Student loan payments to resume--grads cancel trips to Italy, contemplate life without splurges.

“My partner and I agreed, maybe we don’t want kids,” she said. “Not because we don’t want them, but because it would be financially irresponsible for us to bring a human being into this world.”

Out of the more than 44 million federal student loan borrowers, about 7 million are below the age of 25, according to data from the Education Department. Their average loan balance is less than $14,000, lower than any other age group.

Yet borrowers with lower balances are the most likely to default. It's fueled by millions who drop out before graduating, along with others who graduate but struggle to find good jobs. Among those who defaulted in 2021, the median loan balance was $15,300, and the vast majority had balances under $40,000, according to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York.

Resuming student loan payments will cost U.S. consumers $18 billion a month, the investment firm Jefferies has estimated. The hit to household budgets is ill-timed for the overall economy, Jefferies says, because the United States is widely believed to be on the brink of a recession.

Despite the student loan moratorium, Americans mostly didn't bank their savings, according to Jefferies economist Thomas Simons. So they’ll likely have to cut back on other things — travel, restaurants — to fit resumed loan payments into their budgets. Belt-tightening could hurt an economy that relies heavily on consumer spending.

Noshin Hoque graduated from Stony Brook University early in the pandemic with about $20,000 in federal student loans. Instead of testing the 2020 job market, she enrolled at a master’s program in social work at Columbia University, borrowing $34,000 more.

With the payments paused, she felt a new level of financial security. She cut costs by living with her parents in New York City and her job at a nonprofit paid enough to save money and help her parents.

She recalls splurging on a $110 polo shirt as a Father’s Day gift for her dad.

“Being able to do stuff for my parents and having them experience that luxury with me has just been such a plus,” said Hoque, who works for Young Invincibles, a nonprofit that supports student debt cancellation.

It gave her the comfort to enter a new stage of life. She got married to a recent medical school graduate, and they're expecting their first child in November. At the same time, they’re bracing for the crush of loan payments, which will cost at least $400 a month combined. They hope to pay more to avoid interest, which is prohibited for them as practicing Muslims.

To prepare, they stopped eating at restaurants. They canceled a vacation to Italy. Money they wanted to put toward their child’s education fund will go to their loans instead.

“We’re back to square one of planning our finances,” she said. “I feel that so deeply.”

Even the logistics of making payments will be a hurdle for newer borrowers, said Rachel Rotunda, director of government relations at National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators. They'll need to find out who their loan servicers are, choose a repayment plan and learn to navigate the payment system.

“The volume of borrowers going back on the system at the same time — this has never happened before,” Rotunda said. “It's fair to say it's going to be bumpy.”

The Education Department has promised to make the restart of payments as smooth as possible. In a statement, the agency said it will continue to push for Biden's debt cancellation as a way to reduce borrowers' debt load and ease the transition.

For Beka Favela, 30, the payment pause provided independence. She earned a master's in counseling last year, and her job as a therapist allowed her to move out of her parents' house.

Without making payments on her $80,000 in student loans, she started saving. She bought furniture. She chipped away at credit card debt. But once the pause ends, she expects to pay about $500 a month. It will consume most of her disposable income, leaving little for surprise costs. If finances get tighter, she wonders if she'll have to move back home.

“I don’t want to feel like I'm regressing in order to make ends meet,” said Favela, of Westmont, Illinois. “I just want to keep moving forward. I'm worried, is that going to be possible?”

I'm gonna have to eat my cat!

Playing the violin and lighting candles of hope and self fulfillment......NOT

The financial pinch has them postponing or rethinking major life milestones.

Yes, as we all did, or should have done, when we were in that position. It’s called “that’s life.”

I paid off my student loan in 10 years starting in 1987 and did not have a six-figure salary. The payment was 250. a month, which is proportionately higher than what these people are scheduled to pay. I had roommates, bought furniture second-hand, would not have dreamt of a trip to Europe, took freelance jobs and some months made triple payments to get the damn loan out of my life. This is the reality of paying back loans. It's what people have always done. It's never been pleasant.

You chose this. You're deriving a benefit from your degree. You're not a victim.

Why do I get the feeling that the woman in the photo uses they/them pronouns?

Financial illiteracy keeps people in debt and keeps them poor. When you owe thousands of dollars in debt, you scrimp and save, live with roommates, take a second job to earn extra money to pay off your debt and use any extra money to pay off the debt sooner. And going into $34k in debt for a MSW from Columbia is possibly one of the most stupid things I’ve ever read. She probably could have got enough financial aid from Hunter or another CUNY school for the same degree with limited earning potential.

True, a MSW from pricey Columbia was stupid. Only do that if your parents can write a tuition check every semester. CUNY or Hunter is perfectly good for a MSW.

[quote]I paid off my student loan in 10 years starting in 1987 and did not have a six-figure salary.

Ah, Datalounge. Where it is forever 1987. The cost of a college education and the cost of living are much higher four decades later.

I have > 2K left. I have no stake in this; I have worked at a place for years that qualifies for public service loan forgiveness so I will just write it off in any case.

I'm shocked, SHOCKED I tell you, that I am being asked to repay the money I took out under a contract that I signed.

This is abhorrent and unacceptable!

[quote]but at $70,000, her salary barely covers the cost of living in the Bay Area.

Let's say she nets $4200/month after taxes. Her biggest expense is probably rent. She graduated from Cal State Merced in 2019 so, she's probably in her late 20s.

The article states she lives in the Bay Area - but that covers a huge are with a very wide range of rents. Also, since her partner moved it, it suggests that she was living alone. $125 week for groceries. According to The Zebra, the average annual car insurance cost in San Francisco is $2257, but let's make the math simple and say that she's paying $200 per month or $2400 per year. $500+200 = 700, leaving $3500 per month. She claims that she often only has $200 after groceries, insurance, and rent, so she's paying $3300 per month in rent. Let's say she's paying $100 for cell phone which is a necessity these days and another $100 for home internet. That makes her rent $3100.

Does anyone else see a problem here?

The cost of college in the US is outrageous. Americans have no idea how they're being screwed.

I won’t donate a dime to my alma mater. Tuition is outrageous. It was moderate in comparison when I went. But I guess something has to pay for all the ugly new buildings and administrators.

It took me years to pay off my loans. Why should I give that place any more money?

The cost of living is indeed higher now than in 1987, but so are salaries. Debt is debt. Unless it's unconscionable or an adhesion debt, you've got to pay it off. Or renegotiate it or get a public sector job that assumes your debt.

The argument that paying my loans is keeping me from living my best life doesn't cut it.

Salaries haven't kept up with the cost of living.

R10 adjust for inflation and get back to us.

[quote]The cost of living is indeed higher now than in 1987, but so are salaries.

Quite possibly the stupidest response you will see on this thread.

Yes R19.

And exactly how the fuck do you expect us to fund our vast "Critical Gender Queer Theory Enlightenment In The 21st Century" curriculum, pray tell?

I'm gonna get a raft of $h!t for this, but . . .

If the US Government can bail out Wall Street and Failing Banks operated/serving billionaires (think Silicon Valley) then it's about time they extended the privilege to working class citizens.

If we are to extend the privilege to working class folks, then we should forgive medical debt and credit card debt, and debt for for profit trade schools…ahead of taking care of college graduates with a BA, BS, MA, MFA, JD, PhD, DDS or MD.

Many people born after the early 1980s have a very hard time with the word “no.”

My friend’s son just graduated from college. His mother sent his 2-page (!) resume to her friends. I told her he had accidentally included a third page to the resume—some notes he must have taken while getting career advice. I never heard from her.

I also emailed him and asked him to let me know if he was interested in the production or on the air aspect of my business. I also suggested he look at open postings on my company’s job board and asked him to let me know if anything interested him. Never heard from him.

Lazy and entitled at a level I have never seen before. Fortunately, there will always be kids who really want the job and excel.

