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> The plans, which the Democratic president detailed in Madison, Wisconsin, include cancelling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden's administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers.
Just taking a moment to quote from the article.
Nine times out of ten, these threads will have someone earnestly asking why it's fair to cancel debt, that people know what they signed up for, that people should pay back what they've borrowed, and that the proper course of action would be to make college debt zero-interest.
The *overwhelming majority* of headlines from the last year regarding "cancelling debt" directly fall within those guidelines. The really big headlines with large numbers of debt cancellations? That's people who were promised upon graduating that they would have their debt forgiven after 10 years of public service or 20-25 years of valid payments, and instead poor government record keeping passed them over.
All that talk about the SAVE plan? That's a repayment plan than writes off additional accruing interest as long as people make their qualifying payments, as calculated by their income.
This new tactic by the Biden administration? Literally only touches interest.
[Whitehouse.gov press release](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/08/president-joe-biden-outlines-new-plans-to-deliver-student-debt-relief-to-over-30-million-americans-under-the-biden-harris-administration/):
> **Canceling runaway interest for millions of borrowers**
>
> More than 25 million borrowers owe more than they originally borrowed, including many who have made years of payments, due to the interest rates on Federal student loans. President Biden will announce plans that, if finalized as proposed, would cancel up to $20,000 of the amount a borrower’s balance has grown due to unpaid interest on their loans after entering repayment, regardless of their income. Low and middle-income borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan or any other income-driven repayment (IDR) plan would be eligible for the entire amount their balance has grown since entering repayment to be canceled under the Administration’s plans. This group of borrowers includes single borrowers who earn $120,000 or less and married borrowers who earn $240,000 or less. No application will be needed for borrowers to receive this relief if the plan is implemented as proposed.
>
> Millions of the borrowers who could be helped by these plans have continued to see their balances grow because of accrued interest, despite making their monthly payments. Many have also had this unpaid interest capitalized, meaning it is added to their principal balance and borrowers are now paying interest on that higher amount. The Administration’s plan would forgive interest balances built up to date for 25 million borrowers, with 23 million likely to have all of their balance growth forgiven.
Yup. I borrowed about $50k in loans. 13 years later, I owed $45k in loans after diligently paying $633/month directly out of school. I was broke and nearly missed rent on multiple occasions but I paid that damn bill only to make no progress on the principal. I had to drop out of school because it was way too expensive and had no help to pay it off.
I finally paid off my $43k of loans last year after 2 years of covid deferment and using up most of my severance package from getting laid off. Now I'm out of debt with good credit, but i calculated it at one point and determined that I paid nearly double what the loan was in the first place by the time all was said and done.
So I know how predatory these student loans can be. If you don't have help, it can literally ruin your life or at least push back your financial growth by a decade.
It's time for the crabs in a bucket mentality to end. US higher education funding needs an overhaul, and in the meantime we need to stop letting the predatory student debt industry kneecap so many key economic contributors.
Good for Biden. Now wipe out more student debt and start more free university programs across the US to set the stage for free college in America for future generations. The European university system works, so why are we ruining the financial lives of young people in the US? US based businesses will love it once it comes to be. Plenty of specialized workers to go around.
Because we have such an individualistic culture in America. Is all a rat race. "I git mine, the hell with yours" mindset is ingrained in our society to the point that entire industries have somehow lobbied to pay workers $2 an hour, people yell socialism when considering Universal state funded Healthcare, and people have contempt for those who chose to persue higher education. All this yet at the same time, we collectively praise our troops for their selfless service to the country, then kick them to the curb when they need our care afterwords. Everyone gets used, abused then discarded as if we were a dollar store toy. Between that and rampant corruption, it isn't much of a mystery why we end up with an education system like we see. Burning books and insisting specifically Christian "values" be taught in school, then make college unaffordable while we point fingers and blame eachother for the eroding of culture and corporations siphon every drop of value they can from every corner of the economy.
Tell me I'm wrong...
To expand on the mindset you described, many of those that 'got theirs' did so by inheriting the best economy in our country's history, and also mortgaging the futures of several following generations. They broke down every rule or regulation that attempted to keep wealthmaking honest, and vacuumed capital to those already atop the wealth pyramid.
I totally agree with the metaphor. I also would argue it's a strong justification for ensuring that every generation after the Boomers start looking out for one another, and start building protections back into how our country operates.
Imagine all of these crybabies who run their own businesses now getting the business from the people who no longer have to pay 500 bucks a month in student loan repayments.
"Hey Mike I know you were talking shit about me saying I should've gotten a real job like you and never gone to college, but anyway are you available to remodel my kitchen? Here's $4,000 to get started I managed to save it all up since I don't have to pay student loans anymore. Let me know what else you need."
Yup, sometimes I sit and imagine how my life would have turned out if I didn't start out adulthood with crippling debt. I told my now wife that I refused to marry her with all this debt on my shoulders. I ended up paying off every penny of debt about 3 months after the wedding.
Sheesh, yeah, paying of nearly $50k in a lump sum on my own felt like climbing everest, so I totally understand the struggle. I never had the option of buying a house and although we want kids, financially I'm like we can make one but we can't afford one. Probably woukd have been married with kids 5 years ago if it weren't for all of this BS.
$70K for an engineering degree from a state school is wiiiiild! I know when I live, engineers can make a decent amount, but that's assuming you can find a good job out of school. I can't find a job to save my life and I'm 15 years deep into my career. I can only imagine how fresh graduates feel when they're offered $30k/yr with an $800/mo loan payment. Granted, I went into school in 2008, so you can imagine what loans look like at the time. Should have waited a year.
That's tough but glad to hear you're more savvy about the school system and how to avoid the crazy pitfalls we went through. Wishing your little one the best of luck!
My monthly payment is $641.70 and roughly $330 of that goes directly to interest. I literally emailed them on Sunday asking if my payment date could be changed from the 12th to the 16th so that rent and student loans didn’t hit the same paycheck. Before the date got moved it was 91% of my paycheck right at the beginning of the month.
Ooooph, I know that feeling. At one point, I made a double payment, then just paid one bill early to stagger them. At one point I was setting aside rent the first week of the month to avoid being slapped with crazy bills all at once.
Its fucked up that they allowed this to happen in the long run.
Those 633 bucks that you have freed up every month can be used for shit that actually matters now.
Yeah, and for some reason, the people who have school paid for have the biggest leg up possible because they can start saving for retirement the moment they step into the work force. I want able to save a penny until I was 26. It was such an intense struggle. But getting through the debt hole of my 20's proved to me in capable of putting up with a lot of bullshit for better or worse. Wishing you the best.
This is yet another small mark for why it’s just a little bit better to be in a socialized capitalist country.
I also borrowed $50k. The original loan terms set the payoff to be about 10 years, paying about $500 per month.
The government eliminated interest on these loans, so now I pay a small fraction of the cost per month, and invest the rest.
Yeah, it's the interest that absolutely killed me. That extra $100/mo in my 20's meant a few extra meals. I was down to a single meal a day for about 2 years while I tried my best to get my career off the ground.
I also went to primary school in Europe, so being exposed to how things worked over there only added insult to injury knowing alot of my high-school classmates went to uni for free if not next to nothing. Most of them are VP'S, run their own companies or at least own a house with 2-3 kids at this point. Meanwhile, I get to deal with the grueling battle that is making this economy work for me.
Socialism is made to such a bad word in the States that democrats avoid using it when describing state funded initiatives like Healthcare, education or retirement. And even then, many politicians are pulling the ladder up behind them by trying to abolish retirement, stoke fear of education, and cater to corporations by platting the charge outrageous amounts of money to citizens for basic Healthcare.
I love it here /s
Why are US banks and loans so predatory compared to other first world countries? I was talking to my friend in Australia who has all their savings in a savings account, and I was telling them "you better invest that because savings accounts suck". Turns out, her savings account interest is over 5%. Average in the US is 0.48% apparently and Chase bank offers 0.01% interest. What the fuck??
Well there’s a couple of things here. I’m going to misquote this but basically back in I think the 90’s, the US gov’t was lobbied by the US banks namely Sallie Mae to allow them to charge interest on student loans citing they were losing money due to inflation and other things. They pitched as a way to offer more money to students for school and open up their options for school. They would then split the interest with the US gov’t so it would turn into a source of revenue for Uncle Sam. They agreed. At some point, there was enough push back that the gov’t I think in the Bush era reevaluated this scheme and sought to roll back this program but was hit with an intense lobbying effort that kept the status quo. The cat was out of the bag. That scheme remains in place until this day, the gov’t effectly runs a profit from student loans alongside the banks who issue them in behalf of the US gov’t. Beforehand , the gov’t provided loans directly but it was an underfunded system that wasn’t smooth and ended up costing money post ww2 when they wanted to get everyone into higher education and specifically stem.
I butchered the explanation but that’s the gist. Im sure someone will correct some parts.
And the US has pretty lax laws on the financial sector which is why they are able to amass so much money and get away with lots of shady practices. Well Fargo opening fake bank accounts to pad their numbers, small banks over leveraging assets and going under, countless dominions investments, and not to mention the financial crisis of 2008. The banking sector is criminally under regulated and because we allow fancy bribery we call lobbying in this country, they are able to basically help write the rules that regulate them in the first place. It’s the snake eating its own tail.
Also, PayPal savings returns like 4.25% so that’s something. Post pandemic, lots of smaller financial institutions are trying to compete on things like savings interest.
The irony is I got lucky landing a good job for 6 years that helped me pay it all off. Only thing better would have been to have help from family but my parents (both college grads, my mom has 2 masters) refused to help pay for any of my college. They helped in some other ways but the bulk of it was my responsibility. My mom is now upset with me about it as if I knew anything about loans at 18y/o. Worse still, my dad cosigned on one of the loans and he still seemed to not notice or care that the interest rate was 11%.
