Posted on 06/30/2015 8:40:54 AM PDT by Hojczyk
A fast-growing number of seniors are hitting retirement with a student debt burden. Even their Social Security is at risk
Most debt you can get out of—painful as it might be. Credit card debt can be cleared in bankruptcy. A mortgage can end in foreclosure. But student debt is more sticky, and it turns out it can have big consequences in retirement.
Last year, Richard Minuti’s Social Security payments were cut by 10%.
The Philadelphia native was already earning only a bit over $10,000 a year, including some part-time work as a tutor. “I was desperate,” says Minuti. “Taking 10% of a person’s pay who’s trying to live with bills, that’s the cruelty of it.”
The Treasury Department was taking the money to pay for federal student loans he had taken out years before. Just before age 50, Minuti had gone back to college to get a second bachelor’s degree and a better job in social work and counseling. But the non-profit jobs he landed afterwards were lower paying, and he defaulted on the debt.
Student debt’s painful new twist
The number of seniors whose Social Security checks were garnished rose by roughly six times over the past decade, from about 6,000 to 36,000 people, says the GAO. Legislation from the mid-1990s ensured recipients could still get a minimum of $750 a month. At the time, this was enough to keep them from sliding below the poverty threshold. But to meet the current threshold, Congress would need to increase this to above $1,000 a month.
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
That's because pencil and paper seem so basic now.
But back in the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, they thought it was a disreputable crutch to have to write something down to calculate it. They thought you should be able to do it in your head.
The Democrat Party has never before in it’s history been in a more advantageous position to buy votes.
And that is really saying something.
The kids should be on their own for college debt, NOT expect their parents to pay for something they can’t afford.
I thought I had chosen well when I went into research. I spent five years in university for my degree in animal sciences, another three in OJT and night classes to get my industry certifications and was doing alright when I got a good job at a contract lab.
Then the jug eared Kenyan got in and sent my industry to China.
Sometimes you do everything right and the community organizers pee in your soup.
I don’t know HOW MUCH MORE of this the American taxpayer can absorb.
We have our OWN obligations, and increasingly all the responsibility for the support of OTHERS and for the bad choices OTHERS make in life.
It’s TOO MUCH
Note well:
‘Student loans’ may be used for tuition, living expenses, new car, ...
Seldom is it noted how the money was spent?
I have a grandson in college, graduated on the GI bill with no job prospects. Well not the ones that he thinks he deserves/barf. He is very important and entitled you know.
SO what does this BRIGHT young man do? Signs up for Student Loan to stay in college for his Masters degree, to do WHAT? His degree was in management, hahahahaha.
No amount of talking with him on his chosen path does any good, I am just his lowly poor grandmother.
He says he will pay it off with in 5 years after graduating. I said HOW? You can't find that job now.
I think they all must think as Scarlett O'Hare did when she said, "Oh fiddlty dee, I'll think about that tomorrow".
PS: to self...........think about a new WILL, now.
These “seniors have to eat cat food to pay their student loans” sob stories are just setting the stage for student debt forgiveness. Ironically, if we got rid of student loans, the whole educational cost bubble would pop and college would become affordable again. Prima donna professors wouldn’t be making anywhere near what they make now and schools wouldn’t be able to fund a bunch of BS classes and activities, but that would be a good thing.
Can’t the parents who cosigned for student loans or took out student loans on the children’s behalf also have Social Security garnished?
The greater question is, why is a person of retirement age STILL on the hook for student loans to be repaid? Was it a matter of co-signing with a younger person, or was the payment so stretched out that after some forty years or so, there was still a balance unpaid?
No educational program is worth that much. Maybe it is time for the entity that extended the money creating the student loan debt in the first place to take a write-down of the remaining debt. Blood from turnips, and all.
I’ll go to college when I can pay cash for it. But having been homeschooled I don’t need the education and being financially independent I don’t need the wall art; so maybe I will never go.
Sounds like a relative working on a nurse practitioner degree. $50K cost for a job that will pay less than what he is making now. There will be some positive trade offs in job safety and family life, but the economics do not make sense.
thats a suckers bet
Raytheon developed the software used for federal debt collections in several categories.
If you are behind on court ordered child support, federally backed student loans or taxes, it looks for local, state and federal income tax refunds. When those show up, it redirects the funds to the outstanding debt(s) in order of priority.
That way, when someone moves to another state, the tax refund in the new state is intercepted and redirected by the feds to pay the child support order in the other state. Likewise, tax refunds for those who move get applied to the outstanding federal debt.
> Taking 10% of a person’s pay who’s trying to live with bills, that’s the cruelty of it.”
Life is hard. It’s harder when you’re stupid.
“Minuti had gone back to college to get a second bachelor’s degree and a better job in social work and counseling.”
So... he incurred more debt to get a job in a field that pays almost nothing.
No comment.
I paid 8+ hard years of military service (7 years overseas) for my education. From my perspective, these seniors (I’m 65) borrowed on their future with no intent on paying anything back - they gambled on their Democrat Masters to bail out their loans. Guess what? Uncle has bills for younger voting freeloaders to pay.
I’m just. . .amused.
I did undergrad in the early 1980s, on ROTC Scholarship, and left with a Bachelors, Second Lieutenant’s Bars, and $4400. in student loans.
Paid off in full within 5 years.
Finally went back for a Masters in 2006. Shopped schools for least expensive. Made sure it was a major my employer would reimburse for. Current Student Loan debt: about 2500 bucks. Which will be paid off, shortly. . .
ZERO sympathy. . .
Social workers are now being actively told if they stay working, the Gov will pay for their loans.
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