What is this horseshit? Almost $2k in interest this year and it will not even let me throw money against the principal.
I’m assuming you’re from the US considering you’re being treated like a commodity.
I’m 46 and I still have student loans.
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Student lending is the most preditory lending in this country.
For all my problems, at least I can say I’m not in debt. Student loans always seemed scummy to me. The trade off is I don’t receive a piece of paper letting potential employers know i’m worthy. Every thing is a fucking joke and life is meaningless. Fuck everything.
You’re also not allowed to discharge it in bankruptcy, and once you do start paying it the bulk of your payment will go to interest. Before I paid mine off I was making a $150 payment amonth, and over a hundred of that went only to interest.
You can thank Joe Biden. He fought hard to make student loans unescapable. (And that’s not a partisan jab. It’s history.)
We all should remember that people were honest about Biden before he was anoited as the DNC pick, he was a horrible choice who got stuffed in because of name recognition and general prevalence of low information voters who either tick straight ticket ot check by whoever’s name rings a bell.
Yup.,
Unless something has changed in the past decade, you can still make payments to your loans, you just defer the requirement to do so until 6 months after graduation.
As someone else here said, if you would pay money to a loan while in college, it’d be better to put into a high yield account of some sort to hold onto until after college. From there I would get advice from a finance counselor on what to do with that money, whether save for longer or start it into payments.
I just had one kid finish college and another start this week.
Your loan and interest and payments start on day one. Most people choose to defer payments until they finish school because they don’t plan on having money until they finish school. That does not defer the interest.
When you finish school, you can ask the loan company to extend the deferment for another 6 months. Essentially, that’s to give you some time to find a job.
You CAN make a payment on your loan. It probably won’t cover any principal, but you can do it.
Is this the US? There are laws that protect penalty free prepayments on student loans, federal or private. Depending on the rates it may or may not be better to invest or have as a rainy day fund, depending on the overall state of finances. But you have a legal right to prepayment and it would have to be a pretty backwater lender not to be aware of this. That said, the system could be clunky.
What bank or federal payment processor?
Mohela, federal loan
https://mohela.studentaid.gov/DL/resourceCenter/HowPaymentsAreApplied.aspx
They definitely allow prepayments. Have you used the online portal?
Online portal says no payment available.
Your student loan:
Why did you take the full loan if you didn’t need to? Or was it not an option not to?
Do you know how much college costs?
I would hope they tell you ahead of time! I always had the option to borrow per semester and you could pay direct.
Paying down the loan while you are still there would be nice, but makes just as much sense to put that money towards the next semester.
Or maybe they got a job, maybe a relative helped, maybe they found $1000 by the curb. That’s beside the point.
If you have extra money that you aren’t allowed to put against the principal, you could at least put that money into a GIC that matures once you graduate. Depending on the rates involved, you may even come out ahead doing that.
It’s predatory to allow teens to sign these things without fully explaining them and ensuring they understand.
It’s not taught at all in grade school, no one tells them about interest rates, or amortization tables or how to pay extra toward the principal, or that their wages will be garnished if they don’t pay, or if they get married, then their spouse’s wages might be garnished without warning, and so on… It’s just, “sign here, and we’ll give you the money.”
The thing is, I understood perfectly I was getting fucked, it’s just that without a degree you can’t get a good job. That’s the most predatory part
Often enough, even with the degree, you can end up no better off for some time. If you don’t get a degree and make x/yr, or you get the degree, spend 6~8 years in school and looking for a position that pays 2x/yr but you spend half of the money on paying down your debt for 20 years… That’s a long time to get back into the black, assuming you even went for a degree leading to a position that will pay that much. It is almost criminal that a credit hour learning to work on machine learning systems often has the same cost as one spent learning about art history. Both are valuable to society in their own ways, but they definitely won’t get you the same paycheck, and the cost of entry should reflect that.
What do you consider good job?
Pays for a house and kids. I wasn’t able to finish and with the kinds of jobs I can get I can’t afford a car and struggle with bills even with frugal spending. Even the traded require postsecondary training you usuially gotta pay for
We 100% did learn about amortization in high school math, no idea if it’s still taught though
It is. Actually my daughter learned it in middle school (7-8th grades). Not that people have many other choices for college cash.
Also, they make loans standard so they can charge more for the services.
This sounds infuriating, not just mildly infuriating.
Why arent you allowed tp start paying it off? Ive never heard of a student loan you couldnt at least make interest payments on while in school.
The provider shows a $0 balance because it’s “Not available for repayment” which blocks me from making a payment. It’s a government loan, which may be why
It’s early enough in the semester that it may just not be fully processed yet. When I was in school I was able to dump what ever “loan refund” they gave me right into the principle.
I hate they call it a refund, it just means you took out a bigger loan than what the bill actually cost. Calling it a refund makes people think they got free money.
Since when do they charge interest before you exist school on government loans? Is that new? I remember them starting to charge interest when you graduate/leave
Is it not like, really illegal to prevent people from paying back debt?
When has legality ever stopped them fucking over regular people?
Yeah. Or in the worst case, put the money in a savings account now and use the money to pay for part of tuition next semester.