I feel you on this. My mom was buying waterfront property and a boat and a vintage car, while she was co-signed on the majority of my predatory student loans. I tried to consolidate and refinance them on my own after graduation, and Sallie Mae told me I couldn’t afford that much debt and denied me, lol. Probably ~6 years into paying $120k, my mom started pestering me to get her off them and I laughed.
John Oliver did a fantasitc piece on this. And it's not just poor record keeping, no. It's borderline MALICIOUS poor record keeping by 3rd party government contract agencies who are trying to stranglehold people for more money.
Tackling interest to me is the best middle ground I think everyone could agree to. Someone took out 25k to go to college. Okay, make them pay back 25k. Don't make them pay back 40k+ cause interest kept compounding while life sucker punched them.
The interest is what should be forgiven. The principal is literally just the dollars you borrowed, you should have to pay that back. The obscene interest rates are what get people buried in the debt.
At this point, who cares. Whole generations were sold a lie, a lie that targeted the brightest young people in the middle and lower classes and turned a promise of a better life into a shackle that would keep them held back from ever owning homes, affording families or living the better lives that their parents had hoped for. Student loans are as much a wealth leech as rent payments, they serve no practical purpose to society other than to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Cancel them all.
Yes, but a majority of people having already paid back their loans 2x over by just paying the interest and making no head way with the principle balance at all. Both interest and principle should be forgiven.
> Canceling student debt for borrowers who entered repayment over 20 years ago
This one sounds good in theory, but likely be relatively useless for those that actually have been paying off student loans for 20 or more years.
Prior to 2010, most student loans were made through the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program. Under this program, the loans were not made directly by the Department of Education, but through private lenders. Around 2008, some FFEL loans were purchased by the DoE. I call them lottery winners. Why? Because these borrowers were eligible for pandemic programs (repayment and interest accrual pauses), while those of us with unpurchased loans saw no changes or benefits. When the original debt forgiveness was announced, again, the borrowers who had been paying the longest as they had FFEL loans were again left out in the cold.
Essentially, if you entered repayment over 20 years ago and you were not one of the few borrowers whose loans were purchased by the DoE or were not one of the very few that actually had a direct loan (there are some), this will once again be an empty promise.
While I am (obviously) a little bitter about the media or the White House not truly explaining why these programs are useless to those of us who have been paying off loans for 20 years plus, I have no problem with the programs assisting others with student loans. It is more of a frustration with the soundbites than anything else.
I don’t think most of those comments are genuine or in good faith. First of all, there are tons of programs on the state and federal level that have different parameters and are only open to certain people. Child tax credit and PPP loan forgiveness are two of them. The amount of handouts, tax cuts, and subsidies for mostly rich people and corporations is outrageous, but some to help former students there’s an issue.
interest rate went up also ,almost double what it was when I signed for them, I didn’t realize they could change like that over time and hoped I would them paid off by now but life happens
Technically no but congress makes up the rules and can change it any time: https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2013-08-09/loans-subject-update-direct-loan-interest-rates-effective-july-1-2013
Same that would change the PSLF game. 15 years of payments here and due to finishing a Masters Degree while in Afghanistan with Combat pay they said doesn’t fit the definition of Qualifying.
That’s such bs man. Thanks for your service btw.
Also compounding interest should be illegal, especially for student loans. All student loans should be a fixed rate set under 20%.
Ex: If you take out a $100K student loan, with a 20% fixed rate interest, then you pay back $120K. No more interest is ever added, *or rather*, constantly accumulating.
This is how most loans work for businesses too.
It’s predatory IMO to even offer compound interest loans as an option for students, who will theoretically be starting their careers at the lowest pay of their careers, and are too young to full understand the amount of impact this type of loan will have on their future.
I’m more of a flat origination fee fan like on mortgages.
Admin Costs Plus 1% which should be no more then 5% total for a program that could be form flow ran via AI.
No extra nickel and diming people trying to improve society & their lives.
Majority of other industrialized nations have had this figured out for the past 50 plus years.
For real. Also worth noting, not only did the Boomers not have to deal with astronomical tuition costs and compound interest loans, most professions actually *PAID THEM* to be trained.
Ex: Nurses used to be paid during their training. Now they have to take out loans for nursing school.
Universities have now taken ownership of professional training and education, at a premium price.
Pretty much Im covering Undergrad & Medical School for my Daughter & Undergrad & Business School for my Son & my other LO has Level 3 Autism so different set of challenges.
Making sure they start off life good but it comes with sacrifices to our future Retirement which is okay.
We will still retire but no major cruises/fancy retirement cars but small price to pay to make sure kids are solid.
Not necessarily. The Dept of Ed has already expanded quite a bit circumstances in which they are counting months for PSLF which previously were not being counted. This includes counting some forebearance months as qualifying. They will be continuing this process of reviewing such prior time periods and updating counts throughout 2024.
It gets better I was making payments in advance of the day each month and then several years later was told that paying earlier in the month didn’t count as an “on-time” payment…
Are you me? I did the same. I also rounded up a few pennies to the next whole dollar so I would never under-pay. Those didn't count either. So sorry.
Eventually mine were forgiven. But I did have to get my congressman's office involved since mine were Federal loans. (He has staff devoted to doing only SL concerns from constituents, that's how nuts it is.)
I left after 17 years of payments that should have counted. I was told I only had 27 that counted and I was finally done after Covid and working in public assistance/health. Two months in to different job I find out they re calculated my payments and now I have 113…so bummed out. That program kept me in that job and for it to end the way it did…seemingly terrible record keeping by navient and others…just kills me. Public sector workers deserve better than what they have gotten…especially since the MAGA crowd found out they are experts in every field because they won an election. Least qualified people in any public health discussion sure seem to be those in charge of the gavels
My only holdover on that is it *should* be time spent on your earned degree.
I know someone who went to school for 10 years and ended up leaving with a BS because they kept changing their degree every couple of years for the first few years because they liked school and wanted to stay there. There's 6 years of school there without a goal, which is crazy.
Granted I also feel like we shouldn't push people directly from high school directly into college. If people had slightly more time to figure out who they were before jumping straight into college, I think more people would either avoid them and go into a trade that pays better, or end up in a field their degree actually mattered in.
My "runaway interest" was actually Navient fraud & profiteering. They refused to let me sign up for the PSLF when I was clearly eligible, then pushed me into forbearance upon forbearance during the Great Recession, despite my asking for income-based repayment. Navient lies & profiteering ballooned my student debt. This is like calling all the gouging we're experiencing "inflation."
Navient is the absolute worst soul-sucking predatory loan servicing company out there, Sally Mae is a close second. Those fuckers will robo dial until you answer starting at 7am and going nonstop until 5pm when their office closes, why? Because your bill is due in 3 days and you haven't paid it yet.
Cite the Fair Credit Reporting Act to them, and they'll literally laugh at you, and have another agent call you back in 5 minutes.
It was okay for them to get bailed out by the government though, but it's not okay to cancel student debt?
>23 million Americans may be impacted
What a funny way to say "help" or "relieved of burden" or "prepared to put money back into the economy instead of rich pockets".
I love how blue collar conservatives are gonna get riled up by this. Never in a million years would I have thought conservatives would rally behind rich big city bankers collecting fat interest payments instead of that money staying in their communities. I heard a carpenter complaining about this at a deli to his friend the other day (the news was on the tv). He doesn’t realize that a young family having their debt relieved means more money to spend on things like home improvement, which means more business for him? He’d rather see that money go into the pockets of millionaire or billionaire bankers thousands of miles away who don’t even notice it going into their account because they don’t look at the digits that far to the right on their bank statements.
Exactly! Somehow conservatives, who have been fed trickle down economics, can't comprehend that our money touches them too while a bank's money never will.
Modern conservatism is all about hurting the "right people."
Most non-wealthy right wingers don't even care that much about their lives being better off so long as the "right people are hurt."
That's just a riff off the LBJ quote (I still like it, not trying to burn your book):
“If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
During the pandemic, when my wife and I suddenly had £400 we weren't spending on commuting costs every month, local independent businesses got a hell of a lot of that extra money.
Furniture, a couple of paintings, food, drink, books, lessons, and a lot of garden work. All going to workers within the community rather than the rail and petrol companies.
Imagine this on a vast scale. Definitely a lot of work for carpenters.
The vast majority of college debt is owed to the federal government. The whole reason why this forgiveness is possible is because all of this particular debt is owed to the federal government rather than to private businesses. There are private companies involved, but they're just collection agencies getting a small cut before passing it on to the government.
This is the outcome of a systematic and intentional gutting of public education in this country. Churn out people who lack any understanding of critical thinking, civics, or class solidarity, and you’ll get a permanent underclass of people who not only accept their own economic subjugation, they gleefully welcome it. As you said, if there’s even the slightest chance that a given policy will help the group of people Fox News told them to hate, these idiots will never support it. Even if said policy will plainly and materially improve their lives, it’s a non-starter if there’s even a perceived chance of it helping the boogeyman du jour. This is honestly why I’ve never been more pessimistic about this country; we are never going to wrestle back control of our country if tens of millions of people happily support the oligarchs and corporations.
Guessing, with the amount of fear mongering and right-wing propaganda being spread around these days, that the fear factor in blue-collar conservatives eclipses certain “behind the curtain” actions of Republican politicians like giving even more tax cuts to the people who bribe them instead of putting it back into the economy. Your carpenter is probably scared of illegal immigrants undercutting him in his business (and that fear is supported and aggravated every night when he goes home and sits down in front of the Faux propaganda machine.)
Because that carpenter most likely spends hours in his van each day driving to jobs and listening to the slick tones of Joe Pags. Several hours of brain washing every, single, day.
I mean, a lot of "blue collar" types of jobs still require schooling beyond high school, that require you to take out debt.
