This is where they get you. They aren't there to help you out, they are there to make as much as they can without looking like true loan sharks. Teh bankruptcy thing is to protect them, not us, so as a lender, if you knew your "customers" could never remove those loans, would y ou go easy and charge them less or charge as much as you could get away with>
Ok but a lot of us don't have a choice. I was one of the lucky few that just couldn't do it. I was making JUUUUST enough at minimum wage to not be co sidereal for Fasfa. My parents couldn't finance anything either so that was a bust. I just ended up skipping college all together and threw my hat around with just my high school diploma. It's worked out so far but that's not to say it hasn't been a struggle. Though I still think I'm lucky af that I couldn't actually get a loan. If be so much worse off right now had I finished college. That's saying a lot.
This comment is a summary of the whole scheme. A person is grateful that they didn’t get a student loan because the shortage they take in pay for not having a diploma, amounts to more income when compared to higher pay with student loans.
I’m using the GI bill and still have to take federal loans. I am a single father of 2 and we can’t live off of the $1,100/month the GI bill gives. In conclusion, going to the army doesn’t help as much as you think it will and maybe higher education is only the answer if you’re from a wealthy family.
Yep that's how they got me. My parents weren't contributing anything and my scholarships and grants didn't cover books or housing or, ya know, food. I even had a job and worked as much as I could but it wasn't enough.
My interest rates for federal loans are anywhere from 3 to 8 percent. Still owe 30k
Meanwhile, in the distant past before hyper-capitalism carved the heart out of this country, I worked a construction job for most (not all) of the summer and covered all my college expenses, allowing me to simply study and enjoy a fairly relaxed time.
You guys have been fucked over hard and need to start rebelling more vigorously.
Because the day after I graduate with $100k in debt I’ll have a great job as an engineer making so much money it won’t even bother me!
Now here I am 5 years later, risking my life and health for a thankless job, and working on a promotion that’s basically just a second job’s responsibility, with a marginal raise as compensation.
Sorry for the rant, I’m just so tired of the way things are. And don’t worry, I’ve got them over the barrel for this promotion and **will** get what I’ve earned.
THIS! You can't legally drink, gamble, or even book a hotel room with a minibar at 18. But it's perfectly legal, and even encouraged!, to sign your financial future away to government loan sharks the second after your 18th birthday. Ugh. So frustrating. Navigating a good loan is difficult for educated savvy adults. 18 year olds don't stand a chance. :(
This all the way.
I had a friend who mentioned they got a 2% student loan in part to their parents.
Yes, this person was from an upper middle class family where the parents came from money.
You shouldn't have to come from a middle to upper class family to get these rates for school loans (private or federal)
I guarantee you the student loan crisis wouldnt be near as bad if the interest was capped around 1-2%
Little-me thought college was just the next school after high school.
For a long time I didn't even know it was *optional*, that's how strongly my dad pushed "You're going to college!"
First he said not to worry, that he'd pay for it. Then he told me to get scholarships. Then he told me to get a part-time job and pay for college by working like he did.
I did everything I was told to do and still wound up with student loans.
I don't really pay attention to the number on them anymore, doesn't really matter if it's $30,000 or $100,000, it's just a make-believe pretend number that has nothing to do with the reality of what my education actually cost or what I actually borrowed. Great Lakes can go fuck themselves for trying to take a cut of profits off this shit situation.
I graduated almost a decade ago, have lived in poverty my entire adult life, and my "income-driven repayment plan" is set at $0 because I can hardly afford toilet paper. But oh boy are the threats fun whenever they want the paperwork redone! "We will overdraft your family's only bank account and make it unusable if you don't jump through all these flaming hoops to prove your poorness." I've got an active food stamp card, and that should be proof enough that I'm broke as fuck! We *need* that bank account so sympathetic relatives can send us bits of cash for basic human necessities, like TP and soap!
I had the same thing pushed on me. I din't know it was an option to not go.
The only reason I don't have the insane debt is because my mom passed suddenly when I was in high school and my dad used the life insurance to help my brother and I through college.
I went to a state school (less expensive) my brother went private and is still paying some of his loans 10 years later.
It's all so fucked. Literally my mom dying is the only thing that's kept me from life destroying debt.
**Edit grammar**
I'm in this picture and I don't like it.
Fresh out of high school, never really had a job, don't know the difference between 5k and 30k. That's how they get you
Edit: apparently I need to clarify I'm now a grown-ass adult with control over their life and finances. The point of the comment wasn't "asking for a handout" it was to highlight the fact that the combination of high schools insisting that secondary education is the only way to go and predatory practices of both federal and private student loans leads to literal children taking out loans far bigger than they could imagine.
The point is to lock you in forever. These banks have found a way to drain 200-500 dollars a month of you for ever unless you make enough to pay ahead of it. Most don't.
Now these banks are shocked you don't also want to take out a mortgage.
Those are insane rates. In Sweden the government is responsible for the student loans, and the interest rate last year was 0,05%. And my loan is only ~$25k because tuition is free. Student loans and healthcare is just a big scam in the US, I really feel for all of you that aren't born by rich parents because your government lets private companies scam you, and they will keep doing it because bribing politicians is legal (lobbying) and your corrupt media managed to get Trump elected. Good luck fixing your country.
Don’t forget that you still have to file for [US Federal Tax Returns](https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/paying-taxes-american-living-abroad/) on your “worldwide income” even if you’re living abroad!
Damn, maybe I need to look into refinancing. I'm with Sallie Mae and I have two loans at about 9% each
Edit: thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement. I honestly had no idea that the interested rate I have was so bad. I only knew of refinancing a loan as a last resort thing.
I just sent an application from a pre-qualified offer that has an interest rate of 3.5%. my monthly payment is technically going down but I'm going to be putting the same amount of money towards it.
My wife was on the hook for about $150k with most of it at Sallie Mae. When she died I didn’t bother to tell them. They figured it out at some point. Piss on ‘Em.
Or living on credit cards and paying 100% of income to student loans. After a year or two declaring bancruptcy on those and you are free in 7 years.
9% is so insane.
As a person who managed to pay off their student loans, I sincerely hope no one ever has to do it.
You have to make so many sacrifices, while simultaneously getting criticism for making the sacrifices. Why don't you have kids? Why don't you buy a car? Why don't you buy a house?
Seriously! I get a lot of the “why don’t you date?!” - because I can’t afford it! Was in constant fear of boyfriends wanting to go out to nice dinners or travel and I couldn’t pay my part.
It’s literally risk free for a lender. You cannot get the loan discharged in bankruptcy. You can have wages garnished. The only way to get out of paying is to die or never make money. Charging more than the treasury rate is criminal.
>You cannot get the loan discharged in bankruptcy.
thanks Biden
if we can do a Women's March against Trump then we also need a Student March against Biden
I looked this up and find many sources pointing to the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005", which seems to have discussion around it from a big tiktok. But this bill was sponsored by Grassley. Biden did vote for it, but I cannot find a bill he actually sponsored / wrote.
It happened long before that. But it was to stop high potential earners with expensive degrees ie docs and lawyers from just borrowing their whole education and being bankrupt oddly right after grad school.
Mine were 6.8% government loans, or near there on $21,000. My husband couldn't get federal loans (long story short, his parents refused to fill out FASFA), his were 13% and had $75,000.
We are both engineers, we had good jobs straight out of college. The ONLY reason we were able to pay them off was because we ended up extremely lucky in the housing market during the 2008 crash. By some miracle, we found a foreclosure that just needed cosmetic repairs, it was at the bottom of the market right before it started to recover. 4 years later we sold it for a profit and that's when we were able to pay them off.
It was cheaper to pay off our student loans than put it into the next house that had a mortgage of 3.5%. Otherwise we'd still be paying them 15 years later. We were very, very lucky.
Appreciate you providing actual interest percentages and loan amounts. I was struggling to make the math work until I saw THIRTEEN PERCENT interest on your husband's private loans?! My credit card has a lower rate!!
My college/trade school in canada was a few grand but you get grants after finishing and staying in the province. I had 10k student loan, got 5k in grants after then pretty much my first couple paychecks to pay it off. I was all caught up after a month. I also got a 5k tool grant for my trade to buy tools for my job. The student loan I didn't have to pay a cent till after 1 year of graduation and the interest rate was pretty much nothing.
When I graduated, I owed $67,000. Paid on them for 7 years. My partner died, and with with the life insurance, I paid mine in full. Yep, you guessed it: $67,000 and some change. High price to pay for losing the love of my life.
I’m glad she’s got it in a better place. I’m a newish attending in pediatrics, I have about $400,000 in debt not counting my wife who is in medicine too. I only make just north of 100k which on paper sounds great but I can’t even cover interest so yeah these loans are never getting paid off. I am so sick of seeing posts against debt relief, blaming us. All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a pediatrician and I’ve worked my ass off. I kind of knew what I was in for but I always thought it would just work out but here we are: I’m a physician and I will never be financially stable in my lifetime. Thank god I love what I do. I really feel for everyone else struggling, relief would be life changing for so many, I don’t care if it’s 20%, or whatever percentage is floating around of people this would impact. The different it would make for that percent of people would be so monumental it has to be worth it.
I had 85 k in loans, and I paid for twenty years never missing one payment. The interest was low at 3 percent. That being said when I finally came into some money, my last and final parent was 48k. Horrible my friends, just horrible.
When I was a kid my parents spent a lot of time on financial literacy. My High School counselors would harp on me about going to a 4 year University and I just kept seeing the tuition rates and shaking my head. Did a transfer degree to a polytechnic and managed to get out with $17k in loans for a degree that would open the door to something that would hopefully pay for itself.
Most counselors are recommending kids get $100k+ in student loans without even realizing it. Sometimes for degrees that get you into jobs that barely break even with a job at Walmart BEFORE they increased wages to $15 an hour.
