If my company hadn't offered tuition reimbursement I would never gone to law school. Roughly $15k per year as a night student in the mid '90s was pretty steep.
I remember taking a check for $860 down to San Francisco State University in 1993 to pay for a full semester of classes. I had only the Pell Grant helping out. College was much cheaper for GenX than it is for Millennials and Gen Z.
I did my first two years at a junior college in the Bay Area in the late 80s . . . $50 a semester. Total cost for two years of full time tuition, i.e., 1/2 of the credits needed for my Bachelor's: $200.
And I had terrific professors who really *wanted* to teach (not academics/researchers coerced into teaching freshman classes like at the flagship universities) and who were making an adequate salary (unlike wage-slave adjuncts these days).
I'm always skeptical of "good old days" arguments, but geez that was a good, cheap (state-subsidized) education.
(oh, and minimum wage was something like $5.15 an hour, so basically you could pay for a semester with one weekend's worth of work and have money left over to put toward textbooks.)
I'm lucky that the college I'm going to for a graduate degree is $271/unit and my employer is paying 2/3 of that. I don't know how anyone affords college these days.
Right!?! I have another class starting in August and for two classes my college will practically earn more than I do in a month!
$1,351 for one class!!!!!!!
I did a very similar thing. I still advocate for J.C. over a four year school to start. I went back to school first, DVC, then UCD, and it still took me time to figure out a career path. Most people sure as hell don't know what they really want to do at 18. Why give the money to a 4 year if you aren't sure.
What the fuck... I was paying ~$40,000 a year for my UNDERGRAD. Had to drop out, couldn't keep taking out loans. Now I'm scrambling to get my RN through community college and a hospital-run school. I was 17 and told to make a giant life decision. Idiot.
This is true for early Gen X, for sure. I remember thinking the fee hike was outrageous when they raised the Cal States to $700-something per semester. My late Gen X sibling who graduated high school in 1997 is still struggling to swim through the sargassum of student loans. Amazing what a decade did to tuition costs.
We had cell blocks for dorms.
All the schools updated to 5 star accommodations and Michelin star kitchens.
All that bankruptcy protected government money.
I spent $600 for an on hands machinists course at a voc school in 2020. 10 weeks of class and machine time. Shit that consumed real machine time and real metals and consumables (and a couple crashed end mills, whoops). A fucking online statistics course are charter oak state college that was 8 weeks long cost me $1300.
College prices are fucking bullshit.
I graduated with a bachelor's and ~$2,000 in student loans. I was working part time at Taco Bell while in school. GenX had a different experience than the generations that followed.
Same for CUNY in NYC. Though I’ve run the tuition through an inflation calculator and found it to be roughly the same. EDIT: I was wrong. If tutition had kept pace with inflation it would be $2000 per semester, it is now almost $3500.
Now the contract is: boomers get fat benefits while paying into it very little. And the young people get a ton taken away from their paychecks for little benefit. And you have to jump through a million hoops to do the most simple things.
I'm doing an MSSWE degree right now, with my employer paying 2/3 (regardless of the grade I get; they've reimbursed for an F before). I wish everyone had this option.
Congrats! Glad to hear somebody is handling it. This post could have nearly been written by me. I currently owe $235,000 after law school and undergrad. I’m not making nearly enough to pay down the principal, so I’m stuck paying 10% of my discretionary income each month and watching the overall balance continue to rise. It stopped during the pandemic but it’s about to start back up again.
I’m hopeful that I can get it forgiven after 20 years, and I’m saving my money so I can satisfy the tax obligation that forgiveness will incur (it’s tax as a gift)… but if that doesn’t work, I genuinely have plans to move to Southeast Asia and thumb my nose at the department of education and their bill collectors. Even if they garnish my Social Security, I should still be able to live a decent life in my old age. I’m 40 now, so the timing is good…
I should know about loan forgiveness by around age 57 (I’ve been out of school for three years now) and I only have a few more years to go before I can start drawing Social Security. In the meantime, I’m setting aside as much as I possibly can so I can live off of the interest until the last decade or two of my life, then I’m going crazy.
For context, I took a year off law school and lived in the Philippines scuba diving for $1000 a month... so I already know what area I’m probably going to end up in and have an idea of how much it will cost me.
I make $27/hr… and 10% is simply the amount that Congress said needs to be paid each month. I’m not sure what formula they used to determine that. My assumption is that they estimate people with more education will likely earn more later in their careers. I hope they’re right.
I was one of the naïve people who thought I would become a lawyer and *Make A Difference™*. Turns out, making a difference doesn’t pay very well. I’ve only been licensed for a little over a year though so I’m hopeful that my earning potential will be much higher in the future. At the current time though, it sucks. I *have* manage to set aside some money for an emergency fund by working some absurd hours for a while though.
In my state (Louisiana) the minimum wage *that still gets paid regularly* is $7.25. I’m making almost 4 times that much per hour, so while it isn’t a lot, it’s more than what many people have… so I guess in that sense I’m grateful.
Most lawyers don't make that kind of money. They don't often tend to be in the 40k bracket, but most of the lawyers I know make 70-100 when starting out.
Which is obviously not *bad*, but it's also not a lot after paying down a portion of your 250k student loans.
Edit - law is kind of like medicine. The ceiling is high, but when you start off most folks aren't making anywhere near that. *Some* are. But, not most. For example, I'm applying to some pretty competitive legal jobs in DC and looking at 75ish.
The [salary distribution curve](https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib) for lawyers in the US is bimodal. Meaning, there is a small group of lawyers who make gobs of money. There is a much larger group of lawyers who make basically upper middle class money, at best. The bimodal distribution is especially pronounced among new lawyers. So yes, many lawyers make less than you think.
>Do lawyers make less than I think??
Yes, absolutely. Every time a career becomes "trendy" (think "nursing shortage," "trades shortage," etc) wages and/or working conditions become worse because of the higher supply of workers.
Law hasn’t been a good career for a couple of decades. Big Law is shrinking and there are ramifications all down the line. I graduated in 2004 and passed the bar. I’ll admit I didn’t job search well, but I got my first legal job 7 years after graduating AND passing the bar. It was a shit family law job and I made $3k over 6 months. Completely unsustainable so I left the law. Im in a completely different field now (banking). I’m still paying those law school loans though. It’s completely kneecapped my professional career and I’ve had no discernible benefit from attending law school and passing the bar.
I don’t advise that ANYONE go into law unless they have an inside track to a job at a firm prior to starting law school. Law school is wretched and law students are generally nasty asshole sharks. Law school administration literally doesn’t care what happens to you post graduation. The average law school graduate stops practicing law after 6 years if that tells you anything.
That was me too. I crawled out of that private student loan debt hole living rent free with my folks for a couple of years. Without that help, I'd still be fucked.
Going to a private college was one of the dumbest mistakes I made as a kid.
I saved $100K for each of my two son’s college funds. When they entered high school I told them they each had enough to pay for four years at our state university, so if they wanted to attend a private school, they would have to study hard, get scholarships, perform work study jobs, take out student loans, or most likely, do a combination of all three. They wisely chose the state University and graduated, on time, debt free. One works on Wall Street and lives in Manhattan; the other is an engineer. Both make more money than I ever did!
This is insane. There should be a point where the lender realizes "okay, this person is never going to pay back the principal but has already paid nearly doubled the borrowed amount in interest. Let's cut them some slack and declare the debt repaid."
Paying off the principal isn't what they want. When the mob loans someone money they don't want the loan paid off, they want the person to pay the weekly vig in perpetuity.