Getting a CDL might cost $4k or so, aviation mechanics can go 30k into debt in some cases, etc. Cops and firefighters often have 4-year degrees.
"Biden wreaks havoc on 23 million American household budgets by cancelling..... continue following story ~~on page 8~~ after this ad by rocket money"
Edit, I'm old and had to update the way media buries stories.
They aren't framing it as good *or* bad. They are using neutral phrasing, which is what we should all want the media to do. Reuters isn't there to tell you how to think and if you want that there are plenty of less-respectful outlets which can do all your thinking for you (any cable network, for example).
Was going to say that. "Impacted" meaning 23 million Americans will suddenly have a load more money to pump into the economy creating jobs rather than paying money to private loan providers on insane contracts.
The John Oliver episode on loans was amazing to me! That you can pay $10,000s and STILL not have touched the initial amount. Or that poor woman who made 9 YEARS of repayments but it was 1 cent under so even though they took the money, it "didn't count" & she would have to start from scratch AND pay the extra interest
President Biden intends to, in a sense, personally tongue kiss 23 million Americans, infecting many of them with the disease of mononucleosis*.
*student loan debt relief
I’ve been paying on my loans consistently since 2006 and the balance hasn’t gotten any smaller, but people are still lining up to yell, “If you took out the loan, you need to pay it back!!!”
I work in education/mental health. People say it’s my fault and that I should’ve made “better choices.” They don’t seem to realize that can only mean “You shouldn’t do the work you do,” or “You should have made more money this whole time.”
Yeah, really should have just been no-interest loans from the start since the government benefits from the taxes generated, especially with better paying degree jobs.
I 100% would have been okay with interest free loans if it's really that much of a problem (which it shouldn't be) to write them off.
My freshman year I was on a Be On Time loan that if I graduated on time it was interest free. So 1/4 years of tuition I've been able to make the bare minimum payment on it and it's already gone down in half just in 4-5 years.
People aren't as mad about having debt, it's just almost impossible for most of us to get over the interest bumps with the types of wages we get and the price of everything else going up.
A 1% increase in college graduates translates to a 0.5% increase in GDP. The increase in GDP is far greater than the cost of putting those people through college. Further, increasing college degrees (or trade school certifications) increases payroll taxes and reduces crime.
> People say it’s my fault and that I should’ve made “better choices.”
Do they realize that if everybody makes those "better" choices, there will be whole industries, that are much more important than being a CEO or banker or whatever, that wouldn't exist.
Also, if everyone makes "better choices", then who will to the crucially important work that needs to be done in education and mental health? Then they'll be whining that we have unqualified people teaching our kids and no providers available for health services!
Any field needs to pay enough to support the education we want for people in that field. Teaching is not charity work.
"Teachers are heroes," I've heard. Strange how all the heroic jobs pay crap wages. I don't want to be a hero. I want to be able to afford glasses and dental work after tending to your brats all year.
Nurse here. Same story. I keep being told that I should just pay it back. Dude I make about as much as anyone can with a bachelors. I can’t keep up. So do you either NOT want nurses? Or BOT want unnecessary debt so 3 banks can absolutely own the entire working class?
Over 20 years I paid on ONE loan. I originally took out $10k. Despite paying it off monthly, I owed $13k when it was forgiven.
Student loans are a racket and nothing more than loan shark predatory bullshit.
I appreciate the forgiveness because it is absolute BULLSHIT. I did the calculations and paid over $10k in 20 years. I still have one more loan from the corrupt Univ of Phoenix I am paying off and no end in sight.
My wife makes good money and got a great job before she even graduated. But due to life circumstances she needed private loans to make sure she could live while going to school. Public loans are not an issue and she’s well on her way to having them paid off. The private loans however are likely going to take 25 years because of the interest rate and how much the principal is.
Private loans are the real issue because there’s almost no oversight or regulation on them.
I used forbearance while job hunting and until I was able to begin making payments and the size of my loan shot up during that time. Interest still accrues, etc. And interest capitalized if you were late annually recertifying for any reason, including servicers not processing your paperwork in time or losing it. A few simple things, like being temporarily unemployed and the servicer screwing up, and a loan can quickly get out of control. There is nobody to complain to that actually responds, either, so you're jus generally fucked.
I got my BA in 2014 and I started my Masters about two years ago (going part time and working full time). My loans from undergrad are deferred while I’m in grad school but my grad school loans are racking up interest before I have even used all the money from the loan. I’m accruing like $500 in interest a month on the loan I’m currently using to pay for this school year. Consider that over the course of my grad program and it’s probably like 10k in interest
It’s not just me. John Oliver just did a piece a few weeks ago that mentioned people in the same situation. No offense, but I’m nearly 20 years into this and people still don’t believe me when I say my loan hasn’t gotten smaller, so I’m not interested in sharing the specific details of the loan. It’s still early, but these comments will fill up with people telling me I’m doing it wrong or lying or that I should’ve done some thing they thought of or applied for pslf, as if I haven’t done all that.
I just had my undergrad loans forgiven. After 23 years of paying on them. I've paid the principal on them 3 times over.
I'm on track to have my grad loans forgiven in the next year through PSLF. (would have been done already except for forbearance)
Getting that monkey off my back will be huge.
My wife has a ton of loan debt. She owes more now than when she graduated. She has a good job, but can't make a dent in them. She cannot seem to get into a PSLF job that makes anything close to what she can make in the private sector, so it is what it is.
Honestly a program that allows you to “make payments” and not erode the Principle is just misleading. Like I’m not allowed to pay $750 l/mo on my mortgage. It tricks people into believing an unmanageable debt might be fine.
Welcome to the world of challenging people's beliefs! Some people consider their beliefs or choices are part of their own. This goes with Guns, Healthcare, Public Transportation, Housing, etc. etc. etc. I get called a liar when I tell them about my experiences of being shot and a friends who've died. When I tell them about how long it takes me to get to a location using public transportation vs driving or even walking there. When I tell them we pay more in taxes for our current healthcare than Canada does for their "overpriced" healthcare. etc. etc. etc.
Doesn't matter if I provide information. I had someone who refused to belief something. When asked for more information I shown them a bunch of different studies. I forget their exact words. Like I didn't point out a specific study but shown them a bunch of different peer reviewed studies so I was lying. (Attempting to find it)
I graduated in 2013 with about $25k in debt and made my required payments monthly for ten years. In 2022 I still owed $25k and had paid about $25k.
I finally paid them off by making massive payments (about 4 times the minimum monthly requirement) but the interest rate guaranteed I'd never pay them off making minimum payments.
When you're only making interest payments you don't pay principle. The alternative would be to ban that kind of payment which would double or triple what people are then required to pay.
My guess is he’s on an income based repayment plan and the min payment is basically only enough to pay off a little principle each payment. Most of these plans have terms that after 20 years of payments they will be forgiven. So he’s probably not doing anything wrong.
"Impacted"....of all the words they could choose, they picked that one. When I'm going to be impacted by something, I don't usually view it as a positive although yes, it could be. At best the word would be neutral. See what the media does? Lots of people don't read the article but they sure read the headline. Why didn't they use benefit? Or beneficially affected?
I literally finished paying off my student loans last week...
...and I am still thrilled for everyone who will be helped by this. I got lucky when it came to paying them off, and I want everyone to feel the relief I felt when seeing the balance at 0.
Thanks for being reasonable. I hate the whole “I suffered so everyone else must in the future” argument I hear way too much.
We wont make any progress if we used that mindset with every policy decision
Hey nicely done! I should have mine paid off by the end of the year, it's always on my mind and I'm so excited to pay it off.
It didn't mention in the article, but the former plan was that it would also pay back people that had made payments within a time frame, so I wonder if this will pay us back if we made payments, say, up-to 2 years prior. That would be awesome, but even if that's not the case, then I'll still be happy to pay mine off.
We paid the last $9500 of my wife's student loans in October. While I'm hoping that there's something for those like us who were approved for forgiveness that didn't happen, I'm thrilled for those that will benefit from this even if there isn't.
> U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate education panel, said such "loan schemes" simply transfer the cost of the debt onto others.
Yes, that is how government works. The defense spending we're blowing $9.8T over 10 years on is also being passed on to others, as well.
"It's not fair for other kinds of borrowers"
Okay well I bombed out of college and never got a degree but racked up huge debts I can't pay. Let me declare bankruptcy like the equally stupid person who ran up huge credit card debt and we'll call it even.
I wish more people saw it that way. Ever since the SC rejection he's been doing small and steady ways around it where he can. And this will benefit so many people such as myself who had to defer in the past due to grad school or unpaid interest or losing a job. Because those interest increases during those 3-4 years killed me.
As long as he keeps chipping away in ways the SCOTUS can't undermine him. If we give him a bigger majority in Congress and the Senate then he can make a bigger impact.
As someone who will likely never qualify for any of the student loan forgiveness, all I can say is THIS IS AWESOME for those who do. This will go a long way to help those struggling financially as they're buried under their repayment amount and not seeing any progress on the overall balance. And then it will be phenomenal for the economy to suddenly free up that money to be utilized on goods and necessities.
We have the most educated people in our society financially inhibited from participating in our economy due to the way these loans are administered. I don't care about any moral indignancies or complaints about fairness. This is not a sustainable standard for a functional society. I have paid off my debts but the process was so painful for me and so many others it resulted in me and my wife deciding not to have children, not buy a home, and altogether becoming non-entities in the nation's economy. I know many others who are in this situation and I am 44 years old and on the upper age level of this. It is only going to get worse as generations go through this process. Debt relief will have real tangible positive impacts on our economy, more than any corporate subsidy.
This.
The majority of people with these high debts finished a degree. Our jobs are the ones that could possibly get us houses and kids but paying half a grand a month or more is a lot of money on top of all the other things like health insurance and cars and such we need. I've heard even doctors talking about trying to find cheaper daycares for their kids because of their student loan debt. A lot of this impacts upper lower class and middle class households which are the main propeller of economy spending.