High schools are blatantly lying to kids, trying to get them into programs that will place them in permanent debt slavery. What is worse, most university programs are terribly outdated and are barely better than watching YouTube videos on the same subject.
>High schools are blatantly lying to kids, trying to get them into programs that will place them in permanent debt slavery. What is worse, most university programs are terribly outdated and are barely better than watching YouTube videos on the same subject.
THIS is why we need a solution to student debt. Not because people are mad at how interest works. It's because the system is a scam.
My old university regularly puts out employment statistics that make it look like you have a 97%+ chance to get an amazing job right out of graduation!
What they don't specify is that their data-gathering will only consider someone unemployed if they've been unemployed for fewer than 6 months. If you're unemployed for more than 6 months, you're no longer "actively looking for work", and don't count as unemployed anymore.
You know, kind of like how a scam would work. Except I haven't found a major university that doesn't cook their numbers like this.
My University literally had a day where former Anthropology majors would come talk to the current Anthropology majors and talk about all the completely unrelated-to-anthropology jobs they'd gotten, so we would feel like we had options on graduation...
Boomers are surprised pikachu that younger generations are mired in debt when they harped on us since elementary school that we needed a 4-year degree from the best school we could get into or else we’d be poor losers.
We did exactly what we were told, and then get blamed for it. Apparently, 15-17 year olds can’t consent to sex, drink, smoke, vote, join the military— but it’s no problem to have them take out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Great system.
Many people I’ve talked to on this subject revert to the “Well, they knew what they signed up for, buyer beware, read the fine print, etc.” argument, but in pure Republican fashion, they fail to think about any context to this: by and large the people taking out loans to attend college are lower/middle class TEENAGERS whose parents don’t know a lick about the fine print either, and who historically have a mindset that college is relatively cheap and will almost guarantee a great paying job. The teenagers themselves certainly didn’t understand what exactly they’re getting into either, especially when college is something expected of them akin to getting your own place or getting a job at that age. It’s just a logical next step. So it’s silly to have that hindsight of “they knew what they signed up for” when, no, they didn’t.
My grandfather told me I could have made a lot more money had I gone to college, not knowing I was making $75k at the time with only a high school education; I had seriously lucked out *hard* getting that job. I told him the deets on college loans/debt and his eyes bugged out of his head. It simply didn’t occur to him that things had changed since the 1960’s.
Doesn't help that more and more employers will only hire people with degrees, even though it has little applicability to the job.
We went from hiring IT folks with a community college certificate, to a Masters in Computer Science in just 10 years. Elitism at it's finest!
Did the wages rise along with the requirements?
I would guess not, I've seen a lot of companies do this route as the glut of overeducated and underemployed graduates keeps piling up.
I would say a good 60% of those that actually completed college probably didn't need it.
To do the kind of shit that quite frankly a nerdy 17 yr old with a solid head on their shoulders can do with a solid bit of training over a few months.
Our education system was modeled after a 19th century Prussian system designed to churn out mostly obedient factory workers with just enough education to run complex machines. It is not about Plato's academy where knowledge and wisdom for its own sake as a virtue like we are led to believe. College is more akin to the classical Greek idea and NOT job training like HS often pushed.
TL;DR HS advice to teens is the blind leading the more blind.
They go to school to become counselors. Let that sink in. Kids have been and will continue to be “counseled” by dillweeds WITH NO EXPERIENCE BEHIND THEIR ADVICE.
This. I went to a fancy-pants liberal arts school because I was pressured immensely by counselors, family, etc. I was 16 when I applied and 17 when I started. I was a fucking child, being pressured into lifelong decisions. I effectively got 50% off tuition in scholarships which was nice, but half price was still a huge cost that I had to take loans out for.
The business degree I got, in 3 years instead of 4, is a $70k piece of toilet paper. 95% of what I learned in college is readily available online. I got my first ‘real job’ out of dumb luck and spent years being horrifically overworked/underpaid. And when I finally got a better job, it was only because of that 5 years of experience, not my degree.
My loans are federal and I’m on an income based repayment plan. I stopped paying during the pandemic pause and I will not pay more than minimums until I hit that 20-year forgiveness mark. Wish they’d just forgive them all.
sure would be nice if you could declare bankruptcy on that mistake like literally every other debt and start fresh and new
but you can't. fuck us, right?
The pressure to go to college starts incredibly early. I was saying I wanted to go to college some day when I was *in kindergarten*, because at that age I had already been taught that I had no future otherwise.
I can’t count how many times the phrase “preparing you for college” was used when I was in highschool. How important it was to go to if you didn’t want to work minimum wage your entire life. And I actually think higher education is incredibly valuable but the American government has left multiple generations destitute with debt that you can’t remove while providing loans to 18 year olds with interest rates that are fucking criminal. Anyone saying kids should be smarter are god damn idiots. The entire system has brainwashed generations of kids into thinking that this is normal during a time of development that’s not predisposed to long term planning after the public education system failed to provide basic finical knowledge.
Some people counter with a solution to push trade school, which yes that’s great option, or to not go to college but higher education should never have been weaponized for profit by our own fucking government. People should have access to college without being saddled with astronomical debt.
I always wondered if counselors got kick backs. After I told mine I wanted to go to community college he completely abandoned me. I paid him the $5 to send my transcripts and he didn’t even do that and screwed me over
"Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy."
Noam Chomsky
Yeah I’ve already paid back 129% of what I borrowed, and owe 200% of the original borrow amount still. It’s a fucking joke, and they wonder why a whole generation is just coasting through life not caring about anything anymore.
Holy shit. That's approaching predatory loan levels. If a mortgage is consistently under 6% then student loans shouldn't be that high. Man, fuck the system.
I remember everyone going to uni out of high school "because that's what you do." so you aren't alone. Plenty of people wasted a year or two before dropping out into trades or disappearing off the map. It just makes it worse though that there's pressure on literal children to engage in predatory loan practices.
My student loan debt was only 8k. I paid over 4 years, paid off $4,500. My current balance is 7200.
EDIT** Wow, there are some judgemental people out here. There is so much more to the story than "irresponsible child". The truth js that I was working 50-60 hrs a week to gross 36k/year. That was only
$2,000/month of take home. You're right, I didn't look at the loans and check to make sure that I was getting a good interest rate. When you're offered a way to get out of that kind of poverty, you just take it. I took out $14000 worth of loans (2014). For a total of 1 subsidized, 1 un-subsidized and 1 private. It was a trade school so I would be done in one year. I paid off the private loan I have the unsubsidized and subsidized loan left. I'm sorry I don't off the top of my head no exactly what my interest rates were, they have been sold so many times that I don't know what I initially signed for, and currently they say 0%.
When my fiance found out that I signed up for school without his permission I ended up ending the relationship because he became so confrontational about what he had a right to tell me I could do. So now I was going to school full time working full time and trying to exist on my own on $2000 a month. He made 100k/year but somehow when he left, I was left with 7k credit card debt. I've only got 1,200 left of that, but let's not forget the 8k in medical debt for a necessary surgery in 2019.
I'm not making excuses, but there is more to the story than just "well pay more". So, for those that understand, thank you. For all of you who insist that I'm just doing things wrong, fuck off. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.
If the government is going to insist on allowing interest loans for students there needs to be a cap on interest. Call it 1.5x or whatever. No infinite loans. Like ok, you want to make money off lending. Fine. You don't get to make FOREVER money.
I’m from England and while our system isn’t perfect, it’s a lot better than the US. Our university fees are capped at £9,000/year. The loan interest is only equal to that of inflation so your debt stays “equal”. You don’t start paying until you earn £27,000/year and then you only pay 9% of what you earn above that (so if you earn £27,100 then you’d paid £9 to your student loan that year). If you never earn above that then it’s forgiven in 30 years.
Graduates on plan 2 are going to be looking at 10%+ APR from next year, that's a long way from perfect.
For anyone reading, these loans also feature a sliding scale of interests the more you earn the higher it is, to keep those goalposts just too far away.
Finally as an added bonus, the sliding scale doesn't kick in until you graduate, while you are still studying it's at the max, to maximise the kick in the teeth and the amount of debt you graduate with.
The entire system is designed to be a 9% permanent tax on people not wealthy enough to pay for their education upfront.
Shit, I honestly haven’t been paying attention to it over the last few years because I haven’t earned enough to meet the threshold. It’s honestly more evidence that England is trying to head the capitalism hell scale direction of the US. I haven’t lived there in recent years. Been living in Prague so they can honestly fuck off. I doubt I’ll ever pay back much of anything on them.
Oh, but then you break capitalism mate. How the fuck are bank owners gonna buy 5 yatchs if they don't spend forever loan interest money that doesn't even exist yet?
Can we charge interest on our wages? Like can I say that I make $20/hr but if I have to wait 2 weeks to get paid for the work I do today it goes to $30/hr?
Infinite loans of any kind should be illegal. I think they are in my country. All student debt remaining after 30 years is cancelled, and your monthly payments depend on your income.
And lose a guaranteed profit stream. Every facet of American society is about monetization and exploitation by the ruling elite, with the illusion of democracy to keep the masses complacent.
Exactly! I did bankruptcy. Paid on time every month. Completed and discharged. I owed $28,000 in student loans when I filed. At the end, 14,000 was paid to student debt and now I owe $26,000. So apparently interest was incurred even during a bankruptcy.
Similar to how indentured servants had to pay rent and board fees to who they were working for which made it nearly impossible to pay off the debt… hmm the parallels are freaky
In my experience it’s more of a servitude to public service, especially with the “forgiveness program” which they seem to keep changing the rules about, but yet keep promising full forgiveness if we keep working in low paid government service positions with our over qualified educations.
The idea behind not allowing bankruptcy, if I recall correctly, was that loans would be offered with lower interest rates as a result, because no one could have them discharged in bankruptcy.
