometimes you can also fix a lower interest rate with it, or lower your monthly payments (but ultimately pay more in interest, etc)..

the scary thing about consolidating is that you can only do it once. it's not like credit card debt, where you can bounce it around to different cards if one card's interest rates change. once you consolidate, you're stuck with that company, as far as I know.. did any of that make sense?

i can't imagine payments preventing anyone from getting jobs they wanted, unless you wanted to do something relatively low paying but felt that you couldn't afford to do with large loans to pay off--

Well, yes, but it's still got me a bit worried, esp. since I know he's just not good with the figures. Thank goodness he'll have a good job waiting for him.

Total student loan debt as a grad student, thus far: $45K.

That'll keep going up even if I get the funding I'm hoping for at the school I want; few assistantships pay a living wage.

This is all justified by my hopes of a bestseller :)

Debt sux.

Current school = $22,000 tuition and board - $15,000 scholarships - $2,000 out of pocket paid by parents = $5,000 in debt per school year.
I've been in that school for two years, have $10k of debt under my belt.

School I want to transfer to = $30,000 tuition and board, don't know how much financial aid I'm going to receive from them.

So I have $20k if I stay at the one school, and the possibility of $70k in debt if I transfer. But I very much prefer the other school to the one I'm at right now. Am I stupid to entertain the possibility of taking on this much student debt, or does it not particularly matter compared to the prospect of staying on at a school I don't like? Input is much appreciated.

Justin S. I don't think it matters very much at all where you go to school undergrad, unless you are going for a very specific reason. But if it's just general liberal arts, I would say suck it up and finish it out with less debt. I just have this fear of ever being in debt and do everything possible to keep from ever owing anyone money and so far its worked.

My ambition in life right now is to be a professor in the liberal arts, so I had better get used to financial strife :/

Yeah, but look at it that way: it's not like most profs came from rich families. The professors I've talked to have, most of them, taken out tons in loans, and it's not like they're making much -- but they get it paid.

Barring that type of spartan existence, the easiest way of making the debt end is to die, since student loans are dischargable on death. Generally, student loans are not dischargable in bankruptcy, although I am aware of one case where they were discharged because the debtor was mentally ill. A few years ago, there was a big problem with people defaulting on their loans -- specifically, doctors and lawyers. I believe this trend has subsided, but I'm not sure about that.

Because student loan debt has become so outrageous in recent years, it's very easy to get loan forebearances now, at least from the William D. Ford program. Plus, as has already been stated, the interest is tax-deductible - my payment is about $380/month, $300 of which is interest. That's primarly due to the graduated repayment plan I'm on, but it's not entirely unusual either.

I'm just planning on paying the off debt forever, and I consider it a cost of doing business. It's not so bad. And someday, I may get lucky and be able to wipe a bunch of it out.

Nobody should feel bad for law school students and their massive loans; they make plenty of money from the get-go, and the top tier of firms will pay off the loans entirely after a few years. (If they're public defenders or something, then yes, please feel sorry for them.)

My personal consolation is that the typical first-novel advance is, at present, way way bigger than my total debt could possibly end up. These advances are ridiculous and sinking the publishing industry, but I hope they keep handing them out for at least three or four more years.

If you can get away with it, lie about your age (no matter what it is). Young Authors are all the rage now :)

...which, in this day and age, is a completely bullshit statement. Obviously my ire is not directed at you, because you're right, that IS their excuse. You can get any fucking aid at all if you are under 25, unless you are in graduate school, because they think your parents should pay for you. My parents have no money whatsoever and I ran away from home--yeah, they're really gonna pony up the $15-20k, especially with ALL THREE OF MY SISTERS being in school too.

There's just no way around it. I had a long chat with the girl at the financial aid office, and basically she told me, yeah, you should be independent even under their own rules (extraordinary situations include run aways, regardless of whether or not I speak to my parents now), but I'd have to involve psychologists and social workers and the police reports from my past to get this done! I'm like, this just isn't worth it, I got a year and then I'll be declared age-independent...

It's just bullshit. As I've said many times previously: surely I am not the only person under 25 in the entirety of the United States who does not live off mommy and daddy. I know quite a lot of people in my age range who entirely support themselves! It's a system that seems hellbent on keeping the less-wealthy classes (ie those whose parents can't afford to pony up educational costs) down and the borgeouise up, and it seems totally counterintuitive to our much vaunted "American Dream" crap.

< /end annoyance>

fletrejet, I did the straight into work thing and am smashing my head badly against a glass ceiling. This could just be my company but I don't think it is. In this economy, they look for excuses not to hire people or to let them go...*sigh*

Preaching to the choir, believe me. As an undergrad, they took my father's income into account; he's a millionaire who, per the divorce agreement, has no financial responsibility for me, who set up a (small, gone the first year of Hampshire) trust fund in lieu of such, and who stopped filing taxes in the 80s, and from whom I haven't seen a dime since he stopped paying my allowance when I was 13. My mother is a civil servant who was making under $20K at the time -- two-thirds of Hampshire's tuition. I got no aid except a $300 loan.

Over a lifetime, it results in $1 million less in income -- Time quotes that every year when they do their "go to these schools" article. Very few people don't end up making up for their loans, and then some.

It's still bullshit anyway, this responsibility/non-responsibility. Say some deadbeat dad is legally required to pay, but doesn't. WHAT is the kid supposed to do to get the money out of the guy? It should just be the parent who lives with you. WHICH IS ALL IRRELEVANT BECAUSE 18 YEAR OLDS SHOULD NOT BE LIVING OFF THEIR PARENTS ANYWAY. I mean you can go to war, vote for president, and buy cigs, per the government, but you are still considered a child to the same government if you need help from them.

Ugh, it's disgusting.

Yeah, for federal aid, it is. For Hampshire, not so much. That's how they hang on to their money: they exclude whoever they can, give tiny amounts to most, and then pile on full scholarships to a small number, so they can talk about those kids during the open houses. That's why I got the $300 loan -- it was federal. The following year, and until I turned 23 or whatever it is, I didn't even get federal because of my father's lack-of-filing-taxes (they required that even though they didn't take his income into account; somehow they just didn't notice, the first year, that they didn't have his info.)

The main reason I kick myself about Hampshire is, shit, I blew my trust fund in a year. Granted, it wasn't very big, it's not like I'd be rich, but it would have been nice to have.

So yeah, it was a ... great school :)

Ah yes, the special breeding of the spoilt fuckwad.

To over-recycle an over-recycled phrase, Hampshire is spoiled on Hampshire students. But it's really so very very true.

(Ally and I cannot talk very long without bringing up either Hampshire or urinals, I think.)

Time assumes you will make more money from your degree - not a guarantee with many degrees. And school costs you money at the very begining (time value of money), when you should be saving and investing it. Of course this assumes that a 18 year old will actually be doing this, which is actually a silly thing to assume.

But the real problem is that the educational system is fundamentally fucked up. What is now "college"-level education should start in high school (and therefore be paid for by the gov). I got my bachelors in three years by taking advanced placement classes in high school for college credit.

I don't think it assumes that, per se, it's just based on statistics: people with college degrees, on average, make more money. On average, if all you have is an undergraduate degree (and so automatically doctors and lawyers are out of this), you make the same amount of money regardless of what that degree is in (of course, that should practically go without saying; if you're really going to pursue high-paying work in the field of your degree, you're probably going to go to graduate school.)

And nabisco -- Hampshire's scholarship money is, if not entirely need-based, need-based enough that I'm not aware of anyone who received merit-based scholarships from them, beyond the few little things like "this money is earmarked for students of American-Asian descent pursuing a career in sociology," and the usual very-specific funds like that which are set up by alumni.

Fletrejet: a college degree -- in any discipline, a degree period -- raises your earnings. Dramatically. Look through entry-level job listings sometime, and note how many simply require a college degree. Note how many art-history majors from good schools are able to pack up upon graduation and become consultants.

My dad makes less than I do for a family of 5 (6 according to FAFSA), 4 of which (5 according to FAFSA) attend college. He has no money. However, considering his income means my "income" doubles on the financial aid forms, ie I apparently now have $100k of income on hand, and the fact that I am "dependent" means that my rent or living expenses are not of consequence, because my ENTIRE SALARY is "disposable income", since my parents are "supporting me". Basically, according to the way financial aid works, my job is the equivalent of working at the local Best Buy afterschool for cigarette money. My "expected family contribution" is something like $30k--more than half of my salary.

Merit-based scholarships aren't helpful if you aren't already attending the school and have grades for them to base merit on (ie the GS scholarship at Columbia).

Why would you need to be already attending a school to draw merit-based scholarships? My entire college career was funded by merit-based scholarships.

OH my god, Ally, you are so OTM!!!! I have always been upset by this. Most of my friends in college not only had their tuitions paid by their parents, but also got checks in the mail to spend as they pleased. (and didn't have to pay for their first cars, but anyway) Meanwhile, I was poor then and poor now and will owe lots and lots of money forever and ever amen. Bah Humbug! Hallelujah! aMen!

So some of the phrasing strikes me as a little weird: I mean, say what you want about the details of federal aid, which is administratively wonky in a thousand ways, but the basic idea remains that it'll provide loans to cover the amounts the family can't be expected to. My parents don't have that much money = I got lots of loans; I can't really sneer at the many people I know whose families just paid their tuition outright, cause it's not like that had anything to do with that.

The basis for independence, per FAFSA: military member, orphan, graduate student, or over the age of 24. Tax status doesn't enter into it. "Extraordinary situations" are granted forebearance over the rules--mine counts, BUT they won't just accept my word for it (I suppose for obvious enough reasons, such as the high rate of lying in society and all).

