Damn Student Loans

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.