Post: #1

The New York Times complains about rising student loans. A Dangerous 'New Normal'

The top comment is absurd.

mac san diego, ca
I attended a prestigious private school and came out of it with a school loan debt of over $100,000. I earned a PHD in economics. because I didn't want to wait much longer to start a family, that kept my career at the back-burner for another 8 years until all my 3 kids were in school full-time.
Then the recession hit and I haven't been able to find a good-paying full-time job.
That school loan has compounded to over $200,000.
I have no hope and therefore, no plans of repaying all of that loan in my lifetime. I keep deferring it by continuing to take & retake some classes at the community college thereby qualifying as a "full-time student."

America is sad.

She goes to an expensive college for at least four years, five years or more in a Ph.D. program, then has kids for another eight years. That's seventeen years with no attempt to actually pay loans for her "prestigious" degree. She blames America.

Post: #2

   

Post: #3

I feel sorry for her in the sense she was blinded by her belief, which largerly is supported by the for profit higher education aparatus, that she could find a job with her PHD.

I am surprised she didn't. I thought economics was a stable field for PHDs.

She must have taken out a private loan. Mine are all federal. When it came time to pay I gave them my check stubs and I made so little they deferred payment for a year and a half. Another coworker took private and they demanded he pay 1000 bucks a month. He didn't, his credit is fucked, and so is his opportunity to go back to school.

Thank God I was pimped by the government and not SallieMae.

Just out of curisoty, does anyone with student loans plan on paying them back? I don't plan on paying mine unless I have large amount of income coming in from a bestseller or huge sales of ebooks. Then again, I never planned on buying a house or having kids until late in life so taking out school loans wasn't too much of a concern (plus they are federal which offers great repayment/deferment options versus private).

Honestly, with Obama at the helm (and Hillary soon after), I imagine that many of the loans will be either forgiven or made so that repayment options are very leinent.

Also, she took the wrong path by trying to look for a job. If you are not in the process of creating a job for yourself (self-employment) at this stage in the game you more lost than the house of Israel.

Shit, if they can give 700 billion to bail out AIG and GoldmanSachs they can bail my ass out.

I'd tell the commenter to wait a few years, defer, and see what happens.

Post: #4

(03-09-2013 12:15 PM)Captain Ahab Wrote:  Just out of curisoty, does anyone with student loans plan on paying them back? I don't plan on paying mine unless I have large amount of income coming in from a bestseller or huge sales of ebooks. Then again, I never planned on buying a house or having kids until late in life so taking out school loans wasn't too much of a concern (plus they are federal which offers great repayment/deferment options versus private).

I had some at 8% and paid those off.

(I know all of the "traders" here can "beat the market" and earn more than 8% a year, but that's beyond my skill level.")

The rest are at 3.65%. I won't pay those off. I've made regular payments for years and have a great credit score, so they aren't impacting my ability to get credit.

Unless the market tanks again, returns on cash invested will be greater than borrowing costs.

Post: #5

bitch, bitch, bitch. Was she working during her PHD? I worked during my entire masters....

The gov't once again fucked us in the ass with student loans, by guaranteeing almost endless amounts of money to be avail for colleges, colleges dont' have any incentive to lower their tuitions...

Like Ive said on here in the past, NYU charges $50K+ a year and goes around nyc buying up property with federal student loan money...

Post: #6

(03-09-2013 01:24 PM)MikeCF Wrote:  

(03-09-2013 12:15 PM)Captain Ahab Wrote:  Just out of curisoty, does anyone with student loans plan on paying them back? I don't plan on paying mine unless I have large amount of income coming in from a bestseller or huge sales of ebooks. Then again, I never planned on buying a house or having kids until late in life so taking out school loans wasn't too much of a concern (plus they are federal which offers great repayment/deferment options versus private).

I had some at 8% and paid those off.

(I know all of the "traders" here can "beat the market" and earn more than 8% a year, but that's beyond my skill level.")