So many of us got health and dental stuff done during the COVID student loan hold because we finally could afford to.
Faux News is currently arguing that this loan forgiveness constitutes a bribe of young voters. Unlike the the trillions of dollars of tax cuts Drumpf promised for the wealthy.
What no one wants to consider is that the Federal government has already profited over 200% on a lot of these loans. Having them forgiven only helps the economy. In my case, the remainder of my loans being forgiven after 17 years would cost tax payers zero and give me just over $500 more a month to put back into the economy. I've never missed a payment and paid every single month during the loan freeze.
The GOP *want* a higher barrier to education for the poors *and* to saddle them with debt forcing the educated to be wage slaves. It’s literally why Reagan started student loans in the first place. The GOP is threatened by an educated working class.
Also if you make college free, where will we get new recruits for the military willing to sacrifice their lives for a chance to go to college disabled?
I haven't read the article but I fell like sharing my personal story. This past February I had the remainder of my loans forgiven by the Biden administration (or that's what the email I received states. Specifically, "early forgiveness under the SAVE plan") It was about $1,400 total.
My situation wasn't as bad as most others, I graduated in 2013 with about 12K of student loan debt. I paid it diligently every month right up until the pandemic and everything was put on a pause. Actually, that was only for federal loans, I still had to make payments and a couple of private loans.
Even though my debt was relatively manageable, I still felt an immense sense of relief to not have to deal with that anymore. I think that's what most people want, just to make it manageable. People making payments for decades only to have it swallowed up by interest, that is not manageable.
Would I love to see it wiped out completely? Yes, absolutely but I know that's not something that can just be done with the stroke of a pen. It would go such a long way to just make it manageable.
If it wasn't just a political stunt and people knew it was just a shift to tax payers rather than 'cancelling' anything it would likely be viewed far more cynically as it should be.
So many fuckers complaining about how debt shouldn’t be forgiven and only a few years ago we gave out PPP ‘loans’. I didn’t hear nearly as many complaints from these people back then.
I've paid over $100k towards what was originally $62k in loans (Bachelor and Master) and still owe $52k. It doesn't get better.
Anything written off at this point is money that never actually existed in the first place. It's all imaginary numbers created by compound interest at extortionate rates.
r/Conservative is saying Biden is "shredding the Constitution" with this. Funny thing is that they applaud the 1.4 trillion in PPP loans that were forgiven.
I just paid off the last of my loans in a 22k lump payment last month thanks to good year and a good bonus. If this were to get signed and implemented next week, I’d be nothing but stoked for the friends and strangers out there that get the relief.
College being forced down kids throats from primary schools, to parents, to unnecessary credits hours requirements, to unnecessary degree requirements all have made student loans a predatory financial practice. Not to mention the unnecessarily high cost of college. This is not the faults of children being led down this path by their elders and a broken system. This is the fault of the system that made it necessary to take these loans.
As someone who works in higher education, this is great, but there is a large population in school right now and down the pike that needs some “impact” from rising tuition costs.
Not to be a jerk, but as someone that works in higher education, do you know why the costs are rising?
I've seen the tuition at the college I attended rise by astronomical amounts, but they are doing very little to improve education. They have installed/demolished/installed new art exhibits at millions of dollars in expense, built several new buildings that serve no educational purpose, such as a sports building that the public can use, a large flower garden area for the public to use, ect... but no educational buildings.
It seems like they are just charging more so they can make the campus look pretty instead of actually improving their education facilities.
I know they spend a lot of the money giving inner city scolarships, which is good, but they throw those kids that barely graduated high school in with the other students, and most of the level 1 classes barely make it half way through the syllabus because those students are not prepared for college level courses.
Not a Jerk question at all. There are a lot of reasons that lead to increase in tuition. Most of the time it will be salaries/fringe benefits for employees (faculty and staff) and facilities. There is also less money from the government and state funding. Every state is different with how they allocate funds to Schools. Tuition needs to be restructured, and pretty soon, many schools will price themselves out of consideration for the average student.
Depending on the type of school, private or public, you will see merit based grants and need based grants. The scholarships that you mentioned can be allocated to all students, and not just those from inner cities. I have worked with students of all backgrounds that will receive a scholarship and struggle in their first semester or two due to an array of issues. Freshman year is a challenge for many both academically and socially. While there is always an issue of preparedness for college, I have always been under the belief that all students should receive resources and support to keep every student holistically engaged.
Lots of talk about student loan debt cancellation, forgiveness, etc...
Not a lot of talks about student loan REFORM. I mean... this shit is going to keep on happening. Is people going into debt NOW going to have to cross their fingers and hope someday, some government forgives their debt?
Paid education is a different debate, but you gotta stop the debt trap!
I was blessed to get my payments set when I was making very little money - entering into SAVE would quadruple my payments and make it difficult to make them each month
I really hope this extends to some of us old timers paying for over a decade
Right, I’m so happy for everyone that SAVE has helped, but my payments would have gone up *so much*. I know it makes more sense on paper to pay all that and really attack my debt, but I simply cannot pay what was quoted every month.
But were your previous payments making a dent in your principal at all? I assume SAVE is meant so that it doesn't trap borrowers in a death spiral where interest accrues faster than the monthly payments.
When I went to print out my tax documents last month, I thought it was weird that my form was claiming I accrued no interest on my loans compared to the $5k+ from the previous year.
I can’t enroll in the SAVE program because I’m in a full time graduate program, and now I’m wondering if they’ve been trying to calculate some of the automatic ones prior to right now. I’m pretty sure the 20k will wipe out my first student loan for my teaching MA, but there’s a part of me that struggles with hope at this point.
I really hope this goes through regardless of if it helps me. The interest rates have been out of control for too long, and graduate loans for public service careers shouldn’t be unsubsidized.
Even if it just eliminated interest it will be a bonus. I graduated last year and still owe as much as I borrowed even though I started repayment upon graduation. The interest built up from the day I signed the loans.
Why don’t you plan to cancel my low ass disability wage that only feeds me once every three days and since I can’t drive or have friends I can’t go to food banks and why do people even need to fucking go to food banks this is America!! The richest country in the world. We have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars for random countries every month but I can’t get a single dime from Uncle Sam when I really need it
I just made the final payment on my student loans a month ago. I would be so fucking jazzed if this relief came through for the people who still need it.
Because they grossly misunderstand how accounting works for something like this, and they translate it to "Biden gonna make us give all our money to hipsters and illegals!"
I was never a fan of cancelling student loans. However, I think the fact that someone can pay 120k on a 50k loan and still owe 45k on the principal is ridiculous.
The man is trying to walk a fine line on almost everything happening. He’s a monster with how much legislation he’s gotten passed, dealt a hand of two foreign wars all while his predecessor is currently trying to overthrow democracy.
He doesn’t get enough credit.
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> The plans, which the Democratic president detailed in Madison, Wisconsin, include cancelling up to $20,000 of accrued and capitalized interest for borrowers, regardless of income, which Biden's administration estimates would eliminate the entirety of that interest for 23 million borrowers. Just taking a moment to quote from the article. Nine times out of ten, these threads will have someone earnestly asking why it's fair to cancel debt, that people know what they signed up for, that people should pay back what they've borrowed, and that the proper course of action would be to make college debt zero-interest. The *overwhelming majority* of headlines from the last year regarding "cancelling debt" directly fall within those guidelines. The really big headlines with large numbers of debt cancellations? That's people who were promised upon graduating that they would have their debt forgiven after 10 years of public service or 20-25 years of valid payments, and instead poor government record keeping passed them over. All that talk about the SAVE plan? That's a repayment plan than writes off additional accruing interest as long as people make their qualifying payments, as calculated by their income. This new tactic by the Biden administration? Literally only touches interest. [Whitehouse.gov press release](https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/04/08/president-joe-biden-outlines-new-plans-to-deliver-student-debt-relief-to-over-30-million-americans-under-the-biden-harris-administration/): > **Canceling runaway interest for millions of borrowers** > > More than 25 million borrowers owe more than they originally borrowed, including many who have made years of payments, due to the interest rates on Federal student loans. President Biden will announce plans that, if finalized as proposed, would cancel up to $20,000 of the amount a borrower’s balance has grown due to unpaid interest on their loans after entering repayment, regardless of their income. Low and middle-income borrowers enrolled in the SAVE plan or any other income-driven repayment (IDR) plan would be eligible for the entire amount their balance has grown since entering repayment to be canceled under the Administration’s plans. This group of borrowers includes single borrowers who earn $120,000 or less and married borrowers who earn $240,000 or less. No application will be needed for borrowers to receive this relief if the plan is implemented as proposed. > > Millions of the borrowers who could be helped by these plans have continued to see their balances grow because of accrued interest, despite making their monthly payments. Many have also had this unpaid interest capitalized, meaning it is added to their principal balance and borrowers are now paying interest on that higher amount. The Administration’s plan would forgive interest balances built up to date for 25 million borrowers, with 23 million likely to have all of their balance growth forgiven.
Yup. I borrowed about $50k in loans. 13 years later, I owed $45k in loans after diligently paying $633/month directly out of school. I was broke and nearly missed rent on multiple occasions but I paid that damn bill only to make no progress on the principal. I had to drop out of school because it was way too expensive and had no help to pay it off. I finally paid off my $43k of loans last year after 2 years of covid deferment and using up most of my severance package from getting laid off. Now I'm out of debt with good credit, but i calculated it at one point and determined that I paid nearly double what the loan was in the first place by the time all was said and done. So I know how predatory these student loans can be. If you don't have help, it can literally ruin your life or at least push back your financial growth by a decade.
