Yes, I went back to grad school for a career change to Landscape Architecture. It turned out to be quite the fraud. They grossly over promised “jobs everywhere” and the cost for the degree. I started another business.
I really appreciate this forum. I found this group on an NPR story.
Would anyone like to start organizing about architecture schools debt? It’s grossly understated by the schools and they are making the licensure difficult.
Thanks for this post.
I am 60. I have a decent job as a nurse practitioner working for a non-profit in addiction medicine. I was able to pay off my own student loans via debt forgiveness because I work with an underserved population.
I made the mistake of signing Parent Plus Loans for my now 30 year-old daughter so she could get her masters degree. She already had loans from her undergraduate degree, but agreed that she would be responsible for paying back any loans in my name also. She was in forbearance in 2020 when everything was paused. She is working full-time now, but can barely afford to pay the loans in her own name and still support her family. The loans in my name are now over $100,000.
I am single, have a 15 year old dependent, support my 24 year old daughter who lives with me, have a mortgage, some credit card debt, and contribute a small amount to a retirement fund that isn’t big enough to pay off those loans. I make enough money to pay my bills and live comfortably (not extravagantly). When I look at income driven payments, it actually INCREASES my monthly payment estimate. If I was planning on working full-time until I’m 70 and making 120 on-time payments, I would qualify for loan forgiveness because I work for a non-profit. But there is no way I can make those monthly payments (approximately $1600/month, just like my mortgage) for the next 10 years! I would like to plan on decreasing my workload to part-time when I’m 67, but I just don’t see how that will be possible.
I am 54, went back to college at 40. I also have 2 adult children that I have Parent Plus loans for. I recently have gone from a 2 income household to my sole income. I owe $99000 in student loans. The monthly payment they are asking is over $1000 a month. I cant afford that with my regular bills and the new financial situation. This is frustrating because I just dont have it. If I did pay the +$1000/month, I would still end up paying $150000 to pay it off with interest. At this point, I will be 80+ years old before I can pay it off.
Hi Nat, please join in the Debt Collective’s over 50 call on Feb 21. 2024 Fifty Over Fifty Meeting - Debt Collective
HI dottieo, please join in the Debt Collective’s over 50 call on Feb 21. 2024 Fifty Over Fifty Meeting - Debt Collective
please join in the Debt Collective’s over 50 call on Feb 21. 2024 Fifty Over Fifty Meeting - Debt Collective
Hello, Where is the 50 / 50 slack?
Here’s my 2 cent story. I went back to grad school after the recession to what was supposed to be a growing field - Landscape Architecture (Florida) However, reality was far from their marketing materials. The mis represented the debt amount, there were few jobs, they hired younger and out of country students instead of my A+ resume, and I’m denied a license because they deny employment.
Landscape Architecture is fraud.
The licenser doesn’t even allow much “architecture” and the majority of the RLAs know next to nothing about plants.
Anyone want to join me in Florida about this topic?
65 yo philosopher, working a blue collar job. I’m in IDR at $91/month. At that payment level, I’ll pay the loan off roughly speaking in 2234. Right: 210 years.
At Mr. Musk’s rate of pay, I could pay it off in about 12 minutes.
More fun: MOHELA recently reported my debt to TransUnion…twice. Same account #, same balance. Tanked my credit score a few months b4 I might have been able to buy a decent used car.
No matter which of the main POTUS candidates wins, I predict we’ll see the long knives come out to collect these debts. We’re all going to be a lot thinner soon.
I am 70. I owe just shy of $100k, borrowed $105K, paid back about $60k. Capitalization of interest got me (and cancers). On the 25 year payment plan.
I just managed to get it cancelled due to the physi. WHYcian letter disability route. This means after 3 years of monitoring it will be formally considered cancelled and the debt will be forgiven. HOWEVER then I will owe federal (and in my case state) taxes on ordinary income of a couple hundred shy of 100K. Why? Because Biden’s freeze on that ends the end of 2025 and mine will be considered cancelled in 2027. So I then will have about a $27000 debt to the IRS and the state. That year all of my social security will be taxable and then I will have IRS debt. If you don’t pay that on time you get charged interest and penalties for each payment.
ALSO BEWARE if your loan is cancelled because your 20 or 25 years is finally up you will be in the same fix with IRS debt. It’s considered income (exceptions are public service and teacher forgiveness).
AND BEWARE IF YOUR ARE 65+ and in default. Some of your social security will be taken as a payment to pay this debt along with any tax refund. If you are in default and younger and have any tax refunds coming they will take your refund too. It’s the law unfortunately.
If you can consolidate under the SAVE program (if you plan to pay) as the payment is 5% of your net income and all the other consolidation programs they take a higher percent of your income.
Welcome to retirement where you could easily be living below the poverty line like I am but then have a huge tax bill with no way to pay that debt. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. Our debt was cancelled due to permanent and total disability and now we owe more than we are living on for an entire year in IRS tax? (or in my case will be debt?). How the heck can we pay that?
If this is an undergrad loan and you have been in repayment for 20 years, grad student for 25, your loans should have been cancelled. Originally they didn’t count deferment nor forbearance in those 25 years, during the pandemic they added to the count forbearance months and all months during the pandemic. Go to your repayment processor, log in or create an account, and ask for a history of your payments. You should see corrections in the count for forbearance and the pandemic pause. Or call them. If you change to the SAVE plan it will decrease your payment HOWEVER BE AWARE the amount then written off when you hit the 20 or 25 year mark of payments you that write off will create a new debt - IRS debt as it is considered ordinary income and you will have to pay taxes on it as if you actually got that money in spendable form. In 3 years I will have about $100K added to my “Income”. No idea how I will pay that IRS debt as it will be more than I make in a year. We need to change this.