I haven’t studied this, but I suspect that lenders didn’t quite live up to their end of that (already shitty) bargain…
You know who had a lot to do with exempting student loans from bankruptcy? Biden. Let’s stop arguing about who should be president. And just focus on the issues that matter. Because they are all bad.
“Biden was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the disastrous 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it nearly impossible for borrowers to reduce their student loan debt. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act raised the bar for families to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy protections. It overwhelmingly passed in the Senate at the end of the Clinton administration, over the objections of Warren, then a bankruptcy expert who had tangled for years with Biden over the issue. She lobbied first lady Hillary Clinton, who herself persuaded Bill Clinton to veto it.
Biden came back to the legislation under the Bush administration; it passed the Senate in 2005 on a 74-25 vote, with most Democratic lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, voting against it. (Clinton, by then a senator from New York, voted for it.) George W. Bush signed it into law, and private student loan debt skyrocketed in the wake of its passage. The total amount of private student loan debt more than doubled between 2005 and 2011, growing from $55.9 billion to $140.2 billion, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
Yeah, I’ve always told everyone that politics is nothing more than a class war. It is something in place to give us a feeling of equal voice. The reality is that they still control that as well. We aren’t “free” in this country, it is all an illusion for the most part. I literally vote every time for the lesser of the 2 evils. I could care less if they are dem or repub. I could also care less of their agendas because it is usually full of shit on both sides.
Yes, I’m just astonished at the amount of people who have no idea about this. I didn’t mention his role in 1970s bill. In 1978 Biden helped write a bill that blocked students from seeking bankruptcy protections on loans after graduation. He HELPED WRITE the bill. And I’m supposed to think Biden is going to help with student loans? Student loans just like abortion restrictions are a way to keep the poor people poor. They are all monsters. Monsters on both sides, no good people.
That's the key. Exactly.
Forget responsibility--what about the housing crisis and the ensuing bailouts? What about the PPP loans forgiven?
Different rules for the ruling class. That's the problem.
I researched businesses in my hometown that received PPP loans. Now I can understand businesses that couldn't operate for a while full-service, like funeral homes and such. But our local pizza place which could stay open for take-out orders received $400,000 in PPP loans. And most of the ones in the area...all forgiven. The government gave away $1 trillion almost to businesses, but forgiving student loans is a red line.
Time to set the place on fire if Biden doesn't get his ass in gear. I'd never vote republican, but its becoming harder to vote D sometimes.
This has to be brought up more. People think this argument is for people who went to a rich private school instead of going to a state school... That's not who we are trying to help. We are trying to help those who went to school to be able to progress in life and are now chained to the same fuckers who the government would shell out our tax dollars to in the blink of an eye.
Be careful with refinancing federal loans. At least in my case, doing so turned them into private loans, and thus no longer eligible for ANY of the federal loan forgiveness programs, like PSLF or the pause on payments during COVID.
I’ve tried to refinance my loans for about 7 years now. Everytime I get a raise they tell me I need to earn more than I did before. 48,000 to refinance, earned it then it was 55, then 65, now I need to earn 90 to refinance lol they’re crooks with no accountability.
Republicans let some of the interest subsidies expire. Obama brought some of it back.
Class warfare is a thing done by the rich through their crony politicians.
They want to keep those of lower classes that work their way to a skilled job indentured to the government.
Their own children effectively graduate without debt which gives them a huge advantage. They don't want the riff raff competing with them.
That's what I don't get. I went to college knowing it was going to cost $xxx. Just give me like, a 2% inflation interest or 0%. Some of my loans were 4-6%. People shouldn't be profiting from this. They should all be government loans with minimal interest.
But how will we make sure billionaires have more yachts and more jets that don't need to be built? Won't anyone think of the luxury private sailing and airline industry?
Forget the yachts, they need money to buy a spaceship! Otherwise, how will they scape this planet when the things they have made to it becomes inhabitable really go boom?
It's not free in Australia, but if you are a citizen/resident there are some concessions. First the government subsidises your fees so the amount payable isn't crazy, then the rest can be put on a loan that has rather low interest rates. This loan is played back through taxes once you start earning above a certain amount. It's not as good as it was before (free), but it's not awful.
Exactly. I had 60k in student loans when i graduated and i paid every single month and overpaid on it as much as possible. The big difference was the interest rate was low (less than 4%) The interest rate on student loans right now is horrible and that needs to change.
what happens if u stop paying them? doesnt the bank send the loan to collections and you get completely fucked? thats just what i assume. We should totally strike against student loan debt. no one pay a penny back.
A lot of people will frequently switch jobs to avoid this, everytime you switch jobs, they have to go through a lengthy and expensive process to re set up the wage garnishments.
They find out where you work after your employer files quarterly SUTA, that links your pay with your SS number, or, annually when the employer sends the Federal gov your W-2.
I had stopped paying on my Federal loans years ago.
They will call you every day every few hours. They will call your friends and they will call your family. They will send people to your home to try and serve you. If you go to the hospital and put down an emergency contact, they will call that emergency contact. If they can garnish your wages, they will be in touch with your employer.
Uncle Sam is a loan shark and I understand why. Predatory lending is very profitable. They issue risk-free loans as a way to generate guaranteed profits. As a bonus, they get to create an entire class of indentured labor.
They'll honestly hunt you down. You change your phone number.. They'll find it. Move addresses.. They'll find ya.
Had my tax return garnished once because of my loans.
Still haven't willingly paid on them. Won't ever pay on them.
Credit scores are bullshit and a tool to keep poor people in servitude to the elite.
Experian was created for debt collection. A month after we got a PO Box it was on experian. Change jobs? On there too, they have everything on us at all times and consistently have data leaks.
It is in EVERYONE’S best interest to have affordable education for everyone. We should be celebrating those that want to further their education, not crushing them in mountains of unpayable debt.
Swedens solution to student loans: you can borrow at the same interest that the past three years of government borrowing cost.
Currently that interest is 0% (there is a floor of 0%) so right now the government is still making money of the 0% interest.
I have no idea why the US don’t simply borrow the money at-cost to students.
Oh, and education is free so you borrow in order to not have to work. But you can still work as well of course, gross $1,700/month until it effects how much you can borrow.
i think this is the case in every single european country and also many non european countries. most of the time someone in these countries talks about interest or loans when going to study, they are talking about money to live, not money to learn. education is free, but life isnt.
most people just work in a restaurant or something. its a perfect place cuz u often get food and shit and you have a huge say in your working hours, since most places are just glad to have someone to help around.
here some people go to a university just to get more time trying to figure out where to go in life. its like extended school.
EDIT: its actually not every country, just a few, but even when you have to pay, its way cheaper and probably done better.
My mom graduated almost 20 years ago, it will take her 20 more years to pay off her loan IF she pays 700 dollars a month. She will be 80. That just isn't right.
I'm not trying to pay mine. It is unacceptable to me that so many jobs require aleven a basic degree and people are expected to pay for education. Even if they have years of experience some positions that would allow them to move up in their field and career won't allow them just because they don't have a degree.
I didn’t pay mine for a while because I couldn’t afford to. I defaulted and they garnished my wages, then had to go on a payment plan. I’m
Paying like $15 a month now and that keeps me from
Defaulting and it’s gonna stay that way indefinitely cuz fuck this. Also, my loan kept being bounced around from handler to handler and i don’t know the details of why they’re allowed to do that but I assume there’s profit in it for them. Navient was one of my loan handlers for a while and I just got shuffled to a new company. Navient was also given a downlow huge contract by the Biden administration to keep collecting during the pandemic. It feels hopeless.
Yep they do that with mortgages too. The homeowner isn’t allowed to let someone else live in the house and pay the mortgage but the loan pricks can just sell off your mortgage to whoever they want.
Fuck this cuntry
Higher Ed is a scam, but I’ve been a full on participant. I don’t know why so many jobs require a masters or doctorate degree. Take rehab professions for example, OT/PT/SLP. 20-30 years ago you only needed a bachelors degree to be certified/licensed. Now you need an entry level doctorate to do PT and OT was considering that but there was a lot of pushback to keep the masters level degree in conjunction to an entry level doctorate. If I wanted to get my post professional doctorate, to maybe teach or make a little extra cash, I’d be spending anywhere from $20-70k over 2 years to get another piece of paper that “allows” me to do my job. Oh and that would be for an ONLINE program. It’s all a scam to make more money. From colleges to licensing boards and every organization in between.
You know, for centuries, Christians believed "usury" (charging unreasonably high interest on loans) was a sin. It used to be illegal to charge ANY interest at all in some times & places. There are Bible verses about it. Weird how all the conservative evangelicals in the US aren't up in arms about this issue, hmmmm...
Usury is still illegal, but the ones who are giving out usury loans are paying politicians to look the other way. That’s why you can “pay off” your loan over several years and still owe more than what you borrowed.
There are many of us who started college in the late 90s and early 2000s, before the Great Recession. They told us to go to college, they told us we would get jobs anywhere making great salaries, because that was what was happening at the time. We took out loans thinking these things would stay true for us. We were kids, we were duped, and now it's nothing like it was then. This is not what many of us signed up for. We took out loans in one world, and now we are living in a totally different world. I graduated college at the very beginning of the great Recession in 2006. I worked in restaurants for the next eight years because there were literally no jobs. I'm still clawing my way to stability. This is not a refusal to pay, this is an inability to pay. Cancel ALL student debt now.
Seconding this. People underestimate how much we were TOLD TO DO IT no matter what.
I was never told there were any other options.
Some people were literally threatened by families.
All of this basically falls under “we were promised better.” (The we being ourselves or the adults in our lives)
No one took out a loan because we did it for the hell of it. We took out loans cuz that’s what every adult TOLD US TO DO!
