the fact that they actually hit the restart button was so insanely unnecessary and cruel. 60% seems high really
The cruelty is the point. You gotta use the whip to motivate your ‘workers’ right.
It’s one of the classic conservative rules: “Rich people perform better for money and poor people perform better when starved.”
Not sure what proportion of loans it accounts for, but the 60% figure probably also includes people like me who currently have $0 monthly payments. Hilariously every month it takes 3 days to “process” my “auto-debit payment” of $0 but I imagine those are all being marked as “paid” in the system.
Be careful. Mine has $0 monthly payments for some years but is still accruing interest.
Thankfully, Biden’s new IDR plan (“SAVE”) waives any additional accrued interest for the month after you’ve made your minimum payment (even if it’s $0.) This fixes the pretty massive flaw in the IDR plans that were allowing loans to grow out of control, despite payments made on them. As if people barely scraping by will not be unduly burdened by an even more massive debt if they ever manage to claw their way out of the low wage hole. Personally, after a long stretch of unemployment and low-wage jobs, I had like 5 years of payments under my belt and my loan had grown by 25%. Lol… Still hurts to think about even though I’m doing much better these days.
FYI, idk if anything will actually come of it, but Biden is now trying to do a more targeted loan forgiveness and one of the groups he is targeting are those who owe more than their initial loans. So, I guess we’ll see what happens.
If it’s income driven it doesn’t really matter when it all gets forgiven
Downvotes with no reply. Brilliant. Explain how I’m wrong…if you’re in ibr for 20 years it all gets forgiven.
I don’t know what you mean by “it doesn’t really matter”, but I’m assuming because it got forgiven, you don’t have to pay it. However, the forgiven amount is seen as income by the IRS and subsequently taxed. The higher the amount due to interest accrual, the higher the tax.
This is correct. While someone’s $50k of student loans could be “forgiven”, it means that year they will have an additional $50k worth of “income” on their taxes and will be taxed like any regular income would.
Also! You do need to make payments, and $0 is not considered a payment. You need to set up $1/mo payments on all your outstanding loans for them to count. Not that you go 10 years making $0 only to be told nothing counted.
While someone’s $50k of student loans could be “forgiven”, it means that year they will have an additional $50k worth of “income” on their taxes and will be taxed like any regular income would
Maybe one of the best examples of “the cruelty is the point.” Jesus.
Do you have to pay a fee for each such processing?
No
The whole ordeal is/was a colossal screw up.
The student loan company I had to deal with lied to me and made no apologies about it. When I submitted an official complaint through the Federal Student Aid site, it wasn’t handled by some government agent or a 3rd party supervisor, it was handled by a customer service rep working for the student loan company. It was literally “we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong” kind of thing.
Having said that, you may still want to file a complaint if you have had issues with the USA’s loan servicing - https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. It’s probably delusional, but I feel like at least having an official record of the report could be helpful down the line at some point. Maybe one day the Federal government will seriously investigate, or maybe one day there will be a lawsuit and at least an official complaint could serve as evidence you were impacted.
We don’t have to pay for the first year, interest accrues, but you don’t become delinquent. Either I completely misread the agreement I signed, and so did many others including journalists.
More likely, this particular article is garbage.
Well that’s even harsher. They’ll let you build up some principal before garnishment.
The interest doesn’t capitalize at least.
Good. I recall deferring a few payments over a decade ago and they were pretty adamant about telling me the deferred interest would be added to the principal/capital(?). Definitely not my field of expertise.
It’s all such a shit show. I live near a state university town and I have a hard time arguing for student loan relief. They paid theirs off… I feel like it’s not about us or any individual. At some level, a large part of our tax base is being bled dry.
Argh. Cheers, yo
And still nowhere near as garbage as Wall Street profiting off of our youngest, most nascent adults children trying to better themselves
You can be marked as delinquent between 30 to 90 days (and this will negatively affect your credit) depending on the servicer. The direct loans default after 360 days which is what you are thinking of.
