I was pre-covid, but rn I can’t conceive of a world where I’m actually about to cut these vampires a check

  • axont [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I took a look at mine and saw I’m accruing $117 of interest per month. Absolute vultures, I swear.

    I’m waiting for a hilarious wave of defaults to sweep the nation. It should have been obvious that was gonna happen. I’m hoping it’ll have a similar effect to a general strike.

    • balloflearning@midwest.social
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      9 months ago

      I hope you are wrong but it does feel like adding student loans back into the equation is going to put a significant financial burden on a demographic that is already struggling to accumulate wealth.

    • SkeletorJesus [he/him]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      How do you even default on a student loan without becoming a dependent? I was under the impression they could take it directly out of your paycheck and it couldn’t be dismissed as part of bankruptcy.

        • the_itsb [she/her, comrade/them]@hexbear.net
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          9 months ago

          It’s not that they don’t do it because it takes effort, it’s just a long process for them to get there. I have personally known someone whose paychecks were being garnished because they defaulted on 5-figure student loan debt, but he said that he ignored calls and letters for years and then ignored months (maybe even a year plus?) of court summonses to get to that point.

          I was helping his wife fill out IBR paperwork and offered to help him with his and found out he had to be in this forced repayment for some period - couple years? idk this was ~10 years ago - before he could even apply for anything like that.

          It’s an evil trap, and they really will come destroy your financial life.

  • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Unfortunately yea

    Trying to save up to do a group buy on a building with some folks so that we have more reliable / permanent community to fend off the coming capitalist apocalypse, and we can’t possibly secure a loan for that if we don’t all find a way to somehow pay off our student loans too. It’s awful. I make a decent amount of money and it’s still just totally unreasonable to expect anyone but the most affluent to be able to save for anything, let alone something like a building even if you’re sharing that cost burden, while also paying rent, and student loans, and buying food, and paying your ridiculous health insurance premiums and also still paying for your medical needs, and utilites, and literally all the random other bullshit capitalists make you pay for.

    It’s not sustainable in any way shape or form.

    • CantaloupeAss [comrade/them]@hexbear.netOP
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      9 months ago

      Maybe in a similar boat, like I went to a university and used it to “start a career” and even though I’m making “a living” I still feel like I’m paycheck to paycheck and now these fucking cretins are coming out of the grave to take even more.

      It would be great if going to a university and then working for years led to anything like owning my own home or not being like “shit this is bad” when I look at my grocery bill.

      edit: nobody, university-educated or otherwise, should be barred from owning their own home, or be stressed out by a grocery bill. My personal path means nil in the calculus of who deserves to be happy and safe. I only say the above in response to the advertisement for the university path which I was constantly subjected to as a child, which was that by going to a university and then getting a job, I would be shielded from the meatgrinder of the supposedly lesser non-university-educated life path. Along with like, my entire family basically threatening to shun me if I did not go, and thus being agents for a loan agency.

      • Infamousblt [any]@hexbear.net
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        9 months ago

        Mostly we just buy a building and live in it. Instead of renting 4 different flats in different buildings we can buy our own building and live in that. Rent doesn’t change but it goes to our mortgage rather than a landlords mortgage. The math works out well but it’s a lot of work even for 6 people to save up for.

  • CommieElon [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Yeah, I think I can get rid of them in about 5 years. I left them at 20,000 hoping the Supreme Court would give us something. I was going to use my loan payments toward buying a new car. It was kinda crushing when the Supreme Court made their decision.

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]@hexbear.net
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      9 months ago

      To be clear while the Supreme Court shouldn’t have done that Biden should’ve anticipated that and just done it the right way the first time instead of specifically designing it in a way that the Supreme Court could stop.

      And after doing it the right way and immediately, he should’ve had all the records destroyed so if they tried to restore the debt they didn’t even know who owed what.

  • MamaVomit [he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    I was super fortunate that my parents were fine with me living with them post college. I was able to pay back all ~$45k after working a few years, basically just dumping my entire paycheck into loans.

  • Cummunism [they/them, he/him]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    i paid mine off so easily!

    1. dad died
    2. grandpa died so me and sibling got my dads share of his inheritance

    all you need is a white guy born in the 1930s who worked the same desk job for his whole life. so easy! i think it was like $10k i paid off, after having made payments for a while. and that was after my mom paid for some of my college with my dads inheritance/insurance money.

    take a guess what paid for my house downpayment too? you guessed it! although funnily enough my grandpa also paid for my parents first house.

    all student loans should have 0% interest, but then how would the stonk lines go up?

    and yea, i often ponder how much of my current life and security was paid for with generational wealth and death. people talk about life changing amounts of money, mine was like $40k at most. It doesnt take much.

  • yes. i’m about half a year out from hitting 120 qualifying payments / finishing my 10 years of public service to get the last $25k wiped. i originally borrowed about $32k. i have paid “back” something like $24k. that’s right. borrowed $32k, paid $24k, still owe more than half. the juice on federally subsidized loans is harsh. that’s with the 2.5+ year COVID pause on payments and interest. even LIB liz warren said it was embarrassing that the program literally makes money off of student borrowers. and i borrowed significantly less than the average in my cohort, because i won some really big and highly competitive national scholarships. i basically got an entire year free from tuition. i went to a state school and paid at the in-state rate.

    i remember i was in cuba some years ago talking to this younger cuban national who had gone to art school there, and we were talking about how education and assistance programs compare. i mentioned that school was extremely expensive in the US, even at the publicly-supported state institutions. dollar amounts aren’t really a good comparison because the economies are so distinct, but i mentioned that i was working on getting them forgiven by doing public service. he said the cuban system worked like that too, his eyes lighting up. i got the impression he really wanted to believe the US wasn’t a dystopian shithole, as he had family there and wanted to visit them and maybe even live for a while to broaden his horizons.

    i asked how many years of service the cuban government wanted, and it was something like 2. i said in the US, it’s 10. and we had to make payments the entire time. and if we didn’t complete the 10 years, nothing was removed. no partial forgiveness. he struggled to internalize that, but agreed it was too great of a burden.

  • Babs [she/her]@hexbear.net
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    9 months ago

    Mine are FFEL, so they never qualified for anything. Program was bad enough for Obama to end it, but not bad enough to give us any relief. I don’t really care though. Brandon said he was doing something about student loans so if anyone calls I’ll tell them to go bug him about it.