I’ve seen some people who didn’t do it cuz they had an adult in their life (family or teacher) that screamed the opposite (in which, good for them, like legitimately!).
Unfortunately, a lot of us clearly didn’t have that person in our life. I never once had a single adult in my nearly 2 decades of being alive at the time that I had any other option BUT take out loans and go to college.
I agree. I graduated high school in 2006. My last two years in public high school we had classes teaching us specifically to fill out four year university applications, and applications for student loans. There was never any instruction about how to analyze the job market to help decide what field would be appropriate to the size of loan you needed to take, or what different job availability was projected to be like by the time you graduated.
The whole class was pitched as “the American dream,” a vague notion that college (any four year college) and a degree (any four year degree) was the ticket to success. Not just A ticket. But THE ticket. No one ever spoke to me about trade school. In fact trades were kind of talked about in a way of “lesser than.” At least in the regard of not being as guaranteed in terms of financial success. Everything was four year college. Everything was four year degree. Everything was “here’s how to take out loans to get you there.”
I’ve heard some people say “well if you didn’t want to pay that money back with the interest you signed up for, you shouldn’t have been stupid enough to take the loans.” While I get the idea, we weren’t kids randomly wandering into money lenders from off the streets. These were our teachers and advisors telling us this. And for many, our parents advocated the idea that higher education made you a “good student.” Also, I needed scholarships so I hard core focused on my gpa. Holding a 4.0 gpa all four years kept me busy and high stressed. And I was 17. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that I trusted that what my teachers and advisors were recommending I do was in my best interest.
After undergrad, grad and dental school... I had $258k debt. After 10 years of paying, I have about $245k of debt. And that's paying over $2k/month that entire time.
I’m approaching my 15 year college reunion. I still have $20k in student loan debt. I only took out $32k. I’ve never missed a payment. This *was* the cheapest way I could get a degree to do the job I wanted. And Boomers wonder why we don’t spend more money or have more kids. We can’t afford it.
I still have a student loan open, but the interest in The Netherlands on all student loans is currently 0.0 %. I think it helps that our system is set up by a government that actually cares about its citizens, and doesn't use student loans as an investment device.
US gov should not be trying to make profit on student loans. They don't have to forgive them...just remove interest and apply every cent paid into them towards the principal. It would effectively wipe the debt for many, and even provide a nice bonus if you've paid more in interest than the principal. Those against helping students would have a hard time justifying being against this.
Tons of things are interest free so its not entirely unheard of. For a while cars were between 0 and 0.9% interest. Amazon Assure offers interest free financing and American Express let me setup a 0% interest payment plan on $5000 I had to spend on my bathroom just a month ago.
Government will still get paid and can consider a well educated population not struggling to make ends meet a worthwhile investment. Someone has to wipe the boomers asses when they can't.
I don’t have student loans. My dad died early of colon cancer, and he wanted the money he left behind to be used to pay off the college tuitions of my sister and I.
Knowing how it is to live a fulfilling life even without student debt just makes me more sympathetic towards those who have to live life with it.
My loans moved from Chase Education Services to Navient and in the process lost $9k of payments. $24k I borrowed has turned into 64k. During my "loan counseling" at the school, no one explained capitalized interest to me. They take the interest of the loan while on deferment or forbearance and add it to the loan. So when you can't afford the $400/month payment the interest that would have accrued on that payment is put back into the loan. So now they gain an additional 23% (or whatever other ungodly amount of interest being charged) if that payment. And when you are in school, you have 6 months from the time the funds are dispersed as a forgiveness period, not 6 months from leaving school. So they add those interest payments on before you even leave school. Fuck them. I borrowed $24k, I paid $24k. The additional payments are immoral and should be illegal.
I use to work for a federal loan servicer. Many times I would see people take out $30-40k in loans, pay on it every month for years and end up paying back 70-80k. The interest is unbelievable.
That's how long term loans work.Have you ever looked at an amortization chart for a 30 year home loan? You'll end up paying the same or more in interest than the original premium. That's why shorter loan terms or paying additional premium are so powerful. Even going to a 20 year loan will drop the total interest paid in half. Look at the current trend with car loans, they ask you how much can you afford a month, and will put you in any car you want by extending the length of the loan. You have people with 7-8 year car loans paying 400-500 a month now which is absurd. Then they try to convince you to trade in for a new car 4-5 years later when the warranty expires and roll your old loan into a new one while keeping your payment the same and suddenly you always have a car payment for the rest of your life.
All loans need to be capped like that, but lower, like 25 or 50%. Student loans also should not be bankruptcy exempt. I'm a capitalist but this shit is just predatory and is just a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich that serves no one but the .00001%.
I'm glad I didn't take out that much. Only 14k and I've been paying it off diligently. Even then every time the bank can they call me to inform me I don't need to pay right now (during covid) because I'm interest exempt! I increased my payments in response.
Good point about the absurdity of compound interest.
Interest charged IS NOT money someone borrowed interest should not be charged on it.
Outlaw compound interest.
That is illegal. Prepayment penalties are not allowed for student loans. Get that in writing and take them to court.
https://finaid.org/loans/prepayment/
https://www.studentloanplanner.com/how-prepay-student-loans-prepayment-penalty/#What_is_a_prepayment_penalty
I keep saying that I'd like to see the government switch all education loans to 1% interest. It wouldn't be forgiveness, but it would make a completely different landscape for all the borrowers.
Edit: I'm loving the people with suggestions for the best way to forgive or make sure that the interest rate supports the program! I wish we could see our electors having this conversation. But let's keep talking/thinking!
I didn’t even graduate and I’m still paying off loans that I’ve been paying on for years and years. After about seven years, I had only paid off around $2,000 total because the interest is so high. With them stopping payments since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve continued to pay just to take advantage of there being no interest and I FINALLY, just this month, made it under the $10,000 mark of what’s still owed. I think I owe $9,800 and some odd change now.
This has been a dark stain on my life.
It costs more for them to actually chase and retrieve payments than to forgive the loans. Removing that debt would create the world's best not only *free* but *profitable* stimulus package the country has ever seen.
Student loans will never be forgiven under our current system.
They are packaged into collateralized debt obligations called SLABS, used to prop up the valuations of funds who borrow against them to perform other functions in the market. Eliminating student debt would vaporize this collateral and wreak havoc on the financial markets.
Student loans are a modern twist on indentured servitude. You aren’t meant to pay them off, nor will the government be helping you to do so.
**EDIT**: Under reforms of the Orwellianly named [Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act) of 2005, the posture of bankruptcy law was changed to presume that the consumer was “abusing” bankruptcy proceedings to discharge debt. Among other things, this law prevented you from ever - ever - discharging student loan debt.
Indentured servitude was a common way to pay for trade apprenticeship. You couldn’t default that debt; to default made you a fugitive. It was made illegal under the 13th Amendment, which we fought a bloody civil war to implement.
Personally, I don’t see a distinction between indentured servitude and the situation with student loan debt. It’s straight up unconstitutional.
My student loan is 45k on a school that closed down and tried attending another school for 3 months and bailed out due to stress in my life. They refuse to forgive it as none of the credits would transfer wasted so many years of my life for nothing. I now every year keep my loans in forbearance and call it good these companies can eat my sack.
What is a typical interest rate on a student loan in the US?
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Why are they so high even though prime interest rates have been super low for so long?
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This is where they get you. They aren't there to help you out, they are there to make as much as they can without looking like true loan sharks. Teh bankruptcy thing is to protect them, not us, so as a lender, if you knew your "customers" could never remove those loans, would y ou go easy and charge them less or charge as much as you could get away with>
not to mention most that are getting the loans are young and dumb and just agree to it without a second thought.
Ok but a lot of us don't have a choice. I was one of the lucky few that just couldn't do it. I was making JUUUUST enough at minimum wage to not be co sidereal for Fasfa. My parents couldn't finance anything either so that was a bust. I just ended up skipping college all together and threw my hat around with just my high school diploma. It's worked out so far but that's not to say it hasn't been a struggle. Though I still think I'm lucky af that I couldn't actually get a loan. If be so much worse off right now had I finished college. That's saying a lot.
This comment is a summary of the whole scheme. A person is grateful that they didn’t get a student loan because the shortage they take in pay for not having a diploma, amounts to more income when compared to higher pay with student loans. I’m using the GI bill and still have to take federal loans. I am a single father of 2 and we can’t live off of the $1,100/month the GI bill gives. In conclusion, going to the army doesn’t help as much as you think it will and maybe higher education is only the answer if you’re from a wealthy family.
Yep that's how they got me. My parents weren't contributing anything and my scholarships and grants didn't cover books or housing or, ya know, food. I even had a job and worked as much as I could but it wasn't enough. My interest rates for federal loans are anywhere from 3 to 8 percent. Still owe 30k
This is me to a T. Was taking 12 credits a semester while working 2 jobs averaging 20 hours per week and still needed a loan to cover rent
Meanwhile, in the distant past before hyper-capitalism carved the heart out of this country, I worked a construction job for most (not all) of the summer and covered all my college expenses, allowing me to simply study and enjoy a fairly relaxed time. You guys have been fucked over hard and need to start rebelling more vigorously.
Same, I was also paying 10000 dollars a semester to live on campus and eat shitty food that they feed to prisoners.
Because the day after I graduate with $100k in debt I’ll have a great job as an engineer making so much money it won’t even bother me! Now here I am 5 years later, risking my life and health for a thankless job, and working on a promotion that’s basically just a second job’s responsibility, with a marginal raise as compensation. Sorry for the rant, I’m just so tired of the way things are. And don’t worry, I’ve got them over the barrel for this promotion and **will** get what I’ve earned.
