I graduated a state college with a bachelor’s degree in 1994. When I graduated, I was $37,000 in debt. Some of the loans were Perkins, low interest loans at 5%. A few were at the federal rate of 8.5% and the rest were called SLS Loans and they were at 12.5%. Almost immediately after I graduated I received a call from Sallie Mae, and was told that if I consolidated my loans, that they would average my interest rate at 9.5%, but that I would be able to refinance the loans at a lower rate should the federal rate go down. The job market was tight in the area of the country that I lived in, so I took the income sensitive option to repay my loans. After a few years and a layoff, I found that I now owed almost 75k in student loans. I contacted SallieMae and requested a refinance so that I could lower my interest rate down to the 3% that it was at the time. I was told by them that the only way that I could possibly refinance my loans was to take out more loans, but that they would use a weighted average to determine my interest rate. Meaning that I could lower my rate to 9.4% if I took on more debt.
I paid what I could over the years, but in 2005, I landed a really good position where I had a lot of capital to take care of my debt. The problem is that by that time my debt was over $100,000. I contacted SallieMae and told them that I would like to make them a cash offer of 65,000 dollars to forgive my debt. That was everything that I had saved up and was ready to give it all to them to forgive my debt. I was told by a supervisor at SM that since I could not discharge their debt through bankruptcy that they would apply the 65k to my debt, but that they did not have to negotiate with me.
It was at this point that I decided to default on my loans in the hopes that I could get to the guarantor to make a compromise, only to find out that SallieMae purchased the guarantor USAF. Not only that, but the company that has hunted me for the past 6 years is Pioneer collections (they go by a lot of names now) is also owned by SallieMae. I am now a second class citizen. I pay all of my bill but for one. They can garnishee my wages without cause, they can attach my social security. They have even called my neighbors to tell me that there Is an emergency so that they could get my contact information. It has cost me jobs, I cannot get a home loan, so I am stuck in the house that I purchased before I defaulted. My insurance is more expensive. I cannot even get a car loan.
I now owe more than 225,000 dollars on a 37,000 debt. Right now, I see no way out, except death. Not that I am going to kill myself, but that Sallie Mae Will follow me to my grave. I hope they send people to carry my casket.