Is there an Over 50 forum? I joined too late for this zoom meeting.
The conversation in the Debt Collective now happens in the Slack. This link can get you to the Slack: SLACK: https://join.slack.com/t/debtcampaign/shared_invite/zt-1iiiorus7-Q8RHTxnC3k5AV9CfSV06ig
At 58 and after 25 years of making payments, I’ve ended up with 126K (more than double my original debt when I graduated with my master’s). I’ve made mistakes, and I had to file bankruptcy 12 years ago that colored my history, but the criminal banking tyrants have us all trapped by the ridiculous interest compounding.
Had I not had this debt, I would have gone on to get a Ph.D., but even when my debt was 52K, I knew I had to get to earning a debt-entangled living. I daydream of eliminating that debt since I have quickly paid off the original debt.
Thanks for being here and being vocal. It gives me hope I am not isolated and unaware. I hope to see a voting bloc of older debt-holders make an impression on the coming election cycles.
Meant to add the pause on taxation of what is written off ends the end of 2025. Starting in 2026 it is taxable again.
I am 61 years old and took my loan out for 16,000 and now I owe almost 200,000 for a very small loan. I had a very difficult time paying it back because I ended up homeless with a 6-month-old son and was living out the back of a U-Haul truck because the first truck was broken into and stolen with everything I owned. The only thing I had was the clothes on my back It was devastating and scary because I had no clue where my life was going to go at that point. I was with and abusive man and I couldn’t do much around him with a 6-month-old baby. We were barely getting by. Eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for
months until went to a church for help and they turned us away. But a custodian heard our story, and he took us all in until we could get back on our feet. It was tough. No jobs, no clothes, no money, no food etc… To make a long story short I have been working off and on and I finally got myself together. But paying that large amount of money back is pretty tough especially when you are only making 40,000 a year and you have living expense, and you loan payments are 2400 a month which I cannot pay. I barely make that in a month working. How does someone supposed to live like this. Having the burden of a federal loan over your head and afraid that your money will be taken away to pay it and you will eventually be back on the streets. It’s so scary.
If these are federal loans get on the Save program as the percent of your income they take is the lowest out there. If you are in default look at the Fresh Start program. You can sign up for that through Sept. Starting in Oct the federal government will start garnishing wages and social security.
Smartlady With federal loans you can sign up for the SAVE consolidation program and you won’t be paying anywhere near that amount. That is the program that takes the smallest percent of your income. Also if you find a job at a government or non-profit you can, while on the save payback program, count your 10 years of working for either and then the rest of what you owe will be written off and you won’t owe taxes on it.
The right wing conservatives filed suit tonight against the SAVE program. I think the approach where Biden cancels and asks questions later was/is the way to go. What do you think?
https://www.washingtonpost.com/education/2024/03/28/student-loan-lawsuit-save-repayment-plan/
The catch is the SAVE program and any other pay X years and the rest will be forgiven (also a problem with disability discharge except VA disability determination) is all forgiven debt is considered taxable income after the pause ends (end of 2025). As a result you are trading one kind of debt for you can’t rid of it in bankruptcy debt (eg IRS debt and in 10 states state tax debt) because you get a 1099-C. THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE. Below is why (this is a copy/paste from my comment on that WP article). As far as I can tell the Dept of Ed isn’t dealing with this with their Negotiated Rules for Student Debt Relief efforts (committee meetings finished the end of Feb, there will be 30 days of comments in the federal registry but I can’t find it to comment on it).
Copy/Paste:
One big catch never mentioned with canceled student debt (and that includes that which is canceled for disability (except VA determined disability)) is that prior to the covid caused pause and now after it when that bill expires, is that canceled student debt is considered ordinary income (starting in 2026 it will be considered ordinary income again). This means you pay IRS taxes on it. It is counted as income for living in HUD and your rent (if enough is forgiven you will be tossed out of HUD when your income is too high). It is considered income for SNAP eligibility, TANF, ACA health insurance premiums (but not medicaid eligibility), if on medicare your medicare B and D premiums…
This creates a huge financial catastrophe for many. As interest used to be capitalized until recently, often people owe far more than they borrowed if their income is low, if they have had unemployment or hardship forbearance, if they were early in the repayment process and most of their money goes to interest and not principle (that last problem has been resolved as of this year interest is no longer capitalized).
When the pause on this ends the end of 2025 students will have a huge tax debt that they can only get out of if insolvent however to be considered insolvent could be difficult as literally the clothes on your back are considered assets and if you have any money in retirement saved you will need to empty out your retirement savings to pay. 10 states also tax this money as ordinary income and in most of those states insolvency can’t solve that problem.
THIS NEEDS TO CHANGE! If you are disabled and can’t earn money how do you pay a huge tax debt? If you are low income and have been paying all these years how do you pay a huge tax debt? The IRS charges a monthly penalty and interest on a payment plan. If you can’t pay that much a month they garnish your wages and social security… This is a problem no one is talking about.
Hi! Graduate of San Diego State University in 1994. In 1995 the bill I got was around $13,000, now it’s over $92,000. When I first got the bill I was shocked, I had no idea what I had gotten myself into, just signed the “Financial Aid Package” and got down to my education. The debt has influenced my life greatly, from always working as a freelancer after the ‘Education Department’ started garnering my wages, to not getting officially married because who’d want to tie someone they love to your debt? The burden of the monster debt is palpable. Why would I ever try paying a debt so far removed from the original size? There’s been no one to turn to, to plead my case, over these thirty years. The companies that have handled my debt over the years love to just kick my debt down the road with more interest. Cancel all student debt now. Pretty please. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAsqf5ofoVA Link is to a video I made telling my story with the documents to prove it.