Heh, nabisco, the general studies school is for unusual instance students, ie people who probably don't have the strongest academic backgrounds but who have shown ability to succeed otherwise (good essay + strong resume etc). It has a completely different criteria for admission than the other schools at Columbia. I'm a high school drop-out=merit-based scholarships outside the realms of college-grade-based have absolutely zippo interest in me. I have no high school grades to base a merit scholarship on because I left at the end of junior high. Hampshire, to tie in that discussion, has a similar "unusual student background" instance in a lot of them--an inordinant amount of home schoolers go there, for example.

I mean, merit-based scholarships are great and all in general, I'm definitely not knocking them, but there are certainly plenty of instances that don't involve being-not-good-enough-to-merit where they wouldn't work out for someone.

What I don't understand is why this system is set up this way anyway. There are more than enough other countries where schooling IS considered a right and not a privledge.

Sarah, that's the same thing I see a lot too. I mean, cool, good up on them, but jesus christ, it's kind of to the point of making it nearly 100% exclusionary of other people. Yeah, sure, you poor people can go to state college, it's practically free...um, good up if you live in Amherst, Mass., since UMass is one of the top 30 (?) ranked undergrads in the US, bad news if that means you have to attend Hunter Fucking College.

Let's face something here: who is more likely to be living off their parents at the age of 24, a person with well-off parents or a person from the working or poor classes?

Quite honestly this discussion ties directly into the ones from during the "war" in regards to whether or not people should support the troops and their motivations for being in the military: note that you CAN get federal aid if you join the armed forces.

And yes, state schools should receive more funding.

Anyway. I'm just pointing out that there's a difference between "I deserve your aid to complete a college education" and "I deserve enough of it to attend a highly-selective private school" -- the same difference between "I deserve a car" and "I deserve a Ferrari." The problem, as I see it, is more that a car and a Ferrari are both going to get you where you're attempting to go, whereas that selective private-school education confers substantial benefits not as available from the other.

That said, I think people seriously underestimate what a good student can do coming from an affordable college -- whether by transferring to a more selective school after developing the sort of track record that would entice scholarships, or by making that jump when moving on for a graduate degree. This isn't at all to deny that there are giant and often unfair advantages to having a big name on that undergraduate degree, but you'd be surprised how many people do well enough at state or small private colleges to do their graduate work someplace name-y. My own brother did his undergrad at a tiny and not exactly hot school in Missouri and then went to Harvard Law.

Your "fact" completely ignores the instances that both me and Tep brought up of other students. This is just playing semantics with the way we phrased our discussion at this point. I think it is rather clear from what has been said that the issue is that students whose parents have enough money that said students can be paid for and don't need more than a typical "afterschool job" can get more aid than someone like me or Tep. Is this really that hard to comprehend? Example: Take two 22 year olds, for example myself and a boy (who I happen to like a lot, he's very nice) in my English class. He comes from a middle class background, and his parents help him significantly. He does not work, because of this. This is all good and well for him. I haven't got this support, and my living expenses (and I'm talking boiled down rent-food(which I barely eat to begin with expenses, not my frivolous ones)-utilities are thousands a month. I'm not complaining, I live a good life. HOWEVER, the fact that we are the same age ad no other mitigating factor means that we are getting the same support to attend any school.

And I wouldn't still be tight paying for state school without the help, as well, so it's kind of silly.

Like I said, there are plenty of examples of other countries who have set up their system in a more evenly balanced way, and it works marvellously.

Feel free to go read the FAFSA guidelines on independence/dependence and the way disbursement works, they're online. If you are under 24, you can get more money out of them by quitting your job and living off your parents. Which happens to only be a viable option if you happen to have decently well-off parents.

It's Friday afternoon, nabisco. And I'm not an argumentative person. I'm sorry if I upset you. I suppose I do get a bit jealous of the very wealthy. As my mom always says, 'Life's not fair.'

Sarah: I should also probably explain where I'm coming from with this. I was lucky enough to finish high school in a state with good public schools: I could have gone to the University of Michigan for free, saving myself and my family loads of money and coming out without an ounce of debt. I often think I should have done that. But I went to an expensive private school instead and have come out saddled with debt. I try not to complain too much about that debt because I made, at some point, a decision that it was worth it for the benefits of attending that expensive private school, a decision I'm hoping will turn out looking like the right one. And yeah, half of the people I know from school just had their tuitions paid flat-out by family and don't have to worry about any of this, but if I let this bother me very much I'd have put a gun to my head before I was done with my freshman year.

In my case, the benefits of going to the expensive private school aren't actually that huge, name-wise: the University of Michigan is a good enough school that having Northwestern on my diploma instead actually isn't conferring that huge of a boost to my prospects. (Not like, say, Indiana vs. Harvard or something.) I do think the federal aid system needs to move in the direction of recognizing that an education at a selective school really is substantially more valuable than the equivalent education at a state school, which it does in part now but not nearly as much as I think any of us would like. On the other hand, making sure everyone who merits admission to an Ivy can afford it doesn't actually correct this problem. What would correct it, as mentioned, would be a much greater investment in raising the standards of state schools and the numbers of good ones. People wouldn't need or even want to beg for enough aid to afford a luxury school if the bulk of them had decent state schools available to them. (Move to Michigan, everyone!)

If anyone does have some good advice for me on how to get any help with this, please email me? I mean, I reckon I can get through the year-of-dependence, as I've decided just now this is called, but it's just looming over my head, the fact that I don't really know how to do anything at this point, I feel my hands are tied. Any non-govermental loan pointers or tips, etc. would be appreciated muchly.

I was apologizing to keep this a discussion rather than a catty insulting argument, but hey, no luck there. "Heaven forbid" you take a fucking apology in kind.

My point's simply that it's alloted based on what you or "your family" can afford; the more you have, the less you get.

I'm not following, nabisco -- if it's something obvious, blame the heavy drinking I've done today/tonight. Not everyone who went to Hampshire was a wealthy kid -- the ones who got the major aid, for instance, weren't. Hampshire's essential approach was to sprinkle small amounts of work-study over a large portion of the student body, and then to take a small number of kids from non-wealthy families and give them full- or close-to-full scholarships. That way they could point both to "oh, 75% of our students have financial aid" and "we gave out such-and-such number of full scholarships last year," even while the bulk of the student body was paying tuition, room, board, and expenses out of pocket.

It's a large reason why the freshman attrition rate was as high as two-thirds.

no offense, Nabisco, I like you and yer posts generally ... but the above is pretty darn ignorant. the above is only true only if you went to one of the top law schools (like Harvard, Yale, Stanford, or Chicago) -- if you went anywhere else, and didn't graduate in the top 10% of yer class and/or got onto law review, the law firms that pay top dollar nowadays will tell you to go pound sand. i went to an OK public law school, did OK but not spectacular (i.e., graduated top half of class and made a journal), graduated when the market was still hot, i didn't get a job with any Wall Street/Big Law firm, and i don't make anywhere near what folks in those firms make. nor do most freshly-minted attorneys.

While I was earning my economics degree, for the first two years of my college education, I went to a private, "well-regarded" university (I don't know how truly well-regarded it is -- it was Trinity University, fyi). Then, when the loans multiplied so scarily fast that I didn't see myself catching up to them in the five year period I had set up at the beginning, and when my dad's health started deteriorating to the point where I was starting to be responsible for a hell of a lot of things, I finished up my degree at a public university (the University of Texas at San Antonio). Well, what I found was that the education I got at the private institution was really not that top-notch, and I actually had better professors, better facilities, and a generally better education at the public university.

Just to break it all down to you: The tuition at the private university I was attending was $20,000/year. I got a scholarship at the end of my high school career that covered half that tuition, while a series of loans I took out paid for the rest. It's simple math really -- I owed $20,000 by the time I transfered to a public university. Tuition at the public university was $2,000/year. In exchange for taking special care of my father, my parents paid for the tuition as we went along (and my family's not wealthy -- we're probably on the borderline between "working class" and "middle class", so it's not as though I was being spoiled by this, and besides, I decided to be a commuter student because I had to stay in a dorm for the first year of college and it sucked).

I have a job that could be considered a career now, so with the money I'm earning I can pay off my student loans and help out with utilities around the house. (I'm still living here because my mother certainly couldn't take care of my father alone and I'm not about to do what's expected of me by society and leave my parents in the lurch. Besides, it allows me to save bigtime money-wise and thus be able to tackle my student loans, which in just one year are already halfway paid off.) What I'm discovering right now, being Out There in the Real World, is that most employers don't really care that much where you graduate from. What they look for is whether the school's accredited by the usual suspects, what your GPA is/was, what your extracurricular activities was (so thank God my private university had us do volunteer work and my public university had a couple of organizations I got involved with). I know that when the HR director at my job looked at my collegiate history, she was more impressed with my GPA than with my choice of college.

I think that if you're looking out for your finances while you pursue the dream of higher education, you should stick with a good public university or a less expensive private university, and make sure you get really good grades. Then, when finding a place of employment, search for one that will pay for a graduate education, and go to a good school then. I'm going with a degree that has more of a chance to earn me more money and that I somehow feel is more suited to me (the computer science degree), but while I'm an undergrad I'm quite happy to go to a public university. However, it would be very nice to earn my master's at MIT or Stanford, so that's what I'll be angling for, and I'm convinced I will be able to swing it when the time comes. Hopefully my mother can come with me wherever I go, so I can help take care of her (her health is fairly bad, too).

Or you could take out multiple loans to go to wherever you want to go to. Whichever, really. It depends on how much you want to work to get your degree. And believe me, those people who goof off during college and don't take education seriously will really suffer in the long run. As one of my old advisors said, "You can either choose to have fun for four years and work hard for the rest of your life, or work hard for four years and have fun for the rest of your life."