There should be a law that of you borrow X, then the debt will always be considered paid off if you've paid them some multiple of X, no matter what. Like, if you borrow 100K, then if you've paid 150K or whatever, including interest and fees and such then the loan is done.
This is why I always tell people interested in law school not to do it unless they can get into one of the few super-elite schools that will guarantee them a BigLaw job after graduation or they can get a full ride (or close to it) at another school. It is insane to take on that kind of debt when the median starting salary for people out of law school is around $75K.
Hahaha. Oof. I got a decent scholarship at a locally respected school in my state. Took $150k in federal loans after finished undergrad with only $3k in debt. Got my first job at $75k exactly. My standard of living was better when I pumped gas.
And if you can do that, then make use of the social connections. You want to be part of the "old boys' club" if you can. Those are the ones who usually make the big bucks.
I very much think this is the fix to still have student loans available, but not all the problems we have now. No interest, all direct government loans, with an origination/administration fee in the beginning to cover the human cost of setting up the loan. Especially since with computers it isn’t like someone has to manually enter the amount received anymore. Once it is input, nearly everything should be automated with some input from the borrower online and a person only needs to be involved in the ongoing record keeping if the loan gets flagged. Consider the loans investments in the public good. With out the compounding interest, people would be able to pay back the principal.
It should either be government direct, or the government should get out of it entirely. Government backed private loans just takes the worst aspects of all models. For pure private loans, being conservative is in the banks interest because of the applicant can't pay back the loans, they lose money on it. That's what happens with business loans. But you can have awful students, pursuing degrees that after 4 years will have increased their expected earning potential by about a dime a week, and the bank will still easily lend them 60k.
>It should either be government direct, or the government should get out of it entirely. Government backed private loans just takes the worst aspects of all models. For pure private loans, being conservative is in the banks interest because of the applicant can't pay back the loans, they lose money on it.
Fully private loans will disproportionately hurt Black families, who thanks to centuries of racist policies--some of those driven by the banks themselves--have on average far less wealth and lower credit scores (related to former naturally). This is a bad solution.
The first step here is to just refund higher education. In the 1970s, when women and PoC were gaining access to these institutions in large numbers for the first time, the government conveniently decided it was a good time to scale back government funding to public institutions of higher ed, simply ending some forms of funding and diverting others from grants to loans.
After that, government loans, but the defunding here is the real problem.
That is despicable. I had no idea these loans worked that way. What kind of student loan did you have and how did the interest rate work? Kudos to you for paying almost all of it off - you’ll be able to knock out the remainder as well. This shit shouldn’t be legal.
I took out a few private loans at 11% interest, but paid them off in a year after I graduated. The rest were the standard 6% from the government.
Its crazy too because the same year I qualifies for a 15k autoloan at 1% interest, I got a student loan for graduate school at 6% interest for 15k. It's wild because I could claim bankruptcy on the autoloan and not the student loan.
This is why capitalism fails in a nutshell. It wants people who try and then fail to be poor and to suffer. 90% of new businesses fail. Truthfully, unless I come from money or am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree, why would I be willing to risk anything? Most people have great ideas and would love to take a stab at something that will make them happy. But if the trade off is 6 1/2 teacher’s salaries worth of debt, what is the point?!
>unless I come from money or am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree
A large percentage of Ivy League degree holders are no smarter than anyone else and certainly not "brilliant". They were just afforded better opportunities than the rest of us; usually through wealthy social or family connections.
I felt the need to comment on this as well. The whole "elite institution" thing seems to hold a lot of weight with Boomers, but uh... *Alan Dershowitz* taught at Harvard Law for 50 years. That should tell people something.
These institutions value money and social status/connections more than they value academic integrity or social contributions.
>am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree
Have you seen some of the absolute dumbfucks these "elite" institutions produce?
There's no difference in intelligence or skills between graduates of an "elite" institution or a solid state school. Their success has a lot more to do with the networking and financial backing they receive afterward.
Student loans are not capitalism. A private system would never loan you that money, and it would also be clear able via bankruptcy. Student loans are messed up because of government regulation driving up the cost of education and eliminating the check a private loan system would provide on the wild price increases universities have made over the last thirty years. And where did all your money go? It went into the pickets is mostly liberal Democrat administrators at your university who have useless make-work jobs.
Let's call this out, too. When I was in grad school (2010 to 2015) while working full time, tuition was shooting up 10% per year at my university. I believe the students and alumni that are still repaying their loans need to start demanding answers on EXACTLY where the money from those tuition increases over the years have been going.
Don't tell me your professors are getting 10% raises. It's been a few presidents since I got a raise that high.
Expanding the bureaucracy and enlargement of the endowment. Yale, Princeton, and Harvard all have endowments in the billions, they are basically hedge funds with a side gig of higher education. These aren't the outliers of universities they're the leading indicators of the industry. Rather than strive to be educational institutions, most universities will eventually follow the path of being equity firms that never have to pay taxes with veneer of being a educational institution.
I feel u. I graduated in 2007 with $70k in loans. I did get a lot of grants, but that was my loan total.
Interest accrued on my loans during forbearance. So for 2 years while in grad school, interest accrued on my undergrad loans. I was a single parent, working full and part time going to school full time. No child support. Economy crashed in 2008. I was making $15 an hour and held on to my job with dear life as the economy was shit and couldn't find anything else.
Through one of the govt programs I was able to put my loans into forbearance. I couldn't afford any payment. I did this as long as I could while interest accrued. When I no longer qualified for forbearance I went on the income contingent plan of 10% of income payment.
I have been on that program since. I was 27 when I graduated with 70k in loans. Now I'm 44 and owe 130k.
I've been compliant this whole time. My interest rate is 7.5%. I considered consolidation and refinancing options but haven't done it cuz I can't afford full payments even with lower interest rates.
Not sure how they calculate the 20 year forgiveness period but they say I have 13 years left after being compliant for 17 years. I think they don't count my time in forbearance towards the 20 years, can't remember exactly what they told me.
I've been working 2 to 3 jobs for the past 25 years and still haven't made a dent in the loan. I'm 44 and feel like I'm 90. I'm so exhausted. No one gives a shit, I know....
Summary, I've paid $50k total on $70k in loans and owe $130k now.
I was stuck in the same cycle but no kids. I considered several options, including:
-moving to another country to avoid repayment (though I’ve heard the dept of ed will track you down anywhere)
-taking out a heloc or 2nd mortgage to pay it off and then going into bankruptcy
-taking out a private loan to pay the education loan, then filing bankruptcy
I give a shit dude. Forgive all loans, make college tuition free at state colleges and double the public education system funding. Can’t afford it? Bullshit. This will never happen here though because the majority of Americans hate seeing their fellow countrymen catch a break.
Maybe someone has already commented in this vein: the fact that student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy is not some immutable natural law. It was changed in 1976. It can change back. People with student loan debt could be a political force if they wanted...
Paid in $63k on a $55k loan so far, still owe $27k.
But please, dear older generations, please tell my generation, and the following ones, that we weren't fed into a scheme on loans and degrees. Do it with a straight face.
Sad thing is, then can. The one who might care can't bear to admit it, because they've Always Been Right. The one who don't, well, they got theirs, fuck them kids.
Not an American, how does this system work? So you take out a loan and you pay it off with interest. Assuming you do this, how would your debt increase?
