I am going to tell you a story that will probably make you hate me. My student loan payments were about $400 a month. I had an account dedicated to paying it off so the last day of every month for years I would take $400 cash out of my main account, walk across the street and deposit it in the loan payment account.

Then one day they just stopped taking it out. So I called them repeatedly to ask why and no one seemed to know. I kept putting it in month after month and it just sat there with no withdrawals. I kept calling them and no one had any answers. After about a year I received a letter saying they had miscalculated and I owed them $500 a month, to which I said too bad as I had a signed "consolidation agreement" which superseded all other prior agreements and authoritatively set out the terms of my repayment.

Eventually the Bank cashed in on the Federal guarantee and the government then sued me and tendered a consolidation agreement that I had never seen before and was not signed by me but set forth the increased amount and a few other documents that were clearly put together after the fact. After about 2 years it went to trial and the judge called us into his chambers and said the Bank was wrong but I took the money so morally should pay it back. I agreed but the Feds would not give me a discount and I would not agree to the full amount in lump sum. So we ended up going through with the trial and the judge ruled against me as expected. I went for coffee afterwards with the other lawyer and the Fed's representative and he said he would be in touch to work something out about payment.

And then I never heard from them again. By that time I had about $10K in the account and I kept putting money in every month and so I waited about a year and then took the money out and shut the account down. At the end of the day I think I ended up getting away from about $15K of debt. And it does not show up as a default on my credit rating. Bizarre.

And that looks like a pretty nice hike.