I really can't contribute anything to this discussion in practical terms -- my parents set aside college money for me starting at birth, and a combination of regular payments to the fund and some shrewd investing meant my entire experience at UCLA was paid for and then some, as I also received some academic scholarships as well. My graduate experience was covered by a four-year fellowship that handled all costs and guaranteed TA work as well; it was when this ended, in combination with other reasons, that I realized the academic life just wasn't one for me, and so I left rather than accumulate debt in pursuit of something that was driving me nuts. I may not be getting the high-flying job or anything, but I am comfortable, I can indulge myself as needed and I have no debt hanging over my head from schooldays -- but I also realize that this was initially as a result of a combination of particular factors that I had no control over, and I am grateful for it. Some of the stories I've read here just plain anger me, the more so because people I consider friends are suffering as a result.

At any length... *hugs*, and Ned, your parents were s-m-a-r-t.

Delurking a bit more now, obv.

I think student loans suck ass in general. Only if you pay more than what the statements say you owe can you actually find anything advantageous about them.

I didn't qualify for jack when it came to financial aid the first go around. All I had to pay the tuition were my scholarship and the loans I took out. I found that only the super-poor and those who knew how to work the system (e.g. lying on their tax returns) got all the benefits. Maybe some of you who've posted before could've qualified for a lot more than what you're getting. Ally, you seem to me to be an individual who would qualify for tons of stuff, if not now, then a bit later. There are tons of scholarships out there -- get someone in the financial aid office on your side! I had a good friend in financial aid who found for me some loans with low interest rates. (It was the best she could do for me at the time.)

I'm not bitter about any of it, though. I value my education now, and would choose a degree over no loans any day of the week.

*hugs to everyone*

I must confess that my parents had a college fund for me too, but they blew it all on furniture when I was 6. Oh, we'll pay it back some day. And then they got a divorce. So, maybe if they hadn't bought that furniture and had stayed together, I would have been one of those kids whose parents paid their way. Life's just funny like that.

So, whatever else you do, I'd say pay them as much as you possibly can while you're attending. It also made me study much harder as screwing up a class doesn't seem real practical when you know that each class session is actively costing you two hundred and fifty dollars.

I've deferred the hell out of mine. Course, all I want to do is keep consolidation, then give them a huge check. While watching their faces drop in shock.

i know it has been a long time ago, but as i read your comments,i
think back when my husband and i first started. we thought when
we finally made 10k a year, we were rich. i wish we had the opportunites that you young people have today. the information is
out there, read, research, talk to successful people. own up to
your responsibilites. you made the debt, pay it. stop whinning.

does "refinancing" just mean getting a consolidation loan? If you do this, can you still defer if you lose your job? who is the best person to do this through, or are they all basically the same (ie: what is the difference b/w salle mae, direct loans (government run) and collegeloans.com?)

sorry for all the questions.

My loans are gonna default in a few weeeks because then it will be 270 days past due.

dude get one (1) forbearance, otherwise it'll be a pain in the ass

i don't think you can get a forebearance for longer than 6 months

Not true at all -- there are lots of forbearance types, lots of them up to 12 months, depending on your lender.

I doubt Ian would be sharing this bummer if he hadn't exhausted most of the obvious options, so there's not much to say except that that REALLY sucks, and I'm REALLY sorry...

...but on the other hand, dude, don't let it happen! Defaulting on a student loan will screw you thoroughly and for a long time, practically like a minor bankruptcy. Like potential wage-garnishing, can't get certain jobs in certain states, credit-fucked, can't apply for loans for any future schooling, government won't give you any money (even your tax refunds), royally screwed, PLUS -- more serious than any of that -- you'll suddenly owe the entire balance of your loans on a pay-right-now COLLECTION basis, so in addition to the original credit-screwing, you'll also have collection agencies calling you up and demanding what I assume will be thousands of dollars on the spot.

That probably doesn't help with the bummer, so, you know ... that so sucks!

Okay, but dude: seriously, spend every second of the next two weeks bugging and begging the crap out of everyone involved to avoid it! They're actually pretty helpful with keeping you from defaulting, in part because they don't want to sell your debt at a loss, and in part because the law makes them be. So:

1) go after ANY forbearance time you have left, even if it's only a few months -- that still sets back the clock on default
2) see if you have any options with consolidating the debt off to another lender, even if it's kind of a crap deal -- you're WAY better off starting over on worse terms than defaulting! and I'm guessing your mailbox is stuffed full of offers: check to see if any of them aren't too skeezy
3) your mailbox is probably also full of letters from student assistance non-profits. call every one of them and see what they can do for you.

Honestly, if you set aside a weekday and spend the entire day on the phone calling everyone you possibly can ... you will spend a lot of time on hold and maybe have to swallow a shit interest rate, but I'm pretty confident you can keep from defaulting! Just don't get all stressed out and figure you're screwed -- I've kinda screwed myself up assuming that in the past, but if you just keep on everyone's ass, you can get out of it.

P.S. Thank you for reminding me to double-check that my stuff is in order!

PPS -- Sorry, I said COLLECTION agencies, but that may not actually be true, and instead you will have THE GOVERNMENT on your ass about this stuff. I do not know exactly how it works, and I don't ever want to know exactly how it works, and I don't ever want YOU to know how it works, seriously.

ian: IF you can, can you make at least ONE payment to them by the deadline? i am not entirely sure if this is so, but if you can do that then that MAY delay the loan servicer from defaulting (for another month, perhaps).

nabisco... (you guessed it) otm!

there is usually something you can do. if you call them and explain and show that you would like to work something out so they eventually get paid, they should work with you. i don't have firsthand experience with this exact situation, but i think they are generally willing to help when you step forward and ask what you can do to keep this from getting worse.

all that scary forbearance/loan collection stuff doesn't apply to people in the uk does it?

is it worth signing this: http://petitions.pm.gov.uk/student-loans-98/
or would i just be wasting my time? i mean, do online petitions ever achieve anything and does the premise of this petition have any basis in law?

one of the best days of my life was the day the nz government decided to make student loans interest-free (about 2 years ago, i think). there are conditions - they only remain interest-free if you live in nz. but my loan was skyrocketing with interest, esp because the first time round i didn't qualify for an allowance, and my parents could in no way afford to help me out. the second time, when i went back at 23, i qualified for an 'independent circumstances' allowance which made my life a whole lot easier.

i'm basically just living in denial of the $35-40k loan i'm going to one day have to repay.

just in case anyone was wondering, i dropped a check in the mail today for about half the amnt owed. i sold most of my remaining CDs. e_e

i think i'm gonna pay mine off within the next 18 months - that'd be ten years after graduating by then.

Congrats, Ian. You're better off.

Umm, also: where are you getting decent money for used CDs? I'm tempted to sell off a whole stack of mine, mostly because I've become SO LAZY that instead of getting up from my computer and spending 10 minutes finding an album on the shelf, I tend to just download it.

i sold em to the store i work at. academy in williamsburg. we don't really pay particularly more for CDs than anywhere else. they're not really our main source of business and we only have limited space. academy on 18th street might be better suited to your needs.

ian: does your loan servicer offer income-contingent/sensitive repayment plans? if they do then it won't solve your problem with any payments that you have already missed, but it MAY help with future payments.

I paid mine off last month, fantastic.

Worst experience was when I was teaching. The state legislature offered to wipe clean all the loans of teachers in schools like ours (bad ones). However, there was one year when if you had originally received your loan you were shut out. (something to do with the legislature not approving funding that year.) Guess when I had gotten mine?

xpost: they're sending me some forms to fill out to see if i qualify for any kind of low scheduled payment plan. but i am not optimistic cuz i make more than 1100/month.

i really have no excuse for this, and i vow never to get this far behind my payments EVAR again.

but i am not optimistic cuz i make more than 1100/month.

But that's like, what, 13k a year? Surely that would qualify you. You have to eat!

i think 1100 is their cutoff for significant lenience; i make closer to 1500.

Damn, they're cut-throat.

http://www.bizjournals.com/tampabay/stories/2008/04/14/daily53.html

Hey so my lender (of stafford student loans) has "suspended offering our private consolidation loan program". A friend of mine has said, cryptically, that I can consolidate with whoever, no matter who my original lender was. Looking at citibank's webpage, it seems that they have a program for consolidating private loans--stafford loans can't count as private, can they?. And anyway, should I bother trying to consolidate?

To put it another way: my payments are about to kick in, and I can't pay the amount due by a long shot. What's the best way to lower my payments without getting screwed?

http://epguides.com/FallandRiseofReginaldPerrin/logo.gif

wrong thread?

Ah, I see; the internet has indicated to me what you are implying.

Americans?

i am not 100% sure, i just remember being warned against loans through banks because they may change interest rates on you, whereas anything gov't -related is a fixed rate. i'm not sure if that applies to consolidations, though.

^^^Nah, I think it does (I'm trying to school myself on this somehow)--I'm at a fixed rate now, but consolidation could get me a lower rate, albeit one that can fluctuate over time. I'm more concerned with extending my overall payment period (say from 10 year to 20), thus lowering my monthly payment, without hugely ballooning my total payment.

pls advise me, financial geniuses

should i stop paying my student loanz

stop as in take a forbearance, or stop as in whatcha gonna do about it?

forbearance helped me out, can't remember how you qualify

Often times, you can just apply for the forbearance (on the phone) and its done.

Other times, you may need to pay some sort of fee for the forbearance to kick in.

Its not a bad idea, but it may extend the life of your loan by capitalizing interest into the principle. Or something like that.

the feds gave me a year forbearance which i'm still in. the private loans gave me 6 months, and after that they said no more. so i'm paying those again. but i want to stop as in whatcha gonna do about it look at the economies bro.

law school loans are brutal

They may have some additional special-hardship forbearance, beyond the regular voluntary kind.

