Student Loan Debt Forgiveness 10-20k

Discussion in 'General Distance Learning Discussions' started by Futuredegree, Aug 24, 2022.

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  1. Futuredegree

    Futuredegree Well-Known Member

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  2. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    My loans are about $12K so with the pause until December I'm hoping I can be fully paid off going into 2023.
     
  3. Futuredegree

    Futuredegree Well-Known Member

    I just owe 15k from VUL. Hopefully, they will knock off 10k. I been waiting to see how this plays out just to pay it off.
     
    RoscoeB likes this.
  4. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    The Pell recipient angle is interesting. I got a small Pell grant in 2004 that I didn't even really ask for, so it will be interesting to see whether that sort of thing counts.
     
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  5. JoshD

    JoshD Well-Known Member

    Also appears that undergraduate federal loans will have a 5% monthly income cap for the payments.
     
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  6. Dustin

    Dustin Well-Known Member

    Apparently receipt of a Pell at any time triggers the enhanced forgiveness, so congrats!
     
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  7. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    They say education is expensive. I’ll say.

    I served 32 years of federal service. I’ve never qualified for any student loan relief.

    I don’t qualify for this one, either.

    I served a career in the military. I never got the GI Bill. (Neither did my wife.)

    I’ve got a student loan balance equal to the national debt of Ecuador. I’ll likely die with an outstanding balance. (Projected right now to be paid off when I’m 78.)

    But it was fun, right?

    Maybe this is why I’m so sensitive to the discussions around which degree is cheapest. Because cost is not where I choose to focus. I’d rather be grateful for all my education has enabled me to do….including servicing my student loan debt!:)
     
  8. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    It appears to be a brute-force effort to provide greater relief to lower-income borrowers, with the use of a Pell Grant being an indicator of that. Even if it isn’t a very accurate indicator, it will do the job more efficiently than setting up a huge apparatus to go through everyone’s financial history to determine if they’re eligible for this second-tier relief.
     
  9. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    I heard Nelnet and other loan servicers have their web pages down due to an insane increase in traffic. Free money will do that sort of thing.
     
  10. Neuhaus

    Neuhaus Well-Known Member

    If you look at the amount of interest that gets paid and how some people have been paying for years without making a noticeable dent in the principal, I don't think there is very much "free" about this money at all.
     
  11. Garp

    Garp Well-Known Member

    Wasn't meant to be free any more than any other debt such as a mortgage. People contracted for it and were supposed to be responsible for it.

    The problem is multi pronged. PBS or someone did a documentary on the debt crisis a decade or more ago. One of the problems is we let young people borrow who often are not responsible with money to begin with and get in over their head. So, in the documentary many people didn't give a second thought to what they were majoring in or the debt. The interviewer asked a girl at an expensive private Christian College about the debt and her obscure major (some international intercultural missions course of study). She naively replied that she was not worried it would work out.

    Then you have for-profit institutions and others selling students on loans for over priced degrees from for profits (will underperform in the market place). An example might be the University of Phoenix. Some of them like Argosy implode and imploded on people earning doctorates with prior debt who were accumulating more. When it is an easy loan and down the road to pay on it, people don't give it much thought.

    Like many other poorly thought out decisions, the chickens came home to roost. Same documentary there were people in tears (men and women) over debt load. It is almost like a Grimms Fairytale or Pinocchio where the kids all leave their studies and homes for the promise of candy, fun, and no responsibility (and are turned into donkeys who are left crying at their fate).
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2022
  12. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    As Garp implies, the story is one of irresponsibility - on both sides of the table - lender and borrower. And like Pinocchio always was, I think over a century or two, (or less) the student debt story will turn into an allegory, as well - much as the South Seas Bubble and Tulip Mania have done. And that, unfortunately does not mean similar craziness will not be repeated. South Seas Bubble = Nasdaq meltdown. Tulip Mania = Bitcoin and other crypto.

