I paid off mine (grad school, no undergrad) but my wife still has them. Me thinking about whether or not forgiveness is fair.
Yes and I am still paying them off. There's not a ton left but it feels like remaining amount never moves. And I don't mind others not having to pay them back so they don't have to deal with it like I have.
I have 6 figures, some of which will be ultimately forgiven (I hope). I work and can cover the payments so it’s whatever personally. My wife has ~50k for a degree she doesn’t even use anymore. Getting relief on those would be huge from a mental standpoint even though financially it wouldn’t make much of a difference.
I never said that. I just don't think it should be a day 1 thing. Month 3, month 6, whatever. Giving a huge (and warranted) bailout to college educated people who generally make more than non-educated people and just shrugging your shoulders about a stimulus and saying "Blame Mitch!" to the waitress getting evicted from her apartment looks really bad. If you disagree, that's fine. Not going to ruin this thread over it. We agree on the subject. We just disagree on the timing of it.
In all seriousness though I think the whole thing has spiraled out of control and is the problem of well intentioned policies. Basically, the federal government created an endless supply of money and trusted borrowers to do the risk analysis. Borrowers assumed the government was doing the risk analysis, or were otherwise uninformed. Colleges, with access to basically unlimited funds, jacked up the price for an inelastic good. Even worse, for-profit colleges sprouted up to get some of the action. It's really just a shitty unintended consequence of a well-intentioned policy. If we can forgive "to big to fail" industries, we should be willing to do the same for individual citizens. There's some degree of personal responsibility, of course. But we'd be better off as a society with loans forgiven.
What happens to the current debt that gets forgiven? Does the government just erase it from the record? Do the people who just paid off their student loans get some type of forgiveness refund check to recoup some of the money they paid? Do the student in the future who take out student loans have the right to expect their debt to be forgiven at some point? Should student loans even be an option going forward if they are forgiven now? If we forgive student debt, will credit card debt also be forgiven? It seems to be a more serious debt load to the lower/middle income sector of this country? Do other forms of debt get forgiven that are more burdensome to lower and middle income debt holders? Is it more appropriate to renegotiate the current student loan debt structure so that they can be included more easily in bankruptcy filings? Do college degrees get rescinded by those whose debt is forgiven? Should colleges and universities be held responsible for encouraging and enabling this issue to start and persist while they sat back and profited off of it? I truly believe student loans were/are a predatory practice, and I'm certainly open to changing my mind on this issue. But I feel like there's a whole lot that has to be addressed with forgiving student loans that I just haven't seen addressed.
The real question is why isn’t tuition at state schools/community colleges free for in state residents If the goal of state schools is to educate the people in your state tuition should be free.
We as a nation, led by the government, have made public education worse and made getting a career without a college degree more difficult. The government then turned around and price-gouged kids who they don't think are mature enough to buy cigarettes, gamble, or drink.
Law school dropout, then went to design school, so I have about $120k debt. I am working towards moving from basic bitch graphic designer (avg salary 48.8k according to indeed) to Ux designer (avg salary 102.8k). Either way, my plan is IBR for 25 years until I get the rest forgiven or President AOC wipes it all clean.
Undergrad is paid off. Currently in grad school and paying out of pocket, but I may take out loans if cash flow becomes a problem.
It’s a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy as far as government involvement. Government backed loans incentivize the university system to continually raise their pricing.
Ok I edited the first question because the way I originally wrote it would pertain mostly to private student loans.
But if people had less debt to pay for that they can never ever walk away from, they'd have more funds available for more important things in life like say, housing. Now all of a sudden it can benefit you by having more people who can start families and buy houses.
I went to college for free, but I took out loans for law school. I will have them paid off soon, but I delayed major life purchases to do so.
Not sure what to do about student loans but if I got to make whole either citizens who made irresponsible decisions with debt or the universities who price gouge said citizens, it’s an easy decision Also, why don’t we have a number of programs that mimic the ROTC model for people who would like to earn their scholarship from the govt on the front end, during, or after their education? I think that would correct the demand issue and also receive more bipartisan support
Worked through college so that I wouldn’t have debt. That shit was hard, so I am in favor of forgiving loan debt.