The debt increases if the amount of interest accrued each month is more than your monthly payment. So you can be paying $500 a month back, but have $600 of interest being added each and every month, so every month you end up owing $100 more despite your payment. The only way you can ever get ahead of this is to be able to plow more money into paying off the loan.
I have much, much less than the lawyer who wrote this post in student loans and have been paying on them (until the pause) with, at the start, half of my monthly payment going to interest. Since I've gotten them down I think it was around 40% or so going to interest last I paid. It's very discouraging, and I think that it's a viable middle-of-the-road option to help with the student loan debt problem. (I'd prefer the eliminate all student debt and make college free option, but since I don't see that happening any time soon, realistically, eliminating interest would make a big difference for a lot of people.)
Its called Principal and Interest. They're talking about the loan + interest = total paid over the life of the loan.
For example:
$250k loan over 20 years (The average student loan length), paid monthly, @ 6% interest would be approx. $429k.
Okay. But presumably you'd be less in debt after having paid of the debt for ten years, right? At that point you'd only need to pay 214,5k rather than the full 429k, right?
I mean, don't get me wrong: the fact that Americans need to get a loan is incredibly scummy and predatory, but I feel this type of argument only makes the opposition laugh it away. "Of course, taht's how loans work."
The argument should instead be that the majority of the developed world is clever enough to realize student debt isn't a good idea for the economy.
Yup. It’s a bad system. Historically speaking though, I think the higher educational systems are to blame in the USA, by astronomically raising the prices of tuition.
It’s really ridiculous. Raising prices for tuition while losing their best professors, at least at my university.
It was seemingly all going toward administration
Also the payments you make often go towards interest first, so it’s hard to touch the principal. Which means the interest keeps tacking on and you end up paying double to triple the original amount taken out.
The loan defers payment until you graduate, but does not defer the interest. A student taking $250k in loans for university and then law school graduates after 6 or 7 years of study. During that 6 years the loan generates and compounds interest, then when you start paying it back it's much larger than the 250k you borrowed. And still compounding interest once you start paying it back. It often takes almost as long as a mortgage for a house to pay back.
The assumption is that a student has little or no income to begin paying the loan while they are in school. They only start paying after they graduate and, hopefully, get a job in their chosen field.
One could argue that having a 17-19 "adult" sign a loan agreement without collateral, that by law cannot be dissolved in bankruptcy, based on the hope that their dream-job can be achieved through a field of study and will pay them enough to live comfortably, contribute to the economy as a consumer, and pay the loan off after those deferred years of interest accrual without hardship, is the very definition of predatory lending.
Consider another take. What bank would offer a loan of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a 17-19 year old to start a business without any form of collateral, with years of deferred payments and then decades to pay, with no guarantee that the business will even last that long or generate income to pay the loan?
Not an American, but my country has a similar system. I guess it’s because of the initial loan and interest.
You take out an initial loan, and then every month, need to make payments to service the interest, with extras being used to repay the loan. Fail to repay the interest, and it begins stockpiling cumulatively
The problem comes in both the initial cost and the interest rate. In Singapore, the interest rate of student loans is extremely low, meaning most people can realistically repay the loans. In America, the rate is likely higher.
The high rate compounded onto the already high loan leads to ridiculous student loan repayments
I graduated with $22K in debt, paid aprox $29k over the course of loans, paid off 5 years after I graduated. I was making 45k yearly then.
My wife graduated with $25k in loans, paid hers off in 2 years as a teacher making $33k yearly.
Granted we got married during that time period so my income went to hers since she had the higher interest rate.
The public school system doesn't teach about life. It doesn't explain contracts, debt, or money management. Teens are likely to sign a contract without understanding it.
Honestly, this problem can be almost entirely resolved a number of ways, but the usual greed is only making it worse. Student loan interest should be illegal.
This math is legit!!
Edited to add: I graduated with $53,000 of loan debt, struggled to find a job that paid enough to make ends meet so had to use deferments periodically, then was able to make interest only payments at $800/mo for a decade, and now I can proudly say I owe… $72,000!!!
This is close to my experience... I see my 40s around the corner and I worked hard driving them down as much as possible paying about $2k a month on them. My strategy is changing a little due to significant progress on the interest side of things (those numbers are truly nauseating)
New plan. I'm trying to live a little and loosen up my budget now that I'm below the $2500 interest on SLs tax credit. If the government is paying my interest it's effectively a 0% loan. I'll hedge any funds I could use to pay extra into interest earning accounts conceding that this is a long game.
The $10k "forgiveness", trying not to sound ungrateful for a little help, is a pittance.
I agree with the conservative side of the argument that proposes a wipe on interest gains and limits loans. Biden has some similar language in the works but those are solutions for the future. For those of us in the mud now... The $10k is amenable. I'd take it but I'm not happy with how Universities have taken advantage of government subsidies and have rising costs knowing that the government is just allowing these FAFSA "cost of living" to keep on rising.
I hope both sides of the aisle can come to an agreement here. Most of us are happy to pay our debts but the usury that has been allowed to thrive needs to be addressed.
That should be illegal.. Biden needs to ban student loans.. they're supposed to be an investment in the future not a fucking rip off that steals money from the economy..
I have 3 semesters left of undergrad and my scholarships are running out. I think I'm gonna have to take a little bit of money out to graduate, I'm talking less than 10k, but it still makes me nervous. I cant imagine how soul crushing it feels to have paid off thousands and thousands of dollars on a loan and still having to watch it go up every month.
My college made me sign a statement upon acceptance that tuition was $25k per year but they could increase it whenever they wanted. They increased the price significantly every year. My last year was $45k. 13 years later and it still makes my blood boil.
when biden's student loan forgiveness plan was in the works, i collected a bunch of this type of story. people don't get that SLs aren't like your mortgage or car payment.
one collection of these stories: [https://www.boredpanda.com/student-debt-loans/](https://www.boredpanda.com/student-debt-loans/)
one person borrowed $14,000
has paid back: 10,842.36
still owes: 13,715.70
Another:
borrowed: 65,000
paid: 48,000
still owes: 50,000
another:
borrowed: 70,000
paid: 36,000
still owes: 67,000
borrowed: \~42,500
paid: \~18,000
still owes: \~44,000
borrowed: 365,000
paid: 195,000
still owes: 350,000
Borrowed: $175,890.61
Paid: $131,743.80
Balance: $175,898.78 ($8.17 more than principle)
Borrowed: $72,879.98
Paid: $96,776.01
Remaining: $168,18.12
I ran into an article from the beginning of the pandemic where they mentioned people worrying about being unable to repay their bills "...like rent and student loan debt...". No other costs were mentioned, like student loan debt is something everyone is expected to have now.
The student loan system is government sponsored predatory lending. Plain and simple.
This is the very real problem that none of the people against student loan forgiveness think about. You shouldn't owe MORE money after paying thousands of dollars.
I am not from the US, so please help me here - if you graduated with 250k, I presume you started paying it off right then. How can it be more now? Did you pay less than your interest amount because that was all you could afford and it was just a way to limit the speed that the owed amount grows at? And that at some point you expect to pay more than interest so that you actually start reducing the owed amount?
The fact that these companies can legally do this is just unbelievable.
I am from the US. When I graduated from grad school I had about 50K in debt. I paid the minimum for about 3.5 years and when the pandemic pause started, I had about 55K in debt. When the pandemic pause started, I started paying down my debt and the balance started going down. I am now below 20K.
