Posted on 02/10/2012 9:10:15 AM PST by Sub-Driver
I Owe $130,000 in Student Loans
Jennifer Sammartino has a great education and a mountain of student loan debt By Gemma DiCasimirro and Alexis Leonard | Thursday, Feb 9, 2012 | Updated 5:43 PM EST
When Jennifer Sammartino needed help paying for college, she, like many students, took out federal and private loans. Now she’s faced with over $130,000 in student loan debt.
After Sammartino graduated from La Salle University with a Bachelor's degree in Psychology. she had no luck getting a job. She then made the decision to go back to school, hoping that a Master’s degree would bring in more job opportunities.
But graduate school also meant more loans.
Unable to get approved by herself, Sammartino’s parents co-signed for the majority of her loans. Now they could be in serious financial trouble too.
If Sammartino defaults on her loans, her parents could lose their home.
Sammartino, now with her Master’s degree is still unable to find a job in her field. She works as a case manager for special needs children, but her salary isn't enough to pay back all the money she owes for her education.
The debt seems overwhelming to Sammartino. “I would like to be able to pay my student loans, and we know that we have to pay them back,” she says, “But we don’t know where to start.”
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcphiladelphia.com ...
Well then, she may need to do what millions of others are having to do to make ends meet; get a second, part-time job, to help her get her student loans paid off.
No one forced her to go to an expensive private college. If she'd gone to a state school, her debt would be much less. It was her decision, now she needs to pay for it.
There's a guy I know who couldn't get a job when he got out of college with a BS in electrical engineering. A relative of his got him into an electrician apprenticeship (while never revealing he was an EE) and he's now both a journeyman electrician AND and electrical engineer. He's never been unemployed or underemployed since. And he makes a bundle!
Mark
....or Haystack.
“Object lesson No. 1: Do not, do not, do not cosign student loans.”
I wouldn’t use this as a steadfast rule. You are the only parents your kids have. It if makes sense, it’s ok to sign.
Our son went to community college for two years (no debt). Then he went to a ‘good’ college. He got scholarships and grants, and worked PT, but, it was a tough degree (Physics) and investing his time making $8 an hour at Starbucks was not a good investment. Better he spent his time getting an excellent GPA.
So, we signed for 10-20,000 in loans. A risk, sure, but a small one, and one we were willing to take. If you can’t invest in your own children, what can you invest in?
He got a good degree, had relatively little debt, got an excellent job and has paid every payment without a dime from us. God bless him.
No way would I have signed for anywhere near what this woman’s parents did. I wouldn’t sign for debt if I knew I could not possibly pay it if worst came to worst.
Sure if something terrible had happened, like an auto accident or something, we’d have had to pay. But there is risk in everything.
Like I said to the other guy, you need an education but also common sense and a strong work ethic to succeed. You obviously have those things. These kids now have mommmy pay for an overpriced education, get a fancy degree in a worthless subject and expect the road ahead of them to be paved in gold.
Gender studies, black studies, history, literature.
There are a growing number of people out there telling this exact same story.
Once their voting bloc reaches Critical Mass, the Dems will forgive their loans and the country will essentially be over.
LOL! We love those commercials, especially the one with the 'grandson with a dog collar'.
Well over half of college graduates can barely read or do sums. It’s a shame that good technical training is tainted by association with the academy. Professors of Engineering and Professors of Wymens studies are not in the same profession.
High college tuition is like union dues.
Big bucks are routed to liberal profs and administrators so they can make contributions to Democrats.
Numbers are really becoming astounding, saw on tv yesterday Notre Dame will be 57k per year tuition, fees, room, and board. That’ll be a quarter million if you can make it thru in 4 years.
Actually, I admire electricians and plumbers. Very useful trades.
I cost me just a little over a quarter million dollars to get my child through college and medical school. Now has a practice making about 4 times what I do - at the cost of long hours and a lot of stress. I think it was a worthwhile expense.
Many students were enticed by the lure of ‘free money’ or by their educational institution to take out loans to finance education for a job which may never produce enough income to pay them off.
In response to the problem of folks taking bankruptcy to avoid paying their student loans, Congress passed a law that makes it all but impossible to not pay them.
Now that Obama has taken over student loans as a government function (you knew that, right?)the government will be able to easily garnish wages or bank accounts.
Welcome to the wonderful world of government wage slaves who will be under the bootheel of government bureaucrats all their lives.
Gender studies, black studies, history, literature.””
You forgot gay and lesbian studies, hispanic studies, african studies and the rest of the useless drivel marketed to ignorant students.
I didn’t so much forget them as give you a list of some candidates for worthless degrees to compete with psychology. You can alwyas find one more unmarketable degree to add to that list. Amazing how many worthless degrees there are.
“Go to trade school and become an electrician or plumber.”
I was thinking more along the lines of the “Velvet Jones School of Technology”
A masters degree in psychology and she just greatly diminished her chances of marrying due to her advertising her large debt and utter incompetence and inability to live within her means. Nothing but a liability to a future husband and family. I give her an F in human psychology for a complete lack of understanding reality.
Need to follow her and see if she meets a man foolish enough to take on her baggage. Could there be someone dumber than her out there?
I bet she doesn’t ride the bus or pack her own lunch and she probably wears name brand clothes.
Another 4 years of Baraqqicare and your kid will probably decide to become a plumber or electrician.
If someone is dumb enough to get that close and let her sink her hooks in him he will feel even dumber when she decides after a few years to leave him to “find herself” while he is left with her loans to pay.
Your son did the right thing.
I think I would have co-signed that loan as well. Physics is more practical than psychology.
I went the community college route myself for the 1st two years. I also took out loans (and paid them back as quickly as I could) to support the last two years of undergrad because I arrived at basically the same conclusion you did regarding working for $8/hour being a waste of time.
The assessment should be on the amount of $ and whether the degree obtained is practical in terms of obtaining employment.
I would not have signed any loan for $120k. People that do that need their head examined.
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