My wife had 15-20k if i recall. We payed off a decade ago. why are student loans considered different than other debts when talking about forgiveness? Im not opposed to forgiveness, but what’s the argument for it? Do people not realize the interest or terms of the loans when taking them out? i know one of my good friends took out a student loan and bought a gsxr 750 which was absolutely idiotic. So are we just talking about younger people making poor financial decisions?
I just paid my graduate degree off last month. After graduate degree had about $70K in loans (still had some undergraduate left) to pay. Only took me 13 years to pay. Even so, I’m fine with some student debt forgiveness. Needs to be income based and also new students need to be given a similar credit.
Forgiving student loans without first reforming tuition costs seems like a dangerous precedent. Colleges will start charging two arms and a leg when the next generation goes into it with the belief that their loans will be forgiven.
Because legislatures about 20 or so years ago decided to start cutting funding for in state schools, and instead relied on lottery scholarships because olds didn't want to pay taxes or have nice things.
You seem to have a pretty good grasp on the issues this causes people so I’m surprised you wouldn’t want it to happen. Let’s just look at it as a stimulating the economy issue. I’m no Dave Ramsey but a person’s ability to save/earn/accumulate wealth at a young age is completely cut off if the only thing they can afford in their 20s, 30s, and often 40s is housing, food, and debt payment. Taking that third one away for some of the brightest young minds we’ve “invested in” will allow for $$$ to go into other things including new ideas, startups, the retail economy, more fair housing. If we have the best schools in the world as we like to tout, it doesn’t make sense to allow so many of the people coming out of them to not have the ability to use some of what they learned there. It’s becoming rarer and rarer. There are obviously other reasons such as the moral argument around predatory practices we’ve allowed (and encouraged), the myth of the American dream that’s still engrained in every part of Americana, and how the per capita spend on higher Ed by states has decreased drastically over the last forty years making loans the only way of getting there for so many people looking to move themselves out of dire situations. I’m sure there’s more but those are the first few that come to kind for me.
Because cancelling federal student loan debt would literally take Joe 5 seconds. Cancelling private credit card debt is really complicated relative to that.
It needs a complete overhaul. Honestly, I would prefer if the US Government refunded all interest paid above principle for the last ~20 years and made all future loans interest-free (at most they had to be paid back plus a small fee). I think the fact that the government is making money on this is gross, especially since college kids don't get to vote until they're already committed to college.
I think the biggest issue is how kids are steered into it. It was a constant where I went to school and grew up that the best (and perhaps the only) way to be successful was to go to college and get a degree. And by forcing that onto kids and the value of a degree being so strong, people took out loans even if they weren't the best ideas. How relieving debt fixes that issue and doesn't create others I don't know, but like ohhaithur the government has failed and is failing the public education system and then funneling them into a price-gouged college education market.
Honestly preschool to college should all be free and publicly funded. We're created a huge problem with higher education debt but maybe even a worse problem with no universal pre-k. That starts poor kids behind everyone else in the most important years of their development.
What don't you understand about the ease/difficulty of debt cancelation/stimulus are on the opposite ends? They've been trying to get a 2nd stimulus for fucking 8 months. It'll be 10+ when Biden is elected with the same fucking split congress, in which the senate will not pass shit. So why cut off your nose to spite your face?
Took roughly 10k in my first two years of college and bought CDs when they still paid ~5% .. paid them off before any interest hit. When I randomly think about it I wonder whether it was unethical, but then I remember the interest being charged on student loans and shrug it off
I had slightly over $20K in loans to pay off when I graduated in 1996, partially because it took my dumb ass an extra year to graduate. It took me *forever* (11 years or something) to pay them off; I have no idea how you kids are doing it these days.
25% of overall federal student loan debt (and a much higher percentage of student loan borrowers) belongs to people with an associates' degree or no college degree. It's extremely privileged to call taking out student debt an irresponsible decision. For a lot of people, it's their only access to education and social mobility.