OCCUPY STUDENT DEBT

Student debtor stories submitted by the 99%

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160 posts tagged usury

I am staring at a student loan bill from American Educational Services. It says my installment loan is 2,205. behind with a current amount due of 737.00 with 44.00 outstanding late fees and principal and interest due of nearly 3,000. I owe it all now. I took out 33,000. in student loan debt to finish a Ph.D as a single parent with kids who at the time were toddlers. It took about seven years to finish my M.A. and Ph.D and I started a job as an academic at a salary of 32,000. per year in 1992. It has taken me twenty years to earn a salary of 83,000. annually at the same institution. I have always wanted to buy a home, but with the student loan debt I have hanging over my head, I am scared to death to even try to take on a mortgage (and frankly to even apply for one since I am a single-income household in an expensive urban area). I could probably own a small home by now if I were not looking at this bill whose outstanding total balance is 119,750+. I love my job. I had a chance to file bankruptcy and delete this debt several years ago, but chose not to because I felt a moral obligation to pay it back since I am an academic. Now I wish I had. My daughters are now married, self-sufficient, starting families and buying their first homes. I am glad that they will be likely to have something that I wish I could have provided for them during their growing years. Ahhh… depresses me to think about this. I am so competent in so many other areas of my life and I love my job. This black cloud makes me feel like such a failure.

I owe 4x what I borrowed! I have paid $20103.00 on the original $16,730.00 borrowed. I still owe $46,950.00. Even if I was able to pay this off today, I will have paid over 4x the amount for what I have borrowed. I don’t own a home, don’t have a family and never will, and I am harassed every single day by phone calls, texts, and emails. I have not defaulted on my loans, but I also am not paying the full amount, because I would like to continue to eat, have a place to live and be able to drive to work (in which the location changes quite often). The amount I pay only covers the late fees that Sallie Mae charges me every month, but this is no different than what happens when I pay the full amount. I had a loan consolidation done a few years ago, and the way that Sallie Mae structured the loan, there are actually two loans in a single wrapper. That allows them to take my payment and split it between the loans in such a way that it only ever covers the accrued interest and I make little or no progress on the actual principal (due to the compounding interest of 8.25%). I will never be able to retire, I will never be free of this albatross. I am an indentured slave, owned by the Sallie Mae corporation and eventually destroyed by them. I am being crushed under this systematic theft. Any value I would have gained from the education I received, has been fully extracted - siphoned off by these parasites, under the full approval of the government of the United States. I am the 99% and I am encased in economic slavery.
I owe 4x what I borrowed!

I have paid $20103.00 on the original $16,730.00 borrowed. I still owe $46,950.00. Even if I was able to pay this off today, I will have paid over 4x the amount for what I have borrowed. I don’t own a home, don’t have a family and never will, and I am harassed every single day by phone calls, texts, and emails. I have not defaulted on my loans, but I also am not paying the full amount, because I would like to continue to eat, have a place to live and be able to drive to work (in which the location changes quite often). The amount I pay only covers the late fees that Sallie Mae charges me every month, but this is no different than what happens when I pay the full amount. I had a loan consolidation done a few years ago, and the way that Sallie Mae structured the loan, there are actually two loans in a single wrapper. That allows them to take my payment and split it between the loans in such a way that it only ever covers the accrued interest and I make little or no progress on the actual principal (due to the compounding interest of 8.25%). I will never be able to retire, I will never be free of this albatross. I am an indentured slave, owned by the Sallie Mae corporation and eventually destroyed by them. I am being crushed under this systematic theft. Any value I would have gained from the education I received, has been fully extracted - siphoned off by these parasites, under the full approval of the government of the United States. I am the 99% and I am encased in economic slavery.

