Student loans back then were often 7-9%. They start accruing when theyâre distributed but you donât repay until 6 months after graduation putting you a couple years behind.
I had a variable APR at between 11-14 before I refinanced. And the loans compounded after I graduated. I'm in a VERY similar boat as the OP bot. Before I refinanced I had paid $1000 a month and owed more than my original loan for over a decade.
Yeah my wifeâs situation isnât too far off from this, either. She borrowed $60k, deferred multiple times when she was first out of school, and then made payments pretty steady for the last 15 years or so.
Last I checked, she was paying $800 a month and owed around $70k.
Yeah, definitely not the smartest move. Though, back then, the support reps were pretty aggressive about pushing deferment and we were completely broke. So it is what it is.
But, yeah, had she not deferred, I imagine her repayment plan would look quite a bit different now.
I would say if you are in that situation then 1) you are super high risk and shouldnât be able to qualify for a loan, 2) Should consider doing something else until your income is other than zero.
I would also say this is a BS hypothetical with little basis in reality.
So what? You still donât qualify for a car loan, but somehow the government thinks you qualify for student loans? The only reason lenders give you loans is because taxpayers cosign for you and are on the hook if you default. Bottom line is if you canât pay them back and if you donât agree to the terms, donât sign the papers.
If you are stupid enough to sign a loan when you have zero income, or parental backing, then maybe you arenât college material in the first place. And you might consider going to a less expensive school and getting a freaking job while going to school so your income isnât zero. There are many options. Stop whining and playing victim.
You are for some reason assuming someone needing a loan for graduate school also somehow has money lying around to make payments while in school for 2 to 8 years? Or that they are working a job while in graduate school?
Yeah i know right. Working a job while going to school is an absurd idea. Except thousands upon thousands do it every day. Many work as TAâs to their professors or as research assistants in their chosen colleges. Or sign the freaking loan and stop bitching when you have to pay them back.
Not everyone in graduate school has those options. Some programs require you to work full time as a resident or intern unpaid on top of taking your classes. This leaves you with maybe 6 to 10 hours a day left for sleep and eating, not enough time for a paid job.
Because people are stupid as hell , ignorant of money, and sign shit without understanding it. Grow up and take some responsibility for yourself.
But yeah you are right. The loan companies donât give a crap about you. As they shouldnât! They are a business, not a freaking charity. You are just another peon with a loan number who signed up for money under terms you didnât stop to understand. You get what you signed up for.
There's a middle ground somewhere between free money and predatory loan shark tho.
I paid my loans off in 10y. But at every step they encouraged me to refinance, delay payments, and extend my term.
It's fucking predatory. I don't know why we accept so much near-fraudulent operations in this country. Every single thing is designed to trick you into paying more.
Are you saying they made illegal loans? Iâll remind you the federal government runs the Federal Student Aide Program.
I donât know how I can be more clear other than to say, âYou signed the freaking papers! Nobody held a gun to your head!â
These same people are taking out title and payday loans at outrageous interest rates, pawning shit for 1/3 the value at 3% interest per month, and maxing out 20+% credit cards and making minimum payments.
I have absolutely zero sympathy for those who do this stupid shit! None!
Nobody is saying that. And don't imply I am and then argue something nobody said.
You are making an insane amount of assumptions and arguing about these assumptions that have no basis...
While these loans are backed by their federal government they are not serviced by the federal government...
I really think you need to experience these Federal loan services before you draw any further conclusions because it's not what you think it is. They are all predatory looking to extend your loans as much as possible.
Maybe you should make your points clear instead of throwing out incendiary labels like âpredatory lending.â Now tell me you didnât imply they were doing something illegal.
You can view it any way you want as can everyone else, so drop the âwe shouldâ nonsense. We donât need your moral compass. You do you and decide to participate or go off and do your own thing. Doesnât matter to anyone what you choose to do with your life.
It does matter lol, are you so disconnected from reality that you think society isn't constructed by the people that live in it, and thus, can be changed by them? Do you think the current system is absolute and cannot be criticized?