Debt forgiveness before sorting out the cost and incentive structure of post secondary education is insane. It's a reparations approach while slavery is still in effect

[quote]If we are to extend the privilege to working class folks, then we should forgive medical debt and credit card debt

We already do.

It is called bankruptcy.

R9

Would you turn down a an Columbia acceptance?

These threads NEVER go well on DL and a lot of ugly comes out to play.

R27 Of course!!! You go where you get the best financial aid, with NO LOANS.

Not R9. Yes… because i would have already moved to the Bay Area, established California residency and then gone to Berkeley for MSW …. Better program at a lore cost.

Hit too soon: LOWER cost

I borrowed 70,000 dollars to get a degree in Gender Studies and I can only find jobs at Starbucks now. Please cancel my debt!

R27, I wouldn’t have applied to a school I couldn’t afford. I live within my means.

But for a degree like a MSW, in a field with limited earning potential, there is absolutely no reason to take on that level of debt when there are so many affordable options. A master’s from Columbia in social work is pretty much for bragging rights.

R27, some careers benefit much more from the presumed high quality of training offered at a school like Columbia. In law or medicine, e.g., a Columbia education and degree might well mean the difference between a middling and stellar career. Social work? Not so sure.

I'm not in the social work field, so not sure. But my hunch is an M.S.W. from Hunter or CUNY vs Columbia is not going to be dispositive in the career trajectory.

R27, R34 here. I just saw R33's post, which is what I was driving at; R33, however, said it much better.

R34 and the same logic applies to CU law or medicine. Helpful but in no way dispositive of future success.

r24 he just thinks you're an asshole. That's why he ghosted you.

[quote]These threads NEVER go well on DL and a lot of ugly comes out to play.

Bitter eldergays who stopped paying attention to the world three decades ago and have no idea how things operate now.

If you're going to go to an expensive school like Columbia and you have to rely on student loans instead of your parents writing a check every semester, you'd better go into a field with high earning potential, like finance or law. Taking out loans for a teaching or social work degree from an expensive school is nuts. you can go to a state school for those degrees and it won't make a difference as far as who is going to hire you. The NYC Department of Social Services will take you on as a social worker with a state degree just as fast as it will with a Columbia degree.

Yes R26. The point being that bankruptcy should not be a preferred option.

If there’s debt relief available, then the question is what kind of debt should be relieved, in what amount and by which debtors. Thank you.

Many students have actually paid off the priniciple on their loans and then some, but predatory interest rates make it seem otherwise.

The right-wingers whining about student loans don't have a problem with tax breaks for billionaires or PPP loans being forgiven

Hypocrites

An Asian chick that’s as fat as her is going to have trouble limiting “splurges”.

^bigot

I would be far more sympathetic to canceling medical debt, as it affects all Americans and is a necessity. Expensive colleges are not.

[quote]WASHINGTON -- In a good month, Celina Chanthanouvong has about $200 left after rent, groceries and car insurance.

That means she's living beyond her means.

That's a beautiful cat

R45, I'm with you on medical debt, but I imagine some people would argue only medical debt that's not related to largely self-inflicted medical crises like fatty liver disease from obesity. Not saying I agree, but I can see that argument being made.

By the time i was able to pay off the last of my student loan it had gained 15 grand in interest over time. I knew i could pay it eventually but i was under no illusion that overseas trips etc were going to happen in the interim.

Suck it up buttercup. You'll survive.

In Canada and many Western European countries, college is heavily funded by the government. Nobody goes into heavy debt. It would take another civil war to get that in the US. Americans put up with so much unnecessary bullshit.

[quote]The point being that bankruptcy should not be a preferred option.

Yet is still is an option...unlike student loan relief.

The Republicans are loving this. They don't care whether the loans are ever paid back, fuck they grift the treasury every chance they get...they know this will slow spending and confidence and head us right into a recession that they can gloat over.

That is what this is all about.

[quote]In Canada and many Western European countries, college is heavily funded by the government.

We still have to get student loans here.

I’ve posted this before but Boomers are responsible for student loans not being able to be discharged through bankruptcy. In the 80s, everyone was financing medical school, law school and business school. Not just the gap they couldn’t pay, but in many cases, 100% of the cost PLUS living expenses. Then on their rise up the career ladder, they filed for Chapter 7 bankruptcy when they couldn’t pay it back. It got so bad that the system was overhauled and rules but in place that you couldn’t refinance or discharge student loans in personal bankruptcy claims.

If you need another reason to hate Boomers this should be the biggest one.

I think the best thing to do if you have to rely on student loans is do your first two years at a community college and then the next two at a state school. It will keep the costs way down. A degree from a state school can still get you a decent job with a decent income.

Agree, r54. Everyone under age 40 needs the rethink the value and prestige of a college degree. Ivys are handing them out to whoever can afford them, including a huge number of foreign students. I’m all for scholarships for deserving students but anyone who is not poised to be a high earner in a competitive field is nuts for taking on that level of debt. Same as those who go to a lesser tier private university. You can get an incredible education at a state school.

R53 is ignorant. He doesn't even know even when/ why the law changed.

[quote] Bitter eldergays who stopped paying attention to the world three decades ago and have no idea how things operate now.

They have no idea how people are okay with being thieves who receive an expensive college education, instead of going to the cheapest state option, and then try to get out of actually paying for it. They have no idea that there are student loan deadbeats who have zero moral foundation and accordingly have no guilt whatsoever from stealing the loan money.

C'mon, I hate to pile on with the "eldergays are so out of touch," but private and state schools have been refusing to accept credit for community college classes (except as electives) for the past 20 years. And if you are hoping to pursue an even halfway rigorous course of study, you have about 9 credits of electives to work with, which is about one half of 1 of the 4 semesters (and 2 years) you'll spend at community college. I see some states are better at making sure state schools accept cc credits, but still, that's a lot of time and not much money (if any at all) saved.

*a lot of time lost, and not much money....

Don’t you fucking dare blame this on me

Maybe get a side hustle until your main job pays a better salary. You can make more than 70K pretty easily in the Bay Area. Something will turn up but spend your time looking rather than writing articles and blogs about how you can't come up with a couple hundred bucks a month. Walk dogs, baby sit, tutor kids. It's just not that hard.

R58, show me the data, because I taught at community colleges and I am certain that's not true.

Go ahead...I'll wait.

I assume these whiners will be loudly blaming President Biden for their poor choices and the horror of actually PAYING BACK money they borrowed!

They weren't going to vote anyway.

R62,

[quote]If the US Government can bail out Wall Street and Failing Banks operated/serving billionaires (think Silicon Valley) then it's about time they extended the privilege to working class citizens.

You fail to address the fact that the age cohort most affected simply refuses to show up on election day. Voters under 30 are mathematically non-voters under 30.

They can and should blame themselves for refusing to help elect candidates who would be empowered by their numbers to help as you suggest.

I don't have any loans so I just laugh waiting for these spoiled brats to catch on to the solution!

Imagine spending way too much for a shitty degree and living somewhere expensive, and then complaining about it.

Everywhere is expensive now.

What losers! Why didn't they just use their trust fund to pay for college?

Don’t. Even.

What does this mean? About interest being prohibited?

“At the same time, they’re bracing for the crush of loan payments, which will cost at least $400 a month combined. They hope to pay more to avoid interest, which is prohibited for them as practicing Muslims.”

The bankruptcy exclusion was passed in1976 and was specifically aimed at preventing boomers from skipping out on their obligations. If you need to hate the boomers, knock yourself out but that's not a valid reason.

Someone on Twitter suggested that the article erred by not including a financial planning professional with tips on how to economize. I concur. I'd also include a mental health expert to discuss how depressing it is to assume this debt. Back in 1987, I was depressed for six months. Then i got on with it.

I agree with everything said on this thread about tuition being too damn expensive and not always being a good value proposition. None of the people in this article are unemployed or making 20K a year with 200k in loans. They have well-paying jobs and may have their debt decreased by Biden's bailout if the Supreme Court let's it stand. I have no problem with that. I'm not a Republican.