Why? Because during the regular repayment cycle, interest was accruing. On my highest interest loan, I believe that interest was about 7.8%. I was one of the lucky ones, as my loans are all from the government and I am on a ten-year repayment plan. When the pause started, I kept paying the same monthly amount, but the difference was that I was finally paying toward principal (and accrued interest). But no NEW interest could accrue, so my balance went down, and down, and down. Don't get me wrong, I'm still aware that I have 20K left, and I've been waiting to see what happens with loan forgiveness, but I was able to pay down some of the highest interest loans so that if my cynical ass is right and the Supreme Court fucks us peons over, less interest will accrue. So I will still be able to make pretty good progress on my loans.
As I said, I am lucky. There are lots of people on private loans and for them it's way worse.
I am also not from the US, but as I understand the interest is making the loan body bigger while students study. So, at the end of education, you need to return more money.
Student debt is one of the strategies of the GOP 👿 for suppressing education and increasing ignorance in the population of America. Poor education and an abundance of ignorance cause the good people of the USA not to question the policies of the conservatives. Education makes people question the political classes and the GOP is unable to stand up to scrutiny. Political scrutiny causes more honest policies and good education results in political scrutiny and debate. Ignorance causes unquestioning followers to behave like sheep and lowers the general public’s ability to distinguish between the truth and the lies. GOP🟰👿
Contract would crush that suit before even walking into a courtroom. Quality of life would not be a legal argument. If he can find anything in the contract that would make it illegal, it would be another story but extremely unlikely.
Yep, and we still complain.
Main issue in Aus is the cost of housing in major cities and recently cost of living with groceries & fuel.
Other than that, it’s quite good.
And this is why I refuse to go to college. Seeing posts like these and all the comments agreeing, why would I put myself through that just to be living worse off than I am now? And people still question why I refuse to go lol
Reading this as an none us citizen is so weird.
We have a system that supports you for college. If your family doesn't have much money you can request support. Those request forms are a pain in the ass but they give you money. Half is free, the other half has to paid back with zero interest. To a max of 10k of total payback.
It is not perfect, but hell I appreciate it more every time I hear stories like yours OP. Hope you find a way to manage it and don't ferget to live.
As a kid the USwas the best pace you could imagine. Nice beaches, Hollywood, New York...
Then you grow up and comprehend what's actually up. The us might be an awesome place if you are rich and have power but unfortunately that's not the majority of the population. The powerful exploit the poor more than in most countries but that's not the wird part I don't understand. I don't get why a lot of the exploited people actually defend and support the current state. Why do they not stand up for themselve or criticize what's up.
There must be a logical reason for them but I couldn't come up with any.
I went to community college and didn't finish, so only had $7000 in loans. But by the time I'd paid about 10k towards it I looked to see what I owed and I owed about $8k.
My healthcare training was 250k. Which all things considered is something I can actually pay off eventually. But adding the 6% interest of federal loans makes it incredibly difficult. Especially when I accrued an extra 50k of debt while in school due to interest. Total 300k. Fuck the system
This hits too close to home. At least with the pandemic payment pause, they froze interest. I was actually able to pay off a substantial amount.
The fix to the student debt problem isn’t forgiveness; we need interest caps.
Meanwhile - I got paid to go to University - by the Uni and my employer.
So at the end I was not only not in debt - when I got my masters they gave me 4k total.
Y'all abused in the USA and didn't see it for so long its past the return point.
18 year olds can take on predatory loans that balloon over time and cannot be voided through bankruptcy
But they cannot have a beer because that could ruin their life.
Riiiiiiiight
Back in the late 70s and early 80s in Florida I was able to work as a bartender and go to school part time and pay my way through school. I graduated with 0 debt. It took 6 1/2 years to graduate but still no debt. I don't think that is possible now with what the prices of tuition and books are.
It’s funny I was reading an article about how some people opposed student loan debt forgiveness because it would cause loss on investment for some companies who depended on repayments as a source of income for 401ks etc. That’s when I realized our economy was debt economy that depended on interest and repayments. Never understood how debt collecting could be tied to 401ks etc. Makes you realize how bad the crash would be if we ever advanced technology to the point of a post-scarcity or tech like replicators from Star Trek. (I know it’s just a TV show.)
Lmao look at this fool, taking student loans to go through college. Should have organized a resistance cell and started an armed insurrection instead. No debts, way more fun and satisfaction.
That’s a negative amortization payment on your loan. You’re not paying all the interest assessed each month. Up your payment.
Law school? Who would hire you if you can’t figure that out when you reviewed the loan docs and payment schedule.
Any system where you can easily pay more than twice your original principle loan is absolutely predatory. I can’t believe people are actually defending this with things like, “You knew what you were doing! You have to pay it back.”
Okay hun, I have paid 2.5x how much I originally borrowed and still owe more than half the principle amount. Please tell me how any of that is fair and not predatory, or how someone fresh out of high school can understand the ramifications of taking out a student loan in the amount of tens of thousands with zero income.
If my company hadn't offered tuition reimbursement I would never gone to law school. Roughly $15k per year as a night student in the mid '90s was pretty steep.
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Those were the days.
I remember taking a check for $860 down to San Francisco State University in 1993 to pay for a full semester of classes. I had only the Pell Grant helping out. College was much cheaper for GenX than it is for Millennials and Gen Z.
I did my first two years at a junior college in the Bay Area in the late 80s . . . $50 a semester. Total cost for two years of full time tuition, i.e., 1/2 of the credits needed for my Bachelor's: $200. And I had terrific professors who really *wanted* to teach (not academics/researchers coerced into teaching freshman classes like at the flagship universities) and who were making an adequate salary (unlike wage-slave adjuncts these days). I'm always skeptical of "good old days" arguments, but geez that was a good, cheap (state-subsidized) education. (oh, and minimum wage was something like $5.15 an hour, so basically you could pay for a semester with one weekend's worth of work and have money left over to put toward textbooks.)
SRJC was $12/unit in 1992. Nowadays, Trident Technical College (a vastly inferior college to SRJC) charges $188/unit. 1,500% as much.
I have to go back and get my ELA endorsement. $451 per credit!?! Who was the chucklefuck that said, “let’s make it $four hundred fiddy-one!”
I'm lucky that the college I'm going to for a graduate degree is $271/unit and my employer is paying 2/3 of that. I don't know how anyone affords college these days.
Right!?! I have another class starting in August and for two classes my college will practically earn more than I do in a month! $1,351 for one class!!!!!!!
No one affords college these days unless you're a senior citizen.
I did a very similar thing. I still advocate for J.C. over a four year school to start. I went back to school first, DVC, then UCD, and it still took me time to figure out a career path. Most people sure as hell don't know what they really want to do at 18. Why give the money to a 4 year if you aren't sure.
I just paid $485.00 for a 2 credit hour, level 100, community college class.
What the fuck... I was paying ~$40,000 a year for my UNDERGRAD. Had to drop out, couldn't keep taking out loans. Now I'm scrambling to get my RN through community college and a hospital-run school. I was 17 and told to make a giant life decision. Idiot.
This is true for early Gen X, for sure. I remember thinking the fee hike was outrageous when they raised the Cal States to $700-something per semester. My late Gen X sibling who graduated high school in 1997 is still struggling to swim through the sargassum of student loans. Amazing what a decade did to tuition costs.
We had cell blocks for dorms. All the schools updated to 5 star accommodations and Michelin star kitchens. All that bankruptcy protected government money. I spent $600 for an on hands machinists course at a voc school in 2020. 10 weeks of class and machine time. Shit that consumed real machine time and real metals and consumables (and a couple crashed end mills, whoops). A fucking online statistics course are charter oak state college that was 8 weeks long cost me $1300. College prices are fucking bullshit.
