Damn Student Loans

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

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

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

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

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

:(

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

guess i should try and do some more overtime:/

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"forgiven": FUCK THIS LANGUAGE

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

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

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

wow. well done!

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

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

— Alannah Massey (@alannahmassey) December 14, 2021

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

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

maybe you should ask her

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

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

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

Private loans, maybe?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

— President Biden (@POTUS) December 22, 2021

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

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

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

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

now

milo otm

thank god

big help to our household

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

paused again through 8/31

nice, paused until just before the election, smart

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

just for federal loans

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

student loan relief decision from SCOTUS due this month:

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

really got to stop referring to it as 'forgiveness'

fuck my life

ja

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

from the us politics thread:

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

seeing a lot of reports where people's monthly payments are now ballooning with the SAVE plan suspended. This will surely help with grocery prices

about to send over 5 million borrowers to collections. this will break a lot of people that are already on the edge.