What's annoying, economy-wise, is that there's no credit available to consolidate separate loans -- i.e., someone who just got out of school could wind up paying 4 separate minimums on 4 individual years' loans, and be more or less screwed w/r/t consolidating them, even at terrible or shady rates.

does anyone know what total US student loan indebtedness adds up to? if it's wall street bailout money size, i say, listen here, barry -- government pays our debt off, we save the economy by spending money at local businesses

This is a timely revive, as it suddenly struck me today that I have to start paying off my grad school loans ($70K) in June. I suppose I better look into consolidating.

I wish you serious not-just-bitter-sarcasm good luck with it, cause it's just ... so inopportune, timing-wise

Will the academic tuition bubble ever burst?

Ha, thanks Nabisco. I'm really crossing my fingers for a few jobs I'm applying for at the EPA, because then I could apply for a student loan repayment program on top of what I'll be paying off anyway.

my life would be perfect without any student debt. everything else is in order.

did you expect to be making more money in law at this point, or is the debt load for law school so high that only the 6-figure big lawfirm guys able to keep up?

#2

Will the academic tuition bubble ever burst?

I think the problem is that things have been set up so that it really does require $40,000 (or whatever) per student to keep the institution at status quo. So it's not a bubble that can pop without lots and lots of other things changing.

Yeah, my impression of the problem is that the wide availability of student credit has created or at least helped fueled a kind of arms race between schools -- since cost-competition is less important (since no one really notices what they're paying until the loans come due), schools try to outdo each other in programs and services and "quality of life." Students have come to expect a lot of things that would probably be hard to provide at lower costs.

Exactly. Nice dorms, new buildings every year, events etc. - a lot of the cost of an undergrad education has very little to do with the actual education part.

If it weren't for credit, there would be a good possibility that good students wouldn't be able to go to the schools they couldn't afford, and the high costs could actually hurt the institution. At the moment? Not really.

These decisions are difficult to make too. Is it worth going $50,000 in debt to go to private school X to get diploma X? Sometimes it is and some people come from states w/ crappy public schools. It's a life gamble.

$50,000 is one year of school

They are crushing. I'd stimulate the economy so much if I had that extra $1500 a month to buy stuff.

I do kinda wonder where the money goes in law schools though.

xp iatee: it is similar to the housing bubble in that the cost inflation is based on easy credit and minimal attention paid to the debtor's ability to repay the debt. I'm sure that if student loans became difficult to get, tuitions would go down at some institutions in order to attract students. There are a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier colleges and universities charging the same tuition as the Ivies, Stanford, etc. partly as a marketing strategy. Though the top tier schools tend to have larger endowments and offer more grant and scholarship aid, so students are often paying more to go to these 2nd and 3rd tier private schools. Another factor is the increase in graduate students. Grant and scholarship aid for grad students is a lot more scarce than for undergraduates.

$50,000 is one year of school

That's just incredible - it has doubled in 15 years.

word ive been paying down my private lawyer school loans v. aggressively. i had some decent scholarship $ too but yeah im ecstatically happy to only have the gov $ left even tho its like 50k lol -- just accepting ill be paying it for 30 yrs

50k is nothing

i finished paying mine off this week. what should i spend the spare £85 a month on now?

I do kinda wonder where the money goes in law schools though.

especially since law schools are total cash-cows for their parent institutions. the overhead costs (computer and library resources, professors and admin staff) are probably a great bit lower than other, more capital-intensive academic disciplines (such as the hard sciences).

srsly they started @ over 100 and i only finished law school in 05. if u rly want to make a dent in them, dont live in ny (or any other major city)

Yeah I wasn't disagreeing that it's a bubble, just that it could really crash. I don't see tuition going down anywhere, pretty much - universities are cash-strapped themselves right now due to the way they choose to finance themselves. Things might be downscaled, student body sizes might get smaller. Maybe tuition will stay flat for awhile and inflation will eat it up in the next 10 years.

Another variable: at a lot of private schools a large % of the student body *can* afford to pay the tuition + the fact that a % of poor students get a % of their tuition paid for. These %s are all different numbers at different schools. But truth be told, the actual tuition number cited by everyone is only gonna be paid by the very richest families. Considering that a large segment of their student body *can* afford to pay it, why not charge that much if not more? The solution is having a very, very good near-socialist financial aid system for the poor and middle class - which does seem to be happening more and more at the very best schools.

There are a lot of 2nd and 3rd tier colleges and universities charging the same tuition as the Ivies, Stanford, etc. partly as a marketing strategy.

Those 2nd and 3rd tier schools are charging the tuition not just for the image but also because they want to be 1st tier schools and that requires spending a lot of money. I do think that image is at least a part of it.

(recent examples of 2nd tier schools that got to the first tier on money alone: usc, washu)

especially since law schools are total cash-cows for their parent institutions. the overhead costs (computer and library resources, professors and admin staff) are probably a great bit lower than other, more capital-intensive academic disciplines (such as the hard sciences).

― LOLBJ (Eisbaer), Thursday, March 26, 2009 10:03 PM (16 minutes ago) Bookmark

Exactly. My school is an independent private, which means it's not sending excess dollars to a parent institution. Plus it owns a ton of valuable residential real estate, which I'm pretty sure it profits from even at the below-market rents it gives students. Faculty are paid highly but many classes are 80-person lectures. No need for expensive reseach facilities/technology, and even a lot of the library stuff is becoming obsolete and reduced to a few online research systems (which I'm guessing give the school a sweet deal in exchange for the promotion). Granted 50% of the student body gets at least some merit scholarship.

Maybe we talked about this article elsewhere? If so, I missed it. It's about a 26 year old with $100K in loans, having graduated from NYU. I'm curious what you think about this part:

"Her mother can’t help without selling her bed and breakfast, and then she’d have no home. She could take her daughter in, but there aren’t good ways for her to earn a living in Alexandria Bay, in upstate New York."

"Cortney could move someplace cheaper than her current home city of San Francisco, but she worries about her job prospects, even with her N.Y.U. diploma."

"She recently received a raise and now makes $22 an hour working for a photographer. It’s the highest salary she’s earned since graduating with an interdisciplinary degree in religious and women’s studies. After taxes, she takes home about $2,300 a month. Rent runs $750, and the full monthly payments on her student loans would be about $700 if they weren’t being deferred, which would not leave a lot left over."

Paying her student loans "would not leave a lot left over", but according to the article's data, she'd be left with $850 a month. Any thoughts on that?

I think she is a bad choice to be a subject of an article like this...hell, she's in a better financial situation than a ton of people I know. there are plenty of people w/100k in loans from schools worse than NYU, who are not taking home $2300 after taxes.

yeah, I was thinking $2300 is pretty decent! I mean, if that's enough for a single person to get a NY Times article...well, then maybe this should go into the "quiddities" thread instead.

a friend of a friend was graduating john hopkins UNDERGRAD w/ 250k in debt.

$22 working for a photographer, must be a damn good photographer

how the hell can you graduate with 250k in debt. were they doing a 5 year program? xp

studying abroad somewhere expensive helps

this same person had the option to go to ut-austin iirc

damn; no shame on Hopkins but I don't think it would be much advantage brand-wise over a decent state school...unless you can spend all your free time there making friends with rich people (dunno if that's the kind of place Hopkins is)

oh it is

we have a family friend who is taking out $400k to finance his daughter going to medical school

but that's understandable, cuz you make all of that back in like 30 minutes after you graduate iirc

overall the thing that really disgusts me is the 'can't use bankruptcy' aspect. there are a lot of 18 year olds making stupid decisions w/ college loans so they can live in greenwich village (etc.) but there are people making comparably stupid decisions w/ houses that cost much more than 200k and if shit blows up, it might suck, but they won't be paying for it 15 years from now.

i have more loans than 100K. soon i can start paying them off. the only reason i'm not panicking about them is a big chunk is going to be forgiven after i make 120 payments if i keep working for the government. but then i gotta pay income taxes on that. it's ok i'll be like 36 at that point, plenty of time to think about it.

huge debts like this make me lol to myself because money is not real iirc

a big chunk is going to be forgiven after i make 120 payments if i keep working for the government

if you choose an eligible loan repayment plan. I think I'm sorta getting screwed, because I did all the paperwork and waiting to shift to the repayment plan that "counts", and it somehow ended up raising my monthly loan bill to like $790. So I shifted back to my previous plan ($450 a month), which apparently isn't eligible for the 120 payments thing.

I'm wondering if somehow I screwed up at some point? It seems off.

huge debts like this make me lol to myself because money is not real iirc

oh word

yeah i gotta do some more research before my forbearance ends 8/21

we have a family friend who is taking out $400k to finance his daughter going to medical school

but that's understandable, cuz you make all of that back in like 30 minutes after you graduate iirc

i'll defer to gbx here, but don't fledgling doctors usually take a low-paying internship right after med school?!?

as for the non-dischargeability in bankruptcy: the only defensible reason AFAIC relates to the portion given by the US government. however, student loans have only been damn near impossible to discharge in bankrupcty since 1997. and however the strong the reasons for making discharge of government loans so difficult, there's no good reason that i can think of as to why private student loans should not be dischargeable.

I have a friend who had $100,000 of student loans wiped after his mum died, because they were under her name or something. Every cloud and such.

I thought that the UK Student Loan Company had forgotten about me after they didn't get in touch for a couple of years, but a couple of weeks ago I got a letter telling me I owed them £15,000. Ah well. I can be pleased that I'm not my American friends doing PhDs here and adding $25,000 a year of loans to their already lingering undergrad loans.