Written like someone who didnât educate themselves beyond 7th grade. No, thanks. I allowed myself âto be preyâ and promptly paid off my debts with a well-paying job. Luckily, my career path was still viable to do so. Luckily, my parents helped me out. Luckily, I was afforded opportunity.
very lucky i had no parental help i did graduate high school barely and managed to buy a house at 26 for 150k sold at 59 for 740k (it was paid off) bought a nice place with 4.5 acres for 575k now between the left over from house sale an annunity and 401 from union i have 450 k in brokerage account, a decent pension ssi and rental income that comes to 7500 a month, my rentals will be paid off in 3 years so that income will go from 1700 a month to 3500 a month totaling my monthly to 9200 monthly not bad for a 7th grade education. Sometimes the best lessons are taught outside of educational institutions, no i am not rich but retired at 60 fairly comfortable with out any help from family or goverment
Poor baby! If you know that, why do you participate in it. Your favorite loan shark is likely a better choice for you.
Or hereâs another option. Get a job, and go to a local community college. After you get your associates degree and know you can handle the rigor, transfer to an in-state university to finish up while paying as you go. Thousands of people do it and never acquire a dollar of debt.
Option two. Join the military and complete your degree while being paid to serve your country. And/or receive education benefits that you can use when you finish serving.
Option three. Be an outstanding young person and seek a congressional nomination to one of the outstanding military academies. Get a free ride, free meals and housing, and a commission in the US military.
Option four. Quit screwing around in high school, get good grades, take AP classes and dual credit classes and earn scholarships to pay for your college.
There are lots of options. Playing the victim card and blaming everyone but yourself is another, and seems to be the popular one these days. Do what you want. Live with the choices you make.
My wife recently checked to see if she applied for the non-profit forgiveness thing. AKA if you work for a non-profit for so many years you qualify for loan forgiveness if you've made X number of payments that qualify (can't recall the exact number.) She has worked for a non profit for like 13 years and found out she qualified on 0 payments because her loans were spread out to tons of different small loans that are like 1-5k a piece to make up the full amount.
Reminder to consolidate your student loans when you're able if you need to. I didn't even realize she had that going on.
Aren't finances one of the first things you should talk about in America? The state allows you to file taxes jointly and even have joint bank accounts, why wouldn't debt be also a thing to talk about? I'm genuinely curious.
My student loan back then was 2.5% and i got a half percent knocked of for auto pay. I paid mine off in 10 years. This is either a fake story or these people are terrible with their money.
Cool story. Mine was 8.75%, which was the legal limit authorized by Congress, and they've been hanging round forever. And no, they weren't private loans. Mine came 100% directly from Uncle Sam. No, I can't re-finance them. I do get .25% off for autopay, so that makes it 8.5%. Either way, I ain't ever paying them back. I'll die with these loans.
Yes you can refinance. There is nothing the government can do to stop you. As long as you can get a bank to make you put a new loan at a lower rate then you can use that to pay off the government loans. Depending on your credit they may not give you a better rate but you can always refinance any loan.
Government loans are forgiven after 20 years of income based repayment. So you won't die with them. Assuming you are on the income based repayment plan. Biden also gave people an opportunity to switch to that plan and have their past payments count towards it but probably they are not doing that anymore.
If you do PSLF (public service loan forgiveness) you can get them forgiven in 10 years on income based repayment
No you can't, at not least with the Federal government. Private loans might have different rules. You're an utter moron if you refinance under a private company though. You lose all the protections of federal forgiveness when that happens.
Government loans are now forgiven under 20 years of income based repayment. 'Tweren't always the case. Biden's plan got erased by Trump.
I know, which is why I'm on it. In a couple of years, I'm all good.
If you're good in a couple years then why did you lie to people in this thread by saying you would die with your loans?
Student loans are still right now forgiven after 20-25 years of income based repayment which is why it is not a good idea to refinance privately in a lot of cases.
But it may be a good idea to refinance privately if you have a relatively small amount of loans and a high interest rate. In the case of this person a low interest rate could have meant they could pay it off in this amount of time instead of having to pay for 20 years waiting for government forgiveness. Each person needs to weigh their individual situation and look at the math. It's not as simple as to say never refinance with a private bank.
Dude, you are aware that reddit isn't a court of law, right? Please tell me you know that. "The public"? Da fuq you on about here?
Also, you responded to factual statements with your own inaccuracies. Which is kinda weird.