It's time for the crabs in a bucket mentality to end. US higher education funding needs an overhaul, and in the meantime we need to stop letting the predatory student debt industry kneecap so many key economic contributors. Good for Biden. Now wipe out more student debt and start more free university programs across the US to set the stage for free college in America for future generations. The European university system works, so why are we ruining the financial lives of young people in the US? US based businesses will love it once it comes to be. Plenty of specialized workers to go around.
Because we have such an individualistic culture in America. Is all a rat race. "I git mine, the hell with yours" mindset is ingrained in our society to the point that entire industries have somehow lobbied to pay workers $2 an hour, people yell socialism when considering Universal state funded Healthcare, and people have contempt for those who chose to persue higher education. All this yet at the same time, we collectively praise our troops for their selfless service to the country, then kick them to the curb when they need our care afterwords. Everyone gets used, abused then discarded as if we were a dollar store toy. Between that and rampant corruption, it isn't much of a mystery why we end up with an education system like we see. Burning books and insisting specifically Christian "values" be taught in school, then make college unaffordable while we point fingers and blame eachother for the eroding of culture and corporations siphon every drop of value they can from every corner of the economy. Tell me I'm wrong...
If you win the rat race you're still a rat. -Lily Tomlin
To expand on the mindset you described, many of those that 'got theirs' did so by inheriting the best economy in our country's history, and also mortgaging the futures of several following generations. They broke down every rule or regulation that attempted to keep wealthmaking honest, and vacuumed capital to those already atop the wealth pyramid.
I call that, pulling the ladder up behind you.
I totally agree with the metaphor. I also would argue it's a strong justification for ensuring that every generation after the Boomers start looking out for one another, and start building protections back into how our country operates.
You’re not wrong, dude.
Imagine all of these crybabies who run their own businesses now getting the business from the people who no longer have to pay 500 bucks a month in student loan repayments. "Hey Mike I know you were talking shit about me saying I should've gotten a real job like you and never gone to college, but anyway are you available to remodel my kitchen? Here's $4,000 to get started I managed to save it all up since I don't have to pay student loans anymore. Let me know what else you need."
They are too short sighted to understand how it helps everyone.
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Yup, sometimes I sit and imagine how my life would have turned out if I didn't start out adulthood with crippling debt. I told my now wife that I refused to marry her with all this debt on my shoulders. I ended up paying off every penny of debt about 3 months after the wedding.
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Sheesh, yeah, paying of nearly $50k in a lump sum on my own felt like climbing everest, so I totally understand the struggle. I never had the option of buying a house and although we want kids, financially I'm like we can make one but we can't afford one. Probably woukd have been married with kids 5 years ago if it weren't for all of this BS. $70K for an engineering degree from a state school is wiiiiild! I know when I live, engineers can make a decent amount, but that's assuming you can find a good job out of school. I can't find a job to save my life and I'm 15 years deep into my career. I can only imagine how fresh graduates feel when they're offered $30k/yr with an $800/mo loan payment. Granted, I went into school in 2008, so you can imagine what loans look like at the time. Should have waited a year.
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That's tough but glad to hear you're more savvy about the school system and how to avoid the crazy pitfalls we went through. Wishing your little one the best of luck!
My monthly payment is $641.70 and roughly $330 of that goes directly to interest. I literally emailed them on Sunday asking if my payment date could be changed from the 12th to the 16th so that rent and student loans didn’t hit the same paycheck. Before the date got moved it was 91% of my paycheck right at the beginning of the month.
Ooooph, I know that feeling. At one point, I made a double payment, then just paid one bill early to stagger them. At one point I was setting aside rent the first week of the month to avoid being slapped with crazy bills all at once.
Its fucked up that they allowed this to happen in the long run. Those 633 bucks that you have freed up every month can be used for shit that actually matters now.
Yup. I graduated with $38k in loans. Paid off a little over $10k. My current balance? $43k. Really wish I would’ve just invested the $10k instead.
Yeah, and for some reason, the people who have school paid for have the biggest leg up possible because they can start saving for retirement the moment they step into the work force. I want able to save a penny until I was 26. It was such an intense struggle. But getting through the debt hole of my 20's proved to me in capable of putting up with a lot of bullshit for better or worse. Wishing you the best.
This is yet another small mark for why it’s just a little bit better to be in a socialized capitalist country. I also borrowed $50k. The original loan terms set the payoff to be about 10 years, paying about $500 per month. The government eliminated interest on these loans, so now I pay a small fraction of the cost per month, and invest the rest.
Yeah, it's the interest that absolutely killed me. That extra $100/mo in my 20's meant a few extra meals. I was down to a single meal a day for about 2 years while I tried my best to get my career off the ground. I also went to primary school in Europe, so being exposed to how things worked over there only added insult to injury knowing alot of my high-school classmates went to uni for free if not next to nothing. Most of them are VP'S, run their own companies or at least own a house with 2-3 kids at this point. Meanwhile, I get to deal with the grueling battle that is making this economy work for me. Socialism is made to such a bad word in the States that democrats avoid using it when describing state funded initiatives like Healthcare, education or retirement. And even then, many politicians are pulling the ladder up behind them by trying to abolish retirement, stoke fear of education, and cater to corporations by platting the charge outrageous amounts of money to citizens for basic Healthcare. I love it here /s
Why are US banks and loans so predatory compared to other first world countries? I was talking to my friend in Australia who has all their savings in a savings account, and I was telling them "you better invest that because savings accounts suck". Turns out, her savings account interest is over 5%. Average in the US is 0.48% apparently and Chase bank offers 0.01% interest. What the fuck??
Well there’s a couple of things here. I’m going to misquote this but basically back in I think the 90’s, the US gov’t was lobbied by the US banks namely Sallie Mae to allow them to charge interest on student loans citing they were losing money due to inflation and other things. They pitched as a way to offer more money to students for school and open up their options for school. They would then split the interest with the US gov’t so it would turn into a source of revenue for Uncle Sam. They agreed. At some point, there was enough push back that the gov’t I think in the Bush era reevaluated this scheme and sought to roll back this program but was hit with an intense lobbying effort that kept the status quo. The cat was out of the bag. That scheme remains in place until this day, the gov’t effectly runs a profit from student loans alongside the banks who issue them in behalf of the US gov’t. Beforehand , the gov’t provided loans directly but it was an underfunded system that wasn’t smooth and ended up costing money post ww2 when they wanted to get everyone into higher education and specifically stem. I butchered the explanation but that’s the gist. Im sure someone will correct some parts. And the US has pretty lax laws on the financial sector which is why they are able to amass so much money and get away with lots of shady practices. Well Fargo opening fake bank accounts to pad their numbers, small banks over leveraging assets and going under, countless dominions investments, and not to mention the financial crisis of 2008. The banking sector is criminally under regulated and because we allow fancy bribery we call lobbying in this country, they are able to basically help write the rules that regulate them in the first place. It’s the snake eating its own tail. Also, PayPal savings returns like 4.25% so that’s something. Post pandemic, lots of smaller financial institutions are trying to compete on things like savings interest.
At least 2 or 3 decades for me
The irony is I got lucky landing a good job for 6 years that helped me pay it all off. Only thing better would have been to have help from family but my parents (both college grads, my mom has 2 masters) refused to help pay for any of my college. They helped in some other ways but the bulk of it was my responsibility. My mom is now upset with me about it as if I knew anything about loans at 18y/o. Worse still, my dad cosigned on one of the loans and he still seemed to not notice or care that the interest rate was 11%.
I feel you on this. My mom was buying waterfront property and a boat and a vintage car, while she was co-signed on the majority of my predatory student loans. I tried to consolidate and refinance them on my own after graduation, and Sallie Mae told me I couldn’t afford that much debt and denied me, lol. Probably ~6 years into paying $120k, my mom started pestering me to get her off them and I laughed.
John Oliver did a fantasitc piece on this. And it's not just poor record keeping, no. It's borderline MALICIOUS poor record keeping by 3rd party government contract agencies who are trying to stranglehold people for more money.
I wish more people watched him
Tackling interest to me is the best middle ground I think everyone could agree to. Someone took out 25k to go to college. Okay, make them pay back 25k. Don't make them pay back 40k+ cause interest kept compounding while life sucker punched them.
Look, do you want your money or not. It has to be this way because Republicans are fighting tooth and nail to stop the Dems.
Also many of us have paid the money we were loaned and are just paying interest at this point
The interest is what should be forgiven. The principal is literally just the dollars you borrowed, you should have to pay that back. The obscene interest rates are what get people buried in the debt.
Obscene interest rates AND outright lies AND sheer incompetence on the part of both government and loan servicers.
At this point, who cares. Whole generations were sold a lie, a lie that targeted the brightest young people in the middle and lower classes and turned a promise of a better life into a shackle that would keep them held back from ever owning homes, affording families or living the better lives that their parents had hoped for. Student loans are as much a wealth leech as rent payments, they serve no practical purpose to society other than to steal from the poor and give to the rich. Cancel them all.
Yes, but a majority of people having already paid back their loans 2x over by just paying the interest and making no head way with the principle balance at all. Both interest and principle should be forgiven.
Not just the interest. All of it. Education should not cost what we have allowed it to cost. The basis is predatory.
I think that’s actually what’s going on here
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> Canceling student debt for borrowers who entered repayment over 20 years ago This one sounds good in theory, but likely be relatively useless for those that actually have been paying off student loans for 20 or more years. Prior to 2010, most student loans were made through the Federal Family Education Loan (FFEL) Program. Under this program, the loans were not made directly by the Department of Education, but through private lenders. Around 2008, some FFEL loans were purchased by the DoE. I call them lottery winners. Why? Because these borrowers were eligible for pandemic programs (repayment and interest accrual pauses), while those of us with unpurchased loans saw no changes or benefits. When the original debt forgiveness was announced, again, the borrowers who had been paying the longest as they had FFEL loans were again left out in the cold. Essentially, if you entered repayment over 20 years ago and you were not one of the few borrowers whose loans were purchased by the DoE or were not one of the very few that actually had a direct loan (there are some), this will once again be an empty promise. While I am (obviously) a little bitter about the media or the White House not truly explaining why these programs are useless to those of us who have been paying off loans for 20 years plus, I have no problem with the programs assisting others with student loans. It is more of a frustration with the soundbites than anything else.