I will have more than $100k when I'm done later this year.

Been really sorta freaking out about loans recently. Post calming things about student loans here! Gallows humor is fine so long is it is not mean-spirited.

i'm w/ u on this, and i just took out more for this round of grad school. topping out around 100,000.

also, two collection agencies seem to have found me for debts i – honestly! – paid off years ago.

I definitely do not regret going back to school, and absolutely knew how expensive it would be. No idea how I will ever pay all this stuff but on the plus side I have done things in the last 3 years that were simply unthinkable previously. But I def. owe a ton AND I got a half-scholarship! Hoping to consolidate under Federal Direct and do income-based repayment in hope of meeting forgiveness eventually. Maybe find low-interest credit union loan to pay down on some of it. Besides school, where else is good place to seek advice about handling repayment?

you're back at grad school, remy?

It is clear to me that I will have crappy income and high payments so income-sensitive makes sense.

On the plus side, I have no undergrad loans, car paid off, no mortgage, wife (currently) has good job which pays for her school. But I have Jewish paranoia that shit will inevitably happen!

Do we have any financial advisors on ILX? I'll edit your wedding video!

http://www.meltingmama.net/.a/6a00d8345190c169e2012876a140ef970c-400wi

yes

Honestly, the Peace Corps seems pretty cool and my wife would be into it, but I do not qualify as a non-US citizen. I heard a guy from my school was thinking about joining the army! But he is also that sort of guy.

yeah, peace corp is really hard to get into, i've heard.

I know a guy that was in the peace corp and mined his familiarity with his host country to create a body of work and a Glittering Art Career. Pretty impressive.

You can't even think about how long it's going to take to pay them back because it will cripple you. I've just gotten used to paying this $200/month thing as part of a routine and it doesn't feel that bad. Then again I've only been in repayment for 3 months so.....

Yeah it's not really the amount of time that it will take to pay them, I just want to get them to a point where I can afford the payments each month. THAT is what is gnawing at me, but it's not something I've looked into in much detail.

For me, the depressing part over the last several months has been that the total amount I owe has been rising, even though I've been paying off several hundred dollars each month, because up until now my payments have just been applied to accumulated interest. I think I'll finally pass that hump this month and start to dig into the principal, I hope. :/

jeez how on earth do you pay off several hundred each month?

I took out subsidized Fed loans in grad school to supplement my rather lean research fellow stipend (tuition was covered) and have been paying them back for many years now, and I have to say it hasn't been bad. At 2.24% interest(!), it makes more sense to just keep paying them on schedule rather than trying to clear them out faster. The Feds seem to do a pretty good job of working with you if you're out of work and need a reduction or suspension of monthly payments.

That's cool, I <3 the government, they are bros. 2.24!!

It's almost free money! Luv you gov! Anyone who says the gov doesn't do shit is duuuuuuumb.

Does Obama bring it to your house personally?

what how did you get 2.24%? i'm not worried about loans because money isn't real, i'm just mad at them because my salary now would be pretty huge without them

stop saying money isn't real, I don't know why you say that. You don't really believe it

yeah i do, i believe it in my heart

i really don't understand you sometimes

Oh I totally believe in the "this money is imaginary" line. All I have to do is sign my name once a year and somehow that entitles me to over triple the highest salary I ever made working to be given in my name to my school to cover a tuition fee I could not otherwise begin to afford. But it is all done electronically, and I will almost certainly pay off my enormous student loans electronically once I have a job again, and that job will probably pay direct deposit, so all that will happen there is that the computer will say I have some money, and then I will tell the computer to give that money to my loan payments, and so all that will really ever happen is that the number I am said to owe on my computer screen will go down a little bit at a time until it is gone.

I feel that I would only really understand the magnitude of what I owe if the government was like "OK, once a year you can just drop by our office and leave a suitcase filled with hundred dollar bills".

Yes I see.

I have no idea how I got 2.24%. This was 1999, and I didn't even have to use the money directly for tuition or anything! In fact, I used it to afford travel I would otherwise have put on a credit card or something stupid!

What I'm saying is, at least in my case, SUBSIDIZED (this is key to the 2.24% now that I think about it) student loans = 100% classic. And the gov is making out OK too, given that I'm at low risk for default over the 30-year life of my loloan.

2.24 would be SWEET.

Combined with my significant other, we pain an ungodly amount every month. Really, it's ridiculous.

Yeah I'll never bitch about paying taxes because hell if other people can go to school with good interest rates on loans then hey I cosign.

Note that I could have taken out more, but am glad I cut myself off at 25k. Which, when spread over close to 5 years of full-time, otherwise unemployed studenthood, was not so bad, considering.

I graduated (UK) 7 years ago (jeeesus I never thought of it as that long), same time as my husband. He's consistently been earning about £15k more than me. Hence he has paid off his loan whereas I've been paying whatever the normal amount is every month and haven't made a single dent in it. Now I'm unemployed and not paying anything, that'll show em.

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2010/08/09/student-loan-debt-surpasses-credit-cards/

did we talk about this? mindblowing

aaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrgggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

why do all borrowing institutions have completely automated phone systems? I HAVE QUESTIONS AND THERE IS NO ONE THERE TO ANSWER THEM

Fuuuuuuuuuuuu-

xpost

If only there were unemployed people desperately searching for jobs that would be willing to help. Oh well!

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/07/29/seeking-arrangement-college-students_n_913373.html

Anyone ever tried negotiating interest rates with the Fed (particularly on consolidated loans)? Is it even possible?

and Harvard University ranks at No. 9 with 231.

wait I thought harvard was supposed to have really good financial aid

Don't think it's possible, admrl.

the only school at harvard that receives federal aid money is harvard college. they refuse to share the money w/ the extension students (many older, many working, many part time) because their numbers will bring down the average aid available to the college money, which is also shared w/ the business school. and the MBAs are litigious and greedy fuxors.

the average aid available through the college mon

so get your ass on the corner, ho, and hook yourself a nice cambridgey john who will let you let you listen to terry gross in his orchidarium while you gobble his junk before taking your wood-rimmed bicycles for a straw-hatted ride along the charles

Harvard has buttloads of private grant money tho that they give based on need. I'm guessing these girls fall into the upper middle class bracket, I.e. don't really qualify for massive amounts of need based aid yet parents wont support them?

not that anecdotal data demonstrates anything, but proving /need/ espesh for asian/white students is harder'n passing the camel through the needle's eye, and moreso for adult/part time/working students. i.e. there are real cases known to me of full-time students who can't receive grants b/c they work, but will lose the limited scholarship dollars they receive if they don't. in another more (ahem) close to home case (sitting across the desk from me), financial aid is being withheld from a full-time extension school student at harvard b/c of an 'incomplete' on the transcript due to a work schedule conflict two years ago

I think it's prob lots of grad degree debt dan

http://img1.photographersdirect.com/img/5220/wm/pd727960.jpg

W/o any context, I'm going to assume that's Dennis Miller and Andrew Breitbart.

ok

http://online.wsj.com/media/studentloan.JPG

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2011/08/15/student-loan-debt-climbs/

yes

I applied for IBR and don't have to make a payment for a year. I guess only being able to find menial shit work after getting your grad degree has some positive side effect :/\

Anyone familiar with IBR know what they take into account? I wanted to buy a vehicle after paying off my CC's but don't know if they're going to take car payments into account.

They use your tax return? I am applying IBR now

Wait you don't have to make a payment but you still accrue interest, right?

we gave up on deferring my wife's loan (which isn't very much to be honest); we had been doing this for years after she stopped working, and even while she was going through cancer treatment, they were ok with it. then suddenly it they wanted a whole lot of other stuff in order to do a deferral; documentation that she was applying for work, on unemployment, or had to be receiving SSDI (which she was denied, whole other story there). so we just started paying it. fuck that.

Government loan?

yes. they did set up a 'graduated' payment plan whereby the payments are a nice size ($70/month) for a while then get bigger, and then it all gets paid off by the year 2748.

I have to admit a slight tinge of bitterness/regret that I stayed at my law school for a full scholarship when I was in position to transfer to a top school -- I could have just taken the debt and then relied on IBR if I were in trouble it seems. I don't begrudge anyone their IBR, but it seems like it kind of negated the point of me avoiding debt.

No, better that you don't have to depend on IBR, TBH

Filed my first FAFSA ever, got the full Pell and $6500/semester in loans. I don't like the prospect (given that I'll have a liberal arts degree from a 'fifth-tier national research university'), but I took the full amount as a cushion for the economy shitting the bed. If I don't end up needing it, my interest rate (which is like 2.9%, if I read my Stafford Counseling session shit right) is lower than some other debts I have.

don't spend all of your loan money at a bar treating your friends, like I did. bad move.

word

stupid US dollar is so weak right now, my student loan repayment next month is gonna be a lot more than i expected (loan is in NZ).

I didn't think about that...maybe I should move back to UK and pay off my (US) loan from there

No fears of that. Got all that out of the way years ago (via Discover rather than student loans). All my friends have more money than I do now.