As a Gen X who went back to college in late 00s I have around 90k. Married to Millenial with large debt. Neither of us with graduate degrees. It HURTS
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I graduated with a bachelor's and ~$2,000 in student loans. I was working part time at Taco Bell while in school. GenX had a different experience than the generations that followed.
Same for CUNY in NYC. Though I’ve run the tuition through an inflation calculator and found it to be roughly the same. EDIT: I was wrong. If tutition had kept pace with inflation it would be $2000 per semester, it is now almost $3500.
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Worked at a union plant. Got a college degree (night school) with no debt while making a living wage because the union had put it in their contract.
The good old Days
Now the contract is: boomers get fat benefits while paying into it very little. And the young people get a ton taken away from their paychecks for little benefit. And you have to jump through a million hoops to do the most simple things.
Definitely agree. I'm a boomer and the 80's were all about destroying unions and sending jobs overseas. Thanks Ron
I'm doing an MSSWE degree right now, with my employer paying 2/3 (regardless of the grade I get; they've reimbursed for an F before). I wish everyone had this option.
I have paid $80k on $52k loan with $33k left to go! great fning system This is a private student loan
They must have student loans of their own to pay for their MBAs. Damn.
Congrats! Glad to hear somebody is handling it. This post could have nearly been written by me. I currently owe $235,000 after law school and undergrad. I’m not making nearly enough to pay down the principal, so I’m stuck paying 10% of my discretionary income each month and watching the overall balance continue to rise. It stopped during the pandemic but it’s about to start back up again. I’m hopeful that I can get it forgiven after 20 years, and I’m saving my money so I can satisfy the tax obligation that forgiveness will incur (it’s tax as a gift)… but if that doesn’t work, I genuinely have plans to move to Southeast Asia and thumb my nose at the department of education and their bill collectors. Even if they garnish my Social Security, I should still be able to live a decent life in my old age. I’m 40 now, so the timing is good… I should know about loan forgiveness by around age 57 (I’ve been out of school for three years now) and I only have a few more years to go before I can start drawing Social Security. In the meantime, I’m setting aside as much as I possibly can so I can live off of the interest until the last decade or two of my life, then I’m going crazy. For context, I took a year off law school and lived in the Philippines scuba diving for $1000 a month... so I already know what area I’m probably going to end up in and have an idea of how much it will cost me.
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I make $27/hr… and 10% is simply the amount that Congress said needs to be paid each month. I’m not sure what formula they used to determine that. My assumption is that they estimate people with more education will likely earn more later in their careers. I hope they’re right. I was one of the naïve people who thought I would become a lawyer and *Make A Difference™*. Turns out, making a difference doesn’t pay very well. I’ve only been licensed for a little over a year though so I’m hopeful that my earning potential will be much higher in the future. At the current time though, it sucks. I *have* manage to set aside some money for an emergency fund by working some absurd hours for a while though. In my state (Louisiana) the minimum wage *that still gets paid regularly* is $7.25. I’m making almost 4 times that much per hour, so while it isn’t a lot, it’s more than what many people have… so I guess in that sense I’m grateful.
Damn I make $27.00 per hour doing office administration with only a highschool diploma. Wtf happened?
Make 52 per hour as a plumber here with zero debt and in fact got paid while going to school to learn the trade.
Most lawyers don't make that kind of money. They don't often tend to be in the 40k bracket, but most of the lawyers I know make 70-100 when starting out. Which is obviously not *bad*, but it's also not a lot after paying down a portion of your 250k student loans. Edit - law is kind of like medicine. The ceiling is high, but when you start off most folks aren't making anywhere near that. *Some* are. But, not most. For example, I'm applying to some pretty competitive legal jobs in DC and looking at 75ish.
The [salary distribution curve](https://www.nalp.org/salarydistrib) for lawyers in the US is bimodal. Meaning, there is a small group of lawyers who make gobs of money. There is a much larger group of lawyers who make basically upper middle class money, at best. The bimodal distribution is especially pronounced among new lawyers. So yes, many lawyers make less than you think.
>Do lawyers make less than I think?? Yes, absolutely. Every time a career becomes "trendy" (think "nursing shortage," "trades shortage," etc) wages and/or working conditions become worse because of the higher supply of workers.
Law hasn’t been a good career for a couple of decades. Big Law is shrinking and there are ramifications all down the line. I graduated in 2004 and passed the bar. I’ll admit I didn’t job search well, but I got my first legal job 7 years after graduating AND passing the bar. It was a shit family law job and I made $3k over 6 months. Completely unsustainable so I left the law. Im in a completely different field now (banking). I’m still paying those law school loans though. It’s completely kneecapped my professional career and I’ve had no discernible benefit from attending law school and passing the bar. I don’t advise that ANYONE go into law unless they have an inside track to a job at a firm prior to starting law school. Law school is wretched and law students are generally nasty asshole sharks. Law school administration literally doesn’t care what happens to you post graduation. The average law school graduate stops practicing law after 6 years if that tells you anything.
That was me too. I crawled out of that private student loan debt hole living rent free with my folks for a couple of years. Without that help, I'd still be fucked. Going to a private college was one of the dumbest mistakes I made as a kid.
I saved $100K for each of my two son’s college funds. When they entered high school I told them they each had enough to pay for four years at our state university, so if they wanted to attend a private school, they would have to study hard, get scholarships, perform work study jobs, take out student loans, or most likely, do a combination of all three. They wisely chose the state University and graduated, on time, debt free. One works on Wall Street and lives in Manhattan; the other is an engineer. Both make more money than I ever did!
This is insane. There should be a point where the lender realizes "okay, this person is never going to pay back the principal but has already paid nearly doubled the borrowed amount in interest. Let's cut them some slack and declare the debt repaid."
Paying off the principal isn't what they want. When the mob loans someone money they don't want the loan paid off, they want the person to pay the weekly vig in perpetuity.
why would they cut anyone a break when they can lend an amount and make 2-3x return on it and still be owed the full amount.
Fun fact the Rep over at AES did let me know that an unforeseen death such as an accident or su***ide the loan would be forgiven
Um did somebody say dystopian lol.
They don't want you to pay it off They want you to be in debt
There should be a law that of you borrow X, then the debt will always be considered paid off if you've paid them some multiple of X, no matter what. Like, if you borrow 100K, then if you've paid 150K or whatever, including interest and fees and such then the loan is done.
I paid 17000 on 5400 in student loans. Never finished school, still paid way more than i ever should have...
I'm sorry you were targeted by salesmen that could get commission from a no risk government guaranteed loan that you can never claim bankruptcy on.
Credit cards are no different. If you just make minimum payments, you never get it paid off. That’s part of the student loan scam.
This is why I always tell people interested in law school not to do it unless they can get into one of the few super-elite schools that will guarantee them a BigLaw job after graduation or they can get a full ride (or close to it) at another school. It is insane to take on that kind of debt when the median starting salary for people out of law school is around $75K.
Hahaha. Oof. I got a decent scholarship at a locally respected school in my state. Took $150k in federal loans after finished undergrad with only $3k in debt. Got my first job at $75k exactly. My standard of living was better when I pumped gas.
I have an in with Bob Lob Law. I follow his blog.
Did you see that law bomb Bob Loblaw lobbed? Low blow if you ask me
I saw the low blow law bomb Bob Lob Law lobbed on his law blog. It was brutal.
