• dan1101@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    I was talking to a lady that had somehow gotten into $500,000 of student loans for herself, her ex husband, and their son. And the payments are about to resume.

    • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      How do you rack up 500k in loans without telling your prodigy that they better do something with it or else its going to fuck everyone up? Like if they didnt go to become lawyers or surgeons then they essentially self sabotaged their entire family.

          • PatFusty@lemm.ee
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            1 year ago

            Lets all give a round of applause for the Bankruptcy Abuse Prevention and Consumer Protection Act of 2005 for almost single handedly fucking over a generation. Its tough but it get shit done. Without it, Fanny Mae and Freddy Mac wouldnt be where they are today.

        • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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          1 year ago

          And move where? No one wants us unless we’re super successful. And if we were we’d pay off our loans. Don’t think the sovereign citizen shit works.

          • DashboTreeFrog@discuss.online
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            1 year ago

            Non-US expat living in Asia here. It's crazy how easy it seems for US citizens / westeners to get jobs overseas compared to people from developing nations. I can tell you, if you have a teaching license and developed country's passport there are international schools all over the world willing to pay you well plus living and travel expenses.

            • elFlexor@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Calm down buddy, nobody called you a sovereign citizen. The comment above yours is just saying that trying to renounce citizenship but not being able to emigrate (since nobody else wants us) would leave only the option of sovereign citizenship, which obviously doesn’t really work or solve anything.

              Stop looking for something to feel offended about and read properly.

            • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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              1 year ago

              It was a joke. And it’s wasn’t directed at you. I hope things are well. I’m not a vegan but I appreciate vegans wholeheartedly.

  • Vej@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    What happens if you just say no to them, because you don’t have the money as inflation makes it that you can only afford beans.

          • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Do universities have shareholders too? Or do they just call it something different like how they hide their hedge funds under the title “endowments?”

            • empireOfLove@lemmy.one
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              1 year ago

              Yes and no.

              They sort of have shareholders in their Board of Trustees whose goals are to see the school grow. They also have shareholders in the form of their upper administration whose goals are usually to increase their own salaries. (Private universities are their own thing and have actual investors and shareholders and don’t really count imo)

              Really the problem with (public) universities though is the lack of any market pressure with no regulation to back it up. Student loans are federally guaranteed to never default, which means universities are guaranteed payment as long as students sign up. Incoming freshmen do not have the initial barrier to entry with loans, so their demand has zero response to price increases.Thus universities have zero market incentive to actually reduce any costs or optimize efficiency as a result, because fuck them kids, they’re gonna get paid no matter what. It creates a poor feedback loop where the school’s budget balloons, tuition is raised to make up the difference, students take out more loans, rinse, repeat.

      • CobblerScholar@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        Garnish wages, keep your tax return, take social security benefits and destroy your credit rating. They pardon the super rich for basically stealing our tax dollars and yet they will also destroy the financial lives of their citizens who have to make the decision of having the gas to get to work the next morning or having more than sleep for dinner. I’m of half a mind that if they are going to steal my money then they will have to pay to take more of it

        • SARGEx117@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          You’ll get a harsher punishment for not paying back a loan than some get for stealing LITERAL BILLIONS from people, and not even through tax loopholes, just regular old confidence schemes on a commercial level.

    • Gray@lemmy.ca
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      1 year ago

      The only way that could conceivably work out is if everyone collectively protested their student loans together since it’s such a massive problem for so many people. Even then, the government would probably buckle down and try to destroy half the country’s financial viability before they caved and admitted this toxic industry preyed on kids that didn’t know what that debt meant when they signed up for it.

    • NightAuthor@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Apply for the SAVE income driven repayment, you could possibly end up with a $0 payment. Plus there is an “on-ramp” for 1 year in which you’ll be accruing interest, but you can not make payments without falling delinquent. Which is only recommended if you expect your financial situation to improve significantly within the next year.

    • BorgDrone@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      First of all, I’m not in the US so I can’t say anything about how it works there, I only know the rules that applied to me (I live in a small European country).

      If you can’t afford to pay your monthly payment, you submit an income statement. If they agree you make too little then they either lower the monthly amount or don’t have to pay at all, depending on income. If your income increases you have to start paying again. The payments (if you can afford it) are so that the loan is paid back in 15 years. After 15 years whatever is left of your balance is forgiven. The loan also had a 0% interest rate. Also, part of the loan would be converted into a gift if you managed to graduate within a certain time frame.