R42 of course they don't. But look at these bitches whine about Medicare and Social Security, which their generations are voting to gut right as they're on the brink of retirement.

R70 Under Islamic (and Jewish) law and cultural custom, charging or paying interest is forbidden.

R73 But I guess it's ok to take out loans.

R74 Yes. Interest-free loans. It's how business works among these cultures, or at least the strict adherents of them.

R75 Yeah, good luck with that.

Biden should have extended some of those billions in COVID loans as "forgivable" loans to pay back college debt and then the debtees could have conveniently never repaid the "forgivable" COVID billions, like every other grifter from all walks of life, including CONGRESS.

What's the status on Biden's student loan forgiveness?

Best be cutting down on that avocado toast!

Higher education should be free. However, in the present it makes no sense to go into heavy debt for any degree that doesn’t prepare you for a high income career. That does not include education, social work, counseling, gender studies etc. Find the cheapest city or state school. It will make zero difference for any future earnings. Once established in most careers, no one will care where you went to school. Even the prestige of an Ivy will,fade and mean nothing,

Laughing at these children who thought they would get a free ride from the government.

R81 You'll get yours, you cunt as these children are the same who get take care of your old ass

R81 at the Social Security office:

"I'M OLD! GIMME-GIMME-GIMME!!!!"

R82

Nah these children wouldn’t be able to take care of anyone.

They can’t even pay a bill.

Slipping that outlier Italian-vacation Muslim into the article was classic whataboutery trolling, versus the 80-90% who used loans to finance trade school or community college, are paying more interest than principal, and are underwater without loan relief. The Biden administration released data that this was overwhelmingly NOT gender-studies majors at Berkeley, and the posters claiming this are stooges for republican fascist talking points.

Decent humans don’t make it an “I paid my loans, so should they” pissing contest. Our eldergay loans were tiny comparing to going into house-sized debt to get a basic associates degree. It was $12k a year for Northwestern in the 80s; now it’s $65k. The younger generations have their annoyances, but they’ve had it much, much harder than us on student debt.

I never understand the superiority and downright glee in these DL threads about college debt, the alumni of schools of Hard Knocks; or In My Time, I Proudly Paid Off My $6000 Loan IN FULL; or I Was Treated Like Shit My Entire Life So I Recoil at Anyone Wanting Anything for Himself lining up to shit on younger people whose choices were different, whose job markets were different, who for better or worse thought they were doing something right or at least nothing bad.

The shift to awarding corporations and CEOs with ridiculous sums of money tax-free, robbing the pensions and health plans and salaries of staff to do it. The shift of an economy to one where you had better make some money buying and selling your house at the exact right time and take in a nice inheritance or two, too -- because your salary is never going to do more than keep you barely afloat, The erosion of ideas that held fast for generations that applying oneself at work without having to be too fucking clever at it would pay off, that a 30 year mortgage would always be paid off with/in 30 years, that longevity of work had rewards... These things have all gone to absolute shit and your American dream/s with them, but the fault lies nowhere in in fat kids with blue hair and expensive degrees in Gender Studies who don't even know how to write a cursive thank you note for the shitty Cross graduation present their bitter gay uncle gave them for graduation.

Poor and modest folks should only attend expensive private colleges when those institutions are "need blind" and give FULL TUITION and often more financial aid - FREE. Not a loan. There is list of current need blind schools. If you are lucky and get a FULL RIDE at a non need blind school - because even they award these - to jocks, or to categories of students they want to have, then that's great, too. Modest and poor people should NEVER take out huge loans to pay for expensive colleges that don't value the students enough to pay them.

Speaking from experience. When I told my dad I was going to an Ivy school he was ANGRY. Really pissed. he saw it as an attack on his class consciousness and on his financial responsibility to support me. I had to explain to him many times over that I would go when they awarded me FULL TUITION. He didn't believe it. He only believed it when he saw it on paper with my name on it.

Moral - the super elite schools with billions of dollars in endowment who commit to "need blind" are not creating this situation.

It's the vast range of middling schools, both private and public, that are over priced.

All state universities should be like the rest of the world, with modest tuitions for instate residents. This means the state taxpayers must fork over that funding. Which also means some state universities may be over extended and have to reduce campuses. With today's technology, that can be done.

I think 2 year community colleges should have a "admin fee" of about 200-400 a SEMESTER. No other charges. Kids should be thrown out when they fail 2 semesters in a row. They can apply to other community colleges, if one will accept them. Or there can be a waiting period of 3 years or longer, before they can apply again.

Higher education is necessary but it ALSO a privilege and responsibility and tax payers should have some accountability that these schools are not a dozen layers of well-paid deans sitting on shitty programs and shitty adjunct instructors.

IMO we millennials were promised too much by greedy boomer fucks who just wanted to exploit our labor. Our entire perception of life was shattered in the last 30 years and it hurts. Now our artsy degrees mean nothing, even STEM degrees don’t carry the bang for our buck they used to, inflation outpaces all things, we can’t buy homes, we keep letting republicans win critical victories, regression in our rights, etc. Now we have the next generation exceeding us in many ways, already marketing their “brand” online before they can drive. It’s just too much. The sheer number of people in the world + social media has created late-stage capitalism and unmasked the truth that everything that exists WILL 100% be exploited for profit and there’s nothing poor millennials can or ever will do about it.

Most boomers would just say to suck it up and point to hustle culture garbage. But it’s all lies and I’m glad many of my generation are “starving the beast” by giving up on procreation, intentionally or not. We gentle dreamers were never meant to thrive under these conditions. Of course it’s a useless plink in the sea of projected migration. But at the end, I’ll gladly leave knowing I invested nothing into this boring, deceitful society and lived for solely my own pleasure.

OMG this thread is Boomer catnip! Carry on.

[quote]IMO we millennials were promised too much by greedy boomer fucks who just wanted to exploit our labor.

[quote]We gentle dreamers were never meant to thrive under these conditions.

JFC, R88 -- this kind of bullshit is why people hate your generation.

Or was this written by ChatGPT?

[quote]Laughing at these children who thought they would get a free ride from the government.

Yeah, who'd they think they were....the wealthy?

Obviously people shouldn’t have taken on the debt if they couldn’t pay it back. But the economic environment has definitely crumbled.

Many of us are currently unwilling to live in significantly worse conditions than we expected, while still working ourselves to death for other people’s profits. The fact that previous generations did it means nothing. We can now see it happening in our faces and it feels awful. So we’re giving up in many ways. Trying isn’t worth it.

Here is the list of need blind universities.

I also think that the extremely rich universities should expand their enrolments AND each one should adopt at least one underfunded private or state school, that is serious, but could really use a leg up. They could share their abundant resourses and help more kids reach the American dream.

R83 Nice false equivalence, dumbass.

R92? You should see the way I'M living!

After working for my state government as a clerk, I wanted to better myself; so I went to college at 30, got my master's at 32, finished my Ph.D. coursework at 38. Everything but my undergrad was paid for by the schools I attended (teaching assistantships), but I did take out student loans for living expenses which I fully paid off when I was 50.

But the great jobs never materialized. I'm a social scientist with a statistical field, and while working as a statistician, I was asked to falsify data so many times I got two of my bosses fired. I also taught at community colleges, but I was never offered a tenure-track position because I'm gay and out to my students (in a southern state). I went back to work for the state government and managed to handle working with a bunch of useless millennials until I could get a very small pension, and then with my paltry savings I bought an old trailer in a rural area and have been here amongst the Deplorables ever since. Happy Retirement!

Tell me again about everything you were promised that "we Boomers" didn't give you.

You deserved a better standard of living, I agree. I'm sorry.