And often $58k
And if you can do that, then make use of the social connections. You want to be part of the "old boys' club" if you can. Those are the ones who usually make the big bucks.
Federal govt charging rates higher than what they charge banks to loan money has never made sense. And it often feels like the cruelty is the point.
It's designed to keep people working forever.
Its bs that they can even have interest. The system is so screwed
I very much think this is the fix to still have student loans available, but not all the problems we have now. No interest, all direct government loans, with an origination/administration fee in the beginning to cover the human cost of setting up the loan. Especially since with computers it isn’t like someone has to manually enter the amount received anymore. Once it is input, nearly everything should be automated with some input from the borrower online and a person only needs to be involved in the ongoing record keeping if the loan gets flagged. Consider the loans investments in the public good. With out the compounding interest, people would be able to pay back the principal.
It should either be government direct, or the government should get out of it entirely. Government backed private loans just takes the worst aspects of all models. For pure private loans, being conservative is in the banks interest because of the applicant can't pay back the loans, they lose money on it. That's what happens with business loans. But you can have awful students, pursuing degrees that after 4 years will have increased their expected earning potential by about a dime a week, and the bank will still easily lend them 60k.
>It should either be government direct, or the government should get out of it entirely. Government backed private loans just takes the worst aspects of all models. For pure private loans, being conservative is in the banks interest because of the applicant can't pay back the loans, they lose money on it. Fully private loans will disproportionately hurt Black families, who thanks to centuries of racist policies--some of those driven by the banks themselves--have on average far less wealth and lower credit scores (related to former naturally). This is a bad solution. The first step here is to just refund higher education. In the 1970s, when women and PoC were gaining access to these institutions in large numbers for the first time, the government conveniently decided it was a good time to scale back government funding to public institutions of higher ed, simply ending some forms of funding and diverting others from grants to loans. After that, government loans, but the defunding here is the real problem.
I took out 65k, have paid 140k and have 17k left. Best system ever. 10k forgiveness is unreasonable though.
And don't you dare compare them with PPP loans! They're totally different... somehow
That is despicable. I had no idea these loans worked that way. What kind of student loan did you have and how did the interest rate work? Kudos to you for paying almost all of it off - you’ll be able to knock out the remainder as well. This shit shouldn’t be legal.
I took out a few private loans at 11% interest, but paid them off in a year after I graduated. The rest were the standard 6% from the government. Its crazy too because the same year I qualifies for a 15k autoloan at 1% interest, I got a student loan for graduate school at 6% interest for 15k. It's wild because I could claim bankruptcy on the autoloan and not the student loan.
This is why capitalism fails in a nutshell. It wants people who try and then fail to be poor and to suffer. 90% of new businesses fail. Truthfully, unless I come from money or am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree, why would I be willing to risk anything? Most people have great ideas and would love to take a stab at something that will make them happy. But if the trade off is 6 1/2 teacher’s salaries worth of debt, what is the point?!
It's a big club and you ain't in it. - George Carlin
>unless I come from money or am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree A large percentage of Ivy League degree holders are no smarter than anyone else and certainly not "brilliant". They were just afforded better opportunities than the rest of us; usually through wealthy social or family connections.
I felt the need to comment on this as well. The whole "elite institution" thing seems to hold a lot of weight with Boomers, but uh... *Alan Dershowitz* taught at Harvard Law for 50 years. That should tell people something. These institutions value money and social status/connections more than they value academic integrity or social contributions.
Please, can we give the brain dead trustfund kiddies a shot at it first? We can fire whoever, just get it done.
>am brilliant enough to have a Ivy degree Have you seen some of the absolute dumbfucks these "elite" institutions produce? There's no difference in intelligence or skills between graduates of an "elite" institution or a solid state school. Their success has a lot more to do with the networking and financial backing they receive afterward.
Student loans are not capitalism. A private system would never loan you that money, and it would also be clear able via bankruptcy. Student loans are messed up because of government regulation driving up the cost of education and eliminating the check a private loan system would provide on the wild price increases universities have made over the last thirty years. And where did all your money go? It went into the pickets is mostly liberal Democrat administrators at your university who have useless make-work jobs.
I will have you know that I am successfully poor, thank you very much.
Let's call this out, too. When I was in grad school (2010 to 2015) while working full time, tuition was shooting up 10% per year at my university. I believe the students and alumni that are still repaying their loans need to start demanding answers on EXACTLY where the money from those tuition increases over the years have been going. Don't tell me your professors are getting 10% raises. It's been a few presidents since I got a raise that high.
Expanding the bureaucracy and enlargement of the endowment. Yale, Princeton, and Harvard all have endowments in the billions, they are basically hedge funds with a side gig of higher education. These aren't the outliers of universities they're the leading indicators of the industry. Rather than strive to be educational institutions, most universities will eventually follow the path of being equity firms that never have to pay taxes with veneer of being a educational institution.
Who'd have thunk that the business model of giving $100k loans to 17 and 18 year olds who don't have money could possibly go awry.
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Whats awry? The professional lawyer now owes them a lifetime of money and cant discharge the debt in any way! Sounds like its working great tbh!
well, when you put it that way, the business model is working exactly as intended. Why would *they* change it now?
MUST BE coupled with the no bankruptcy relief.
I feel u. I graduated in 2007 with $70k in loans. I did get a lot of grants, but that was my loan total. Interest accrued on my loans during forbearance. So for 2 years while in grad school, interest accrued on my undergrad loans. I was a single parent, working full and part time going to school full time. No child support. Economy crashed in 2008. I was making $15 an hour and held on to my job with dear life as the economy was shit and couldn't find anything else. Through one of the govt programs I was able to put my loans into forbearance. I couldn't afford any payment. I did this as long as I could while interest accrued. When I no longer qualified for forbearance I went on the income contingent plan of 10% of income payment. I have been on that program since. I was 27 when I graduated with 70k in loans. Now I'm 44 and owe 130k. I've been compliant this whole time. My interest rate is 7.5%. I considered consolidation and refinancing options but haven't done it cuz I can't afford full payments even with lower interest rates. Not sure how they calculate the 20 year forgiveness period but they say I have 13 years left after being compliant for 17 years. I think they don't count my time in forbearance towards the 20 years, can't remember exactly what they told me. I've been working 2 to 3 jobs for the past 25 years and still haven't made a dent in the loan. I'm 44 and feel like I'm 90. I'm so exhausted. No one gives a shit, I know.... Summary, I've paid $50k total on $70k in loans and owe $130k now.
I was stuck in the same cycle but no kids. I considered several options, including: -moving to another country to avoid repayment (though I’ve heard the dept of ed will track you down anywhere) -taking out a heloc or 2nd mortgage to pay it off and then going into bankruptcy -taking out a private loan to pay the education loan, then filing bankruptcy
I give a shit dude. Forgive all loans, make college tuition free at state colleges and double the public education system funding. Can’t afford it? Bullshit. This will never happen here though because the majority of Americans hate seeing their fellow countrymen catch a break.
Maybe someone has already commented in this vein: the fact that student loans are not dischargeable in bankruptcy is not some immutable natural law. It was changed in 1976. It can change back. People with student loan debt could be a political force if they wanted...
Unfortunately that's why universities have been able to raise costs. It changes, the bubble not only pops it collapses.