At 18, I wanted a career that would allow me to be creative, challenging, and still have a lot of fun. After chatting with several people including a college admissions advisor and my uncle among them, I’ve decided to go into Game Software Programming. It was a great field in designing games and what not and finally decided to attend Westwood College Online. This way I could work part time and still attend college and become independent now living on my own. In 2007, the advisor told me that the total program would cost $70,000 but not to worry because the average starting wage in the field was about $60,000 to $80,000; and at the time gas among other things (food, rent, etc) were much cheaper than now. I had decided to go ahead with this and enrolled in August of 2007, the first two years were great. In 2010, the college started sinking, good professors that were always there for me were nowhere to be found including my good advisors both financial and academic. Then lawsuits piled on the school and the college sent us letters saying it was all bullshit and they were getting them dismissed one by one. My third and final year came and the classes got to be sooo time consuming that along with my full-time job that I had earned in the spring of 2010, I just couldn’t keep up with the course load and the time it required so I asked to be switched to a different major, business administration specializing in financial management or accounting for short. The job I’m with is a seasonal lawn care company and struggled off and on working 12 to 14 hour days through the spring, summer, fall. I was able to catch up in the winter term somewhat but with all of the failing classes I was on warning and the end of the winter term that if I didn’t take 6 classes I’d be dismissed from the school. So I took 6 classes in the spring and I actually turn all of my focus to these classes and blew off work to stay afloat until week 7 of the 9 week term came. I had gotten such a discouraging message from the finance department of Westwood College Online that I thought would never happen. “You are not allowed any more sufficient funds since you have reached your maximum loan limits. Therefore, you will need to secure private funds to continue admission with Westwood College Online.” I had called everyone I knew with the college and was put on hold for hours. I called SallieMae to see what was going to happen and they said that they cannot say anything at this time because they weren’t allowed to. The term ended and my email and student login account was gone the day after it ended. I felt like someone used me for 4 years and racked up $78,000 in loans mixed between Federal and Private and another couple grand in Pell Grant and simply just kicked me out like that. I had moved back into my parent’s house out of the city an extra 30 minutes in drivetime to work to save some money on rent and start paying my small credit card debt I had used in the past. Finally got an email on my private account 6 months later (Oct ‘11 I believe) stating that SallieMae would be getting in contact with me to discuss loan payments. Of course this email came from an auto-no reply address and so I resent this letter to every email address in the finance department of Westwood College Online that I could get ahold of asking for more information. Nothing came, except for SallieMae’s phone calls and letters. I talked to the lady on the first phone call and she told me that I had to pay $800 a month, I counter-argued that the college told me it would be no more than $200 at most. We went back and forth for a few hours before she hung up on me. She called back the next day and I told her that I demanded to speak to her supervisor, she said she wasn’t obligated to and hung up on me again. The next day a man called back asking and I told him that I had spoken to a lady the last 2 days and that I cannot pay or afford $800 end of story. He told me that such person had called but left messages and had not actually spoke to me, I corrected him and asked for his name, he hung up. After being hung up on 3 times, I just watch and listen to these calls from SallieMae come through and has actually quite amused me that they are continuing to do so. I’ve managed to send emails about payments and only being able to pay a certain amount and they return an email in a .pdf format stored on their website which I still don’t understand because it’s a pain in the ass to get to. I’ve been laid off for the winter season of 2011 on Thanksgiving and have emailed SallieMae 5 times on how to get unemployment deferement or forbearance or on how to fix this situation. 5 times they’ve replied with the addresses of where I need to make my payment to and how to submit it. Finally for the 6th email, a guy named Robert had replied explaining the different things I can do in this situation. I did them all, requesting forbearance and unemployment deferment and also income base restriction. Amazingly they’ve done everything until July of ‘12 to all the other loans except for 2 private loans which I still have to pay. They still won’t say why those didn’t get approved. They’re still asking for $450 a month. I am 23 in April, $78k in loans and no degree whatsoever to show for it and Westwood College Online Credits have been denied by local area colleges. I have also been turned down from about 50 job applications since Thanksgiving. The lawncare job that laid me off, will start back up in March paying about $300 a week…

At 18, I wanted a career that would allow me to be creative, challenging, and still have a lot of fun. After chatting with several people including a college admissions advisor and my uncle among them, I’ve decided to go into Game Software Programming. It was a great field in designing games and what not and finally decided to attend Westwood College Online. This way I could work part time and still attend college and become independent now living on my own.

In 2007, the advisor told me that the total program would cost $70,000 but not to worry because the average starting wage in the field was about $60,000 to $80,000; and at the time gas among other things (food, rent, etc) were much cheaper than now. I had decided to go ahead with this and enrolled in August of 2007, the first two years were great. In 2010, the college started sinking, good professors that were always there for me were nowhere to be found including my good advisors both financial and academic. Then lawsuits piled on the school and the college sent us letters saying it was all bullshit and they were getting them dismissed one by one.

