Damn Student Loans

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.