I think creative and intellectually ambitious young people should study what they would like, but not take out much in loans to do so. I also think that universities should teach and inform young people about career tracks. People who attend really elite universities tend to have a lot of options with just a BA, and even today that BA can be in History or Math or French. They will have to prove themselves on the jobs but their prestige diploma does help them get the job. After a few years, it becomes clear who can do things autonomously and with critical thinking. Such people, no matter the school that graduated them, will have a lot of possibilities in their careers. My sister predated me a few years in NYC and she taught me that if the career you try out isn't financially feasible, you have to change careers, and quickly. This is possible if you are competent and clever person. Many people are not that. Other people think the credential will get them a career. This only works sometimes. You can't rely on it.

Many people from the middle and working classes don't know very much about professional careers. People make ignorant and unfortunate choices in their youth.

There is nothing wrong with a diploma in "gender studies" if you got it from Bryn Mawr and you are a very clever gal who can do ANYTHING, at the entry level, and find the appropriate job sector and career path from there.

Woe to the dunce with an IQ of 100 who gets a Gender Studies BA from Sheboygan U., and who can't write, can't think critically, isn't socially skilled, and is doesn't have autonomy and initiative.

Grateful for the PSLF. My loans were forgiven last December. What a Christmas gift that was. Too bad this girl and others don’t qualify.

Republicans suck.

R73 I did not know that. Thank you.

Observant Muslims have two choices: borrow from family/a local Muslim finance group, to get around any interest. Or go the conventional route of a bank etc. but fo everything they can to pay down principals quickly so it’s less dirty to them.

Here’s one way to do it, at the link.

[quote]Our eldergay loans were tiny comparing to going into house-sized debt to get a basic associates degree. It was $12k a year for Northwestern in the 80s; now it’s $65k.

Speaking of house-sized debts, many more people are burdened by home mortgages than student loans. My parents took out a home loan for $23,000 in the 70s, my nephew just took one out for $550,000.

Almost 50% of all mortgage loans in the U.S. are backed by the federal government through the FHA, VA, USDA, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Should those be forgiven, too?

[quote] It will make zero difference for any future earnings. Once established in most careers, no one will care where you went to school. Even the prestige of an Ivy will, fade and mean nothing,

This is absolutely true and so many college-aged kids don't understand this. Apparently their parents don't either. Get a foothold in your career and prove your worth and it doesn't matter where you went to college, you can advance in your career just fine if you're competent.

I heard there are investment vehicles that use student loans as an asset similar to mortgage backed securities. This why the GOP is so adamant about opposing debt relief - it will mess with their investments

She should apply for income-driven repayment or PAYE if her income is so low compared to COL. Also I assume social workers usually work for some sort of local or federal government agency or nonprofit so she should be able to apply PSLF. After 120 payments (10yr), which may be pretty low if she is doing IDR or PAYE, she’ll avoid paying the entirety of her loans. Myself, I’m a 27 y/o who has 140k loan (40k UG, 100k private PA school) but make 114k right after graduation. Having zero interest helped a lot and I wished it would be a permanent thing but oh well. I think a big part of the problem is people who get degrees without considering the return in investment of their post grad salary compared to their tuition.

R103 Those are private student loans, held by banks and investment firms.

The loans under consideration for forgiveness are federal student loans, held by the federal government.

[quote]It will make zero difference for any future earnings. Once established in most careers, no one will care where you went to school. Even the prestige of an Ivy will, fade and mean nothing,

As someone who went to top tier schools for undergrad and MBA, I can assure you that this statement in not true in many industries which have high educational barriers to entry, those industries that only recruit from certain key schools to fill positions.

Sure, the values fades, but there is still a great deal of value.

OP's article indicates that these kids are paying around $400 to $500 a month. Is that typical? That's about the same as my monthly payment 25 years ago. Why did I think they were paying around $1000 a month?

R106 That only matters if you're headed to Wall Street to work amongst the crypto bros who sing the Yale Fight Song while doing coke off a hooker's tits at 10am. Those cretins LOVE to talk about their legacy admissions to the Ivy League, as if it means they accomplished it themselves.

Ordinary, mid-level assholes - which is most of America - don't care where you attended college.

[quote]OP's article indicates that these kids are paying around $400 to $500 a month. Is that typical? That's about the same as my monthly payment 25 years ago. Why did I think they were paying around $1000 a month?

You do know how loan payments work, right? The payment amortizes the amount borrowed at a given interest rate over a set period of time.

Therefore, if the payment amount is the same, what can we deduce about the loan amounts, rates, or amortization periods?

R107 Like the taste of Soylent Green, it varies from person to person. And based on the principal and interest. And the repayment plan.

I have a B.A., an M.S., and a Ph.D. from state schools. This fueled just barely six figures of student loan debt. But since I'm in public service and earning a modest income, my repayment plan caps my payments at somewhere between $300 (before COVID pause) and $600 (after COVID pause) per month. Another five years of government service and monthly payments, and they will forgive the loan balance tax-free.

Public Service Loan Forgiveness allows government and nonprofit workers to forgive their loans after ten years of on-time payments. Monthly payment amounts are tied to your income, and rise as you get raises over time. But many government entities and nonprofits - ranging from state universities to charities, transit agencies to school districts, and even federal agencies themselves - don't know about the program and don't help workers sign up for it.

Friends of mine who are medical doctors or dentists graduate with $300k or more in loans. Their payments are higher, but their earnings keep pace, and they can afford it. But the pressure to repay such a huge loan balance does lead young doctors away from low-paying general practice and into the glitzy specialties where they are less needed but better paid.

Worst off are the people like those in this cherry-picked article. Fools who go to Columbia or Stanford to get a teaching degree, racking up Maybach-sized debt for a Corolla-paying job. Working in public service will help them a little, but that still means ten years of paying as you're told, and for the few nutjobs this reporter dug up, that is apparently a reach.

The fight isn’t over, what are all these white flags 🏳️? This could be the end of round 1. There way be a need to regroup and restrategize. Keep up the fight!

[quote] You do know how loan payments work, right? The payment amortizes the amount borrowed at a given interest rate over a set period of time.

You're very tedious....congratulations. I've heard many of these students are carrying six-figure loan debt, that doesn't yield a $450 monthly payment.

Senior Lesbian is obnoxious and not to be confused with ElderLez

College is not and shouldn't be for everyone. There are plenty of jobs you can do without incurring a huge educational debt.

[quote]You're very tedious....congratulations. I've heard many of these students are carrying six-figure loan debt, that doesn't yield a $450 monthly payment.

You're financially illiterate...congratualtions (there's only three dots in an ellipsis).

Of course, there are people with six-figure loan debt and they may or may not be paying $450 per month. You have no idea how long the amortization period is, how many loans they have, or what the specific T&Cs of the loan are - perhaps they're six figures because they've capitalized deferred payments, so the amounts have increased along with interest, but the payment amount remained the same. There are literally dozens of plausible configurations.

But, Occam's Razor suggests that the $450 (recent analysis suggests the average is about $503 right now) figure reflects some median or average monthly payment. In turn, which is related to, but not mathematically equal to, the average outstanding debt - which was $37K at the end of 2022. Also, the "six-figure" debt that you're heard about reflects an extreme, rather than the average often cited in articles.

What we do know for certain is that you lack financial acumen to opine on this subject.

^^^Yep, still tedious....so much so you deserve an extra dot.

[quote]College is not and shouldn't be for everyone. There are plenty of jobs you can do without incurring a huge educational debt.

Unlike four/five decades ago, which is when time stopped for our eldergays, you can't even get an admin job in the year 2023 without a BA. A college education is necessary for most jobs these days.

R117 The dirty little secret of all those "Start in the Mailroom" jobs from the Boomer Era?

Blowing the boss.

Trust me. My grandmother "started in the mailroom" and worked her way up to a vice presidency by retirement. She fucked most of her bosses along the way, and married/divorced two of them.

r118 I have to be honest - if I could've climbed the corporate ladder by blowing my bosses instead of spending tons of time and $$$ on a BA and MBA I totally would've done it! I'm glad this forum is anonymous!