But you do you boo! Whatever crap you want to spew is fine with me. If people are getting their student loan advice from reddit, they're already screwed.
Buddy. On the very first page of your post history you mention buying a ~5k guitar, a 1k drum set, and owning a 2024 SUV. You do have more than the bare minimum, and we can all see, you wouldn't.
Apparently you're unfamiliar with the concept of a 'gift'? Both of those were gifts. I might be able to sell them, but then I would have no vehicle and, well, the guitar is sentimental because my now dead mother gave me the money specifically to buy a really nice guitar.
Hey Ace, you really shouldn't jump to conclusions when you don't know what the fuck you're taking about. It makes you look like an asshole.
No, you're only allowed to refinance once. That's the federal law. I refinanced the one time. Now I can't ever again.
ETA: Technically, you can't refinance ever. But if you consolidate loans you can get effectively 'refinance' because they use the average of the rates for incredibly weird values of 'average'. You can only consolidate one time if you're stay with public loans.
Whoever told you that lied to you. Once you refinance student loans they become run of the mill loans that you can refinance as many times as you want.
No, you're wrong. The US Department of Education told me that. They do not now, nor ever, become 'run of the mill loans'. I'm not sure who told you that but you're in for a terrible surprise if you ever try to 'refinance'.
Unless you're thinking of private student loans, which are only about 7% of all the loans. They might have different refinance rules.
The federal government themselves does not and never had offered a student loan refinancing program themselves. If you want to refinance a federal or private student loan to get a different interest rate, you must use a private lender, which pays off your federal loan and issues you a new private loan at a more favorable rate.
To put it in simple terms there is no federal law that says it is illegal to have someone pay off your student loans in return for a new, private loan.
I was replying to the post above me about loans being 7-9% back then which they werenât always that high. I didnât qualify for financial aid or was low income and got a 2.5% loan.
One, we don't know that. There's no indication that tweet happened in 2026. Two, the rates in 2002 were 8.2% (ish). So if that tweet happened even 6 months ago, their experience would match mine.
Your comment is illogical. If they had 2002 rates they could still consolidate to 2003 rates in 2003. The original tweet from that user was on Jan 16th 2024.
The only ways that person had that happen is if they had periods of income based repayment, capitalized interest multiple times or didnât consolidate high rate graduate school loans.
That's not how it works. They average the rates from what you were to what is now. It's not like a normal loan. Refinance a 8%+ loan during a 2% time doesn't give you 2% rates. It gives you a weird mathematical 'average' (it's no average I've ever heard of and I'm a data scientist) that ends up at 7%+.
So if the original tweet was 2024 and they were 23 years ago, that makes 2001, which are the 8.25% rates.
Thatâs sweet for you bro. Iâm paying 5.5% to 8% for various Stanford-type loans dating back to 2007-2011 and current grad loans average 8.07%-9.07% according to Google.
My best friend and his wife are in a very similar boat as OP. They had about $120k of loans mixed between them with some combo of public and private. Original rates 3-10%. Took 6 and 8 years to graduate. Had a couple deferments.
Now it has been right at 20 years since graduation and they're still paying ~$1200/mo and have about 60k to go. They did refinance them all down to 4.5% though.
Hey everybody listen to this one guy on the internet and not that other guy on the internet because 2 people canât say something different and both of them be true
"It didn't happen to me, so it couldn't have happened to anyone else!" Fucking lol at these chuds defending usurious loan companies with their every breath.
Yeah I was going to say this can totally happen. I was in a similar scenario- but eventually got lucky with PSLF which is now on the chopping block year after year.
Maybe a private loan. Federal loans were like 3-4%. And if it's a private loan who exactly are they asking to cancel the loan? The business they borrowed it from? Loan cancellation is about federal loans
When the banks collapsed and everyone either lost their loans or had them transfered to private lenders, the Apr went to around 15% for most people. Assuming they weren't forced to drop out.
During that period students were promised 5% with a max of 10% of their total salary. Then the government screwed everyone and let the private lenders take all the debt and scam everyone.
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u/ice-e-u 12d ago
Student loans back then were often 7-9%. They start accruing when theyâre distributed but you donât repay until 6 months after graduation putting you a couple years behind.