So, a movement/petition appears to be gaining traction that aims to forgive ALL student loans, in the name of stimulating the economy.
http://signon.org/sign/want-a-real-economic.fb1?source=s.fb&r_by=142663

the idea seems kind of naive to me, but major media outlets have covered it(http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2009/mar/30/financial-pinch-stifles-college-ambitions/ , http://www.usnews.com/blogs/capital-commerce/2009/03/08/the-next-bailout-cancel-us-student-loans.html , http://www.businessweek.com/bschools/content/mar2009/bs20090323_558993.htm , etc), and Rep. Hansen Clarke (D-MI) has introduced legislation (H. Res 365) on the topic.

i'm deep in student loan debt (paying around $500-600 a month just to stay even - i'm not even cutting into the principle), so don't get me wrong, i would love it if it magically disappeared. but since the amount of student loan debt totals around $800 billion, "forgiving" it would be a massive, MASSIVE investment that would mostly benefit those who least need it. the unemployment rate for college graduates hovers around 5% iirc, whereas it's ~10% for high school graduates, and higher for those without high school degrees. it just seems like an asshole move to invest more money than the stimulus and almost totally ignore the people who are suffering the most.

on top of that, there's the argument that very little of the $800 billion investment in debt forgiveness would actually make it into the economy in the first year, because only about 4% of the total student loan debt is actually in payment each year, once you take into account students still in college, people in forbearance, etc.

anyway, just seeing if anyone has thoughts.

I read a lot about student loans even tho I only have like 1-2k worth (and they're interest-free)...partly because I know so much people w/ debt, partly because I'm always tempted/being pushed towards some expensive grad program and hold back because of it.

I think people really underestimate how massive and slow-building this crisis is. also it's not gonna be something you can solve w/o a massive reform of our university system.

on a political level, forgiving nearly a trillion dollars worth of student loans anytime soon is unthinkable. it's not a public issue right now, and it would have to take a long time to build into one. lotta people are gonna have to be suffering publicly and the economic effects are gonna have to be noticeable before it gets *any* attention.

but forgiving all loans is also basically impossible. for one, we can't have taxpayers paying some harvard mba's loans. I would imagine the end-game will involve making it possible to discharge them via bankruptcy and some sort of bailout will be paired w/ that? but there will be no 'free ride', that's for sure.

oops "so much people w/ debt" = "so many people w/ debt"

I just want mine forgiven. That's all. Then I'll stimulate the economy all by myself.

i'd love to not have to pay back my loans (30K+) but it will never, ever happen.

um, i'm kind of really annoyed at direct loans right now as they decided to change sites and i never received any communication saying i'd have to re-submit monthly deduction info. now my account shows past due. i'm sure if i call them they'll fix it, but i just don't think i should have to waste my time doing this crap when they could have just sent me an email/letter to say 'hey, you'll need to re-submit your payment info in order for auto-deductions to continue. make sure you do this by x date!'

Huh, wonder if I'm pass due.

whaaaaaaaa?
FUCK

great, and it doesn't recognize my email address for logging in?

oh wait, i need to register for a new account?

i'm several gimlets and herbsaints in, i can't handle this shit

yeah i had to register a new account. ugh.

OK, mine was past due, but Jenny's (which I also manage) was not. WTF.

Also, lol at seeing the total debt again. Since I had autopayments set up, I hadn't looked at it in awhile. Doesn't seem to have gone down much.asdjfklasdfjlskdf

my principal hasn't decreased in 2 1/2 years, despite making monthly payments.

hah i switched to income-based repayment about 6 months ago so i expect my balance will stay the same for the next 10 years (or until i start making mad $).

my principal's being paid down, but it's like watching paint dry or golf on TV. i'll be paying them shits off till i die ;_;

Also, lol at seeing the total debt again. Since I had autopayments set up, I hadn't looked at it in awhile. Doesn't seem to have gone down much.asdjfklasdfjlskdf

LOL at you coming in the bedroom and announcing my outstanding debt when I'm still in bed on the one day of the week I get to sleep in. *bitter*

I forgive you, by the way. I just thought it was funny.

How can you sleep when we have so much debt???

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204644504576653043088346786.html

Sweet.

Wait, I don't think my private loan is government backed. Oh well. Sweet for other people, though!

so my payment was deducted after all! Just late. I think they owe me a penalty fee?

And the same thing happened to me..... So I ended up paying double. I suppose there are worse things in this world. They'll get 1 month less interest from me. Idiots.

I've only ("only") got about $24,000 total spread across three things ($9000 Direct Loan, $12,500 HESAA NJClass loan, $2500 Perkins loan) and I'm thinking abt consolidating them under the Federal Direct. This is the best way to consolidate, right? Are there any downsides to consolidation? And does anyone know the system well enough to be able to tell me that, if I'm paying a total of $250ish/month now, whether having them consolidated into one loan would make that go up or down?

i would hope they would waive penalty fees for at least the 1st month they are transitioning 2 this new system. i went thru the re-registration & it wasnt really clear whether the autopay was still set up or if that also needed 2 be re-inputted.

also there are still ~1M ppl im guessing in the n.east (me included) w/o power right now & for the near future probably

Okay, I've decided to consolidate; has anyone done this recently that can give me tips on who to consolidate with? Or does it all depend on diff shit?

I think it's best to consolidate everything into a federal loan if you can since they have lower interest rates.

That's what I've read before and that's where I was leaning. I've also been told that rates are at their lowest and that if there's a time to consolidate, it's now.

Surely the slowest and most ponderously bureaucratic process ever?? It takes you 2 months to read my 2-page IBR form? Seriously???

You'd almost think they don't WANT you to pay your loans...

Since the fed loans website changeover, it really screwed up my auto debit, which I thought was resolved. I was looking at my checkings account the other day and though wow, I'm doing OK. But then I became suspicious and realized that the last 2 months they hadn't taken my loan out.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yfySK7CLEEg

Let's talk IBR. Do you have it?

from several months ago:

but forgiving all loans is also basically impossible. for one, we can't have taxpayers paying some harvard mba's loans. I would imagine the end-game will involve making it possible to discharge them via bankruptcy and some sort of bailout will be paired w/ that? but there will be no 'free ride', that's for sure.

― iatee, Thursday, September 15, 2011 6:03 PM (6 months ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i think that a large part of the student loan problem would be resolved by making all student loans fully dischargeable in bankruptcy (subject to a waiting period of however many years or income caps so that Harvard MBAs/white-shoe lawyers/Kim Kardashian's plastic surgeon don't immediately try to get rid of their burden).

Well, I would more or less qualify for ten year forgiveness under IBR for my current work situation. But it's sort of difficult then how to think "tactically" about paying my loans. I also see a lot of conflicting opinions on whether or not the forgiven amount is subject to tax - seems like it should be, but apparently not?

i don't think that the amount forgiven under IBR is taxable (though i don't have a citation for that) mainly b/c if it was there would've been a pretty big stink about it.

sweeet

I have a citation for it somewhere...

http://www.finaid.org/loans/forgivenesstaxability.phtml

Some loan forgiveness programs are taxable and some are not. Under current law, the amount forgiven generally represents taxable income for income tax purposes in the year it is written off. There are, however, a few exceptions. Generally, student loan forgiveness is excluded from income if the forgiveness is contingent upon the student working for a specific number of years in certain professions.

Public service loan forgiveness, teacher loan forgiveness, law school loan repayment assistance programs and the National Health Service Corps Loan Repayment Program are not taxable. Loan discharges for closed schools, false certification, unpaid refunds, and death and disability are considered taxable income. The forgiveness of the remaining balance under income-contingent repayment and income-based repayment after 25 years in repayment is considered taxable income.

so IBR IS taxable income then ... unless you are eligible for one of the loan forgiveness programs that explicitly states that the amount forgiven is non-taxable.

i am also on the IBR plan, about 2.5 years down, 7.5 more to go. after all these months of payments, i still haven't even cut into the principle, so if i don't follow through to 10 years i'm screwed.

/indentured public servant

so IBR IS taxable income then ... unless you are eligible for one of the loan forgiveness programs that explicitly states that the amount forgiven is non-taxable.

Right, although I believe I will qualify for PSLF like ZS. Just getting my certification now.

Do you just pay the minimum, Z S? Good luck to you! - 1/4 of the way there is pretty good going, IMO. You'll hopefully be one of the first over the finish line!

I just pay the minimum, yep. which is still like $450 a month. what's sad is, before i got on the IBR plan, i was on another repayment plan for several months that was more like $600 a month, and i STILL wasn't cutting into the principle at all!

I will be paying more than twice what you pay, bro!

oh man, so sorry! that suuuuucks!

I'm actually weirdly okay with it. It's because my IBR is calculated off of both my wife and my income. But because my minimums are so big AND I hopefully qualify for PSLF, I feel okay about the fact that I am probably paying down interest faster than I would if I filed single. I also get a pretty big tax refund that way so would usually just pay it down on my loans. And I just erased all my other debt so I can focus on this.

Let's just hope she's right, haha!:

http://askheatherjarvis.com/blog/PSLF_is_secure

on the "forgive student loans" movement thing, my gut reaction is that if the government is going to spend hundreds of billions of additional dollars to help people out, it seems kind of...wrong...to direct that money toward a bunch of college graduates rather than people stuck in a cycle of poverty. obviously i understand that so many of us are over our heads in student loan debt, and that if the debt was forgiven a bunch of people would have extra hundreds of dollars each month to consume products. and of course, i realize that the same crappy argument could be made against any sort of financial stimulus directed toward the middle class. but still.

which is why the bailout is prob gonna be 'letting people go bankrupt'

Yeah on some level I am, well, okay I will do my best to pay these within reason. I def. see it as my responsibility and I did sign up for it after all.

I just don't quite think student loans should even HAVE interest, or significant interest I should say.

(xp)

well that's just another subsidy. 'no interest' is no different from 'here here's $500'

the bigger problem is that even after people in the worst situations can go bankrupt, higher ed isn't getting any cheaper

I got a severance payment last year that was taxed at close to 40% but also bumped my income up enough that I think I'm going to be dq'd from my ibr plan, despite the fact that I don't currently earn as much as last year's return would indicate. Those paymens are going to make my life much more difficult :(

tehresa, Do you have to file for IBR from your tax returns? I did mine using an "alternative documentation of income" that reflects my current income:

http://www.usafunds.org/lenders/Lender%20Forms/IBRAltIncomeDocumentation.pdf

ooh thanks. they had asked for my most recent return but i think i can use that form.