[quote]^^^Yep, still tedious....so much so you deserve an extra dot.

When it comes to knowledge, I'd rather be tedious about it than prideful of my ignorance of it.

...not to mention, you type fat.

You should try for humility rather than tedium. You don't know what you don't know.

You old cunts sound like my fucking grandfather- "all you have to do is put on a nice suit, comb your hair, and go into the personnel office and ask if they're hiring. They'll see a nice, clean cut young man like you and offer you a job on the spot."

R122 Old people LOVE this bullshit advice, but so do my rich asshole friends who get all their jobs through their fathers' social networks.

The advice is half true in the world's capitals. I don't know about flyoverstan. The spirit and intent of the advice is true. In dynamic cities there are plenty of opportunities to get jobs and then the cream rises to the top, and quickly. Movers and shakers like eying up young people and going on their hunch and experience and giving young people they think can be stars, a chance. The young person may need to make lateral moves but everyone one figures out who can produce and who is a hot house flower dead weight.

It’s all pretty much fucked: too many people, late-stage capitalism, etc that I mentioned above. Life in the future will only become more competitive and profit-driven. There will be larger and larger numbers of poor people just hanging around because inflation will outpace wages forever. They will own nothing. Those who want to keep at this may be forced to look to some form of ultra-capitalism as a long-term fix.

Debtors’ labor camps might be the only solution to guaranteed employment for those diehard natalists who are convinced their future kids need to be here to do something. Billionaires will probably fund their creation and control all aspects on behalf of the government: AmazonLabor or MuskFarms. Tenants will be given a cot, maybe a small room, and work doing whatever the billionaire wants. The tenants would of course be contractually required to procreate to ensure eternal profit growth. There will also be a gamification/meritocracy system to create castes and the right amount of discord to maintain control.

You're funny. Bravo. That is only a few steps removed, and only on a few points, from today's Dillinger Capitalism. Otherwise it is spot on about today. The last sentence, for example.

[quote] Unlike four/five decades ago, which is when time stopped for our eldergays, you can't even get an admin job in the year 2023 without a BA. A college education is necessary for most jobs these days.

One word: OnlyFans.

[quote]Yes, I know you'd rather put the money into your retirement, house or kids' education fund or use it to buy things. But you signed paper to get money and now you have to pay it back.

A huge part of the issue, which apparently you don't understand, is the interest rates, which are very high when they should be very low.

The phony businesses who took out PPP loans also signed a piece of paper obligating them to pay back the money.

But the cocksuckers in Congress forgave those loans.

Why bail out MTG, and Fannie and Freddie, and not me?

[quote]a shitty degree

r66 An MSW is hardly a shitty degree. It's even more marketable if you get licensed and become an LMSW. You can pretty much get hired anywhere in the mental health field; a field that's aggressively hiring at all times due to high demand from people needing mental healthcare and not enough staff to meet these demands. One could also go the education route and become a school social worker, which is also a stable career always hiring.

She just chose a stupid expensive college to obtain that degree.

The very fact that people would go into such huge debt for degrees that have limited market value is the real issue.

You have to question the decision making of someone who goes into debt to get a masters in social work before clearing whatever undergraduate debt she had or at least building a financial cushion.

Basic rule of sound financial decision making is not to incur more debt than your income or expected income will cover. It's one thing to spend money on getting a JD from Harvard or an MBA from Wharton. It's delusional to put on the same amount of debt to get a masters in social work or an MFA.

I’m so glad these cheats are finally being forced to pay up, don’t cry about having to pay for a loan you signed for knowing it would need to pay back.

I surprised the article used such mundane $300-500 examples rather than the "upper class" of student debtors who have super high payments.

This generally effects a class of debtors who were presumably at one time paying their loans. The payment pause was probably fantastic and many people did pay down other debt or save. But there seems to be a subgroup who buried their heads in the sand and splurged. In isolation a single splurge seems fine - but to keep on doing it knowing that payments would resume and without getting a higher paying job seems short sighted. Some people normalize things really quickly and I think there's a group of borrowers who convinced themselves that payments would never start up again, as stupid as that seems. Even without Biden's student debt relief, 2.5 years of no payments PLUS no accrual of interest is a huge benefit.

R134 And this reporter managed to find a few ludicrous examples from that subgroup.

A cousin of mine is currently attending the University of Connecticut. It's $36,000 per year.

$36k per year for fucking UCONN?! Fucking hell.

This all reminds me of the line from Police Squad. Lt. Frank Drebin has just been told to turn in his badge, and he complains to his partner "Just think... the next time I shoot somebody, I could go to jail for it."

Again, it's the interest on the loans which is quite high and keeps getting higher. You old cunts are so out of touch.

And you can't do much careerwise in the 21st Century without a college degree, even for bullshit jobs.

Yes R138. We don’t know anything about interest on borrowed money…it didn’t even exist until you younger kids came along. Back in our golden / ancient times, we paid the mortgage with peppercorns and student loans with bushels of wheat.

r139 stay out of touch

R138. Have you tried payin’ with hickory nuts? It worked for the Cunninghams.

"A huge part of the issue, which apparently you don't understand, is the interest rates, which are very high when they should be very low."

Wouldn't they know that going in though, like Oldsters who paid 13% mortgages back in the day, or anyone who has a credit card?

13%? Please. Try 18% mortgages, in 1978.

Hell, all of my student loans from the 1980s had much higher rates than what these pimply asswipes are paying/not actually paying yet.

It's the interest that kills you. And of course the cost of college is much higher than it was in the 80s.

R140 stay gold, Ponyboy. And then shut up.

Keep staying out of touch r145.

R144 based on your obtuseness, I’m doubting you even went to college.

Yes we had debt, but it was nothing compared to the prices universities have been charging for the last 20 years.....that's the point everyone seems to be forgetting.....my undergrad debt when I graduated in 98 was like 48K....I paid it off with no help. Now, $48K is about one year at some of these schools (and not even top tier). If the prices were the same per year, then maybe I'd be pissed, but they're not.

The average mortgage rate in 1978 was 9.6%, but the median home price was $56,000. That's a mortgage payment of just over $400 per month, which accounts for roughly 1/3 of the median monthly salary of $1,255 in 1978 dollars.

R143 must've been quite a deadbeat in 1978 to be charged DOUBLE the national average rate for a home loan.

One thing about our digital era of internet and social media is that Americans are waking up to the fact that the rest of the Western World has a lot of great benefits that Americans are denied by their government and pig-fucking corporate overlords, such as universal healthcare, government paid college tuition, a lack of firearms and gun violence, etc. Younger Americans see what's going on in other Western countries and they're bitter and resentful that they can't have the same things. As they should be.

I'm guessing R 143 just had the misfortune of having a variable rate loan. There wasn't the amount of financial education back then or a student loan lobby.

I think everyone should negotiate the best deal they can. But pretending this thread is about Republican boomers reminiscing about the good old days misses the mark. No one likes paying back student loans. It's never been fun. It's always entailed diverting funds from uses that were either more fun or more productive long-term.

Back when I got my student loans, I actually ended up with several loans, each with a different term and rate.

Are the majority of these student loans a single loan or is the debt spread over multiple loans? What really sped up my repayment was focusing on the smallest loan first to eliminate that monthly payment since it doesn't matter whether you're in your first month or 38th month, the payment amount remains the same. By eliminating the loan, I could roll the money for the minimum payment into the next smallest loan and repeat. The advice to payoff the highest interest rate is misguided in many cases.

If people are paying small amounts to several loans, it would likely help a huge number of people if the loans could be consolidated.

1977-1984 rates

👀 GSL rates in the 1980s

Fees on federal student loans were higher as well 👀

I am cheered to see some vocational high schools offering more wide ranging specialties, like aircraft maintenance and television production. Plus, they have college-level classes. This is the way to go. You get a skill and a chance to either further that or build on it with some college.

WTF was the cost of tuition FOUR fucking decades ago?