The rest are at 3.65%. I won't pay those off. I've made regular payments for years and have a great credit score, so they aren't impacting my ability to get credit.

Unless the market tanks again, returns on cash invested will be greater than borrowing costs.

This is basically my situation. I graduated with around 20K in loans (much less than that now) but my interest rate is locked-in so ridiculously low (1.84 pct) it makes no sense for me to pay any more than the bare minimum because the returns I make on investing that cash are far greater than my cost of borrowing.

This could change if I go to business school, but the way things are going I may not need to.

Post: #7

I have a private variable loan, down to around 3% interest or something like that. I've been paying a little extra and I am down to around 24K.

I called to lock in or consolidate but they said its no longer avail : (

Grad school was worth it for me. Cost $35K, but I ended up making 20K extra. Grad school was rediculously easy, all I did was write papers for 3 years. I had a 2.7 in undergrad, but a 3.7 in grad school. A ton of work, but they didnt fail anyone.

Post: #8

Grad school student loans are ridiculously expensive right now. I had to take out some my final year and they're at 6.9 and 7.2%. Both are federal. It's hard for me to understand how they can justify a 6% mark up over the fed rate for a loan that can never be discharged. Maybe losers like this chick are the reasons why. In any case mine will be paid off in a year or two so no big deal.

Post: #9

I applaud her starting the family in time, but this is a typical case of a woman playing career-woman. This is one of the reasons why society is going down the drain. And this is an economist! Imagine spending hundreds of thousands on loans to educate a doctor who then doesn't start working for another 6 years.

Post: #10

Any good school waives tuition and pays you a stipend to earn a PhD in economics. She either squandered her money elsewhere or attended a disreputable school, thus explaining her employment troubles.

Post: #11

she has to understand an 8 year unemployment gap after school is going to really limit any type of high paying gig irregardless of the recession.

Post: #12

I have $3,600 to repay and I feel like I shouldn't have gotten that loan. It was a mistake.

Post: #13

(03-10-2013 06:33 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  Any good school waives tuition and pays you a stipend to earn a PhD in economics. She either squandered her money elsewhere or attended a disreputable school, thus explaining her employment troubles.

This is where we got trolled. Women never tell the whole story.

(03-10-2013 10:49 AM)bacon Wrote:  she has to understand an 8 year unemployment gap after school is going to really limit any type of high paying gig irregardless of the recession.

Yes. But, as a typical American women in her hyper sense of entitlement, wanted her cake and eat it too. Now she's painted herself into a corner and has no other outlet other than attention whoring on the internet.

Post: #14

She's dumb as most PhD programs if your talented the school will take on a huge chunk of the fees. Also you get access to teaching jobs, "funding", and other hustles to ease the cost considerably.

Post: #15

American public university should not be a 'for profit' business.

Post: #16

This is one of many reasons why I love being an autodidact

Post: #17

Unfortunately the whole university situation is becoming insane.

Even state schools cost at least 32,000 for 4 years of undergraduate and that's tuition and fees only. Unless you are getting grants or have sweet scholarships or are having someone pay for your schooling, it's insane. It's important to remember that university is essentially a gamble and there's no guarantee that your degree will mean shit.

People say, you major in X to learn how to think! Yeah...no. Dropping 32K to learn how to think illustrates you're a dumbass and you'll probably buy a bridge. Things like critical thinking can probably be taught in two semesters or something at a community college for much lower the cost. Just look at university literature about why to attend or even department literature in why you should major in X and you'll laugh your ass off.

If you get a shitty car, you can at least use it to go places.
If you get a shitty house, you can at least live it in.
If you get a shitty degree, it's worth nothing.

The smart thing to do is credit by examination tests like CLEP + community college and then university if you want. Going that way you can probably save yourself 20k.

Looking back at the educational aspects, it was so overrated that I now cringe that I ended up with ~18k in loans.

