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goobster  ·  2505 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: The New York Times is entirely too blase about these statistics.

Thanks for the compliment, but my situation is not at all unique in my peer group. Most people I know are still making student loan payments, actually. People making six figures.

For me the situation is a bit different, since I didn't actually go to college until my late 30's. Then realized I hated the industry, and went off and started my own business, and then the economy tanked, and I defaulted for years and ... yeah. It went on and on and on.

The student loan payment system is designed to make it difficult to pay off. If you over pay, they play games with the extra money, instead of applying it to the principal. If you lose your job and miss a few payments, they sell your debt to a debt collector (who is actually the same company, just a different office) and add thousands of dollars to the principal, effectively increasing your debt right at the time when you can't pay.

Etc.

Eventually, their games break your will to fight, and you just pay your monthly payment via auto-pay, which is designed to ensure the loan lasts far longer than it needs to.

So, say $200/mo leaves your account automatically on the 15th of every month, and will until you are well into your 60's. Possibly longer.

There are two types of people who get their student loans paid off quickly: Those who come into some sort of cash windfall (death of a relative, or whatever), and those who monomaniacally focus on learning every detail of the byzantine internal operations of SallieMae (or whatever the company is called nowadays) and pore over every single monthly statement and bill, and make regular calls to the company customer service department demanding that the extra payment they made gets applied to the principal and not the interest, and ... it tires me just to think about it.

Pissing away a couple hundred bucks a month on a shady bunch of fucksticks empowered by the Federal Government and the politicians that despise you, is all part of becoming an adult.

Sorry.