Damn Student Loans

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.