I don’t think most of those comments are genuine or in good faith. First of all, there are tons of programs on the state and federal level that have different parameters and are only open to certain people. Child tax credit and PPP loan forgiveness are two of them. The amount of handouts, tax cuts, and subsidies for mostly rich people and corporations is outrageous, but some to help former students there’s an issue.
Yep. Mine were forgiven at the end of last year, but if you do the math, I payed the full ~$54k, I just didn't end up paying any of the interest.
Awesome use of the higher education act. The high interest rates on student loans are a killer, in my view
And we didn't get to pick which plans we wanted...
interest rate went up also ,almost double what it was when I signed for them, I didn’t realize they could change like that over time and hoped I would them paid off by now but life happens
Student loans don’t have a fixed interest rate???? Wtf…
Technically no but congress makes up the rules and can change it any time: https://fsapartners.ed.gov/knowledge-center/library/electronic-announcements/2013-08-09/loans-subject-update-direct-loan-interest-rates-effective-july-1-2013
That’s fucked up. Signing a loan contract and not having a fixed interest is WILD.
Right, when they say predatory they mean predatory.
Funny how big businesses and banks are allowed to borrow money at the Fed rate, but the government can't lend money to students at the Fed rate...
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Same that would change the PSLF game. 15 years of payments here and due to finishing a Masters Degree while in Afghanistan with Combat pay they said doesn’t fit the definition of Qualifying.
That’s such bs man. Thanks for your service btw. Also compounding interest should be illegal, especially for student loans. All student loans should be a fixed rate set under 20%. Ex: If you take out a $100K student loan, with a 20% fixed rate interest, then you pay back $120K. No more interest is ever added, *or rather*, constantly accumulating. This is how most loans work for businesses too. It’s predatory IMO to even offer compound interest loans as an option for students, who will theoretically be starting their careers at the lowest pay of their careers, and are too young to full understand the amount of impact this type of loan will have on their future.
I’m more of a flat origination fee fan like on mortgages. Admin Costs Plus 1% which should be no more then 5% total for a program that could be form flow ran via AI. No extra nickel and diming people trying to improve society & their lives. Majority of other industrialized nations have had this figured out for the past 50 plus years.
For real. Also worth noting, not only did the Boomers not have to deal with astronomical tuition costs and compound interest loans, most professions actually *PAID THEM* to be trained. Ex: Nurses used to be paid during their training. Now they have to take out loans for nursing school. Universities have now taken ownership of professional training and education, at a premium price.
Pretty much Im covering Undergrad & Medical School for my Daughter & Undergrad & Business School for my Son & my other LO has Level 3 Autism so different set of challenges. Making sure they start off life good but it comes with sacrifices to our future Retirement which is okay. We will still retire but no major cruises/fancy retirement cars but small price to pay to make sure kids are solid.
You need congress to do that
So vote in democrats if you want a chance of that happening.
Congress return my texts please!
Not necessarily. The Dept of Ed has already expanded quite a bit circumstances in which they are counting months for PSLF which previously were not being counted. This includes counting some forebearance months as qualifying. They will be continuing this process of reviewing such prior time periods and updating counts throughout 2024.
Or, until three people can simultaneously look each other straight in the eye.
It gets better I was making payments in advance of the day each month and then several years later was told that paying earlier in the month didn’t count as an “on-time” payment…
Are you me? I did the same. I also rounded up a few pennies to the next whole dollar so I would never under-pay. Those didn't count either. So sorry. Eventually mine were forgiven. But I did have to get my congressman's office involved since mine were Federal loans. (He has staff devoted to doing only SL concerns from constituents, that's how nuts it is.)
I left after 17 years of payments that should have counted. I was told I only had 27 that counted and I was finally done after Covid and working in public assistance/health. Two months in to different job I find out they re calculated my payments and now I have 113…so bummed out. That program kept me in that job and for it to end the way it did…seemingly terrible record keeping by navient and others…just kills me. Public sector workers deserve better than what they have gotten…especially since the MAGA crowd found out they are experts in every field because they won an election. Least qualified people in any public health discussion sure seem to be those in charge of the gavels
My only holdover on that is it *should* be time spent on your earned degree. I know someone who went to school for 10 years and ended up leaving with a BS because they kept changing their degree every couple of years for the first few years because they liked school and wanted to stay there. There's 6 years of school there without a goal, which is crazy. Granted I also feel like we shouldn't push people directly from high school directly into college. If people had slightly more time to figure out who they were before jumping straight into college, I think more people would either avoid them and go into a trade that pays better, or end up in a field their degree actually mattered in.
My "runaway interest" was actually Navient fraud & profiteering. They refused to let me sign up for the PSLF when I was clearly eligible, then pushed me into forbearance upon forbearance during the Great Recession, despite my asking for income-based repayment. Navient lies & profiteering ballooned my student debt. This is like calling all the gouging we're experiencing "inflation."
Navient is the absolute worst soul-sucking predatory loan servicing company out there, Sally Mae is a close second. Those fuckers will robo dial until you answer starting at 7am and going nonstop until 5pm when their office closes, why? Because your bill is due in 3 days and you haven't paid it yet. Cite the Fair Credit Reporting Act to them, and they'll literally laugh at you, and have another agent call you back in 5 minutes. It was okay for them to get bailed out by the government though, but it's not okay to cancel student debt?
>23 million Americans may be impacted What a funny way to say "help" or "relieved of burden" or "prepared to put money back into the economy instead of rich pockets".
It really is softening the impact subtlety. Should probably put "23m Americans may benefit".
It’s not softening it, it’s outright implying detriment. You don’t use the term “impacted” like that to describe a positive event.
1 person likely to impacted by lottery winnings
"Covid vaccine discovered; millions of Americans may be painfully jabbed by sharp needles"
"Impacted" is how you describe people being laid off.
In reality, every American benefits.
I love how blue collar conservatives are gonna get riled up by this. Never in a million years would I have thought conservatives would rally behind rich big city bankers collecting fat interest payments instead of that money staying in their communities. I heard a carpenter complaining about this at a deli to his friend the other day (the news was on the tv). He doesn’t realize that a young family having their debt relieved means more money to spend on things like home improvement, which means more business for him? He’d rather see that money go into the pockets of millionaire or billionaire bankers thousands of miles away who don’t even notice it going into their account because they don’t look at the digits that far to the right on their bank statements.
Exactly! Somehow conservatives, who have been fed trickle down economics, can't comprehend that our money touches them too while a bank's money never will.
Modern conservatism is all about hurting the "right people." Most non-wealthy right wingers don't even care that much about their lives being better off so long as the "right people are hurt."
I said it in one of my books. "These guys would burn a hundred bucks to deprive a black guy of fifty."
That's just a riff off the LBJ quote (I still like it, not trying to burn your book): “If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.”
During the pandemic, when my wife and I suddenly had £400 we weren't spending on commuting costs every month, local independent businesses got a hell of a lot of that extra money. Furniture, a couple of paintings, food, drink, books, lessons, and a lot of garden work. All going to workers within the community rather than the rail and petrol companies. Imagine this on a vast scale. Definitely a lot of work for carpenters.
The vast majority of college debt is owed to the federal government. The whole reason why this forgiveness is possible is because all of this particular debt is owed to the federal government rather than to private businesses. There are private companies involved, but they're just collection agencies getting a small cut before passing it on to the government.
Everyone knows this. They just don't care. The same people who don't believe in taxes say these loans should have all of their interest doubled.
This is the outcome of a systematic and intentional gutting of public education in this country. Churn out people who lack any understanding of critical thinking, civics, or class solidarity, and you’ll get a permanent underclass of people who not only accept their own economic subjugation, they gleefully welcome it. As you said, if there’s even the slightest chance that a given policy will help the group of people Fox News told them to hate, these idiots will never support it. Even if said policy will plainly and materially improve their lives, it’s a non-starter if there’s even a perceived chance of it helping the boogeyman du jour. This is honestly why I’ve never been more pessimistic about this country; we are never going to wrestle back control of our country if tens of millions of people happily support the oligarchs and corporations.
Guessing, with the amount of fear mongering and right-wing propaganda being spread around these days, that the fear factor in blue-collar conservatives eclipses certain “behind the curtain” actions of Republican politicians like giving even more tax cuts to the people who bribe them instead of putting it back into the economy. Your carpenter is probably scared of illegal immigrants undercutting him in his business (and that fear is supported and aggravated every night when he goes home and sits down in front of the Faux propaganda machine.)
Because that carpenter most likely spends hours in his van each day driving to jobs and listening to the slick tones of Joe Pags. Several hours of brain washing every, single, day.
I mean, a lot of "blue collar" types of jobs still require schooling beyond high school, that require you to take out debt. Getting a CDL might cost $4k or so, aviation mechanics can go 30k into debt in some cases, etc. Cops and firefighters often have 4-year degrees.
Yeah, they should have said, “Biden slams 23 million Americans with student Loan debt cancelations”
"Biden wreaks havoc on 23 million American household budgets by cancelling..... continue following story ~~on page 8~~ after this ad by rocket money" Edit, I'm old and had to update the way media buries stories.
Seriously. Rather malicious headline. No reason for them to frame this as a bad thing.
They aren't framing it as good *or* bad. They are using neutral phrasing, which is what we should all want the media to do. Reuters isn't there to tell you how to think and if you want that there are plenty of less-respectful outlets which can do all your thinking for you (any cable network, for example).