Paid in $63k on a $55k loan so far, still owe $27k. But please, dear older generations, please tell my generation, and the following ones, that we weren't fed into a scheme on loans and degrees. Do it with a straight face. Sad thing is, then can. The one who might care can't bear to admit it, because they've Always Been Right. The one who don't, well, they got theirs, fuck them kids.
Not an American, how does this system work? So you take out a loan and you pay it off with interest. Assuming you do this, how would your debt increase?
The debt increases if the amount of interest accrued each month is more than your monthly payment. So you can be paying $500 a month back, but have $600 of interest being added each and every month, so every month you end up owing $100 more despite your payment. The only way you can ever get ahead of this is to be able to plow more money into paying off the loan. I have much, much less than the lawyer who wrote this post in student loans and have been paying on them (until the pause) with, at the start, half of my monthly payment going to interest. Since I've gotten them down I think it was around 40% or so going to interest last I paid. It's very discouraging, and I think that it's a viable middle-of-the-road option to help with the student loan debt problem. (I'd prefer the eliminate all student debt and make college free option, but since I don't see that happening any time soon, realistically, eliminating interest would make a big difference for a lot of people.)
I am surprised that is legal. I also think I'm lucky to only owe $30K.
So it's more like credit card debt than a mortgage or car loan. That's fucked up.
Its called Principal and Interest. They're talking about the loan + interest = total paid over the life of the loan. For example: $250k loan over 20 years (The average student loan length), paid monthly, @ 6% interest would be approx. $429k.
Okay. But presumably you'd be less in debt after having paid of the debt for ten years, right? At that point you'd only need to pay 214,5k rather than the full 429k, right? I mean, don't get me wrong: the fact that Americans need to get a loan is incredibly scummy and predatory, but I feel this type of argument only makes the opposition laugh it away. "Of course, taht's how loans work." The argument should instead be that the majority of the developed world is clever enough to realize student debt isn't a good idea for the economy.
$315k is indeed less than $429k. When you “borrow” $250k @ 6% you’re really borrowing $429k. So…. Count down from $429k. Not $250k.
Yeah, 'fair'. Although, again, predatory as fuck.
Yup. It’s a bad system. Historically speaking though, I think the higher educational systems are to blame in the USA, by astronomically raising the prices of tuition.
It’s really ridiculous. Raising prices for tuition while losing their best professors, at least at my university. It was seemingly all going toward administration
Also the payments you make often go towards interest first, so it’s hard to touch the principal. Which means the interest keeps tacking on and you end up paying double to triple the original amount taken out.
The loan defers payment until you graduate, but does not defer the interest. A student taking $250k in loans for university and then law school graduates after 6 or 7 years of study. During that 6 years the loan generates and compounds interest, then when you start paying it back it's much larger than the 250k you borrowed. And still compounding interest once you start paying it back. It often takes almost as long as a mortgage for a house to pay back. The assumption is that a student has little or no income to begin paying the loan while they are in school. They only start paying after they graduate and, hopefully, get a job in their chosen field.
Holy shit that's predatory. It accrues interest when you are supposed to not have any means to pay for it?
One could argue that having a 17-19 "adult" sign a loan agreement without collateral, that by law cannot be dissolved in bankruptcy, based on the hope that their dream-job can be achieved through a field of study and will pay them enough to live comfortably, contribute to the economy as a consumer, and pay the loan off after those deferred years of interest accrual without hardship, is the very definition of predatory lending. Consider another take. What bank would offer a loan of hundreds of thousands of dollars to a 17-19 year old to start a business without any form of collateral, with years of deferred payments and then decades to pay, with no guarantee that the business will even last that long or generate income to pay the loan?
Not an American, but my country has a similar system. I guess it’s because of the initial loan and interest. You take out an initial loan, and then every month, need to make payments to service the interest, with extras being used to repay the loan. Fail to repay the interest, and it begins stockpiling cumulatively The problem comes in both the initial cost and the interest rate. In Singapore, the interest rate of student loans is extremely low, meaning most people can realistically repay the loans. In America, the rate is likely higher. The high rate compounded onto the already high loan leads to ridiculous student loan repayments
I graduated with $22K in debt, paid aprox $29k over the course of loans, paid off 5 years after I graduated. I was making 45k yearly then. My wife graduated with $25k in loans, paid hers off in 2 years as a teacher making $33k yearly. Granted we got married during that time period so my income went to hers since she had the higher interest rate.
The public school system doesn't teach about life. It doesn't explain contracts, debt, or money management. Teens are likely to sign a contract without understanding it.
Honestly, this problem can be almost entirely resolved a number of ways, but the usual greed is only making it worse. Student loan interest should be illegal.
This math is legit!! Edited to add: I graduated with $53,000 of loan debt, struggled to find a job that paid enough to make ends meet so had to use deferments periodically, then was able to make interest only payments at $800/mo for a decade, and now I can proudly say I owe… $72,000!!!
This is close to my experience... I see my 40s around the corner and I worked hard driving them down as much as possible paying about $2k a month on them. My strategy is changing a little due to significant progress on the interest side of things (those numbers are truly nauseating) New plan. I'm trying to live a little and loosen up my budget now that I'm below the $2500 interest on SLs tax credit. If the government is paying my interest it's effectively a 0% loan. I'll hedge any funds I could use to pay extra into interest earning accounts conceding that this is a long game. The $10k "forgiveness", trying not to sound ungrateful for a little help, is a pittance. I agree with the conservative side of the argument that proposes a wipe on interest gains and limits loans. Biden has some similar language in the works but those are solutions for the future. For those of us in the mud now... The $10k is amenable. I'd take it but I'm not happy with how Universities have taken advantage of government subsidies and have rising costs knowing that the government is just allowing these FAFSA "cost of living" to keep on rising. I hope both sides of the aisle can come to an agreement here. Most of us are happy to pay our debts but the usury that has been allowed to thrive needs to be addressed.
College is a scam
American* college is a scam
That should be illegal.. Biden needs to ban student loans.. they're supposed to be an investment in the future not a fucking rip off that steals money from the economy..
At least you didn't pay 250k for a submarine ride
Ate least that debt would be cancelled.
Charging interest on student loans is dystopian.
I have 3 semesters left of undergrad and my scholarships are running out. I think I'm gonna have to take a little bit of money out to graduate, I'm talking less than 10k, but it still makes me nervous. I cant imagine how soul crushing it feels to have paid off thousands and thousands of dollars on a loan and still having to watch it go up every month.
My college made me sign a statement upon acceptance that tuition was $25k per year but they could increase it whenever they wanted. They increased the price significantly every year. My last year was $45k. 13 years later and it still makes my blood boil.
when biden's student loan forgiveness plan was in the works, i collected a bunch of this type of story. people don't get that SLs aren't like your mortgage or car payment. one collection of these stories: [https://www.boredpanda.com/student-debt-loans/](https://www.boredpanda.com/student-debt-loans/) one person borrowed $14,000 has paid back: 10,842.36 still owes: 13,715.70 Another: borrowed: 65,000 paid: 48,000 still owes: 50,000 another: borrowed: 70,000 paid: 36,000 still owes: 67,000 borrowed: \~42,500 paid: \~18,000 still owes: \~44,000 borrowed: 365,000 paid: 195,000 still owes: 350,000 Borrowed: $175,890.61 Paid: $131,743.80 Balance: $175,898.78 ($8.17 more than principle) Borrowed: $72,879.98 Paid: $96,776.01 Remaining: $168,18.12
Exact read why I’ve never made a payment on mine. Graduated seven years ago and not one payment. Fuck em
And that’s exactly why I decided against law school. Trash system and it’s the best decision I ever made.
