It's a 'massive student debt strike' activist says, as millions of borrowers still aren't making payments
It's a 'massive student debt strike' activist says, as millions of borrowers still aren't making payments
Just 60% of student loan borrowers made a payment when the bills resumed in October. "This is, in essence, a massive student debt strike," one activist said.
the fact that they actually hit the restart button was so insanely unnecessary and cruel. 60% seems high really
Not sure what proportion of loans it accounts for, but the 60% figure probably also includes people like me who currently have $0 monthly payments. Hilariously every month it takes 3 days to "process" my "auto-debit payment" of $0 but I imagine those are all being marked as "paid" in the system.
The whole ordeal is/was a colossal screw up.
The student loan company I had to deal with lied to me and made no apologies about it. When I submitted an official complaint through the Federal Student Aid site, it wasn't handled by some government agent or a 3rd party supervisor, it was handled by a customer service rep working for the student loan company. It was literally "we investigated ourselves and found we did nothing wrong" kind of thing.
Having said that, you may still want to file a complaint if you have had issues with the USA's loan servicing - https://studentaid.gov/feedback-center/. It's probably delusional, but I feel like at least having an official record of the report could be helpful down the line at some point. Maybe one day the Federal government will seriously investigate, or maybe one day there will be a lawsuit and at least an official complaint could serve as evidence you were impacted.
Wait don’t do that. They garnish wages for student debt. They’re happy to do it, too, as they get to keep a big chunk of extra fees that way.
While agree that not paying you are just sinking youself deeper especially since you can’t declare bankruptcy and get rid of the debt. The Biden administration put an on-ramp period in place so that it would reduce any penalties for not paying. Repayments start
Time to start working under the table.
This is what happens when the social contract unravels.
That takes a lot of work and a court order. You can avoid that by making a token payment say of five dollars once a month.
We don’t have to pay for the first year, interest accrues, but you don’t become delinquent. Either I completely misread the agreement I signed, and so did many others including journalists.
More likely, this particular article is garbage.
You can be marked as delinquent between 30 to 90 days (and this will negatively affect your credit) depending on the servicer. The direct loans default after 360 days which is what you are thinking of.
No, this is specifically with regard to the un-pause of student loan payments. During the first year after payments started again, if you miss 2? payments you are automatically put on a short term deferment and you will not be considered delinquent. It’s referred to as a grace period / on-ramp.
https://fortune.com/2023/08/11/when-do-student-loan-payments-resume-grace-period-biden/
Whether or not she was right, this is what support at my loan serviced told me
Millions of borrowers have probably gotten themselves into situations where they can't make their payments.
Honestly, why the fuck should they? Mohela is a perfect example of how impressively bad the restart of payments went. Absolutely bottled it. People paid, didn't register, they reported late payments then magically everything was ok... until the next payment.
The entire restart was an absolute shit show. Fuck em.
This could be good. If students default en mass congress might be forced to enact debt forgiveness
You got some wishful thinking there buddy.
No, they'll just garnish your wages
The only way that would happen is if financial entities can unwind their student loan debt derivatives that are larger than their total holdings, so that would tank the economy.
The best part? If student loans aren't paid or are forgiven without unwinding, the debt is worthless and the derivatives implode which would cause an unwinding that would be multiples worse than 2008.
So people with student loans have a gun to the heads of Wall Street and the economy, Wall Street has a gun to their own head and the economy. The only way to avoid an economic failure is for loan payments to happen because that is how the system was designed.
Too bad 🤭
Hold the line until every single executive at Bear, Goldman, and AIG pays back their bonuses.
YOU ARE FREE!!!
This article is way back in 2020. Two douchebags went to the Supreme Court to stop the White House from forgiving debt.
Is it an intentional strike or simply not being able to pay?
I can make the payments, I choose not to. I’d be content with 0% interest options, but for now my payment is set so that i’ll either be broke monthly in order to beat the interest levels or more interest is added on, even though I made the regular payment.
College can be free, it shouldn’t be a burden to anyone.
Fuck yeah, glad I'm not american
I'm also glad you aren't American.
Maybe don't go into debt to begin with? And yes, I did go into student debt, but I paid it off. How? Shit wage at a few horrible jobs. It can be done.
can I borrow your bootstraps?
"Just don't go into debt," they say while talking about a system designed to put people in debt.
What year did you graduate?
How much was your debt?
What were those ‘shit wages’?
What were your other expenses? How much of those ‘shit wages’ were you able to put towards the loan vs. your cost of living?
What year did you pay it off?
I’m quite curious.
I graduated in 2011 from a state school in Minnesota. $90k in student loans. Private, parent plus, the works...first job out of school I averaged $50k on an hourly job, and only got up to about $65k by 2017. Got married with that debt, my wife had none. We both worked, my job and hers gave us combined income ~$75k. One bed apartment rent was $950 back then, we owned 2 cars, both beaters, no debt. Paid it all off in late 2019. No debt since then except a mortgage.
Or maybe it would be better for society, that bases its economy on highly educated people mind you, to not force people to go into debt if they want an education?
Like, sure great, your solution is "don't take the debt so that you can get educated, work instead", and then where would that leave society in 10 years?
Or we could do what a MAJORITY of the developed world does, and make college a public good (assuming your grades in HS are good enough), or heavily subsidize it like a lot of the EU does. France, for instance - someone on another thread informed me that for an entire 4-year degree, you pay roughly about 1500 euros in loans. Monthly wages in France hover around 13-1400 euros. So assuming you plan well, you could very easily pay off a 4-year degree with less than a year of minimum-wage work after you graduate.
When did you do that? And how long did it take?
Answered in other comment. I appreciate the question!
Politics aside, as someone who defaulted on student loans years ago, don’t do that. It is a decision that will follow you for a ridiculously long time with little recourse.