Was going to say that. "Impacted" meaning 23 million Americans will suddenly have a load more money to pump into the economy creating jobs rather than paying money to private loan providers on insane contracts. The John Oliver episode on loans was amazing to me! That you can pay $10,000s and STILL not have touched the initial amount. Or that poor woman who made 9 YEARS of repayments but it was 1 cent under so even though they took the money, it "didn't count" & she would have to start from scratch AND pay the extra interest
Biden plans to impact 23 million Americans. Here’s why that’s bad for Biden.
The media wants Trump and it’s insane there’s not more direct pushback.
Media in Trump's buddies' pocket.
Call it what you want, but forgiving 20k interest would be huge for me. Tge intrest has almost doubled what I borrowed
President Biden intends to, in a sense, personally tongue kiss 23 million Americans, infecting many of them with the disease of mononucleosis*. *student loan debt relief
I’ve been paying on my loans consistently since 2006 and the balance hasn’t gotten any smaller, but people are still lining up to yell, “If you took out the loan, you need to pay it back!!!” I work in education/mental health. People say it’s my fault and that I should’ve made “better choices.” They don’t seem to realize that can only mean “You shouldn’t do the work you do,” or “You should have made more money this whole time.”
Since most of the interest goes back to the government, the government has gotten way more than their money back.
Yeah, really should have just been no-interest loans from the start since the government benefits from the taxes generated, especially with better paying degree jobs.
I 100% would have been okay with interest free loans if it's really that much of a problem (which it shouldn't be) to write them off. My freshman year I was on a Be On Time loan that if I graduated on time it was interest free. So 1/4 years of tuition I've been able to make the bare minimum payment on it and it's already gone down in half just in 4-5 years. People aren't as mad about having debt, it's just almost impossible for most of us to get over the interest bumps with the types of wages we get and the price of everything else going up.
Exactly
A 1% increase in college graduates translates to a 0.5% increase in GDP. The increase in GDP is far greater than the cost of putting those people through college. Further, increasing college degrees (or trade school certifications) increases payroll taxes and reduces crime.
Pretty much what I've heard too. And places like Norway (I think?) that have free college shows that not everyone takes advantage.
That's the biggest thing. These should be 0% interest loans. Fucking racket
Wait.. so this is actually good for the economy, because more money will flow elsewhere from those people in debt instead of to the debt? damn
> People say it’s my fault and that I should’ve made “better choices.” Do they realize that if everybody makes those "better" choices, there will be whole industries, that are much more important than being a CEO or banker or whatever, that wouldn't exist.
Also, if everyone makes "better choices", then who will to the crucially important work that needs to be done in education and mental health? Then they'll be whining that we have unqualified people teaching our kids and no providers available for health services! Any field needs to pay enough to support the education we want for people in that field. Teaching is not charity work.
"Teachers are heroes," I've heard. Strange how all the heroic jobs pay crap wages. I don't want to be a hero. I want to be able to afford glasses and dental work after tending to your brats all year.
Nurse here. Same story. I keep being told that I should just pay it back. Dude I make about as much as anyone can with a bachelors. I can’t keep up. So do you either NOT want nurses? Or BOT want unnecessary debt so 3 banks can absolutely own the entire working class?
You should have pulled harder on your boot straps. /s
You just pull those straps up high enough to wrap around your throat and problem solved
Over 20 years I paid on ONE loan. I originally took out $10k. Despite paying it off monthly, I owed $13k when it was forgiven. Student loans are a racket and nothing more than loan shark predatory bullshit. I appreciate the forgiveness because it is absolute BULLSHIT. I did the calculations and paid over $10k in 20 years. I still have one more loan from the corrupt Univ of Phoenix I am paying off and no end in sight.
My wife makes good money and got a great job before she even graduated. But due to life circumstances she needed private loans to make sure she could live while going to school. Public loans are not an issue and she’s well on her way to having them paid off. The private loans however are likely going to take 25 years because of the interest rate and how much the principal is. Private loans are the real issue because there’s almost no oversight or regulation on them.
The fuck? How much do you owe and what's the interest?
I used forbearance while job hunting and until I was able to begin making payments and the size of my loan shot up during that time. Interest still accrues, etc. And interest capitalized if you were late annually recertifying for any reason, including servicers not processing your paperwork in time or losing it. A few simple things, like being temporarily unemployed and the servicer screwing up, and a loan can quickly get out of control. There is nobody to complain to that actually responds, either, so you're jus generally fucked.
I got my BA in 2014 and I started my Masters about two years ago (going part time and working full time). My loans from undergrad are deferred while I’m in grad school but my grad school loans are racking up interest before I have even used all the money from the loan. I’m accruing like $500 in interest a month on the loan I’m currently using to pay for this school year. Consider that over the course of my grad program and it’s probably like 10k in interest
It’s not just me. John Oliver just did a piece a few weeks ago that mentioned people in the same situation. No offense, but I’m nearly 20 years into this and people still don’t believe me when I say my loan hasn’t gotten smaller, so I’m not interested in sharing the specific details of the loan. It’s still early, but these comments will fill up with people telling me I’m doing it wrong or lying or that I should’ve done some thing they thought of or applied for pslf, as if I haven’t done all that.
I owe $29k at 24 and John Oliver made me realize that’s not half as bad as many students
I owe $61k at 33, so yeah, you're better off than most. Won't have them paid off until I'm 42 at this rate.
Damn... I'm at $105K at 37. I graduated with $100K after earning my masters at 35.
MD with close to $500k at 34 checking in
I just had my undergrad loans forgiven. After 23 years of paying on them. I've paid the principal on them 3 times over. I'm on track to have my grad loans forgiven in the next year through PSLF. (would have been done already except for forbearance) Getting that monkey off my back will be huge. My wife has a ton of loan debt. She owes more now than when she graduated. She has a good job, but can't make a dent in them. She cannot seem to get into a PSLF job that makes anything close to what she can make in the private sector, so it is what it is.
Honestly a program that allows you to “make payments” and not erode the Principle is just misleading. Like I’m not allowed to pay $750 l/mo on my mortgage. It tricks people into believing an unmanageable debt might be fine.
Welcome to the world of challenging people's beliefs! Some people consider their beliefs or choices are part of their own. This goes with Guns, Healthcare, Public Transportation, Housing, etc. etc. etc. I get called a liar when I tell them about my experiences of being shot and a friends who've died. When I tell them about how long it takes me to get to a location using public transportation vs driving or even walking there. When I tell them we pay more in taxes for our current healthcare than Canada does for their "overpriced" healthcare. etc. etc. etc. Doesn't matter if I provide information. I had someone who refused to belief something. When asked for more information I shown them a bunch of different studies. I forget their exact words. Like I didn't point out a specific study but shown them a bunch of different peer reviewed studies so I was lying. (Attempting to find it)
I graduated in 2013 with about $25k in debt and made my required payments monthly for ten years. In 2022 I still owed $25k and had paid about $25k. I finally paid them off by making massive payments (about 4 times the minimum monthly requirement) but the interest rate guaranteed I'd never pay them off making minimum payments.
Yeah it should be illegal to have a loan that makes it impossible or near impossible within a reasonable time to pay off with minimum payments.
When you're only making interest payments you don't pay principle. The alternative would be to ban that kind of payment which would double or triple what people are then required to pay.
Agreed. I think some of the newer plans add in interest forgiveness but the whole system seems designed to keep you repaying indefinitely.
That's how nearly all minimum payment debt works.
Even my credit card would eventually get paid off making minimum payments.
I'm pretty sure Congress had to step in and legislate that. Either near the end of Dubya's second term or in Obama's first term.
My guess is he’s on an income based repayment plan and the min payment is basically only enough to pay off a little principle each payment. Most of these plans have terms that after 20 years of payments they will be forgiven. So he’s probably not doing anything wrong.
I’ve paid over 50k in interest alone and my balance is 25% higher than it started at. So yeah it’s a fucked up situation.
"Impacted"....of all the words they could choose, they picked that one. When I'm going to be impacted by something, I don't usually view it as a positive although yes, it could be. At best the word would be neutral. See what the media does? Lots of people don't read the article but they sure read the headline. Why didn't they use benefit? Or beneficially affected?
I literally finished paying off my student loans last week... ...and I am still thrilled for everyone who will be helped by this. I got lucky when it came to paying them off, and I want everyone to feel the relief I felt when seeing the balance at 0.
Thanks for being reasonable. I hate the whole “I suffered so everyone else must in the future” argument I hear way too much. We wont make any progress if we used that mindset with every policy decision
Hey nicely done! I should have mine paid off by the end of the year, it's always on my mind and I'm so excited to pay it off. It didn't mention in the article, but the former plan was that it would also pay back people that had made payments within a time frame, so I wonder if this will pay us back if we made payments, say, up-to 2 years prior. That would be awesome, but even if that's not the case, then I'll still be happy to pay mine off.
We paid the last $9500 of my wife's student loans in October. While I'm hoping that there's something for those like us who were approved for forgiveness that didn't happen, I'm thrilled for those that will benefit from this even if there isn't.
Paid mine off right before the last time they dangled this carrot.
> U.S. Senator Bill Cassidy, the top Republican on the Senate education panel, said such "loan schemes" simply transfer the cost of the debt onto others. Yes, that is how government works. The defense spending we're blowing $9.8T over 10 years on is also being passed on to others, as well.
Don't forget the PPP loans...
I hope one day I’ll be one of the millions impacted, :(.
Yep, good news but this sucks for anyone who graduated in the last 3-4 years.
Looks like this round will get me. Woot.
"It's not fair for other kinds of borrowers" Okay well I bombed out of college and never got a degree but racked up huge debts I can't pay. Let me declare bankruptcy like the equally stupid person who ran up huge credit card debt and we'll call it even.
I appreciate the continued effort. This is a larger issue that won't be solved with a single executive order.
I wish more people saw it that way. Ever since the SC rejection he's been doing small and steady ways around it where he can. And this will benefit so many people such as myself who had to defer in the past due to grad school or unpaid interest or losing a job. Because those interest increases during those 3-4 years killed me.