My third and final year came and the classes got to be sooo time consuming that along with my full-time job that I had earned in the spring of 2010, I just couldn’t keep up with the course load and the time it required so I asked to be switched to a different major, business administration specializing in financial management or accounting for short. The job I’m with is a seasonal lawn care company and struggled off and on working 12 to 14 hour days through the spring, summer, fall. I was able to catch up in the winter term somewhat but with all of the failing classes I was on warning and the end of the winter term that if I didn’t take 6 classes I’d be dismissed from the school. So I took 6 classes in the spring and I actually turn all of my focus to these classes and blew off work to stay afloat until week 7 of the 9 week term came. I had gotten such a discouraging message from the finance department of Westwood College Online that I thought would never happen. “You are not allowed any more sufficient funds since you have reached your maximum loan limits. Therefore, you will need to secure private funds to continue admission with Westwood College Online.” I had called everyone I knew with the college and was put on hold for hours. I called SallieMae to see what was going to happen and they said that they cannot say anything at this time because they weren’t allowed to.

The term ended and my email and student login account was gone the day after it ended. I felt like someone used me for 4 years and racked up $78,000 in loans mixed between Federal and Private and another couple grand in Pell Grant and simply just kicked me out like that. I had moved back into my parent’s house out of the city an extra 30 minutes in drivetime to work to save some money on rent and start paying my small credit card debt I had used in the past. Finally got an email on my private account 6 months later (Oct ‘11 I believe) stating that SallieMae would be getting in contact with me to discuss loan payments. Of course this email came from an auto-no reply address and so I resent this letter to every email address in the finance department of Westwood College Online that I could get ahold of asking for more information. Nothing came, except for SallieMae’s phone calls and letters. I talked to the lady on the first phone call and she told me that I had to pay $800 a month, I counter-argued that the college told me it would be no more than $200 at most. We went back and forth for a few hours before she hung up on me. She called back the next day and I told her that I demanded to speak to her supervisor, she said she wasn’t obligated to and hung up on me again. The next day a man called back asking and I told him that I had spoken to a lady the last 2 days and that I cannot pay or afford $800 end of story. He told me that such person had called but left messages and had not actually spoke to me, I corrected him and asked for his name, he hung up. After being hung up on 3 times, I just watch and listen to these calls from SallieMae come through and has actually quite amused me that they are continuing to do so.

I’ve managed to send emails about payments and only being able to pay a certain amount and they return an email in a .pdf format stored on their website which I still don’t understand because it’s a pain in the ass to get to. I’ve been laid off for the winter season of 2011 on Thanksgiving and have emailed SallieMae 5 times on how to get unemployment deferement or forbearance or on how to fix this situation. 5 times they’ve replied with the addresses of where I need to make my payment to and how to submit it. Finally for the 6th email, a guy named Robert had replied explaining the different things I can do in this situation. I did them all, requesting forbearance and unemployment deferment and also income base restriction. Amazingly they’ve done everything until July of ‘12 to all the other loans except for 2 private loans which I still have to pay. They still won’t say why those didn’t get approved. They’re still asking for $450 a month.

I am 23 in April, $78k in loans and no degree whatsoever to show for it and Westwood College Online Credits have been denied by local area colleges. I have also been turned down from about 50 job applications since Thanksgiving. The lawncare job that laid me off, will start back up in March paying about $300 a week…