No, this is specifically with regard to the un-pause of student loan payments. During the first year after payments started again, if you miss 2? payments you are automatically put on a short term deferment and you will not be considered delinquent. It’s referred to as a grace period / on-ramp.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/11/when-do-student-loan-payments-resume-grace-period-biden/
Whether or not she was right, this is what support at my loan serviced told me
Wait don’t do that. They garnish wages for student debt. They’re happy to do it, too, as they get to keep a big chunk of extra fees that way.
While agree that not paying you are just sinking youself deeper especially since you can’t declare bankruptcy and get rid of the debt. The Biden administration put an on-ramp period in place so that it would reduce any penalties for not paying. Repayments start
Time to start working under the table.
This is what happens when the social contract unravels.
Just wait until they bring back debtors prisons to fix the labor shortage
How would removing people from the labor force fix the shortage? Did debtors prisons have you work for companies or something?
The 13th amendment outlaws the practice of slavery, except for prisoners. A possible (legally questionable and morally objectionable) solution is to throw those who can’t pay in prison, then force them into labor as prisoners, and use that labor to pay their debts, after they pay room/board of course, thus ensuring they never escape their bonds
The answer to your questions is slavery with extra steps.
That takes a lot of work and a court order. You can avoid that by making a token payment say of five dollars once a month.
Millions of borrowers have probably gotten themselves into situations where they can’t make their payments.
Honestly, why the fuck should they? Mohela is a perfect example of how impressively bad the restart of payments went. Absolutely bottled it. People paid, didn’t register, they reported late payments then magically everything was ok… until the next payment.
The entire restart was an absolute shit show. Fuck em.
This could be good. If students default en mass congress might be forced to enact debt forgiveness
You got some wishful thinking there buddy.
No, they’ll just garnish your wages
Unfortunately student loans are one of the few types of loans you cannot default on or get relief through bankruptcy. From what I understand, anyway.
You can thank Biden for that one.
Uh. Pretty sure that student loan legislation far predates Biden’s presidency. Unless you’re referring to his time as senator and have a particular bill in mind?
Okay, Joe Biden voted for that bill in 05, gotcha. Seems like the vote was “I promise to vote for this R bill that is likely to pass anyway, so long as they include my amendments to soften it,” although Elizabeth Warren seems to think even that was capitulating too much to the Rs.
Like a lot of other policies, current Biden seems to be working to undo some of his past voting record. Not a bad trend, at least.
Lol, if only you had any idea how ignorant that take really is
How ignorant you are to not know about it.
The only way that would happen is if financial entities can unwind their student loan debt derivatives that are larger than their total holdings, so that would tank the economy.
The best part? If student loans aren’t paid or are forgiven without unwinding, the debt is worthless and the derivatives implode which would cause an unwinding that would be multiples worse than 2008.
So people with student loans have a gun to the heads of Wall Street and the economy, Wall Street has a gun to their own head and the economy. The only way to avoid an economic failure is for loan payments to happen because that is how the system was designed.
Too bad 🤭
Hold the line until every single executive at Bear, Goldman, and AIG pays back their bonuses.
YOU ARE FREE!!!
This article is way back in 2020. Two douchebags went to the Supreme Court to stop the White House from forgiving debt.
Fuck the greedy bankers taking advantage of students trying to gain an education. They deserve to get fucked and every American citizen deserves an education.
Fuck the universities too. Why do they cost so much in the U.S.A.?
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Is it an intentional strike or simply not being able to pay?
Strikes are traditionally caused by situations that the striking persons have determined are untenable in one way or another.
I can make the payments, I choose not to. I’d be content with 0% interest options, but for now my payment is set so that i’ll either be broke monthly in order to beat the interest levels or more interest is added on, even though I made the regular payment.
College can be free, it shouldn’t be a burden to anyone.
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Fucking usurer scum. The real cancer of our planet. How is this bs fair?
The real cancer of our planet is all humans. 7 billion and counting.
Edit: 8 billion and counting!!
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I stand corrected!
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I’m also glad you aren’t American.