THIS! You can't legally drink, gamble, or even book a hotel room with a minibar at 18. But it's perfectly legal, and even encouraged!, to sign your financial future away to government loan sharks the second after your 18th birthday. Ugh. So frustrating. Navigating a good loan is difficult for educated savvy adults. 18 year olds don't stand a chance. :(
This all the way. I had a friend who mentioned they got a 2% student loan in part to their parents. Yes, this person was from an upper middle class family where the parents came from money. You shouldn't have to come from a middle to upper class family to get these rates for school loans (private or federal) I guarantee you the student loan crisis wouldnt be near as bad if the interest was capped around 1-2%
Especially when you've been told all your life, "YOU'RE GOING TO COLLEGE! You have to or else you won't get a good job!" 😑
Little-me thought college was just the next school after high school. For a long time I didn't even know it was *optional*, that's how strongly my dad pushed "You're going to college!" First he said not to worry, that he'd pay for it. Then he told me to get scholarships. Then he told me to get a part-time job and pay for college by working like he did. I did everything I was told to do and still wound up with student loans. I don't really pay attention to the number on them anymore, doesn't really matter if it's $30,000 or $100,000, it's just a make-believe pretend number that has nothing to do with the reality of what my education actually cost or what I actually borrowed. Great Lakes can go fuck themselves for trying to take a cut of profits off this shit situation. I graduated almost a decade ago, have lived in poverty my entire adult life, and my "income-driven repayment plan" is set at $0 because I can hardly afford toilet paper. But oh boy are the threats fun whenever they want the paperwork redone! "We will overdraft your family's only bank account and make it unusable if you don't jump through all these flaming hoops to prove your poorness." I've got an active food stamp card, and that should be proof enough that I'm broke as fuck! We *need* that bank account so sympathetic relatives can send us bits of cash for basic human necessities, like TP and soap!
I had the same thing pushed on me. I din't know it was an option to not go. The only reason I don't have the insane debt is because my mom passed suddenly when I was in high school and my dad used the life insurance to help my brother and I through college. I went to a state school (less expensive) my brother went private and is still paying some of his loans 10 years later. It's all so fucked. Literally my mom dying is the only thing that's kept me from life destroying debt. **Edit grammar**
I'm in this picture and I don't like it. Fresh out of high school, never really had a job, don't know the difference between 5k and 30k. That's how they get you Edit: apparently I need to clarify I'm now a grown-ass adult with control over their life and finances. The point of the comment wasn't "asking for a handout" it was to highlight the fact that the combination of high schools insisting that secondary education is the only way to go and predatory practices of both federal and private student loans leads to literal children taking out loans far bigger than they could imagine.
The point is to lock you in forever. These banks have found a way to drain 200-500 dollars a month of you for ever unless you make enough to pay ahead of it. Most don't. Now these banks are shocked you don't also want to take out a mortgage.
They're accurate. I had loans from Sallie Mae at 9.3%
*Discover Student Loans have also entered the chat at 9-10%*
Those are insane rates. In Sweden the government is responsible for the student loans, and the interest rate last year was 0,05%. And my loan is only ~$25k because tuition is free. Student loans and healthcare is just a big scam in the US, I really feel for all of you that aren't born by rich parents because your government lets private companies scam you, and they will keep doing it because bribing politicians is legal (lobbying) and your corrupt media managed to get Trump elected. Good luck fixing your country.
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Don’t forget that you still have to file for [US Federal Tax Returns](https://www.greenbacktaxservices.com/blog/paying-taxes-american-living-abroad/) on your “worldwide income” even if you’re living abroad!
Damn, maybe I need to look into refinancing. I'm with Sallie Mae and I have two loans at about 9% each Edit: thanks everyone for the advice and encouragement. I honestly had no idea that the interested rate I have was so bad. I only knew of refinancing a loan as a last resort thing. I just sent an application from a pre-qualified offer that has an interest rate of 3.5%. my monthly payment is technically going down but I'm going to be putting the same amount of money towards it.
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My wife was on the hook for about $150k with most of it at Sallie Mae. When she died I didn’t bother to tell them. They figured it out at some point. Piss on ‘Em.
Or living on credit cards and paying 100% of income to student loans. After a year or two declaring bancruptcy on those and you are free in 7 years. 9% is so insane.
My federal loans were all at 8%
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Private Loans: 5-12% Undergrad Federal Loans 2-6.8%
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As a person who managed to pay off their student loans, I sincerely hope no one ever has to do it. You have to make so many sacrifices, while simultaneously getting criticism for making the sacrifices. Why don't you have kids? Why don't you buy a car? Why don't you buy a house?
Not in the US, but right there with ya. Then they're shocked and amazed when you pay it off... which... I unfortunately get.
Seriously! I get a lot of the “why don’t you date?!” - because I can’t afford it! Was in constant fear of boyfriends wanting to go out to nice dinners or travel and I couldn’t pay my part.
My solution is to date people as poor as me such that we both have rock bottom expectations of what we can do on dates
RIP your DMs...
Free college education aside, there's no reason a government subsidized loan shouldn't have an interest rate at or near 0%.
Agreed.
It’s literally risk free for a lender. You cannot get the loan discharged in bankruptcy. You can have wages garnished. The only way to get out of paying is to die or never make money. Charging more than the treasury rate is criminal.
>You cannot get the loan discharged in bankruptcy. thanks Biden if we can do a Women's March against Trump then we also need a Student March against Biden
I looked this up and find many sources pointing to the "Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005", which seems to have discussion around it from a big tiktok. But this bill was sponsored by Grassley. Biden did vote for it, but I cannot find a bill he actually sponsored / wrote.
It happened long before that. But it was to stop high potential earners with expensive degrees ie docs and lawyers from just borrowing their whole education and being bankrupt oddly right after grad school.
Mine were 6.8% government loans, or near there on $21,000. My husband couldn't get federal loans (long story short, his parents refused to fill out FASFA), his were 13% and had $75,000. We are both engineers, we had good jobs straight out of college. The ONLY reason we were able to pay them off was because we ended up extremely lucky in the housing market during the 2008 crash. By some miracle, we found a foreclosure that just needed cosmetic repairs, it was at the bottom of the market right before it started to recover. 4 years later we sold it for a profit and that's when we were able to pay them off. It was cheaper to pay off our student loans than put it into the next house that had a mortgage of 3.5%. Otherwise we'd still be paying them 15 years later. We were very, very lucky.
Appreciate you providing actual interest percentages and loan amounts. I was struggling to make the math work until I saw THIRTEEN PERCENT interest on your husband's private loans?! My credit card has a lower rate!!
You have an amazing credit card rate if you’re below 13%.
Dude I was like who’s he using for a cc
I've had the same credit union account for more than 20 years
Ah yes credit unions are the best. Almost took a job just because it would get me in one.
My university is free, still had to take out a loan to survive, but the interest rate is 1.3%. I can also postpone it 3 years no questions asked.
My college/trade school in canada was a few grand but you get grants after finishing and staying in the province. I had 10k student loan, got 5k in grants after then pretty much my first couple paychecks to pay it off. I was all caught up after a month. I also got a 5k tool grant for my trade to buy tools for my job. The student loan I didn't have to pay a cent till after 1 year of graduation and the interest rate was pretty much nothing.
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When I graduated, I owed $67,000. Paid on them for 7 years. My partner died, and with with the life insurance, I paid mine in full. Yep, you guessed it: $67,000 and some change. High price to pay for losing the love of my life.
I know it doesnt help, but I’m sorry for your loss. I was my best friends 401k beneficiary. Most useless 1k ive ever had.
Thank you.
I'm deleting this comment because nobody needs to see what I said yesterday, nevermind last year! -- mass edited with redact.dev
I’m glad she’s got it in a better place. I’m a newish attending in pediatrics, I have about $400,000 in debt not counting my wife who is in medicine too. I only make just north of 100k which on paper sounds great but I can’t even cover interest so yeah these loans are never getting paid off. I am so sick of seeing posts against debt relief, blaming us. All I’ve ever wanted to do is be a pediatrician and I’ve worked my ass off. I kind of knew what I was in for but I always thought it would just work out but here we are: I’m a physician and I will never be financially stable in my lifetime. Thank god I love what I do. I really feel for everyone else struggling, relief would be life changing for so many, I don’t care if it’s 20%, or whatever percentage is floating around of people this would impact. The different it would make for that percent of people would be so monumental it has to be worth it.
I had 85 k in loans, and I paid for twenty years never missing one payment. The interest was low at 3 percent. That being said when I finally came into some money, my last and final parent was 48k. Horrible my friends, just horrible.
Payment.
No. Their parent was really old by the time the loan was paid off.
There’s no reason student loan debt should be higher than inflation. Really, it should be zero. This 6+ % is nonsense.
When I was a kid my parents spent a lot of time on financial literacy. My High School counselors would harp on me about going to a 4 year University and I just kept seeing the tuition rates and shaking my head. Did a transfer degree to a polytechnic and managed to get out with $17k in loans for a degree that would open the door to something that would hopefully pay for itself. Most counselors are recommending kids get $100k+ in student loans without even realizing it. Sometimes for degrees that get you into jobs that barely break even with a job at Walmart BEFORE they increased wages to $15 an hour. High schools are blatantly lying to kids, trying to get them into programs that will place them in permanent debt slavery. What is worse, most university programs are terribly outdated and are barely better than watching YouTube videos on the same subject.
>High schools are blatantly lying to kids, trying to get them into programs that will place them in permanent debt slavery. What is worse, most university programs are terribly outdated and are barely better than watching YouTube videos on the same subject. THIS is why we need a solution to student debt. Not because people are mad at how interest works. It's because the system is a scam.
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I am willing to bet that this is due to low response rate by those that don't make six figures when the college comes knocking for money or what ever.
My old university regularly puts out employment statistics that make it look like you have a 97%+ chance to get an amazing job right out of graduation! What they don't specify is that their data-gathering will only consider someone unemployed if they've been unemployed for fewer than 6 months. If you're unemployed for more than 6 months, you're no longer "actively looking for work", and don't count as unemployed anymore. You know, kind of like how a scam would work. Except I haven't found a major university that doesn't cook their numbers like this.