    It seems many people can accumulate a bunch of degrees - but fail to learn elementary lessons about financial self-preservation. Perplexing and sad. I'm sure this situation has ruined family life for many, many people. Money problems do that. Insurmountable money problems - irretrievably
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2022
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  13. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    If that were true you wouldn't have conspicuously stopped reporting its daily price.
     
  14. Johann

    Johann Well-Known Member

    Conspicuous? I just got bored - that's all. People want the quote today - THEY can look it up. I just did and the patient has been comatose for the past 30 days. Any change - call Dr. Nosborne. I'm off to the golf course. :p

    Only difference - Tulip Mania was more exciting. And tulips, when they grow, are pretty. Crypto-cyber-coin? Well, it just ....isn't. Ever.
     
    Last edited: Aug 25, 2022
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  15. Michael Burgos

    Michael Burgos Active Member

    Let's imagine I've been paying my high-interest credit card for years without making a noticeable dent in the principal. The Fed comes along and, using the power of taxation and the printing power of the treasury, reduces my principle substantially. Tell me again why this isn't free money? Those who take federal student loans complete both entrance and exit counseling by necessity and are thus taught the regarding interest and loan payment. The real culprit, which no one seems to care about, is that the balance of loan disbursement (after tuition and fees are paid) goes directly to the borrower. In many cases, this amounts to giving thousands of dollars to students each semester-- many of them young and shortsighted. If students would return this balance instead of using it, I'd imagine loan balances would be significantly less.
     
  16. Tireman 44444

    Tireman 44444 Well-Known Member


    Let me say this as a History Instructor at the Community College level for 23 years, 17 years at the same institution, many ( and I MEAN many) of my students have to live on Financial Aid. Do they see it as free money? I would say some do not see it as paying it back right away. Are they aware they have to? I hope so.

    "this amounts to giving thousands of dollars to students each semester-- many of them young and shortsighted. If students would return this balance instead of using it, I'd imagine loan balances would be significantly less."

    As much as I agree with your statement, most will not. I teach in one of the poorest sections of Houston ( Ship Channel area). Hardest working folks you have ever met, but most are working two/three jobs to get by. My students are as well. I had three of my students deal with being homeless in the Spring semester. We (my institution) helped them as much as we can. In theory, you are 100 percent correct. I gave mine back. In reality, it just does not happen. Just my four cents.
     
  17. Vonnegut

    Vonnegut Well-Known Member

    After living through 3 of the largest and most wide spread financial bailouts of the wealthy, just in the past 15 years… the amount of outrage over this relatively minor educational debt relief is just bewildering to me.
     
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  18. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    The argument about “they made their beds they can lie in it” is really weak.

    There is a HUGE imbalance of information in that transaction. Also, students are buying an education with an eye on a degree. This indirectness creates all kinds of inequities. Finally, it’s not like the lenders could do any shopping around. Talk about a monopoly!

    The other weak argument is the “I paid mine” or “I didn’t borrow” or “I didn’t go to college” so this is unfair. Uh…there are lots of government programs that individuals either are not eligible for or are too late for. It happens.

    I have to wonder if many of the objecting are based on the fact that those “other” people are getting it.

    Finally, there might be some macroeconomic impact from this (the stock market seems okay with it), but that didn’t seem to stop the other party from giving a huge tax giveaway to the wealthiest Americans for absolutely no reason.

    I’ll never catch a break regarding student loans. But that doesn’t cause me to change my mind. This is a good idea, especially because it didn’t go all the way. Now it’s time to fix the problems that bring about these problems.
     
  19. SteveFoerster

    SteveFoerster Resident Gadfly Staff Member

    It's not like I don't understand the argument of "I paid, and they should too!"

    But I don't understand being as animated about this bailout as one would be about a bailout like TARP.
     
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  20. Rich Douglas

    Rich Douglas Well-Known Member

    Not "lenders." Borrowers. Sorry

    Students (and families) are faced with borrowing from a monopoly to pay for prices set by a cartel. And we're supposed to get worked up over forgiving some of this? Please.:confused:
     
    Rachel83az likes this.
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