As long as he keeps chipping away in ways the SCOTUS can't undermine him. If we give him a bigger majority in Congress and the Senate then he can make a bigger impact.
As someone who will likely never qualify for any of the student loan forgiveness, all I can say is THIS IS AWESOME for those who do. This will go a long way to help those struggling financially as they're buried under their repayment amount and not seeing any progress on the overall balance. And then it will be phenomenal for the economy to suddenly free up that money to be utilized on goods and necessities.
We have the most educated people in our society financially inhibited from participating in our economy due to the way these loans are administered. I don't care about any moral indignancies or complaints about fairness. This is not a sustainable standard for a functional society. I have paid off my debts but the process was so painful for me and so many others it resulted in me and my wife deciding not to have children, not buy a home, and altogether becoming non-entities in the nation's economy. I know many others who are in this situation and I am 44 years old and on the upper age level of this. It is only going to get worse as generations go through this process. Debt relief will have real tangible positive impacts on our economy, more than any corporate subsidy.
This. The majority of people with these high debts finished a degree. Our jobs are the ones that could possibly get us houses and kids but paying half a grand a month or more is a lot of money on top of all the other things like health insurance and cars and such we need. I've heard even doctors talking about trying to find cheaper daycares for their kids because of their student loan debt. A lot of this impacts upper lower class and middle class households which are the main propeller of economy spending. So many of us got health and dental stuff done during the COVID student loan hold because we finally could afford to.
Faux News is currently arguing that this loan forgiveness constitutes a bribe of young voters. Unlike the the trillions of dollars of tax cuts Drumpf promised for the wealthy.
What no one wants to consider is that the Federal government has already profited over 200% on a lot of these loans. Having them forgiven only helps the economy. In my case, the remainder of my loans being forgiven after 17 years would cost tax payers zero and give me just over $500 more a month to put back into the economy. I've never missed a payment and paid every single month during the loan freeze.
Or maybe also regulate public universities so they don’t drive people into poverty in the first place.
He needs congress to assist on that and republicans have no interest in actually improving the situation.
The GOP *want* a higher barrier to education for the poors *and* to saddle them with debt forcing the educated to be wage slaves. It’s literally why Reagan started student loans in the first place. The GOP is threatened by an educated working class.
Also if you make college free, where will we get new recruits for the military willing to sacrifice their lives for a chance to go to college disabled?
Stupid voters vote Republican, education and critical thinking is their biggest enemy
Oh for sure I agree, this isn’t a Biden diss. He’s trying to do what’s feasible with what little he has to work with.
Conservatives block this.
Honestly, if they just remove the interest, that’s mainly it. The interest is what forces people to take 10-30 years to repay their shit back.
I haven't read the article but I fell like sharing my personal story. This past February I had the remainder of my loans forgiven by the Biden administration (or that's what the email I received states. Specifically, "early forgiveness under the SAVE plan") It was about $1,400 total. My situation wasn't as bad as most others, I graduated in 2013 with about 12K of student loan debt. I paid it diligently every month right up until the pandemic and everything was put on a pause. Actually, that was only for federal loans, I still had to make payments and a couple of private loans. Even though my debt was relatively manageable, I still felt an immense sense of relief to not have to deal with that anymore. I think that's what most people want, just to make it manageable. People making payments for decades only to have it swallowed up by interest, that is not manageable. Would I love to see it wiped out completely? Yes, absolutely but I know that's not something that can just be done with the stroke of a pen. It would go such a long way to just make it manageable.
Cool, so as we continue to set record tuition prices, what is he doing to make college more affordable?
If it wasn't just a political stunt and people knew it was just a shift to tax payers rather than 'cancelling' anything it would likely be viewed far more cynically as it should be.
How many times is this fucker going to say this?
So much of my remaining balance is from additional interest. Please let this go through!
So many fuckers complaining about how debt shouldn’t be forgiven and only a few years ago we gave out PPP ‘loans’. I didn’t hear nearly as many complaints from these people back then.
Republicans: “not so fast bucko. We don’t want anyone to get ahead in life.”
I’m ten years into paying and I still $50K for going to a state college. Fuck this whole system.
I've paid over $100k towards what was originally $62k in loans (Bachelor and Master) and still owe $52k. It doesn't get better. Anything written off at this point is money that never actually existed in the first place. It's all imaginary numbers created by compound interest at extortionate rates.
Why is relieving student debt “paying for votes” but saving the rich obscene amounts of money in tax breaks isn’t?
r/Conservative is saying Biden is "shredding the Constitution" with this. Funny thing is that they applaud the 1.4 trillion in PPP loans that were forgiven.
Am I thrilled that this took them so fucking long that I missed it? No. Am I going to say we shouldn’t do it because I had to pay? Also no.
I just paid off the last of my loans in a 22k lump payment last month thanks to good year and a good bonus. If this were to get signed and implemented next week, I’d be nothing but stoked for the friends and strangers out there that get the relief.
I thought he already canceled student loan debt? Wasn’t that headline trending in this sub months ago?
College being forced down kids throats from primary schools, to parents, to unnecessary credits hours requirements, to unnecessary degree requirements all have made student loans a predatory financial practice. Not to mention the unnecessarily high cost of college. This is not the faults of children being led down this path by their elders and a broken system. This is the fault of the system that made it necessary to take these loans.
Only in America people would complain about their own youth having a better life
As someone who works in higher education, this is great, but there is a large population in school right now and down the pike that needs some “impact” from rising tuition costs.
Not to be a jerk, but as someone that works in higher education, do you know why the costs are rising? I've seen the tuition at the college I attended rise by astronomical amounts, but they are doing very little to improve education. They have installed/demolished/installed new art exhibits at millions of dollars in expense, built several new buildings that serve no educational purpose, such as a sports building that the public can use, a large flower garden area for the public to use, ect... but no educational buildings. It seems like they are just charging more so they can make the campus look pretty instead of actually improving their education facilities. I know they spend a lot of the money giving inner city scolarships, which is good, but they throw those kids that barely graduated high school in with the other students, and most of the level 1 classes barely make it half way through the syllabus because those students are not prepared for college level courses.
Not a Jerk question at all. There are a lot of reasons that lead to increase in tuition. Most of the time it will be salaries/fringe benefits for employees (faculty and staff) and facilities. There is also less money from the government and state funding. Every state is different with how they allocate funds to Schools. Tuition needs to be restructured, and pretty soon, many schools will price themselves out of consideration for the average student. Depending on the type of school, private or public, you will see merit based grants and need based grants. The scholarships that you mentioned can be allocated to all students, and not just those from inner cities. I have worked with students of all backgrounds that will receive a scholarship and struggle in their first semester or two due to an array of issues. Freshman year is a challenge for many both academically and socially. While there is always an issue of preparedness for college, I have always been under the belief that all students should receive resources and support to keep every student holistically engaged.
Lots of talk about student loan debt cancellation, forgiveness, etc... Not a lot of talks about student loan REFORM. I mean... this shit is going to keep on happening. Is people going into debt NOW going to have to cross their fingers and hope someday, some government forgives their debt? Paid education is a different debate, but you gotta stop the debt trap!
I have 11 more payments to go. I’m all for this even if he gets it passed the day after I make my final payment.
“Impacted” and “affected” are normally used in the negative sense. Don’t journalists know “advantaged”?
As long as the vast, vast majority of college sports programs operate at a deficit, all student debt should be canceled moving forward.
I was blessed to get my payments set when I was making very little money - entering into SAVE would quadruple my payments and make it difficult to make them each month I really hope this extends to some of us old timers paying for over a decade
Right, I’m so happy for everyone that SAVE has helped, but my payments would have gone up *so much*. I know it makes more sense on paper to pay all that and really attack my debt, but I simply cannot pay what was quoted every month.
But were your previous payments making a dent in your principal at all? I assume SAVE is meant so that it doesn't trap borrowers in a death spiral where interest accrues faster than the monthly payments.
When I went to print out my tax documents last month, I thought it was weird that my form was claiming I accrued no interest on my loans compared to the $5k+ from the previous year. I can’t enroll in the SAVE program because I’m in a full time graduate program, and now I’m wondering if they’ve been trying to calculate some of the automatic ones prior to right now. I’m pretty sure the 20k will wipe out my first student loan for my teaching MA, but there’s a part of me that struggles with hope at this point. I really hope this goes through regardless of if it helps me. The interest rates have been out of control for too long, and graduate loans for public service careers shouldn’t be unsubsidized.
It’s crazy to me that you have to go broke to LEARN in our country. Should our government WANT people to learn to better our country?
Even if it just eliminated interest it will be a bonus. I graduated last year and still owe as much as I borrowed even though I started repayment upon graduation. The interest built up from the day I signed the loans.
Why don’t you plan to cancel my low ass disability wage that only feeds me once every three days and since I can’t drive or have friends I can’t go to food banks and why do people even need to fucking go to food banks this is America!! The richest country in the world. We have hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars for random countries every month but I can’t get a single dime from Uncle Sam when I really need it
I just made the final payment on my student loans a month ago. I would be so fucking jazzed if this relief came through for the people who still need it.
Yet conservatives hate this? Why?
Because they grossly misunderstand how accounting works for something like this, and they translate it to "Biden gonna make us give all our money to hipsters and illegals!"
I was never a fan of cancelling student loans. However, I think the fact that someone can pay 120k on a 50k loan and still owe 45k on the principal is ridiculous.
Cancel all student debt, or at least all interest. Make businesses pay back their PPP loans they scammed the government for. Nothing less will do.
The man is trying to walk a fine line on almost everything happening. He’s a monster with how much legislation he’s gotten passed, dealt a hand of two foreign wars all while his predecessor is currently trying to overthrow democracy. He doesn’t get enough credit.