How much was a school like NYU in 1983? $4000 per year? It's currently about $56,000 a year.

God bless you eldergays for paying off the 13% interest on your $7000 loan back in the 80s by working a summer job.

God bless you millennials for delaying that trip to Italy and buying Dad that designer-logoed polo shirt by paying your financial obligations. Some of you are thinking of not having children because of your student loans. That's a loss the world will never recover from.

R160 These people are Gen Z, you moron. Millennials are well into their thirties by now.

[quote]Younger Americans see what's going on in other Western countries and they're bitter and resentful that they can't have the same things. As they should be.

Maybe they should try voting.

r162 it's not like Dems are going to do much about guns, skyrocketing costs of living and tuition, etc. The type of liberal , progressive politician that the rest of the Western World has is demonized in the US.

r160 the dumb cunt they profiled in that article isn't really typical of what's really happening.

[quote]it’s not like Dems are going to do much about guns, skyrocketing costs of living and tuition, etc.

They would if they had veto-proof majorities, which younger voters could give them.

And if my aunt had a dick she would be my uncle r165

R166 My aunt DOES have a dick. It's her husband - my uncle.

You mean all those borrowers got to enjoy life as if they hadn't been raped by their loan interest rates?

How dare they!

It's good that they did, R168, but now it's time to pay.

I say let the issue stay alive and political. Let young people stay motivated to vote on this issue. Millennials and Gen Z voters outnumber Boomers, and that advantage grows stronger every day.

College affordability has needed a national discussion - and national reform - for decades. Instead of more aimless shit about abortion and oil in Alaska, let's have this conversation. Let's force candidates to articulate their vision for this issue, one way or another. If they don't have a clue about the issue, bounce their asses out and start electing people who spent more than $9 for college.

[quote]I say let the issue stay alive and political. Let young people stay motivated to vote on this issue. Millennials and Gen Z voters outnumber Boomers, and that advantage grows stronger every day.

The problem is that they'll vote for some third party candidate that promises them free money, resulting in the dems losing the House, Senate, and the Presidency.

Meanwhile, the rethugs will vote straight down party lines while conceding more and more policy to maga idiots. Then, they'll redraw voting districts and retain power in states until they've crossed the line and can amend the Constitution. You only need 38 states and they hold 22 solidly right now and gaining ground in the swing states.

According to inflation calculators the cost of my college tuition and first year salary in my career are the same equivalent today. Same with my first NYC rent. The only thing that is off all these years later is minimum wage. It was $3.35 per hour which would be worth $8.78 today. Federal minimum wage today is $7.25 but in NY it is $15 per hour.

College tuition is way more than standard inflation. Unless you think $4000 in 1983 is worth $56,000 in 2023.

R129 because those PPP loan borrowers are older and the same age as the posters here, thus they feel entitled to all sorts of benefits and assistance that they can get. In case you haven't noticed, today's elders are very much all about themselves and serving their own interests

The problem is that when people defer payments or make just the minimum payment because they have shitty jobs, the loan isn't in default, but the debt keeps growing (compound interest works both ways). I have a friend who had no financial help from parents or relatives. She went to a low cost state school for her undergraduate (her degrees were in music and piano performance). Then grad school at American University and finally DMA from Eastman Conservatory. She could defer her loans which were high, but not exorbitant, while she was in a degree program - but what she didn't really understand was that her debt was growing. She only borrowed 60,000 to attend all those universities- but by the time she had a decent paying university job to make all those payments, her debt had ballooned to 120,000. She's very frugal and was working all along, but at jobs that paid little. That's a formidable amount to be facing when you are 40+ years old and are making, perhaps $45,000/year. Now she is earning closer to $100,000, but it really took a number of small inheritances from parents (now deceased) and other relatives to make a big enough dent in her debt to make her payments manageable. She's now 63 and she's probably nearly finished paying off her college loans, but now of course has a mortgage, etc. She'll probably have to work at least until 75 to be out of debt.

I was lucky. I got a lot of financial aid at a prestigious university, had a work study job, and also had a graduate assistanceship when I went for my masters. - so my total loans were not unmanageable and once I got a decent job, I prepaid on them so that they weren't hanging over my head. I wouldn't sleep at night if I were in the position of some of these former students with such high debt. It's one thing to be an MD with a lot of medical school debt, because you're earning $250,000/year. But in most other professions, you might have nearly that much debt but not nearly that salary.

[quote]I have a friend who had no financial help from parents or relatives. She went to a low cost state school for her undergraduate (her degrees were in music and piano performance). Then grad school at American University and finally DMA from Eastman Conservatory. She could defer her loans which were high, but not exorbitant, while she was in a degree program - but what she didn't really understand was that her debt was growing.

[quote]She's now 63 and she's probably nearly finished paying off her college loans, but now of course has a mortgage, etc. She'll probably have to work at least until 75 to be out of debt.

r175 This is basically my story (right down to the damn music performance degrees) and the fact that your friend is over half my age and just now "nearly finished" paying off her loans is depressing as hell.

But, I'm the dummy who took out the loans, majored in music education, dropped the EDU courses because I realized me and teaching don't mix as well as I thought, and ended up using absolutely zero portions of that degree while owing a ton of student debt. That was my choice. I signed that master promissory note without fully reading or comprehending the details, but I understood that it was borrowed funds that I would be expected to pay back.

It is what it is.

R171 is exactly --sadly-- correct.

R152 unless your various loan balances and your interest rates matched up from lowest to highest, you paid extra interest for no good reason on the larger balances.

There is a perfectly valid reason to start payments with debt at the higher interest rate; don’t mislead people with your one-off story.

Money is fake it’s what it makes one do that matters. Look at the behavior that is changed because of it and how that behavior is changed that’s what matters. Banks get money because even if they crash the behaviors that banking causes are wanted be the buisness profitable or not. The behaviors that not having to pay back a student loan cause are less wanted by those with power. Education is supposed to set one’s trajectory as a worker the paying back of loans in a reenforcement of that.

College students think they are going to be hired right out of college with a job that pays at least $100k and not in a big city, but in flyoverstan.

This is the fault of past generations including mine that placed too much emphasis on getting a college degree and not even considering alternatives.

The message today should be that there is no need to take on excessive debt for a career that simply will not generate the future income needed to live comfortably and pay off student loans and provide alternatives.

r180 as mentioned above, you can't even get an admin job without a BA in this day and age. College is a necessary evil for even the most basic employment in most career areas.

The maybe 20 yr old bank teller dude at my bank was going on about his upcoming vacation to Greece and his 2 weeks in France last summer. He is very obese, wears ugly glasses and is so fem you wonder if he’s transitioning.

No one is arguing that a college degree is necessary in many cases but going into a lifetime of debt to obtain one is completely unnecessary.

r183 Undergraduate college should be free, in the first place. Only graduate school and professional schools should come out of the student's pocket. Most other developed nations offer free college. I don't understand why the US just stops providing free public education when most job positions that pay enough to make a living wage have "Bachelor's Degree" as the minimum education requirement. It's senseless.

Don’t worry R184. Republicans will dismantle free public education as well in a few years. So all primary education will be for profit and for (their) god. Many parents will probably just opt to send their kids to work in factories though, to bring in extra income.

[quote] I don't understand why the US just stops providing free public education when most job positions that pay enough to make a living wage have "Bachelor's Degree" as the minimum education requirement. It's senseless.

Because the US has some of the most ignorant, selfish piece of shit people on Earth. They don't care about the common good or an educated, informed population. All they care about is themselves.

20th Century conservatives successfully sold the idea that a "welfare state" is socialism which is repugnant and close to ungodly communism. The USA rebuilt Western Europe after WWII including their socialised medicine and higher education. The USA started to get serious about low-cost quality public higher education for the masses in the 60s and many states built admirable and vast state university systems including multiple small but complete colleges and several research universities, inside one state alone. These were incredibly well-funded into that 80s. A small town in a remote part of the state could have a fully functioning college with liberal arts and sciences and sports teams, the whole shebang. Professors were often graduates of the great universities and they were tenured and paid proper upper middle class salaries.