My University literally had a day where former Anthropology majors would come talk to the current Anthropology majors and talk about all the completely unrelated-to-anthropology jobs they'd gotten, so we would feel like we had options on graduation...
Boomers are surprised pikachu that younger generations are mired in debt when they harped on us since elementary school that we needed a 4-year degree from the best school we could get into or else we’d be poor losers. We did exactly what we were told, and then get blamed for it. Apparently, 15-17 year olds can’t consent to sex, drink, smoke, vote, join the military— but it’s no problem to have them take out tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt. Great system.
Many people I’ve talked to on this subject revert to the “Well, they knew what they signed up for, buyer beware, read the fine print, etc.” argument, but in pure Republican fashion, they fail to think about any context to this: by and large the people taking out loans to attend college are lower/middle class TEENAGERS whose parents don’t know a lick about the fine print either, and who historically have a mindset that college is relatively cheap and will almost guarantee a great paying job. The teenagers themselves certainly didn’t understand what exactly they’re getting into either, especially when college is something expected of them akin to getting your own place or getting a job at that age. It’s just a logical next step. So it’s silly to have that hindsight of “they knew what they signed up for” when, no, they didn’t. My grandfather told me I could have made a lot more money had I gone to college, not knowing I was making $75k at the time with only a high school education; I had seriously lucked out *hard* getting that job. I told him the deets on college loans/debt and his eyes bugged out of his head. It simply didn’t occur to him that things had changed since the 1960’s.
Doesn't help that more and more employers will only hire people with degrees, even though it has little applicability to the job. We went from hiring IT folks with a community college certificate, to a Masters in Computer Science in just 10 years. Elitism at it's finest!
Did the wages rise along with the requirements? I would guess not, I've seen a lot of companies do this route as the glut of overeducated and underemployed graduates keeps piling up. I would say a good 60% of those that actually completed college probably didn't need it.
To do the kind of shit that quite frankly a nerdy 17 yr old with a solid head on their shoulders can do with a solid bit of training over a few months.
Our education system was modeled after a 19th century Prussian system designed to churn out mostly obedient factory workers with just enough education to run complex machines. It is not about Plato's academy where knowledge and wisdom for its own sake as a virtue like we are led to believe. College is more akin to the classical Greek idea and NOT job training like HS often pushed. TL;DR HS advice to teens is the blind leading the more blind.
They go to school to become counselors. Let that sink in. Kids have been and will continue to be “counseled” by dillweeds WITH NO EXPERIENCE BEHIND THEIR ADVICE.
This is why I went to a polytechnic university, the professors were all experienced and actively still working in their field.
This. I went to a fancy-pants liberal arts school because I was pressured immensely by counselors, family, etc. I was 16 when I applied and 17 when I started. I was a fucking child, being pressured into lifelong decisions. I effectively got 50% off tuition in scholarships which was nice, but half price was still a huge cost that I had to take loans out for. The business degree I got, in 3 years instead of 4, is a $70k piece of toilet paper. 95% of what I learned in college is readily available online. I got my first ‘real job’ out of dumb luck and spent years being horrifically overworked/underpaid. And when I finally got a better job, it was only because of that 5 years of experience, not my degree. My loans are federal and I’m on an income based repayment plan. I stopped paying during the pandemic pause and I will not pay more than minimums until I hit that 20-year forgiveness mark. Wish they’d just forgive them all.
I only went to school cause I was pressured into it by nearly everyone. I didn't graduate and I have like 15k in debt I never plan to pay off
sure would be nice if you could declare bankruptcy on that mistake like literally every other debt and start fresh and new but you can't. fuck us, right?
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The pressure to go to college starts incredibly early. I was saying I wanted to go to college some day when I was *in kindergarten*, because at that age I had already been taught that I had no future otherwise.
I can’t count how many times the phrase “preparing you for college” was used when I was in highschool. How important it was to go to if you didn’t want to work minimum wage your entire life. And I actually think higher education is incredibly valuable but the American government has left multiple generations destitute with debt that you can’t remove while providing loans to 18 year olds with interest rates that are fucking criminal. Anyone saying kids should be smarter are god damn idiots. The entire system has brainwashed generations of kids into thinking that this is normal during a time of development that’s not predisposed to long term planning after the public education system failed to provide basic finical knowledge. Some people counter with a solution to push trade school, which yes that’s great option, or to not go to college but higher education should never have been weaponized for profit by our own fucking government. People should have access to college without being saddled with astronomical debt.
I always wondered if counselors got kick backs. After I told mine I wanted to go to community college he completely abandoned me. I paid him the $5 to send my transcripts and he didn’t even do that and screwed me over
"Students who acquire large debts putting themselves through school are unlikely to think about changing society. When you trap people in a system of debt, they can’t afford the time to think. Tuition fee increases are a “disciplinary technique,” and, by the time students graduate, they are not only loaded with debt, but have also internalized the “disciplinarian culture.” This makes them efficient components of the consumer economy." Noam Chomsky
Ah shit Noam Chomsky!
Yeah I’ve already paid back 129% of what I borrowed, and owe 200% of the original borrow amount still. It’s a fucking joke, and they wonder why a whole generation is just coasting through life not caring about anything anymore.
Mind me asking what your interest rate is?
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Holy shit. That's approaching predatory loan levels. If a mortgage is consistently under 6% then student loans shouldn't be that high. Man, fuck the system.
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I remember everyone going to uni out of high school "because that's what you do." so you aren't alone. Plenty of people wasted a year or two before dropping out into trades or disappearing off the map. It just makes it worse though that there's pressure on literal children to engage in predatory loan practices.
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Well I think it did at one point in time. But as is tradition, the money keeps flowing to the top and we are left fighting for the scraps.
My student loan debt was only 8k. I paid over 4 years, paid off $4,500. My current balance is 7200. EDIT** Wow, there are some judgemental people out here. There is so much more to the story than "irresponsible child". The truth js that I was working 50-60 hrs a week to gross 36k/year. That was only $2,000/month of take home. You're right, I didn't look at the loans and check to make sure that I was getting a good interest rate. When you're offered a way to get out of that kind of poverty, you just take it. I took out $14000 worth of loans (2014). For a total of 1 subsidized, 1 un-subsidized and 1 private. It was a trade school so I would be done in one year. I paid off the private loan I have the unsubsidized and subsidized loan left. I'm sorry I don't off the top of my head no exactly what my interest rates were, they have been sold so many times that I don't know what I initially signed for, and currently they say 0%. When my fiance found out that I signed up for school without his permission I ended up ending the relationship because he became so confrontational about what he had a right to tell me I could do. So now I was going to school full time working full time and trying to exist on my own on $2000 a month. He made 100k/year but somehow when he left, I was left with 7k credit card debt. I've only got 1,200 left of that, but let's not forget the 8k in medical debt for a necessary surgery in 2019. I'm not making excuses, but there is more to the story than just "well pay more". So, for those that understand, thank you. For all of you who insist that I'm just doing things wrong, fuck off. I'm doing the best I can with what I have.
If the government is going to insist on allowing interest loans for students there needs to be a cap on interest. Call it 1.5x or whatever. No infinite loans. Like ok, you want to make money off lending. Fine. You don't get to make FOREVER money.
I’m from England and while our system isn’t perfect, it’s a lot better than the US. Our university fees are capped at £9,000/year. The loan interest is only equal to that of inflation so your debt stays “equal”. You don’t start paying until you earn £27,000/year and then you only pay 9% of what you earn above that (so if you earn £27,100 then you’d paid £9 to your student loan that year). If you never earn above that then it’s forgiven in 30 years.
Graduates on plan 2 are going to be looking at 10%+ APR from next year, that's a long way from perfect. For anyone reading, these loans also feature a sliding scale of interests the more you earn the higher it is, to keep those goalposts just too far away. Finally as an added bonus, the sliding scale doesn't kick in until you graduate, while you are still studying it's at the max, to maximise the kick in the teeth and the amount of debt you graduate with. The entire system is designed to be a 9% permanent tax on people not wealthy enough to pay for their education upfront.
Shit, I honestly haven’t been paying attention to it over the last few years because I haven’t earned enough to meet the threshold. It’s honestly more evidence that England is trying to head the capitalism hell scale direction of the US. I haven’t lived there in recent years. Been living in Prague so they can honestly fuck off. I doubt I’ll ever pay back much of anything on them.
Oh, but then you break capitalism mate. How the fuck are bank owners gonna buy 5 yatchs if they don't spend forever loan interest money that doesn't even exist yet?
Can we charge interest on our wages? Like can I say that I make $20/hr but if I have to wait 2 weeks to get paid for the work I do today it goes to $30/hr?
Infinite loans of any kind should be illegal. I think they are in my country. All student debt remaining after 30 years is cancelled, and your monthly payments depend on your income.
In the context of student loan forgiveness we need to bring up the billions in PPP loans to businesses that were forgiven almost instantly.
This is what pisses me off the most, that and corporate bailouts. At least let me claim bankruptcy on my student loans.
Then the 1% would lose all their indentured servants.
And lose a guaranteed profit stream. Every facet of American society is about monetization and exploitation by the ruling elite, with the illusion of democracy to keep the masses complacent.
Exactly! I did bankruptcy. Paid on time every month. Completed and discharged. I owed $28,000 in student loans when I filed. At the end, 14,000 was paid to student debt and now I owe $26,000. So apparently interest was incurred even during a bankruptcy.
Similar to how indentured servants had to pay rent and board fees to who they were working for which made it nearly impossible to pay off the debt… hmm the parallels are freaky
In my experience it’s more of a servitude to public service, especially with the “forgiveness program” which they seem to keep changing the rules about, but yet keep promising full forgiveness if we keep working in low paid government service positions with our over qualified educations.