I graduated from a small private school in California. I have a BS in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. I got an excellent education. My parents could not afford to pay for college, and my school did not give out good financial aid, so I took out loans. I originally took out around 90k. I have 5 student loans, 4 of which are private. When I first graduated college I moved to Portland, Oregon and worked a job which paid $9.00 dollars an hour because it was all that I could get (the job market up there is very bad). I had 6 months before the 4 out of 5 of loans started kicking in. I had my first mental breakdown in January of 2010 when my first payments were due, and they started around $500.00. I had no idea that it was going to be this much. I found another part time job, this one making $11.90 an hour. I worked six days a week and had to commute 35 miles for my jobs. I had to borrow money from my parents, grandparents, and roommates to get by, although it wasn’t really borrowing since I couldn’t afford to pay them back. I had to call two loan companies to change my payment plan so that I pay less now, and more later (meaning $150.00 now, and will eventually have payments of $450.00, and this is just for one loan!). By June of 2010, my 5th loan started kicking in, making my monthly totals $668.78. As my first part time job was as a teacher and ended right before summer break, I was back to one part time job. I then applied for food stamps, because all of my income was going towards student loans. I fed myself for the next few months on food stamps (thank god for that!). Since my second part time job was technically a paid internship, I discovered that some loan companies allow you to defer during your employment. I was able to defer two private loans until the end date of my internship (August of 2010). My federal loan (Direct Loan) allowed me to defer for up to a year. The two other private loans wouldn’t help me. Once my internship was over I contacted my loan companies to let them know that I was now unemployed and was looking for work and may not be able to make full payments. They all were pretty helpful, or at least kind, except for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo told me that even if I had $50.00 dollars left to my name, it should go to them. I made partial payments for about 3 months, thinking that as long as I paid something ($50.00 or $75.00 out of $150.00) that they would get off my case as I have called them many times to explain my situation and I could catch up once I had a job. They started harassing my co-signers (parents) and calling them every morning at 8am making threats. My parents aren’t in a good financial situation (also a lot of debt) and I woke up every morning feeling stressed and sick thinking that Wells Fargo would take action (over me being only $150.00 behind). I moved back to California to live in my parent’s basement, since all the money that I was making was going straight to these companies and I couldn’t afford rent. I am so thankful that I have family that can help me in a time of need by providing shelter and assistance. If I didn’t have them, I don’t know what I would do. I have been pretty lucky in that I haven’t had much trouble finding work. After about 2 months (which I consider good) I found a job that pays over $19.00 an hour. However, with a monthly loan payment of $668.00 a month, I cannot afford to be independent and still can’t afford to live on my own. After taxes, 28% of my income goes to student loans alone. That is almost 1/3. I have been living in my parent’s basement for a year now, with no savings to show. I am 25 years old. I don’t know when or if I will be able to afford living on my own, especially in this economy. I really had no idea what I was getting into, as loan payments did not become a reality until after college. I never experienced anxiety until the loan payments started, and I have been stressed ever since. At this rate, paying the minimum, I will pay off my loans in about 30 years (when I am 55). Having a large debt of 90k (not including interest) at 22 years old is scary and its even more than that today with interest applied. Although my borrowed amount was $89,061.22, since graduation (2.5 years) I have paid off over $10,000.00, and I still owe more than I borrowed with a current balance of $91,959.78. I have been busting my butt and have not even taken a dent in the money that I originally borrowed. I am not planning on ever buying a house, or a car, or having the “American Dream”. But hey, at least I am surviving and am healthy, right? I don’t think I would be where I am today without my college education, as I am in the field that I want to be, and really enjoy my job, but I definitely question my decisions. I always come back to telling myself “you can’t do anything about it now, so just deal with it”. I am trying to deal with it as best as I can.

I graduated from a small private school in California. I have a BS in Anthropology and Environmental Studies. I got an excellent education. My parents could not afford to pay for college, and my school did not give out good financial aid, so I took out loans. I originally took out around 90k. I have 5 student loans, 4 of which are private.

When I first graduated college I moved to Portland, Oregon and worked a job which paid $9.00 dollars an hour because it was all that I could get (the job market up there is very bad). I had 6 months before the 4 out of 5 of loans started kicking in. I had my first mental breakdown in January of 2010 when my first payments were due, and they started around $500.00. I had no idea that it was going to be this much. I found another part time job, this one making $11.90 an hour. I worked six days a week and had to commute 35 miles for my jobs. I had to borrow money from my parents, grandparents, and roommates to get by, although it wasn’t really borrowing since I couldn’t afford to pay them back. I had to call two loan companies to change my payment plan so that I pay less now, and more later (meaning $150.00 now, and will eventually have payments of $450.00, and this is just for one loan!). By June of 2010, my 5th loan started kicking in, making my monthly totals $668.78. As my first part time job was as a teacher and ended right before summer break, I was back to one part time job. I then applied for food stamps, because all of my income was going towards student loans. I fed myself for the next few months on food stamps (thank god for that!).

