Reply #79: wow

[deFaultLine]

I have been having difficulty in dealing with Sallie Mae, I'm in grad school and have tried to stay in communication with them regarding deferments until I can complete my degree. Thus far I have to give them and F for competence. I have faxed them forms and have had them lose them or have been given the wrong number and several other excuses/obfuscations about what happened to my forms.

I still don't live and extravagant lifestyle and as an undergrad I lived very frugally, I worked at jobs and had other financial aid to help. Despite this, I had to take out loans to help pay for school and it got worse when some clerical errors were made that prevented me from receiving a full package during some periods of my undergrad career. I simply took out a loan when I could not pay for tuition in any other way.

Going out to for dinner, seeing movies or even drinking espressos was/is out of the question and despite my cost cutting efforts, I had to take out loans just to make ends meet and pay for the skyrocketing costs of school. (Which I may add got considerably worse since 2001.)

Now I find out that I've essentially signed over my life to a government subsidized loan shark...

The interest is outrageous, I have a hard time believing that a government subsidized organization is charging this much in fees and interest.

I would also say it's inaccurate for anyone to say that students are just blowing loan money on frivolous expenditures. The cost of education and housing are just too high to blithely pass off loan debt as poor planning by students. Consider the time and effort to become an engineer...it's not easy and the time it takes to study precludes taking a full-time job to pay for school. You end up either getting a loan or finding an easy major like business that allows you to spend a minimal amount of time studying and more on a job to pay for school.

If you are considering using a loan to pay for school... don't.