Politics aside, as someone who defaulted on student loans years ago, don’t do that. It is a decision that will follow you for a ridiculously long time with little recourse.
The vast majority of student loans are valuable and profitable. The moratorium was a hand out to mostly those that needed it very little. https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2022/08/an-economists-case-against-biden-student-loan-forgiveness-plan/671259/
Agh neoliberals
Maybe don’t go into debt to begin with? And yes, I did go into student debt, but I paid it off. How? Shit wage at a few horrible jobs. It can be done.
can I borrow your bootstraps?
“Just don’t go into debt,” they say while talking about a system designed to put people in debt.
What year did you graduate?
How much was your debt?
What were those ‘shit wages’?
What were your other expenses? How much of those ‘shit wages’ were you able to put towards the loan vs. your cost of living?
What year did you pay it off?
I’m quite curious.
I graduated in 2011 from a state school in Minnesota. $90k in student loans. Private, parent plus, the works…first job out of school I averaged $50k on an hourly job, and only got up to about $65k by 2017. Got married with that debt, my wife had none. We both worked, my job and hers gave us combined income ~$75k. One bed apartment rent was $950 back then, we owned 2 cars, both beaters, no debt. Paid it all off in late 2019. No debt since then except a mortgage.
$50K is not shit wages. Minimum wage is, for example, $13.25 in MD. That is shit wages. And lucky you to find such a cheap apartment, and be able to share it. Nowadays, using MD again for consistency, you’ll be paying $1450-$1600 a month for a studio, if you’re lucky. And what if you don’t have someone to share that with?
And don’t get me started on the mercurial rise of food products. The luck you have to roll to have a beater not die on you with no way to revive it (mine just did; I can revive it, to the tune of $4,000).
You didn’t have it trust-fund-easy, but you still didn’t have it all that bad.
Well, thats perspective. Thanks! Beaters did die, more than once…wasnt a cake walk.
The context here started with college debt. I stuggle with the idea that a college graduate only find a minimum wage job. Or if they do, that that will be their wage the entire time they’re paying off debt. Am I being naïve?
With the way things are now, a bit. The world has gotten heavily fucked over in one way or another
I don’t know, I think it depends on a million different factors. I’m around your age and struggled badly financially out of college. I spent more than a year completely unemployed and when I finally got a seasonal retail job, it was a big fucking deal. Took about 6 years busting my ass climbing the ladder in that department store moving cross-country (costing several thousand dollars) before I started making $50k. In the meantime, my $40k principle had grown 25% during the unemployment deferment and my interest started to snowball because despite years and thousands of dollars in payments, my monthly payment didn’t even cover the interest.
So yeah, while I no longer make a low wage, it was really fucking difficult to claw out of that hole (office jobs treat you with a ridiculous level of skepticism if you’ve been working full-time in retail.) It took the better part of a decade and meeting a partner whose second income helped defray the cost of living before I was actually able to see my amount owed go down. I honestly feel very lucky that things shook out the way they have because I can easily imagine it ending differently and certainly there are many for those it has.
parent plus,
We both worked, my job and hers gave us combined income
That’s so nice for you that you had other people to carry your debt burden for you.
It was so nice of them that I paid those loans off too! They didn’t pay a cent. Also, I was upfront about my debt. She didn’t have to marry me. I’m grateful she did.
Or maybe it would be better for society, that bases its economy on highly educated people mind you, to not force people to go into debt if they want an education?
Like, sure great, your solution is “don’t take the debt so that you can get educated, work instead”, and then where would that leave society in 10 years?
Or we could do what a MAJORITY of the developed world does, and make college a public good (assuming your grades in HS are good enough), or heavily subsidize it like a lot of the EU does. France, for instance - someone on another thread informed me that for an entire 4-year degree, you pay roughly about 1500 euros in loans. Monthly wages in France hover around 13-1400 euros. So assuming you plan well, you could very easily pay off a 4-year degree with less than a year of minimum-wage work after you graduate.
When did you do that? And how long did it take?
Answered in other comment. I appreciate the question!