Guys I need to reconsolidate (under my Federal Direct loan) but I don't know which repayment plan to choose. Anyone have pros/cons w/ the Income-Based Repayment and/or Income Contingent Repayment? They seem more appealing than the standard fixed-rate plan but I'm worried there's some aspect of this that I'm not considering.

it's insane. my first bill came and said that in 6 days "$583" was due - my min payment!!!!! I called and told them in NO WAY could I pay that much a month let alone in 6 days. I logged onto myedu and did a income based payment and it said I could afford over $900 a month - who designed this freaking algorithm? As it is, living alone in So Cal is paycheck to paycheck - how is it they think I'm sitting on $900 each month?!! I had no choice
but to go with the increase every 2 years plan for 25 years. I'll pay TWICE as I borrowed and the best part? I'll be paying $675/month ages 63-65! let's hope my social security can cover it!!! For the next two years I'm at $192/month.

it's terrible. I couldn't afford to go to graduate even if I wanted to :( So much for a new(er) car any time soon. let's hope work is always just 7 miles away. such a flippin' bummer :(

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052702304818404577350030559887086.html

Between the ages of 18 and 22, Jodi Romine took out $74,000 in student loans to help finance her business-management degree at Kent State University in Ohio.

jesus christ

I didn't think you could borrow that much for a BA

For Stevie:

http://askheatherjarvis.com/forums/viewthread/215/

But I can summarize - you pretty much want IBR

Jen IBR is supposed to be 10-15% of your income. That's the point of INCOME-based repayment. Are you using the calculator right?

http://askheatherjarvis.com/forums/viewthread/2744/#961

This one?
http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/IBRCalc.jsp

I'm using the calculator at the myedaccount they ask my for my adjusted gross income monthly, gross monthly, martial status and family size. I'm single, never married, no kids, and decently above the median income for the US. It can be "up to 25%" and that's what I get socked with. I can't seem to find what "middle class" income is. According to Wiki I'm above "lower middle class". So with no mortgage, no family, they think it's more like 25% of my take-home that is available for paying this off. We SINKs really get the shaft. tax wise, too! Sadly, my rent is 1/2 of my take-home. Not rent and utilities, just rent where I think the rest of the country goes for like 1/3 of take home for rent and utilities. and i have low rent for where I live! still HALF of what I make.

anyways. I'm on the pay double over 25 years plan. and $192 for the next 2 years. I borrowed the max allowed 48k (maybe it was 46K) for a BA. so nope. can't even think about graduate school unless an employer is picking up that tab.

apparently I could get a $10/month plan for my $6000 loan

Haha my monthly payments are almost a quarter of your entire loan

Jen it sounds like you make too much money

and pay too much rent

I recommend you actually call the Fed and speak to them, they are surprisingly helpful. Although so few people-accountants included-seem to properly understand this shit. I guess there's a niche for someone there.

I did call them and this was the only way to get my payments to what I could afford now: $200 month (I pay another $75 for an non-fed student loan so $275/month total). With this plan I will pay 110K for 60K borrowed over 25 years. I'm very lucky to earn enough to pay this. It seems INSANE that I will end up paying double for my BA. Pretty insane a BA costs so much but I'm not trying to buck the system. Just like a family of 4 can't live on 25k. The assumption even 10-25% of your take home is available for one single debt is just nuts!

Not anymore, lol =/ I think that assumption has actually become kind of normal now that student loans are starting to look a bit more like mortgages

http://www.lepoissonrouge.com/lpr_events/peoples-bailout/

ATTN student loan experts:

I am repaying abt $12,000 of consolidated federal student loans under the Income Based Repayment plan, which I was eligible for when I was experiencing "partial financial hardship"

however due to new job I am no longer financially challenged. It's time for me to renew my IBR paperwork, and idk whether or not to keep IBRing it or go back to the standard repayment plan. Is IBR like this super special club that you never want to leave once yr in it? Are there any distinct advantages or disadvantages of going back to standard repayment?

When is the US going to get to grips with direct debit?
― Ed (dali), Wednesday, April 30, 2003 9:41 AM (10 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lol

The ILX-shamefully-ignored INTERCEPT continuing to kick all kinds of varied news type ass, right down to the fab lead photo - check out those t shirts ILM-ers:

https://firstlook.org/theintercept/2015/05/04/bankruptcy-filing-shows-corinthian-colleges-secretly-funded-d-c-think-tanks-dark-money-election-efforts/

this will end well

https://news.vice.com/story/betsy-devos-will-let-one-company-handle-all-federal-student-loans

sounds good - monopolies laways work out well

Acting like there was accountability among the servicing companies because of competition seems sorta silly. These firms are basically like defense contractors or municipal waste companies or charter school operators. Replacing a cartel with a monopoly may not make much of a difference at all

I hope they will service me well

only the best people :)

https://www.insidehighered.com/quicktakes/2017/08/30/report-education-department-hires-enforcement-chief

yes, finally -- there is way too much opportunity in america

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/12/trumps-budget-would-end-student-loan-forgiveness-program.html

Why is that not a bigger story?

possibly because few people have successfully completed the PSLF program. it requires 10 years of qualifying monthly payments, and it wasn't a program until 2007, so only the very first wave of people who qualified for the program at the very beginning and then didn't miss a single payment in 10 years have made it through. speaking of...

i am also on the IBR plan, about 2.5 years down, 7.5 more to go. after all these months of payments, i still haven't even cut into the principle, so if i don't follow through to 10 years i'm screwed.

/indentured public servant

― 1986 tallest hair contest (Z S), Wednesday, April 4, 2012 1:38 PM (five years ago)

i'm sure i told my pathetic PSLF story on another thread, but i got completely screwed/screwed myself. Department of Education didn't come up with a process for PSLF participants to monitor their progress until around 2014 or so. when they did, i submitted my work history, expecting to be told that i had successfully completed about 5 of the 10 years worth of monthly payments, since i was in a qualifying job and a qualifying repayment program (IBR), and i had paid my student loans on time every month for the 5 years i'd been with the govt at the time. instead, after several months i received a response stating that i had only successfully completed around 2.5 of the 5 years. for almost a year straight, it turns out, i was autopaying a tiny amount less than the full monthly payment (for example, if i should have paid $500 in a month, my autopay would pay about $490). i have no idea why that happened. i signed up for autopay and to pay the full amount every month, and somehow that happened. as a result, NONE of those payments counted toward my 10 years. in addition to that, some early payments that i made were apparently not in a qualifying payment plan, so those didn't count either. anyway, long story short, after 5 years in PSLF and a huge portion of each paycheck going to the monthly payment, only half of them counted, meaning i would need to work 12.5 years instead of 10 years to get my loans forgiven.

HEY USA YOUR SYSTEM FUCKIN SUX

Hey, I'm in the PSLF - thanks Trump!

I had heard actually they were going to stop new enrollee's into it but if you were already in it they would let you continue. The whole thig has been poorly run - why not just reimburse the laons after each year or something nto such a long period

https://www.reddit.com/r/StudentLoans/comments/7x1no5/i_received_pslf_forgiveness/

My wife was in income-based repayment and was making PSLF-qualied payments every month, and then we got married. Apparently I make too much money and we don’t qualify for income-driven repayments now, so she can no longer participate in PSLF. So now we’re on a thirty-year “graduated repayment” plan and we’ll still be paying these when we’re sixty. Yargh. Student loans suck!

hm i just realized i will be finished paying mine up at the end of trump's first term

am i missing something though or does the loan forgiveness thing get it exactly backwards i.e. requires payments during the least lucrative stage of your career, and then lets you stop paying once you're most likely poised to make more money

that s why the pslf should just pay you a payout at the end of each year not the whole term - its a stupid program but I hope it works out for me

Reviewing my posts over the years in this thread, I’m in a lot better position now. Mine are paid off and my wife’s are down to 112K. The best thing we did was consolidate with Sofi. Previously we had part private, part fed loans with varying interest rates. With Sofi we locked into 4.615% on a 10 year plan. This will end up saving us over 30K in interest. Current pay off date is July 2026, which seems like it is right around the corner.

I was playing around with a loan calculator the other day to see how quickly we could pay it off if we paid a little extra each month. $100 extra would pay it off 8 months earlier and save 2K in interest. $200 extra a month would pay it off 15 months early and save $4k in interest. I feel like we are in control now instead of just barely chipping away at an obscene amount of debt.

I wonder how many people refinance their mortgage, pay off student loans in the refinance with cash out and then later go bankrupt and discharge the debt which was once non-dischargeable student loan debt

jeepers it's as if America wants to punish people who pursue higher education...

Its gotten way out of hand

ask not what your country / community can do for you

at least we can own guns!

more pslf news

https://twocents.lifehacker.com/heres-whats-going-on-with-the-public-service-loan-forgi-1825113047

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-government-loan-forgiveness-program-has-rejected-99-of-borrowers-so-far-2018-09-20

Why can’t the Department of Education create a website out there where I can access my profile and see who my current employer is, whether that employer is public sector, what my loan type is, and how far along I am with PSLF? Do they make it this much of a pain in the ass on purpose, because they don’t really want loans to be forgiven?

Abrams recommends that borrowers hoping to avoid the shock of rejection after 10 years in public service file an Employment Certification Form every year. These forms, which borrowers fill out with the help of their employer and send off to their servicer for approval, are the only way for borrowers to know how close they are to having their loans forgiven under the program.

This is ridiculous.

