If you're a slave to Sallie Mae, get out from under her as fast as you can. I had trouble finding work after graduating, big shock I know. So I took a few deferments and didn't make payments. Sallie Mae took those missed payments and through some accounting magic turned the interest into loan capital. My loan was growing and was $3000 fatter before I could bring it under control. The whole thing is engineered to drag you into a perpetual spiral, much like the IRS. I probably sound like yet another old man who thinks he knows what's best for everyone. In this matter I think I know enough to deliver a warning. Government loans only give the government more control of your life. Some of the paperwork they made me sign stated that if the state found me a job, "at any pay rate", I had to accept it. Which means they could have steered me toward the golden arches, with my fresh new computer science degree, to assemble Big Macs. If I refused, I would lose my unemployment deferment (which was not penalized). They called me every month while I was unemployed to ask if I had been looking for a job. I started sending them the spreadsheet I used to keep from applying twice to the same places. When I did get a job, I made the mistake of telling Sallie Mae, thinking they would have no reason to pester me. Instead they called my boss after the first month to see if he thought I was going to be retained by them. When I got my second paycheck they called me and my boss to ask why I hadn't made a payment yet. Sallie Mae is a cute way of saying SLMA or Student Loan Marketing Association. Their only business is conning broke people into college loans and then raking them over the coals for payments. After making payments for a while I was able to consolidate my various loans, another trick played on me while I was still in college. Consolidation brought them all under 1 interest profile and a decade later I finally paid it off. Getting rid of Sallie Mae was like shedding an unwanted dominatrix.
Are enough parents making use of things like 529 plans to save for their children's education after high school?
Do you research and go for a degree thats most likely to get you employment after graduating...usually the boring ones no one wants to do Everyone seems to go for the degrees they think is a where the money is, or an easy ride like an arts degree. Tertiary education follows the same law of supply and demand everything else does. Although a lot of jobs in the next decade will be wiped out in the next couple of decades due to technology....so kids are screwed today no matter what they do
i'm assuming these are two separate suggestions? i didn't watch the video, so i apologize if this was already covered, but one option (at least in the US) is to work for a non-profit. after 10 years all student debts can be forgiven.
That isn't necessarily true. If you are going to Oklahoma State University, sure, don't choose History because it will be difficult to find jobs. If You're going to Cambridge, it doesn't matter as much what you study - it is the signalling function of the degree that is important.
'Nilla, you are SO right. While my best living is provided by engineering support, I have changed horses a few times to pay the bills. On one such job I was working with several very good artists. I was there because I know my way around composites like fiberglass and carbon fiber. Most of the artists on the crew were art school graduates. They were crushed by the mechanized way the company approached art. Creativity was maintained by a small cult of artists that stayed largely in the air conditioned offices. The rest were out on the shop floor with trogs like me. To me the work was no big deal. I built molds for huge aircraft parts, so theme park and resort props were easy. I don't consider myself to be an artist, but if you give me an engineering drawing with precise measurements, I can produce the part you want. It's the same for making fake marble for a hotel lobby or fake astronauts for NASA. I can sculpt a replica of whatever you want, but I can't free hand an apple. I must have the measurements. The professional artists on the team were always unhappy with the horrible working conditions, heat, dust and fiberglass. The few who were allowed to express themselves did so brilliantly. I remember one guy making a dragon out of clay in a couple of hours that looked like it belonged in a museum. I was assigned to cast it in silicone so copies could be made. But he had never made a sculpture for casting before, so he didn't have a proper frame within. As soon as we applied the 3rd layer of silicon we could see the dips and distortion. The artist was naturally pissed, but he sat with me and we designed a frame out of copper wire and soldered it together. He worked his magic with the modeling clay and we were able to get a good casting. I never knew what the dragon was meant for. A restaurant chain? TKD schools? Pet stores? I didn't care, I was paid by the hour to make a mold so they could make dozens of dragons sculpted by a graduate artist. Not that anyone would actually know all of that. I respect people who have artistic talent. But it seems like they should have another, parallel career going as well. So what if you have to be the district manager for a hardware chain if it affords you the opportunity to paint Amazonian tree frogs with machine guns in your spare time. Some day you will be discovered. You'll probably be dead. So have a bill-paying career to support your art habit.
I graduated with about average (for America) debt myself. Hated the thought of being in debt. I worked two jobs and lived in cheap apartments, and managed to pay off my debts in 2 years. I also picked an affordable grad school so I didn't have to take out loans for that. So, my advice would be to prioritize paying them off, work hard for a few years, even if it isn't your dream job, and then you will have a lot more freedom to pursue things you love afterward.
Here the student loans are/where only indexed to inflation. 0% otherwise although its arbitary whether they were actually 0% as ones own inflation is dependant on what you spend money on,,,,,anyhoo.....didnt bother paying off mine for 15 years...as there were no real interest charges
That sounds very nice, and very much not the case in the good ol' US of A. I had some with interest rates as high as 7%, I believe.
What i found that helped me out was a VET Loan from the government. What it is basically is a government funded education scheme. It's here in Australia. It a great option if you can't be bothered paying for HECS fees
the only real solution is political, which is to decomodify useful knowledge, to decouple its personal transfer from symbolic value.
They loan you money at a low interest rate. That's what I like. I think the reality is though that students have enormous expenses sometimes - the costs of living away from home; if that's the case, being among the highest. Typically they don't know how to manage money. And although there are sites and disclaimers and warnings along the way, I think usually they over-borrow and end up in over their heads before college is over.
That's easy. Get born to rich parents. That way, they can pay for your college and living expenses, and you won't have any debt, whatsoever, when you graduate. They can also give you a nice graduation gift of cash to help you buy your first home. </sarcasm>
let the corporations who want well educated grunts pay for it, and get the financing "industry" out of it too.
Remembering all of the heat that the lenders took during the 2008 Housing Finance crisis. Isn't the Government who is the Lender for student loans? People are less inclined to blast away at Gvmt. Lenders and the University community then they are at mortgage bankers. Doesn't make them any less guilty.
