Posted on 04/01/2009 9:40:35 AM PDT by Arguendo
I’m about to talk about two little words that make most people cringe. The mere mention of these words usually incites the same reaction in everyone: a) fear b) denial c) a throbbing headache and d) the desire to run away screaming and crying and begging to go to a “happy place.” Yes, I am talking about STUDENT LOANS. If you don’t have one, you know someone who does and you sympathize with them. In the midst of the credit crisis, home foreclosures and bailout turmoil, the amount of debt that graduates are facing is overwhelming.
I am 23-years-old, two years out of college and I am sitting on $115,000 of student debt. And based on my lender’s loan terms, I only have roughly 12 years to pay it off. How much does that make my monthly payment, you ask? A whopping $1,200 a month. And let’s just say my lifelong dream career in television doesn’t lend itself to that. The only option my bank is giving me is to go on “graduated repayment plan.” That means that for four years I will only be paying off the interest every month. How much is that? Well, $115,000 with interest rates between 4-8%… that’s about $600 a month and that doesn’t even touch the principal amount. People don’t pay off houses in 12 years and I am expected to pay off this student loan in an entry level position?
Some might say, “Sam, you shouldn’t have gone to a private school in New York City if you wouldn’t be able to pay it off.” Well, I made a lot of mistakes when signing up for my loans, but I was uneducated on the process and on the repayment and now I’m stuck.
(Excerpt) Read more at ac360.blogs.cnn.com ...
That’s very crazy advice. Since I did work collections, I can say you are wrong. One hundred thousand dollars of debt in today’s job market is death.
Because you have no response. YOu know good and well a degree could continue to be used so it is stealing not to pay for it or expect it to be discharged. A very liberal way of thinking.
I have to agree with you. All of us who took a student loan out knew the contract we signed. Death or mental disease is the only other two options to eliminate the debt: aside from paying them.
Hardship deferments are ok in times of hardships...but the interest is horrible.
Degrees in idiocy are the rule, they are just mislabeled. See you have yours.
Apparently you believe that propaganda that universities are in the business of public service. Here’s a valuable lesson: they aren’t. The administration and faculty are in the business of making the most money for the least outlay in terms of money and effort possible, the same as everyone else in a capitalist system. I believe the ruling principal is “enlightened self-interset”. Just because these people mouth nice platitudes about “caring for the future of our youth”, you are naive to take them at their word. You, the consumer, have to demand it and back it up with refusing to purchase poor products.
Don’t listen to bvw - your son is doing it the right way - paying off his debt. Tell him most of us appreciate his honestly and integrity.
Why the personal attack? I'm not a statist in the least.
“It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we can expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.”
That's a quote from Adam Smith. You might want to check the guy out. The free market has always been based on the idea that it's better to incent productive behavior and disincent bad behavior, so that even people acting selfishly in their own interest choose the former, than to rely on them to choose it out of benevolence and Christian virtue.
College has become de rigueur, but the educational standards have degraded such that the degree is almost superfluous. Colleges used to grant degrees for a well developed curriculum; today most are no more than a capstone of socialist indoctrination.
Post #56 wasn’t intended for you. My bad. My other posts stand. No one has a responsibility for look out for your well-being except yourself.
I emailed the guy and he responded. I disagreed and tried to explain that it was over-availablity of money that drove college tuition up.
Arguendo, Post 56 was meant for you, I misdirected it to another poster. For you I say hang in there and do the right thing.
I completely agree about the effect of government aid. Still, individuals have a responsibility to make sure they can afford the degree before they choose to take on the debt. Just because it’s available doesn’t mean it’s free.
Telling someone NOT to try to weasel out of their just debts is CRAZY ADVICE?!! That’s not the way we were raised and it’s not the way we raised him either. What other honorable suggestion do you have besided the old socialist saw of weaseling out and soaking poor old Uncle Sucker?
I have a year left, and will then move to NYC and sit for the New York bar (about which I have not heard pleasant things).
My advice for student loans is that students should try to limit the total amount of loans to the average yearly salary of the profession they are going to school for.
It was in English. I didn’t have a hard time following it.
I’d say a good general rule is to never borrow money for undergraduate education. Young people who do are just enriching the Ward Churchills of the world. No bachelor’s degree by itself is worth $120K.
Well, I think JFK Jr. managed to pass it—eventually, so how hard can it be? Seriously, it sounds like you have the situation mapped out. Watch out for that deadly boring third year and don’t be too hard on those first-years. ;o)
Well you are right, it is the over-availability of money which has allowed college costs to increase so much.
But it is important to understand in some depth what this particular “Over Availability” means and how it comes about. In the case of higher education it is governmental interference in the market that has caused it. Many factors to that interference. But all the most poisonous factors share a common aspect: Irresponsibility.
I would put it a bit different than you did. It is the increase in differential rate of addition of irresponsible money versus responsible money, which causes the biggest increases.
You didn’t. If you did you could have easily rephrased it.
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