I think your best bet is to call them, and if you relly want good service, call them twice to make sure you didnt get one of the poorly trained csr's

i got FUCKED by that program, and i did everything i could to play by the fucking rules

This is why people hate the federal government.

seven years of service for the federal government, straight out of grad school, applied for the program right away and got on a qualifying loan plan, and yet somehow when i checked in with the employment certification form (which wasn't even created by dept of Education until...2012 or so?) it turns out that 2 years of my monthly payments didn't count because, for some bewildering reason, my auto-pay was paying JUST UNDER the full payment each month, leaving a few dollars of interest each time.

and who should i call to fix this situation? well, who the fuck knows, because my loans have been routed through a million different companies since i first took them out, and the companies that fucked me over are no longer in business, and all the new companies see is a history of payments that don't meet the qualifying amount

IN CONCLUSION FUCK THIS FUCKING PROGRAM

i was at work when i found out that i had gotten completely screwed and i almost had a complete meltdown

uh, i already told this story a few months ago. i'm sorry. *disappears through the bushes*

it's a horrible story, and if something that enormous and frustrating happened to me, i'd consider it worth telling more than once.

my auto-pay was paying JUST UNDER the full payment each month

Did you get an explanation for this? It sounds shady.

I sense a class action lawsuit

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/02/tips-from-one-of-the-first-public-servants-to-get-their-student-loans-erased.html

its like finding the blue lobster

you support those troops, ms. de vos, you republican secretary of education you ; )

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/11/12/many-disabled-veterans-are-still-forced-to-repay-their-student-debt.html

Dumb q. but where do I look to find reasonable offers on refinancing? I know Nerdwallet, Bankrate, etc., are owned by bigger banks, and I'd pref. consult a credit union or w/e.

Credible.com (nb I work there).

dick

https://www.forbes.com/sites/zackfriedman/2020/02/11/trump-student-loans-forgiveness/#66de31216b3d

Yesterday Donald Trump vetoed a resolution passed by Congress, which would have left in place rules making it easier for students to default on debt owed to for-profit colleges that had engaged in deceptive marketing practices. The Washington Post told readers that this veto is expected to save the government $11 billion over the next decade.

Most readers may not have a good sense of how much money $11 billion over the next decade is. The government is projected to spend 60,700 billion over this period. That means the savings from this veto will be a bit less than 0.02 percent of projected spending.

meanwhile, the students who were fleeced by the for-profit colleges are expected to earn less than $1 billion over the next decade. (<-- which number represents a plausible fiction)

Biden is not going to just wipe away like $300 billion in future government revenue from student loan payments, come the fuck on. Why do people believe this shit?

$300b over how many years?

If it's over the next 10 years, that's roughly .06% of projected revenues. That's six hundredths of 1%.

I have to admire the way this has really pulled the selfishness out of people and, frankly, I'm all for even talking about it if it ends up making so many contemptible people completely show their asses. Like so many aren't even trying to couch this argument in some larger economic picture, it's flat out, "fuck you, I had to suffer and pay my loans, so does everyone else."

Likewise there are a lot of people who can’t think about anyone suggesting problems as anything but selfish.

The floated debt forgiveness would be both a good thing and politically/socially risky, absent any sweetener for people who didn’t go to college (often because they couldn’t afford it) or lowering college attendance costs going forward.

wonder if there was a similar sourness by the 8th-grade educated way back when mandatory public high school became a thing. oh well. public universities in these days when people can expect to live well into their 70s and 80s should be free, full stop

this isn't going anywhere and dems are gonna lose so fucking bad in 2022

Honestly I'll be happy if they only end up getting rid of interest on student loans.

nationalizing Harvard & using its stupid endowment toward canceling student loan debt would be a good start

“Some payments, for example, didn't count toward forgiveness because autopay programs rounded the payments down instead of up to the nearest penny” are you fucking kidding me?

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/10/06/dept-of-ed-announces-public-service-loan-forgiveness-program-changes.html

god, i'm afraid to search for my posts upthread

i'm very heartened by the recent announcements, though. i was screwed out of multiple years of payments, that, at the time, were deemed "ineligible". it would be a huge deal for my qualifying payments to bump from 4 years up to 7 years (out of the 10 you need). i'm not going to go do it now, but i could put it 3 more years of public service, some time, and it would mean everything to get $75K of loans forgiven

"forgiven": FUCK THIS LANGUAGE

just have to say, "forgiven": FUCK THIS, that these are the terms

i'm asking for forgiveness, for this thing that has been a giant albatross on my life and has FUCKED me

Reviewing my posts over the years in this thread, I’m in a lot better position now. Mine are paid off and my wife’s are down to 112K. The best thing we did was consolidate with Sofi. Previously we had part private, part fed loans with varying interest rates. With Sofi we locked into 4.615% on a 10 year plan. This will end up saving us over 30K in interest. Current pay off date is July 2026, which seems like it is right around the corner.

wow. well done!

Ok, I'm confused by the anecdotal things I see about student loans. for instance this:

I took out $55,000 in loans so I could earn a degree as a single mom. I’ve paid and deferred as much as someone who earns no more than $40k can. I now owe over $180,000. #CancelStudentLoans

— Alannah Massey (@alannahmassey) December 14, 2021

how is this even possible? Rates for federal undergraduate loans is around 3.5%. for Graduate student loans it's about 5%. How does that equate to a total loan amount tripling when you have made payments on it? Are people taking other types of loans?

like even if you didn't make payment on it, that math doesn't make sense to me. admittedly I hate math and did no calculations to prove my point.

maybe you should ask her

Just like a credit card - the required minimum payment is often below the amount of interest that accrues on the principal (the $55k) here. You know - your credit card spending was $1000 for the month but the minimum payment is only $30 or whatever.

Do that too many months in a row, and you quickly learn that compound interest is a bitch

Actually, not at all like a credit card. Ignore me, 420

Private loans, maybe?

I did ask her! I think I found some useful responses in that thread though. Deferrals (which my wife did, on her undergraduate loan...but the amount on that was never very high), apparently they keep adding fees on people, and someone said the interest rates are 9-10%, which doesn't jibe with anything I read but ok. Maybe these are not federally backed subsidized loans people took.

my gut tells me this is private loan industry that took advantage of people and people are not being clear about that (they may not even know). fuck this shit, I hope my kid gets scholarships and doesn't borrow a dime. I'm personally very familiar with crushing credit card debt, it has almost ruined my life multiple times.

loans disbursed when i was in law school were at 6-6.8%. at an interest rate of 9% the balance doubles in approximately 8 years if you don't pay anything.

"according to my calculations" (online calculator) if you take out 55,000 at 6.8% interest you must pay at least $312 per month to cover the interest in the first month (they are amortized so the interest goes down after that if you have paid it, i want to assume you pay the same each month). if you continue to pay $312 per month you will pay it off in 100 years, 11 months at a total cost of $378k.

got it. so basically I am shitty at mental math. as is probably everyone, because I would assume most people would look at that and think it's fine when they are signing it, not realizing their payback rate isn't even close to being what it should be.

My colleague and his wife are celebrating this year because she's at the end of her PSLF and I think they're erasing 250K and I don't think she paid anything back on that (interest probably, I don't know how it works).
That puts in perspective the 10K zero-interest loan I was awarded to do a second masters since I didn't qualify for any scholarschip. Even that comparatively small amount took some time to pay back (like 2.5Y). The system was just that you start paying back 12 months after finishing your studies, on an agreed installment plan. That made sense.

Today, I announced my Administration is extending the pause on federal student loan repayments for an additional 90 days. pic.twitter.com/mxveCTe7bH

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 22, 2021

This is a good thing! A small victory, but a victory nonetheless.

Am I still paying them even though I don’t have to? Hell yes I am!!! 0% interest!!!

Just keep delaying repayment as long as a Democrat is in office, make the next Republican be the one to restart it.

the delayed student loan deferments are the only thing keeping my head close to water right

now

milo otm

thank god

big help to our household

I've got about £900 left to pay on a loan I started paying back in 2002. I swear I borrowed no more than about £15-18k at the time but have been paying back upwards of £100 or more a month. Bonkers

paused again through 8/31

nice, paused until just before the election, smart

I’ll believe it when I see it, but apparently Biden just chopped off $10,000 off of everyones’ student loans, which would automatically make him the single greatest president in the history of the United States including the future.

that is 8 months rent. it's in a similar ballpark to capping out of pocket spending for drugs at 2,000. a toss of rice out of the bag. your hyperbole is ridiculous.

i'm not a number jockey so idk how exactly it compares but the public service loan forgiveness program is a lot more dramatic if you're, say, a post office employee for 10 years.

that being said i think there's a decent chance the repayment start keeps getting extended, which is much more enticing to me personally than $10k.

Continually delaying repayment until a Republican President has to be the one to make everyone start paying is the such a political gimme.

i'm not a number jockey so idk how exactly it compares but the public service loan forgiveness program is a lot more dramatic if you're, say, a post office employee for 10 years.

Guess it depends how in debt someone is. I'm eligible in my job, but am only ~$15 grand in debt. So with minimal payments i'd be paid off before loan is forgiven. Coworker is like $100 grand in debt so he's absolutely going for the forgiveness

does anyone know if there are limitations re where you can apply this 10k (i.e. govt loans vs private bank loans)

just for federal loans

right outdoor_miner that makes sense, admittedly blinkered by the massive amount of debt i have.

student loan relief decision from SCOTUS due this month:

https://www.forbes.com/sites/adamminsky/2023/05/17/huge-student-loan-forgiveness-decision-is-only-weeks-away---key-details

really got to stop referring to it as 'forgiveness'

fuck my life

ja

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmMnISN3e3E

from the us politics thread:

https://prospect.org/education/2023-07-05-biden-administration-begins-student-debt-relief-plan-b/