The 80s Dillinger Capitalism, however, required tax cuts for corporations and the rich. The squeeze was on. The price of public education had to passed partly to the students and their families. By the year 2000, all former intentions of quality low cost public higher education were lost.

It will take a sea change to go back to the status of 1960s and 1970s when all state taxpayers paid for quality public higher education.

By the way, the cost per student per year to educate an undergraduate are remarkably consistent across North America and Europe. It's easily 40-50K per student per year to run a good public university. In Europe, the STATE is paying that. European universities are not "free" rather they are publicly funded.

The MIT of Switzerland - ETH Zurich - is 9th ranked in the world. Swiss and FOREIGN students pay about 1400 USD per year. The Foreign students be educated on the Swiss tax payer dime is a kind of foreign aid, you see, from a rich country. Running the top STEM universities is incredibly expensive and the tax payers are funding that.

Could this happen again in USA? Even Joe Biden doesn't have the clout and vision to dare it or accomplish it. They can't even get modest community college to be 100% publicly funded in all state.

GREEDY GREEDY American rich people.

Also the social shift to all young people going to college has happened in many countries. Germany and Switzerland are famous for their extremely well developed apprenticeship systems + tech schools - not universities - for training workers. However, any of the former tech schools are now applied universities granting BA and MA. Many of the apprenticeship tracks have lost luster. In 30 years the number of Swiss teens now going to Gymnase to prepare to enter university has multiplied by 6. It used to be a small elite that went to gymnast then University. No longer. This is true in many many countries. That is why it's important to fund and expand state universities for average folks who can nevertheless manage higher education studies. And they should be affordable.

While I agree that public universities should be heavily subsidized, I also think that not everyone is the right fit for a university. Universities historically were meant to expand someone's mind, by exposing him to a myriad of subjects and points of views. The word UNIVERSE is in the name for a reason. (And comes from the Latin word which means "whole"). The current economy has created the notion of a university as a kind of trade school for business and for computer coding. That was not what universities were intended to do, but I can understand parents wanting the most bang for their buck when they are shelling out 50 grand a year for Junior.

In regard to European universities, students begin testing into various kinds of preparatory schools for universities in their early teens, and are sorted then into aptitude. Those who are not academically inclined are steered towards trade schools, mechanical schools, and the like. That means the pool of likely students for universities is considerably smaller than in the US. We don't have that system. Everyone thinks his or her child ought to go to a university, even if that child is reading at 5th grade level at age 18.

Universities have dug themselves into a hole as well. The AMA discovered a long time ago that they had to limit access to medical schools to keep the number of people in the profession relatively small. The US doesn't need 200,000 people a year graduating with PhDs in English literature. It doesn't need 2000 people a year graduating with DMAs in piano performance. There are approximately 4000 institutions of higher learning in the US. Even supposing that every university changed its entire faculty every year, there would only be the need for 20,000 English Literature PhDs, and with the tenure system in place, in fact, only about 1/4th of that in practice.

But people graduating from a college should still have been exposed to English literature, world history, a foreign language, some math, some economic theory, and some philosophy. They ought to have had at least one course and preferably several that teach critical thinking skills. And those requirements should remain even if someone is rushing into STEM. (in other words, they should have a liberal arts background no matter what they are planning to do as a career). Much of the content of those courses could be taught in high school of course, if there wasn't such an emphasis on teaching to the test and meeting "national standards".

Are sociology degrees good for anything? Not judging

All true, R189. However note the nuance that things are changing in Europe, as I explained in R188. Meaning more and more average European teens are being tracked into, or opting to go, universities. Any many of the the "trade" schools are now "applied universities", after the Bologna Process. Which standardised higher education degrees and programmes across Europe. 15 years ago one could get a "professional certificate" but now it's a B.S. from an applied university. The options for trade jobs are diminishing. Furthermore, because the schools are affordable, many ordinary teens now are getting BS and if they succeed, rapidly the MS. A sea change from two decades ago.

Ciao Roma! Me haz billz!!

[quote]The options for trade jobs are diminishing.

Why, when the opposite is true in the US?

R193 Because the trades in Europe are traditional working class strong unions and cultures, well paid. Like in the old days in USA - 50s-1980s. But now they trades can be done by uncertified immigrant workers and the blue collar class and culture is breaking down. The trades may be growing in USA but are they middle-class union jobs?

Let's take "baker". A good trade that is not doing well in some European countries because the consumer is increasingly satisfied with industrial bakery products. So becoming a baker was once a promising apprenticeship and career. But now people buy factory bread and cakes and those factories are not staffed by many "bakers".

What about "machinist". Highly precise luxury level machining jobs remain. But much of the rest has been offshored. And so on and so on and so on.

This carries down to the level of shop bottoms, for example. Once upon a time, "employee de commerce" was an apprenticeship leading to a solid job as a sales clerk in an old fashioned shop.

If you shopped in the 80s or 90s or early 2000s, you were served by very knowledgeable, professional sales clerks. It's all been trashed now.

You took a loan. Pay it.

Thanks, R182, for acknowledging that the demise of public funding for universities is because of Reaganism and greedy rich people, not Boomers, as uncritical minds have been taught. It's a good strategy to obscure who is really pulling the strings. Yes, sone Boomers supported Reagan but many did not.

[quote]The trades may be growing in USA but are they middle-class union jobs?

All of my brothers work in the trades here in the US, and each makes six figures a year. They certainly didn't start out making that kind of money -- but their first jobs out of high school paid a lot more than my first "professional" job out of college.

^^But no, they're not union jobs. Unions are (or at least, were) strong in my state, but not in my area.

If I could do it over, I would definitely go into a unionized trade. Screw college.

Well I'm happy to hear they found the necessary incomes in the trades!

See what you idiots don't realize is that forcing these people to restart paying their student loans means that millions will default on their rents, mortgages, etc.

Millions will not take a vacation, thus the travel business takes a hit. Millions won't go out to dinner, thus restaurants take a hit. Millions won't redo their home, thus construction takes a hit.

It will ripple throughout the economy.

But you all think that it's some kind of morality play. Meanwhile, Trump is on his seventh bankruptcy? Meanwhile Private Equity made fucking PYREX go bankrupt?

Making sure that student loan debtors pay back every cent they agreed to pay is a hill worth dying on. There’s no grey area. They made an agreement they would pay back the money and so they must. No whataboutism, no examples of other debt being forgiven, will alter that.

^^^That's totally sane and I'd like to subscribe to your Substack.

[quote][R152] unless your various loan balances and your interest rates matched up from lowest to highest, you paid extra interest for no good reason on the larger balances.

[quote]There is a perfectly valid reason to start payments with debt at the higher interest rate; don’t mislead people with your one-off story.

This is wrong. While there are some situations where it might require some modification, if you're paying on several loans, whether credit cards or student loans, it generally works better to use excess cash to pay down the smallest loans first in order to eliminate that monthly payment. The excess payment is applied to principle reduction - on which interest is charged - so eliminating a small loan allows you to roll the minimum payment on that loan into principle reductions on the next loan.

The fact that people continue to perpetuate this strategy demonstrates that lack of financial literacy. Obviously, it's not 100% true all the time. There could be oddities in rates, meaningless differences in balance (obviously, you'd pay more on a $26K loan at 9% than a $24K loan at 3%), or amortization terms that throw it off. But, most people lack the acumen to test for certain.

r107, it totally depends on how much debt you have.

[quote]Even without Biden's student debt relief, 2.5 years of no payments PLUS no accrual of interest is a huge benefit.

Yep but its not enough. If Biden can't get more student loan relief, he is not getting re-elected. The oldest millennials are now in their early 40s and have their own families to raise, meaning they want most of the debt gone. They will not vote for him again if he can't get the job done.