I heard another horror story about someone that got their undergraduate degree, then either it was a phd program or went masters then phd after a little but they ended up with so much debt that even making 50k a year they could only manage to pay the interest off each year and they never touched the principal.

Post: #18

(03-10-2013 06:33 AM)ElBorrachoInfamoso Wrote:  Any good school waives tuition and pays you a stipend to earn a PhD in economics. She either squandered her money elsewhere or attended a disreputable school, thus explaining her employment troubles.

No, she spent $100K on a "prestigious" undergrad. The Ph.D. was free, but probably took five or six years. Then she spent eight years having kids. So thirteen years after graduating with her prestigious bachelors degree (and making no payments), the interest had doubled her loan balance to $200K.

Here is an idea. Have kids when you are young and healthy. Then go to college afterwards. Then you can start working immediately after graduation instead of not using your degree and letting the accumulate on your loan balance.

Post: #19

The way the current student loan system is setup there is zero incentive to pay back your loans.

It's called the "income based repayment plan," or in popular media, "pay as you go" plan. Here's how it works.

- First, this only applies to federal loans.

- Feds look at your income relative to your loan size. The smaller the percentage your income is relative to your loan, the less you pay back.

- So if you make 18K a year and have 72K in debt, you pay around $36 a month or something like that (I did the calculations on the student loan website awhile ago). A paltry amount.

- But if you make 18K and only owe 20K in debt, you'll be paying around 180-240 a month. That's around 15% of your income.

- If, after 25 years, you still haven't paid back your loans the rest is forgiven.

- Thus the current laws are setup so that there is no incentive to pay back your loans. Instead, the incentive is to increase your loan size to as much as possible so you'll be exempted under the "pay as you go" plan from making large payments while hiding as much of your income as you can (i.e. make as much as you can under the table) to keep your reported income low, and you can game the fuck out of the system.

Not only do you get tons of student money loans to spend, but you never have to pay more than 10% of it back over a 25 year period (if you're smart).

- And this also preserves your credit score, because they will report to credit bureaus that you are paying on time.

- In addition, combine the free student loan money with the massive inflation coming to America in the next 10 years, and it's obvious that it's not the students who are getting fucked, but the senior citizens with large pension savings and the taxpayer who is getting fucked.

For the students, this is all just free cash.

Post: #20

This all seems like really bad economics to me.

Post: #21

(03-11-2013 01:53 PM)Samseau Wrote:  - So if you make 18K a year and have 72K in debt, you pay around $36 a month
(I did the calculations on the student loan website awhile ago).

- But if you make 18K and only owe 20K in debt, you'll be paying around 180-240 a month.

That seems wrong.

Student Loan Calculator

Post: #22

(03-11-2013 05:24 PM)Divorco Wrote:  

(03-11-2013 01:53 PM)Samseau Wrote:  - So if you make 18K a year and have 72K in debt, you pay around $36 a month
(I did the calculations on the student loan website awhile ago).

- But if you make 18K and only owe 20K in debt, you'll be paying around 180-240 a month.

That seems wrong.

Student Loan Calculator

It's actually better than I thought. Just did it again:

   

And if you only owe 20k:

   

This was different than when I looked back at this shit in 2010. Before, you needed a high debt load relative to your income. Now, it appears to be based solely off your income.

A truly remarkable ponzi. Only a sucker would pay back their loans.

Post: #23

What if it's through Sallie Mae?

Post: #24

Reading those figures makes me sick. These tuition rates are only going to increase, $200,000 for a bachelors degree from NYU! These kind of stories make me so happy I decided to come back to England for University. I pay £3,000 a year (Roughly $4,500) so with that figure you could have sent 15 people through school for the price of 1 person at NYU.

Post: #25

(03-11-2013 09:27 PM)houston Wrote:  What if it's through Sallie Mae?

You're fucked... see if you can get the federal government to buy your loan?