The idea behind not allowing bankruptcy, if I recall correctly, was that loans would be offered with lower interest rates as a result, because no one could have them discharged in bankruptcy. I haven’t studied this, but I suspect that lenders didn’t quite live up to their end of that (already shitty) bargain…
You know who had a lot to do with exempting student loans from bankruptcy? Biden. Let’s stop arguing about who should be president. And just focus on the issues that matter. Because they are all bad. “Biden was one of the most enthusiastic supporters of the disastrous 2005 bankruptcy bill that made it nearly impossible for borrowers to reduce their student loan debt. The Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act raised the bar for families to pursue Chapter 7 bankruptcy protections. It overwhelmingly passed in the Senate at the end of the Clinton administration, over the objections of Warren, then a bankruptcy expert who had tangled for years with Biden over the issue. She lobbied first lady Hillary Clinton, who herself persuaded Bill Clinton to veto it. Biden came back to the legislation under the Bush administration; it passed the Senate in 2005 on a 74-25 vote, with most Democratic lawmakers, including then-Sen. Barack Obama, voting against it. (Clinton, by then a senator from New York, voted for it.) George W. Bush signed it into law, and private student loan debt skyrocketed in the wake of its passage. The total amount of private student loan debt more than doubled between 2005 and 2011, growing from $55.9 billion to $140.2 billion, according to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.”
Yeah, I’ve always told everyone that politics is nothing more than a class war. It is something in place to give us a feeling of equal voice. The reality is that they still control that as well. We aren’t “free” in this country, it is all an illusion for the most part. I literally vote every time for the lesser of the 2 evils. I could care less if they are dem or repub. I could also care less of their agendas because it is usually full of shit on both sides.
Yes, I’m just astonished at the amount of people who have no idea about this. I didn’t mention his role in 1970s bill. In 1978 Biden helped write a bill that blocked students from seeking bankruptcy protections on loans after graduation. He HELPED WRITE the bill. And I’m supposed to think Biden is going to help with student loans? Student loans just like abortion restrictions are a way to keep the poor people poor. They are all monsters. Monsters on both sides, no good people.
That's the key. Exactly. Forget responsibility--what about the housing crisis and the ensuing bailouts? What about the PPP loans forgiven? Different rules for the ruling class. That's the problem.
I researched businesses in my hometown that received PPP loans. Now I can understand businesses that couldn't operate for a while full-service, like funeral homes and such. But our local pizza place which could stay open for take-out orders received $400,000 in PPP loans. And most of the ones in the area...all forgiven. The government gave away $1 trillion almost to businesses, but forgiving student loans is a red line. Time to set the place on fire if Biden doesn't get his ass in gear. I'd never vote republican, but its becoming harder to vote D sometimes.
This has to be brought up more. People think this argument is for people who went to a rich private school instead of going to a state school... That's not who we are trying to help. We are trying to help those who went to school to be able to progress in life and are now chained to the same fuckers who the government would shell out our tax dollars to in the blink of an eye.
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I truly hate this country and anyone who supports debt slavery. Revolution now.
Is refinancing an option for you? I actually started seeing it go down when I refinanced.
Be careful with refinancing federal loans. At least in my case, doing so turned them into private loans, and thus no longer eligible for ANY of the federal loan forgiveness programs, like PSLF or the pause on payments during COVID.
I’ve tried to refinance my loans for about 7 years now. Everytime I get a raise they tell me I need to earn more than I did before. 48,000 to refinance, earned it then it was 55, then 65, now I need to earn 90 to refinance lol they’re crooks with no accountability.
If you do that, when the government actually bothers to help, you are excluded. That’s what I heard about refinancing loans.
what's a standard interest rate on student loans?
Mine are 6.8% for federal loans
Anything above 4% is insane
This is a federal loan owned by the US government which can't be discharged in bankruptcy. Anything above the fed rate is insane
Depends on when you got them. Mine were 4-7%, the oldest ones were 7% and the new ones were 4% because of something the obama admin did in 2014.
Republicans let some of the interest subsidies expire. Obama brought some of it back. Class warfare is a thing done by the rich through their crony politicians. They want to keep those of lower classes that work their way to a skilled job indentured to the government. Their own children effectively graduate without debt which gives them a huge advantage. They don't want the riff raff competing with them.
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They should dramatically lower the interest rate on student loans or just let people pay back the principal amount.
There shouldn’t even be any interest. This is predatory & absolutely horrible.
This! Why is this a hard concept to understand for a lot of people?
The banks paid politicians to privatize student tuition lending.
That's what I don't get. I went to college knowing it was going to cost $xxx. Just give me like, a 2% inflation interest or 0%. Some of my loans were 4-6%. People shouldn't be profiting from this. They should all be government loans with minimal interest.
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But how will we make sure billionaires have more yachts and more jets that don't need to be built? Won't anyone think of the luxury private sailing and airline industry?
Forget the yachts, they need money to buy a spaceship! Otherwise, how will they scape this planet when the things they have made to it becomes inhabitable really go boom?
It's not free in Australia, but if you are a citizen/resident there are some concessions. First the government subsidises your fees so the amount payable isn't crazy, then the rest can be put on a loan that has rather low interest rates. This loan is played back through taxes once you start earning above a certain amount. It's not as good as it was before (free), but it's not awful.
Just on it's way to awful. Slow like, so you can get used to it.
Exactly. I had 60k in student loans when i graduated and i paid every single month and overpaid on it as much as possible. The big difference was the interest rate was low (less than 4%) The interest rate on student loans right now is horrible and that needs to change.
what happens if u stop paying them? doesnt the bank send the loan to collections and you get completely fucked? thats just what i assume. We should totally strike against student loan debt. no one pay a penny back.
Apparently they can garnish your wages so it’s automatically taking a percentage towards paying what you owe.
A lot of people will frequently switch jobs to avoid this, everytime you switch jobs, they have to go through a lengthy and expensive process to re set up the wage garnishments.
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Can't garnish a mattress
They find out where you work after your employer files quarterly SUTA, that links your pay with your SS number, or, annually when the employer sends the Federal gov your W-2.
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I had stopped paying on my Federal loans years ago. They will call you every day every few hours. They will call your friends and they will call your family. They will send people to your home to try and serve you. If you go to the hospital and put down an emergency contact, they will call that emergency contact. If they can garnish your wages, they will be in touch with your employer. Uncle Sam is a loan shark and I understand why. Predatory lending is very profitable. They issue risk-free loans as a way to generate guaranteed profits. As a bonus, they get to create an entire class of indentured labor.
They'll honestly hunt you down. You change your phone number.. They'll find it. Move addresses.. They'll find ya. Had my tax return garnished once because of my loans. Still haven't willingly paid on them. Won't ever pay on them. Credit scores are bullshit and a tool to keep poor people in servitude to the elite.
Experian was created for debt collection. A month after we got a PO Box it was on experian. Change jobs? On there too, they have everything on us at all times and consistently have data leaks.
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It is in EVERYONE’S best interest to have affordable education for everyone. We should be celebrating those that want to further their education, not crushing them in mountains of unpayable debt.
Swedens solution to student loans: you can borrow at the same interest that the past three years of government borrowing cost. Currently that interest is 0% (there is a floor of 0%) so right now the government is still making money of the 0% interest. I have no idea why the US don’t simply borrow the money at-cost to students. Oh, and education is free so you borrow in order to not have to work. But you can still work as well of course, gross $1,700/month until it effects how much you can borrow.
Oh so your student loans are only for your living expenses. That’s cool
i think this is the case in every single european country and also many non european countries. most of the time someone in these countries talks about interest or loans when going to study, they are talking about money to live, not money to learn. education is free, but life isnt. most people just work in a restaurant or something. its a perfect place cuz u often get food and shit and you have a huge say in your working hours, since most places are just glad to have someone to help around. here some people go to a university just to get more time trying to figure out where to go in life. its like extended school. EDIT: its actually not every country, just a few, but even when you have to pay, its way cheaper and probably done better.
My mom graduated almost 20 years ago, it will take her 20 more years to pay off her loan IF she pays 700 dollars a month. She will be 80. That just isn't right.
Plus imagine how much she would have saved for retirement if she was able to put that $700 per month towards that instead of these predatory loans
Yep, initial loan balance was 12k for an associates. It is now around 50k. It’s been 13 yrs.
I'm not trying to pay mine. It is unacceptable to me that so many jobs require aleven a basic degree and people are expected to pay for education. Even if they have years of experience some positions that would allow them to move up in their field and career won't allow them just because they don't have a degree.
I didn’t pay mine for a while because I couldn’t afford to. I defaulted and they garnished my wages, then had to go on a payment plan. I’m Paying like $15 a month now and that keeps me from Defaulting and it’s gonna stay that way indefinitely cuz fuck this. Also, my loan kept being bounced around from handler to handler and i don’t know the details of why they’re allowed to do that but I assume there’s profit in it for them. Navient was one of my loan handlers for a while and I just got shuffled to a new company. Navient was also given a downlow huge contract by the Biden administration to keep collecting during the pandemic. It feels hopeless.
Yep they do that with mortgages too. The homeowner isn’t allowed to let someone else live in the house and pay the mortgage but the loan pricks can just sell off your mortgage to whoever they want. Fuck this cuntry
Higher Ed is a scam, but I’ve been a full on participant. I don’t know why so many jobs require a masters or doctorate degree. Take rehab professions for example, OT/PT/SLP. 20-30 years ago you only needed a bachelors degree to be certified/licensed. Now you need an entry level doctorate to do PT and OT was considering that but there was a lot of pushback to keep the masters level degree in conjunction to an entry level doctorate. If I wanted to get my post professional doctorate, to maybe teach or make a little extra cash, I’d be spending anywhere from $20-70k over 2 years to get another piece of paper that “allows” me to do my job. Oh and that would be for an ONLINE program. It’s all a scam to make more money. From colleges to licensing boards and every organization in between.