      • tha_frontline@feddit.de
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        1 year ago

        Same here in Germany. But let’s see, how long that will be. Wiith CDU and it’s little dirty and stinky brother already waiting for their turn to come and destroy everything which makes the future seem not completely damned. Alongside with all welfare-goodies (leftover from the nineties).

        Argh.

      • ImFresh3x@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        That was actually the plan dems came up with but we never had a real majority in the senate, and then we lost the house too.

  • ColdWater@lemmy.ca
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    1 year ago

    Can someone explain to me as a non American, what is the student loan? Is it college fee? In my country it’s only costed 300-1500$ a year unless you take extra classes then it’ll cost a bit more, you can also get groceries from the local market for months worth of food for really cheap and room for rent is 150$-300$ a month or you can live in pagoda for free

    • Nurgle@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      College is very expensive in the US, with the average “in-state” school costing $26K/yr for someone who lives on campus and $56K/yr for a private institution. Since a majority of undergraduates are teenagers with virtually no savings, they take on loans to pay for college. Also unlike traditional loans where you can declare bankruptcy, these loans are very difficult to get forgiven.

      There obviously a lot more to it, but that’s the gist in three sentences.

    • graham1@gekinzuku.com
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      1 year ago

      It’s a way to force an 18 year old into a life of indentured servitude under the guise of “financial assistance” by simply clicking accept on a couple online forms, only for 40% of them to end up working jobs that don’t require a college degree in the first place.

    • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      So back in the mid 1900’s in the USA tuition cost a fairly reasonable amount (about 8-10 percent of a minimum wage income could be budgeted for school, depending on which one you went to) but from 1970-2020 we saw an explosion of college tuition that didn’t match inflation/CoL/income.

      So now in order to budget for a public state school you need to allot about 40% of your minimum wage income for tuition. OR you can sell your life to the military and potentially die that way (if you’re even medically able and willing) in addition to the previously mentioned “go into debt until you’re 60” method that we currently use.

      Somehow, while costs have been skyrocketing the quality of schooling has been going downhill for awhile now as funding gets reallocated to the things that make the most money which is just sports essentially (also why it’s so damn expensive.)

      • Dettweiler@lemmyonline.com
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        1 year ago

        Tuition has gone up much more. The average US college will now require 157% of your minimum wage income, provided you can still work full time on top of school.
        Average US cost of attending college in 2023-2024: $23,630 per year
        Federal minimum wage: $7.25 per hour

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          I was using the metric of state MW where I live compared to tuition at a public state college with in-state tuition.

          Your results may vary, if you live in a state that has no state MW I don’t know how you’d ever be able to afford it without enlisting or having wealthy family.

        • R0cket_M00se@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Education isn’t even the highest priority for a college anymore, it’s the teams they can use to make MORE MONEY.

          Unless it costs you money and you never make any! Guess we’ll just pass that cost onto the students as well, fuck 'em.

    • Jessvj93@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      It’s a loan made of public money that universities seem to think is an open faucet and upcharge a ridiculous amount for tuition.

    • itsgroundhogdayagain@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      the average US public university is about $11,700 for tuition. that doesn’t count room and board if you are staying in a dorm in campus. private universities are much more.

      • Pseu@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        This is per year. And most degrees are 4 years, though it’s not uncommon for them to run to 5. So by the time a student graduates they have on average ~$37k in debt.

    • mommykink@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      Lots of Americans are insecure and are convinced that they need to go to a $7,000/semester University or they’re a failure. For many, it’s entirely possible to get a good education without ever paying a dollar through scholarships (provided either through the state or private parties). I graduated with two bachelor’s last year and was paid about $12,000 per semester in scholarships refunds for attending a lower-cost, but still accredited, university.

  • Cold_Brew_Enema@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    I mean, you willingly signed up for them, so pay them back. No one forced you to do anything. And this is coming from someone who has student loan debt.

    • maniclucky@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I mean, we weren’t forced into it. We were just told we’d be homeless (or some other stand in for poverty) if we didn’t.

      Now a lot of people with loans are in poverty because of them. We weren’t forced into them is only technically true.