Since my second part time job was technically a paid internship, I discovered that some loan companies allow you to defer during your employment. I was able to defer two private loans until the end date of my internship (August of 2010). My federal loan (Direct Loan) allowed me to defer for up to a year. The two other private loans wouldn’t help me. Once my internship was over I contacted my loan companies to let them know that I was now unemployed and was looking for work and may not be able to make full payments. They all were pretty helpful, or at least kind, except for Wells Fargo. Wells Fargo told me that even if I had $50.00 dollars left to my name, it should go to them. I made partial payments for about 3 months, thinking that as long as I paid something ($50.00 or $75.00 out of $150.00) that they would get off my case as I have called them many times to explain my situation and I could catch up once I had a job. They started harassing my co-signers (parents) and calling them every morning at 8am making threats. My parents aren’t in a good financial situation (also a lot of debt) and I woke up every morning feeling stressed and sick thinking that Wells Fargo would take action (over me being only $150.00 behind).

I moved back to California to live in my parent’s basement, since all the money that I was making was going straight to these companies and I couldn’t afford rent. I am so thankful that I have family that can help me in a time of need by providing shelter and assistance. If I didn’t have them, I don’t know what I would do. I have been pretty lucky in that I haven’t had much trouble finding work. After about 2 months (which I consider good) I found a job that pays over $19.00 an hour. However, with a monthly loan payment of $668.00 a month, I cannot afford to be independent and still can’t afford to live on my own. After taxes, 28% of my income goes to student loans alone. That is almost 1/3. I have been living in my parent’s basement for a year now, with no savings to show. I am 25 years old. I don’t know when or if I will be able to afford living on my own, especially in this economy.

I really had no idea what I was getting into, as loan payments did not become a reality until after college. I never experienced anxiety until the loan payments started, and I have been stressed ever since. At this rate, paying the minimum, I will pay off my loans in about 30 years (when I am 55). Having a large debt of 90k (not including interest) at 22 years old is scary and its even more than that today with interest applied. Although my borrowed amount was $89,061.22, since graduation (2.5 years) I have paid off over $10,000.00, and I still owe more than I borrowed with a current balance of $91,959.78. I have been busting my butt and have not even taken a dent in the money that I originally borrowed. I am not planning on ever buying a house, or a car, or having the “American Dream”. But hey, at least I am surviving and am healthy, right? I don’t think I would be where I am today without my college education, as I am in the field that I want to be, and really enjoy my job, but I definitely question my decisions. I always come back to telling myself “you can’t do anything about it now, so just deal with it”. I am trying to deal with it as best as I can.

Research Scientist Can’t Pay Off $50,000, Screws it, Moves to Europe

After Highschool, I was determined to college and climb my way up into the middle class. Unfortunately, I was basically disowened by my parents when I told them I didn’t want to be Mormon or go on a mission, so I was left alone to try and pay for school. I worked 30-40 hours a week, even though that wasn’t allowed at the University. If you work more than 19h they’re required to pay for health insurance and so on, but if you find 3 jobs and different places at the Uni, they never catch on. So, like I said, I didn’t have health insurance for 12 years (ever since Clinton ended it for me in the 90s) and since minimum wage at that time was $5.25/h I managed to rake in more than $50,000 of student loans just staying alive, and mind you, I lived very poor during that time, and even stayed in-state at the University of Utah. But I worked hard and eventually got my PhD. Now, happily, I even have a job in my field as a research scientist, but only making $40,000 a year (hardly middle class salary). If I were to pay my student loans I would have to live like a PhD student for the next 10 years, and the whole reason I went to the University was to get into the middle class, and even without making payments on my student loans I haven’t achieved that. How could I ever hope to buy a house or have a family? How can it be that a hard working successful scientist hasn’t earned that right? Instead our beloved Romney makes $20,000,000/year without working and pays next to no tax on it. So, screw it, I moved to Europe. Now I could finally afford to get my wisdom teeth removed (only 10€ here, love European health care!). Now I’ve been in default for maybe two years, so the loan amount is probably well over $60,000, so I guess I can forget ever coming back. Good bye US of A!!! Hello socialist Europe!

Insane interest! $25,019.45 just in interest!

I am still in college, I am 32 years old. The original amount of my 5 loans was original 5 loans is 42,875.75. Today (I am still in college and graduate next year), I owe $67,895.20. That is 25,019.45 in interest while I was in school, and still have not graduated yet - THAT IS INSANE!

$25019.45 in interest!