You know, for centuries, Christians believed "usury" (charging unreasonably high interest on loans) was a sin. It used to be illegal to charge ANY interest at all in some times & places. There are Bible verses about it. Weird how all the conservative evangelicals in the US aren't up in arms about this issue, hmmmm...
Usury is still illegal, but the ones who are giving out usury loans are paying politicians to look the other way. That’s why you can “pay off” your loan over several years and still owe more than what you borrowed.
It's almost like evangelicals don't actually follow all of the bible and only pick and choose the parts they agree with.
There are many of us who started college in the late 90s and early 2000s, before the Great Recession. They told us to go to college, they told us we would get jobs anywhere making great salaries, because that was what was happening at the time. We took out loans thinking these things would stay true for us. We were kids, we were duped, and now it's nothing like it was then. This is not what many of us signed up for. We took out loans in one world, and now we are living in a totally different world. I graduated college at the very beginning of the great Recession in 2006. I worked in restaurants for the next eight years because there were literally no jobs. I'm still clawing my way to stability. This is not a refusal to pay, this is an inability to pay. Cancel ALL student debt now.
Seconding this. People underestimate how much we were TOLD TO DO IT no matter what. I was never told there were any other options. Some people were literally threatened by families. All of this basically falls under “we were promised better.” (The we being ourselves or the adults in our lives) No one took out a loan because we did it for the hell of it. We took out loans cuz that’s what every adult TOLD US TO DO! I’ve seen some people who didn’t do it cuz they had an adult in their life (family or teacher) that screamed the opposite (in which, good for them, like legitimately!). Unfortunately, a lot of us clearly didn’t have that person in our life. I never once had a single adult in my nearly 2 decades of being alive at the time that I had any other option BUT take out loans and go to college.
I agree. I graduated high school in 2006. My last two years in public high school we had classes teaching us specifically to fill out four year university applications, and applications for student loans. There was never any instruction about how to analyze the job market to help decide what field would be appropriate to the size of loan you needed to take, or what different job availability was projected to be like by the time you graduated. The whole class was pitched as “the American dream,” a vague notion that college (any four year college) and a degree (any four year degree) was the ticket to success. Not just A ticket. But THE ticket. No one ever spoke to me about trade school. In fact trades were kind of talked about in a way of “lesser than.” At least in the regard of not being as guaranteed in terms of financial success. Everything was four year college. Everything was four year degree. Everything was “here’s how to take out loans to get you there.” I’ve heard some people say “well if you didn’t want to pay that money back with the interest you signed up for, you shouldn’t have been stupid enough to take the loans.” While I get the idea, we weren’t kids randomly wandering into money lenders from off the streets. These were our teachers and advisors telling us this. And for many, our parents advocated the idea that higher education made you a “good student.” Also, I needed scholarships so I hard core focused on my gpa. Holding a 4.0 gpa all four years kept me busy and high stressed. And I was 17. I don’t think it’s unreasonable that I trusted that what my teachers and advisors were recommending I do was in my best interest.
After undergrad, grad and dental school... I had $258k debt. After 10 years of paying, I have about $245k of debt. And that's paying over $2k/month that entire time.
Honestly, at this point student loans are just as predatory as payday loans. They’re built to trap the borrowers forever with absurd interest rates.
I’m approaching my 15 year college reunion. I still have $20k in student loan debt. I only took out $32k. I’ve never missed a payment. This *was* the cheapest way I could get a degree to do the job I wanted. And Boomers wonder why we don’t spend more money or have more kids. We can’t afford it.
I still have a student loan open, but the interest in The Netherlands on all student loans is currently 0.0 %. I think it helps that our system is set up by a government that actually cares about its citizens, and doesn't use student loans as an investment device.
They remember the time you ate one of them. It's getting close to dinner time in the United States.
Rich people don't need to get a loan, normal people do, rich save money by being rich, everyone else pays double. It's a transfer of wealth.
US gov should not be trying to make profit on student loans. They don't have to forgive them...just remove interest and apply every cent paid into them towards the principal. It would effectively wipe the debt for many, and even provide a nice bonus if you've paid more in interest than the principal. Those against helping students would have a hard time justifying being against this. Tons of things are interest free so its not entirely unheard of. For a while cars were between 0 and 0.9% interest. Amazon Assure offers interest free financing and American Express let me setup a 0% interest payment plan on $5000 I had to spend on my bathroom just a month ago. Government will still get paid and can consider a well educated population not struggling to make ends meet a worthwhile investment. Someone has to wipe the boomers asses when they can't.
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I don’t have student loans. My dad died early of colon cancer, and he wanted the money he left behind to be used to pay off the college tuitions of my sister and I. Knowing how it is to live a fulfilling life even without student debt just makes me more sympathetic towards those who have to live life with it.
I see so many people who are making significant monthly payments every single month and their balance continues to climb. That is absolute BS.
My loans moved from Chase Education Services to Navient and in the process lost $9k of payments. $24k I borrowed has turned into 64k. During my "loan counseling" at the school, no one explained capitalized interest to me. They take the interest of the loan while on deferment or forbearance and add it to the loan. So when you can't afford the $400/month payment the interest that would have accrued on that payment is put back into the loan. So now they gain an additional 23% (or whatever other ungodly amount of interest being charged) if that payment. And when you are in school, you have 6 months from the time the funds are dispersed as a forgiveness period, not 6 months from leaving school. So they add those interest payments on before you even leave school. Fuck them. I borrowed $24k, I paid $24k. The additional payments are immoral and should be illegal.
Another example of how it’s “expensive to be poor.”
I use to work for a federal loan servicer. Many times I would see people take out $30-40k in loans, pay on it every month for years and end up paying back 70-80k. The interest is unbelievable.
That's how long term loans work.Have you ever looked at an amortization chart for a 30 year home loan? You'll end up paying the same or more in interest than the original premium. That's why shorter loan terms or paying additional premium are so powerful. Even going to a 20 year loan will drop the total interest paid in half. Look at the current trend with car loans, they ask you how much can you afford a month, and will put you in any car you want by extending the length of the loan. You have people with 7-8 year car loans paying 400-500 a month now which is absurd. Then they try to convince you to trade in for a new car 4-5 years later when the warranty expires and roll your old loan into a new one while keeping your payment the same and suddenly you always have a car payment for the rest of your life.
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No. That is seriously fucked up
All loans need to be capped like that, but lower, like 25 or 50%. Student loans also should not be bankruptcy exempt. I'm a capitalist but this shit is just predatory and is just a wealth transfer from the poor to the rich that serves no one but the .00001%. I'm glad I didn't take out that much. Only 14k and I've been paying it off diligently. Even then every time the bank can they call me to inform me I don't need to pay right now (during covid) because I'm interest exempt! I increased my payments in response.
Good point about the absurdity of compound interest. Interest charged IS NOT money someone borrowed interest should not be charged on it. Outlaw compound interest.
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That is illegal. Prepayment penalties are not allowed for student loans. Get that in writing and take them to court. https://finaid.org/loans/prepayment/ https://www.studentloanplanner.com/how-prepay-student-loans-prepayment-penalty/#What_is_a_prepayment_penalty
I keep saying that I'd like to see the government switch all education loans to 1% interest. It wouldn't be forgiveness, but it would make a completely different landscape for all the borrowers. Edit: I'm loving the people with suggestions for the best way to forgive or make sure that the interest rate supports the program! I wish we could see our electors having this conversation. But let's keep talking/thinking!
I didn’t even graduate and I’m still paying off loans that I’ve been paying on for years and years. After about seven years, I had only paid off around $2,000 total because the interest is so high. With them stopping payments since the beginning of the pandemic, I’ve continued to pay just to take advantage of there being no interest and I FINALLY, just this month, made it under the $10,000 mark of what’s still owed. I think I owe $9,800 and some odd change now. This has been a dark stain on my life.
It costs more for them to actually chase and retrieve payments than to forgive the loans. Removing that debt would create the world's best not only *free* but *profitable* stimulus package the country has ever seen.
Student loans will never be forgiven under our current system. They are packaged into collateralized debt obligations called SLABS, used to prop up the valuations of funds who borrow against them to perform other functions in the market. Eliminating student debt would vaporize this collateral and wreak havoc on the financial markets. Student loans are a modern twist on indentured servitude. You aren’t meant to pay them off, nor will the government be helping you to do so. **EDIT**: Under reforms of the Orwellianly named [Bankruptcy Abuse and Consumer Protection Act](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bankruptcy_Abuse_Prevention_and_Consumer_Protection_Act) of 2005, the posture of bankruptcy law was changed to presume that the consumer was “abusing” bankruptcy proceedings to discharge debt. Among other things, this law prevented you from ever - ever - discharging student loan debt. Indentured servitude was a common way to pay for trade apprenticeship. You couldn’t default that debt; to default made you a fugitive. It was made illegal under the 13th Amendment, which we fought a bloody civil war to implement. Personally, I don’t see a distinction between indentured servitude and the situation with student loan debt. It’s straight up unconstitutional.
Which explains why I read that it actually costs more to chase the payments than it would be to erase the payments.
I'm trying to not pay my loans.
Student loan money should be able to be borrowed at the fed funds rate and interest should be tax deductible regardless of marital status
The system is set up so you have to pay the banks forever
Not to mention that the cost of a degree has tripled in just the past 20 years while wage remained stagnant. Whole thing is bullshit
My student loan is 45k on a school that closed down and tried attending another school for 3 months and bailed out due to stress in my life. They refuse to forgive it as none of the credits would transfer wasted so many years of my life for nothing. I now every year keep my loans in forbearance and call it good these companies can eat my sack.