Also, millions of people were displaced by the pandemic; for that reason alone many people will default once payments resume. My servicer changed over the course of the pandemic too, there are tons of people out there who don't even keep up with those changes and have no idea who they need to make payments to. Its going to be a shitshow.

[quote]If Biden can't get more student loan relief, he is not getting re-elected

“Biden doesn’t have a magic wand so I’m going to help return power to a party that has pledged never to provide any loan relief!”

They know that only Biden is going to help them get away with stealing all that money by not paying it back.

[quote]The excess payment is applied to principle reduction

R206? I'm not sure I'd take any financial advice from someone who doesn't know it's spelled "principal."

r208, nope they just won't vote at all like 2016.

[quote]nope they just won't vote at all like 2016.

Yes, which will increase the likelihood of a Republican being elected.

Biden owes his presidency (and the Dems owe their Senate majority) to voters under 40. If they don't deliver, R211 is correct. A lot of those voters will just stay home.

[quote]A lot of those voters will just stay home.

They should start a Cut Off My Nose To Spite My Face political party.

The Dem Senate - in an act of political suicide - voted not only to force a resumption of loan payments, but to force borrowers to pay up the interest accrued during the pause.

49 Republicans, one independent and one Democrat-in-name-only are responsible for that, R215, not the 46 Democrats that voted against it. As you well know.

[quote] The Dem Senate - in an act of political suicide - voted not only to force a resumption of loan payments, but to force borrowers to pay up the interest accrued during the pause.

Is it never better to do the right thing, like requiring resumption of payments, when it costs votes?

That's assuming it *is the right thing, dear. Which it very much is not.

I support student loan relief, but did people seriously think payments would NEVER resume? Plus, the relief was 10-20k. Did everyone who had more student loan debt think that it would suddenly disappear and they'd never have to pay it off?

Is Congress going to investigate why colleges have raised tuition so much or why the interest rates are allowed to make the payments so high?

We know why colleges have raised tuition so much - because they got the spigot turned on via federal loans and wanted to collect as much as they could. And students, at least to a large degree for a long time, were willing to pay.

And while interest rates are ridiculous, what's to investigate? It's not illegal to charge high interest rates for loans. Instead of investigating they should pass legislation capping interest rates for federal student loans. Private loans too, but I assume that would be more difficult.

I'm all for student loan debt relief, but what happens to the kids that start college this fall, or next fall? In four years, they will be held back for even longer as they have to pay the inflated tuition price of today's economy and then be saddled with the extra 10-20k that this crop of student borrowers gets forgiven.

1) make 2 year community college free as long as the student receives passing marks.

2) create "public service" agency open to HS graduates. It pays at least minimum wage and many of the positions can offer housing for free. Young people can work up to 3 years in this program. Each year successfully complete equals a "1 year voucher for higher education".

Oblige EVERY accredited university to accept the voucher. It doesn't matter if the tuition is 10K or 50K, the school must give free tuition for 1 year, in return for the voucher.

DO not oblige them to accept every student. But once the student has been admitted, the student can produce a voucher for 1, 2, or 3 years tuition and the college MUST accept it, in order to remain an accredited school.

The voucher can be applied to undergraduate or graduate tuition.

The schools will try got screen out the students who have the vouchers so there should be a minimum percentage of students at every school who are there on the voucher system in any one year.

The school receives NO subsidy for the voucher. The school has to have it finances in order and be able to absorb these students.

The students using the vouchers are being rewarded for public service.

It's a kind of "forced need blind" and shitty colleges that can't manage it should go out of business in the 21st century. Who needs them.

New student loans should be capped at what ever the cost of the cheapest state school option there is. If a student wants to go to a better or luxury college, then they need to pay for it themselves or get a scholarship.

They could cap fed student loans, but beyond that they'd be prohibiting banks from making student loans, which I doubt they'd go for.

I get that some sort of regulation is needed, but it's never going to be foolproof - someone will get themselves in financial limbo going to school. To avoid no one doing it seems it bit overreaching.

The only ones I know who thought/are demanding Biden wipe their loans out entirely are the Berners. Everyone else is being much more realistic about what they expect to happen and who's to blame that Biden can't do more than he's done.

There's something vaguely oily about giving an 18 year old tens of thousands of dollars in an unsecured loan.

Not even vaguely. But they and/or their parents took it.

Tomorrow is the big day.

If the court approves, most borrowers will still have to resume making payments in the fall, but they will be a fraction of what they were, pre-pandemic.

They won't get it.

The plaintiffs have no real standing to sue - A state is suing the administration, even though it's an independent state agency (MOHELA) that actually stands to suffer financially from the plan. And a few moron citizens are suing that forgiveness is unfair to them, even though they've already repaid their loans and wouldn't be materially affected by this either way.

The President and the Secretary also have clear statutory authority to do as they've done here, based on the 9/11 Heroes Act.

But this is a Republican court, so they'll invent shit out of thin air to keep poor people down.

I fucking warned every one of you ass-pirate reprobates in 2016!

r231 Coney Barrett & Kavanaugh have not ruled in favor of states that sued the feds in recent cases. But wouldn't put it past them to rule in favor of the Republican states in the student loan case.

Struck down, ouch!

It was sort of mean how they read the student loan individual case first - and it was unanimous that there was no standing. But THEN they read the case involving the states and (1) found standing, (2) found Biden overreached thus striking down relief. I mean, they could have read the the opinion that matters first.

Roberts language in the conclusion basically "if you criticize our opinions, you don't support the constitution" - oof. And the student loan case to the public at large overshadows the earlier-in-the-day LGBT case - the made up case where the women MIGHT one day be asked to design a same-sex couple website and because she might the court ruled that she (or anyone else) ever has to, or do anything in the context of their business for LBGT folks. More ways to discriminate. Fun!

Happy to see these folks get a break. Hope the court doesn't take it away from them. "Borrowers are eligible for forgiveness if they have accumulated the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years of qualifying months."

The Department of Education (Department) today will begin notifying more than 804,000 borrowers that they have a total of $39 billion in Federal student loans that will be automatically discharged in the coming weeks. In total, the Biden-Harris Administration has approved more than $116.6 billion in student loan forgiveness for more than 3.4 million borrowers.

The forthcoming discharges are a result of fixes implemented by the Biden-Harris Administration to ensure all borrowers have an accurate count of the number of monthly payments that qualify toward forgiveness under income-driven repayment (IDR) plans. These fixes are part of the Department’s commitment to address historical failures in the administration of the Federal student loan program in which qualifying payments made under IDR plans that should have moved borrowers closer to forgiveness were not accounted for. Borrowers are eligible for forgiveness if they have accumulated the equivalent of either 20 or 25 years of qualifying months.

Someone at my office got their notification email today about the discharge posted at r235, it was like they won the lottery. I hope they can do this for more people.

It's good publicity with an election coming up and in the wake of the Supreme Court decision. The means of relief isn't a new program - the 20 or 25 year IBR plan forgiveness has existed since well before Biden. But, the updated counts and quick forgiveness is sort of a "new" thing. Before, the government wasn't always that helpful and people often had to fight with their loan servicer to get things updated and prod Federal Student Aid to finalize forgiveness.

I got my DOE notificaiton today! w00t!

[quote]Your loan servicer(s) will notify you if and when your IDR forgiveness has been processed. It may take some time for your loan servicer to process your forgiveness and for your account to reflect this change.

I'll believe it when I see the balance change. Still, a very nice feeling indeed.

*notification. jesus.

Student loan debt was undoubtedly a factor in what happened this week. I told you bitches

R207, I've had three different "servicers" of my federal student loan debt, and i haven't sent the latest one a cent since payments kicked in over a year ago. I don't open their mail or respond to their emails. The astounding "pass the buck" failure of Biden on student loan debt and his failure to codifiy Roe V. Wade are just morally disgusting. He literally said he would do both before the 2020 election.

I agree r241