Outstanding Student Loans? Prepare to starve in your old age.

[TalkingDog]

http://www.wxii12.com/education/4413020/detail.html

snip>
The San Francisco-based 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals sided with the Department of Education.

The department wants to seize the disabled man's benefit checks to pay loans that are at least a decade old.

snip>

It's off to Debtor's Prison for you!

[HeeBGBz]

1. No shit. Mine will never be paid.

Everytime I set up a payment plan, they sell the loan to someone else and I have to do it all over again.

So the last year or so, they garnish some out of my wages to pay my student loan. My boss just informed me that the checks (that cost me $3 every two weeks to send out) are being returned. Which means they sold it again.

How can I pay something back if they keep doing the shell game thing?

[sui generis]

2. The Department of Loan Sharking

let's see, somebody do a compound interest calculation here:

if half of outstanding student loan debt is more than 10 years old and worth more than 7 billion dollars, what combined interest rate would be required for the debt and "administrative fees" to double the existing principle?

If the ED wanted to really collect money from their delinquent people, they need to offer an amnesty or a rollback to bring roughly 4 billion of that back into the system in the next couple of years.

Of course since the ED is desperately lacking in financial advisors, they wouldn't know a value-of-cash calculation if it shit them on the forehead.

That government department is a classic example of mismanagement and stupidity.

[Arkana]

3. Oh, no...I'm gonna be in debt up to my eyeballs when I get out

and this is really bad news for me.

[wtbymark]

4. i'll be paying the gov't $204/month till i die

well at least they cant come after family survivors for the rest.

[mike_c]

5. my payments are closer to $1,000 per month....

Yep. $795 for one and $149 for another. Each and every frickin' month. Let's see, I'm 50, and still owe nearly $80,000, which my bankrupcy proceeding won't touch, so yeah-- I'll likely be paying this off for a LONG time.

Frankly, I'd do it again if I had it to do over-- my doctorate has dramatically changed my career and my life for the better-- but the larger issue is one of whether it's in the best interests of American society to limit access to education for qualified students using financial barriers.

[CoffeeCat]

6. My student loan payments are close to $1,000 per month too...

We owe 85k--and this is our only debt--besides 80k on a 15 yr fixed mortgage.

We're aggressively trying to pay this down and we send them between $1,000-$2,500 per month. We hope to have it paid off within 6-7 yrs.

It sucks.

Unlike you, I don't have a doctorate. It sounds like the money was a good investment for you. You'll always have that doctorate and I'm sure the income from having the advanced degree will pay itself off.

It's too bad that a college education is so costly. Tuition is skyrocketing. Junior is eliminated Perkins Loans and decreasing Pell Grants.

A college education should be accessible to more people--not just the elite. Society benefits when more people are educated.

[mike_c]

8. it was a great investment, although not necessarily in terms...

...of income-- I've been a university prof now for nearly 10 years and my 2004 AGI was about $52,000, so I make a reasonable living, but I'm not getting rich. I still live pretty much paycheck-to-paycheck. Student loan payments absorb about 25 percent of my net monthly salary.

The payoff was in quality of life in the sense that I truely enjoy most aspects of my job, especially the constant intellectual stimulation.

[Occulus]

7. YET. n/t