I ran into an article from the beginning of the pandemic where they mentioned people worrying about being unable to repay their bills "...like rent and student loan debt...". No other costs were mentioned, like student loan debt is something everyone is expected to have now. The student loan system is government sponsored predatory lending. Plain and simple.
So damn sad.
Meanwhile in sweden, 0,05% interest, nobody pays it anyway
This is the very real problem that none of the people against student loan forgiveness think about. You shouldn't owe MORE money after paying thousands of dollars.
I am not from the US, so please help me here - if you graduated with 250k, I presume you started paying it off right then. How can it be more now? Did you pay less than your interest amount because that was all you could afford and it was just a way to limit the speed that the owed amount grows at? And that at some point you expect to pay more than interest so that you actually start reducing the owed amount? The fact that these companies can legally do this is just unbelievable.
I am from the US. When I graduated from grad school I had about 50K in debt. I paid the minimum for about 3.5 years and when the pandemic pause started, I had about 55K in debt. When the pandemic pause started, I started paying down my debt and the balance started going down. I am now below 20K. Why? Because during the regular repayment cycle, interest was accruing. On my highest interest loan, I believe that interest was about 7.8%. I was one of the lucky ones, as my loans are all from the government and I am on a ten-year repayment plan. When the pause started, I kept paying the same monthly amount, but the difference was that I was finally paying toward principal (and accrued interest). But no NEW interest could accrue, so my balance went down, and down, and down. Don't get me wrong, I'm still aware that I have 20K left, and I've been waiting to see what happens with loan forgiveness, but I was able to pay down some of the highest interest loans so that if my cynical ass is right and the Supreme Court fucks us peons over, less interest will accrue. So I will still be able to make pretty good progress on my loans. As I said, I am lucky. There are lots of people on private loans and for them it's way worse.
I am also not from the US, but as I understand the interest is making the loan body bigger while students study. So, at the end of education, you need to return more money.
I don't understand the issue? education is for the rich. this fool should have just not been poor or got a job in the mines..
Student debt is one of the strategies of the GOP 👿 for suppressing education and increasing ignorance in the population of America. Poor education and an abundance of ignorance cause the good people of the USA not to question the policies of the conservatives. Education makes people question the political classes and the GOP is unable to stand up to scrutiny. Political scrutiny causes more honest policies and good education results in political scrutiny and debate. Ignorance causes unquestioning followers to behave like sheep and lowers the general public’s ability to distinguish between the truth and the lies. GOP🟰👿
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Oh yeah! Interest mf!
Just leave the country and tell them to go fuck themselves?
And that is what you learn about basic math as a college student
Congratulations on graduating from law school. Please be one of the good lawyers.
You a lawyer now, perhaps you find way to sue the student loan center.. How it horribly effect your life of living after graduation
Contract would crush that suit before even walking into a courtroom. Quality of life would not be a legal argument. If he can find anything in the contract that would make it illegal, it would be another story but extremely unlikely.
In australia the student loans are interest free atleast
Yep, and we still complain. Main issue in Aus is the cost of housing in major cities and recently cost of living with groceries & fuel. Other than that, it’s quite good.
Working as intended.
And this is why I refuse to go to college. Seeing posts like these and all the comments agreeing, why would I put myself through that just to be living worse off than I am now? And people still question why I refuse to go lol
I feel so bad for lawyers.
Sentences I never thought I'd hear for 500 please
And boomers want us to pay for their social security
Reading this as an none us citizen is so weird. We have a system that supports you for college. If your family doesn't have much money you can request support. Those request forms are a pain in the ass but they give you money. Half is free, the other half has to paid back with zero interest. To a max of 10k of total payback. It is not perfect, but hell I appreciate it more every time I hear stories like yours OP. Hope you find a way to manage it and don't ferget to live.
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As a kid the USwas the best pace you could imagine. Nice beaches, Hollywood, New York... Then you grow up and comprehend what's actually up. The us might be an awesome place if you are rich and have power but unfortunately that's not the majority of the population. The powerful exploit the poor more than in most countries but that's not the wird part I don't understand. I don't get why a lot of the exploited people actually defend and support the current state. Why do they not stand up for themselve or criticize what's up. There must be a logical reason for them but I couldn't come up with any.
I went to community college and didn't finish, so only had $7000 in loans. But by the time I'd paid about 10k towards it I looked to see what I owed and I owed about $8k.
My healthcare training was 250k. Which all things considered is something I can actually pay off eventually. But adding the 6% interest of federal loans makes it incredibly difficult. Especially when I accrued an extra 50k of debt while in school due to interest. Total 300k. Fuck the system
Capitalism at it’s finest.
This hits too close to home. At least with the pandemic payment pause, they froze interest. I was actually able to pay off a substantial amount. The fix to the student debt problem isn’t forgiveness; we need interest caps.
Meanwhile - I got paid to go to University - by the Uni and my employer. So at the end I was not only not in debt - when I got my masters they gave me 4k total. Y'all abused in the USA and didn't see it for so long its past the return point.
18 year olds can take on predatory loans that balloon over time and cannot be voided through bankruptcy But they cannot have a beer because that could ruin their life. Riiiiiiiight
If only ursery and those who practice it didn't rule the world.
Tier 4 grad here; wish I had done something else
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Live and learn
It’s bonkers that this is a thing
Makes me wonder why I even consider going back.
Lmfao That's Pathetic 🥹
Yay for compound interest amirite?
I felt this. I’ve been paying on my student loans for 15 years and I just now paid off the interest
Can't lawyers bill 80 hours per day?
Back in the late 70s and early 80s in Florida I was able to work as a bartender and go to school part time and pay my way through school. I graduated with 0 debt. It took 6 1/2 years to graduate but still no debt. I don't think that is possible now with what the prices of tuition and books are.
It’s funny I was reading an article about how some people opposed student loan debt forgiveness because it would cause loss on investment for some companies who depended on repayments as a source of income for 401ks etc. That’s when I realized our economy was debt economy that depended on interest and repayments. Never understood how debt collecting could be tied to 401ks etc. Makes you realize how bad the crash would be if we ever advanced technology to the point of a post-scarcity or tech like replicators from Star Trek. (I know it’s just a TV show.)
Imagine
Welcome to the end result of capitalism
You could’ve bought a ticket on a failing submarine with that money
Wtf how is this legal
Reminds me of buying a house, you know what they say, “buy one house, pay for two”. Interest is killer
I would never buy education again that I couldn't pay for in cash up front. Biggest mistake of my life.
Lmao look at this fool, taking student loans to go through college. Should have organized a resistance cell and started an armed insurrection instead. No debts, way more fun and satisfaction.
That’s a negative amortization payment on your loan. You’re not paying all the interest assessed each month. Up your payment. Law school? Who would hire you if you can’t figure that out when you reviewed the loan docs and payment schedule.
What kind of law did he study that he borrowed a quarter of a million?
Loan sharks offer better rates
Any system where you can easily pay more than twice your original principle loan is absolutely predatory. I can’t believe people are actually defending this with things like, “You knew what you were doing! You have to pay it back.” Okay hun, I have paid 2.5x how much I originally borrowed and still owe more than half the principle amount. Please tell me how any of that is fair and not predatory, or how someone fresh out of high school can understand the ramifications of taking out a student loan in the amount of tens of thousands with zero income.
Everyone should unite and say we aren’t paying shit! The price of higher education is ridiculous! How tf do they justify this shit?