Life lately:
Enjoying the hell out of working with wife. She is contracting with my company, and making such a good impression that the president the other day was like "Get ____ to help you with that project" to one of the sales head dudes. We eat lunch together every day. We're kindof sickeningly in love :)
Working on weekly goals, some we reach. Others not. This week, to only eat out twice, both times because of work reasons.
Met with a lawyer and found out we are in too much debt for chapter 13, and make too much money for chapter 7. (last year, I would have qualified for a chapter 7, but couldn't find the $1600 that it would have taken to file it since I had no job, so go figure). We literally can't declare bankruptcy even though we have multiple hundreds of thousands of dollars of student loans between us and will NEVER be able to work it all off. Our loan debts take all my paychecks per month leaving not quite enough for rent. So we rely on wife to make money for us to live on. There's something rather freeing about the fact we cannot discharge student loans (because Sallie Mae in 2005 lobbied congress to pass a law making that impossible), yet they are so large due to predatory lending that we cannot possibly keep up the payments. Something freeing about looking at indentured servitude for the rest of our natural lives. In fact, it's weird because even indentured servants got off after 7 years. Fannie Mae has us for life without parole, and it's all perfectly legal for them to do so.
It's easy to denigrate us for taking on so much debt. But we aren't alone. Student loan debt surpassed $1 trillion this year. There's no question it's the next bubble, higher ed. As more and more of us, fed the lie that higher education is the key to a better life, take on debt, then find no jobs for us on the other side, we are not going to be able to pay back the promise/lie you fed us, America. But hey, don't take my word for it. Other bloggers have said it far better than me.
We keep on truckin on. Sallie Mae suicide is certainly something we discuss on an intellectual level, since being in this position sucks so much balls, and no one gives a shit because you took out the loans willingly to chase the dream that we are fed about education being worth the cost. But in the end, I keep saying, we don't have a house, we don't have cars worth more than 300 bucks. we really have nothing to our names, so what the hell would they take? They can garnish wages, sure, but would any sane judge garnish so much that I can't afford rent let alone food or gas to get to work to pay the wages they garnish? It's hard to say, since this insane system has been upheld by judges so far.
Maybe once enough people are out of work and in life-debt to Sallie Mae - and given the exponential costs of higher ed, that won't take long - things might start to change. Until then, will keep going to work, keep paying the interest only payments that are more than i made in a month at my first professional job 10 years ago.
Sigh.
Forgot to mention how any time we do anything, like take a day trip to Red Wing, wife's family asks why we aren't using that money to pay off our loans. SO that's fun. We are supposed to spend rest of our lives at home, never doing anything but paying into the system that will NEVER be paid off.
ReplyDeleteAlso, I feel this got somewhat dark with all the suicide stuff, but it's a big issue with Sallie Mae debtors, and I don't want to short change it. We have felt suicidal feelings, but the fact that it would just pass on the debt to her parents keeps us going. That and we enjoy the occasional day trip to Red Wing too much to stop that fun train.
I feel your pain brother. My student loans have been in forbearance (or deferment, I can never remember what the difference is because they're both basically the same thing) for almost three years, which is the maximum allowable time period. So in March I will have to start paying them again because we make too much money to claim financial hardship, even though the $600 minimum monthly payment is almost equal to my rent, and is a third of my monthly income. Also, all of this money was borrowed in pursuit of a degree which qualified me for a job paying an average of $9/hr in Fargo, which is irrelevant because I couldn't find a job in my field in this city anyway since there are 3 schools in a 2-hour radius offering the exact same degree and there isn't a clinic in town that wants to hire someone who hasn't worked in a clinic for 3 years. Which is ok because even if I did have a job in my field, my student loan payment would be half of my monthly income.
ReplyDeleteThank you for sharing. This all just so completely sucks. It's a ball of suck that's sucking another ball of suck and College should be prorated for the average amount a job in that field pays, so if the job pays 9 an hour, the degree should be a lot less too. The thing is I consider myself lucky for having a writing degree and actually finding work in my field that I enjoy doing. I do count my blessings. But like you, I'm waiting for the next month when Sallie Mae decides we aren't paying enough and raises the amount again. Last summer, Sallie Mae decided instead of 27 months of forbearance, we only got 12, and they told us that this changed when the first payment was due. I don't know what I'm saying here other than thank you for not being like so many people out there who entirely blame the people taking out loans.
DeleteI've been making an effort to reduce the amount owed even if it means saving less for retirement or in my emergency fund. Trouble is, even though I pay $50 more than owed each month, and even though I'm a month ahead in my payments, the amount owed keeps increasing. I literally cannot make any progress. Thankfully, I work at a qualified non-profit and all my loans could be potentially forgiven in ten years, but my job is also quite precarious, and I read a couple weeks ago that if your student loans are forgiven, the forgiven amount counts as income, which you are then taxed on.
ReplyDeleteLiving the dream.
Reminds me of the blog I linked to above where the lender paid 23k over several years to see her loans go from 37k to 35.9k. Wife has been trying to get a job at a non-profit, that would knock a good chunk of her govt. loans out, but I don't think the private Sallie Mae loans care about that. I wonder about the 10 year thing, does that work if you change jobs or miss a month or have any hiccups during those 10 years, or are you then out of the program?
DeleteThe rule is that you have to make ten years of qualified payments in order to have the loans forgiven, so I assume that if you miss a couple months, then you just add a couple months to your end date. What I'm wondering is if I keep paying more than owed each month and get further and further ahead, does that mean my loans will be forgiven quicker?
DeleteIt takes all my mental energy sometimes to not just dip into my savings and make a huge payment, just so I actually make some progress, but I know that that's just a waste of money, and I'm better off having an emergency fund than trying to pay off an unpayoffable loan.
And yeah, Sallie May loans will never go away :(