74 year old with 36K in student loan debt

[Liberal_in_LA]

http://www.sacbee.com/business/story/1549833.html

Personal Finance: Terms of student loan can be tough
By Claudia Buck

[e-mail]

Published: Sunday, Jan. 18, 2009 | Page 5D

Like millions of Americans, Nancy McMenamin of Winters went back to college to launch a new career. After five years, she acquired a master's degree in mental health counseling. And $27,000 in student loan debt.

Now 74, McMenamin has been paying down that debt for nearly 20 years. Because of several deferments she took over the years, her overall debt has notched upward, to $36,000.

She's not delinquent but is anxious about her ability to repay in full, especially given the hefty interest rate on her Sallie Mae student loan: 9 percent.

"What I really want is to pay it off as soon as possible, but the interest rate is horrendous," says McMenamin, who was laid off in August from a part-time job with a Yolo County mental health office. "What can I do?"

Especially in a stressed economy, student loan debt is a major issue. It's not uncommon to see students saddled with thousands in loans for undergrad and graduate school costs.

[GreenPartyVoter]

1. We need fully gov't paid education just as badly as we need single payer health care.

[Muttocracy]

2. student loan interest rates really went up under Bush, didn't they?

I had one not-so big student loan that I took out at 3%. Last year it had gone up to 8% and I refinanced it as an installment loan at a local bank because the principal wasn't going down. Now I don't get the tax deduction but at least the loan is going away.

[lonestarnot]

4. Pell was the first thing the fuckers cut. The first thing.

[jtrockville]

5. St. Reagan made it harder for the poor to get an education too.

[NYC_SKP]

3. She needs debt management skills, not a pass.

Even in this economy, the jobs in that industry are not drying up.

I may be wrong, but Nancy MIGHT just have really poor skills in managing personal finances.

There's not enough information, what other personal issues she may have could be at the root of this situation.

[My Good Babushka]

8. Oh great

yeah, she probably did something really stupid, like get old and start to have health issues. And she worked in the social services field, notoriious for poverty wages, she should have done the responsible thing and become a hedge fund manager.

Every person who deflects the argument with the "personal responsibility" mantra is just sticking their fingers in their ears and not addressing the problem.

[NYC_SKP]

11. The truth is that we don't know.

I thought I was pretty clear about that.

Not everyone in debt deserves relief, if her personal financial management skills suck, then she's to blame and I'm not bailing her out.

Do you know that she's not driving an Excursion on a 72 month loan? Do you know that she doesn't have a California Lottery habit?

No, I didn't think so.

Neither do I.

[Orrex]

12. So, in the absence of evidence, you choose to condemn rather than sympathize?

Seems that we see a lot of that sort of sympathy here.

Megacorporations aren't made to disclose anything at all before receiving hundreds of billions of dollars in annual handouts, of which the current bailout is only the least of it. Yet this poor woman--and millions like her--have to be subjected to public and humiliating scrutiny before we'll say "yeah, maybe the system is screwed up." How is that equitable?

I know, I know. You didn't support the corporate bailout, either.


The terms of student loans are more predatory and punitive than almost any other legal loans in the country, and yet they're allowed to run unchecked no matter how poorly the lending companies are managed.


The solution isn't to cluck our tongues at the wild excesses of a 74 year old's lifestyle; the solution is to rein in these predatory lending agencies and makes sure that they don't further subjugate the debtors who'll already have to work for decades after they're dead before they can pay off these loans.

[northernlights]

13. I'm glad you are perfect

have never made a mistake in your life, and have a crystal ball to foresee the future. So when you get cancer, hit by a car, or hit over the head by a criminal, I'm not bailing *you* out with universal healthcare. Cuz for all I know, you smoked or talked to a smoker, crossed a street without looking both ways or walked down a street in a bad neighborhood.

Seriously, woman at her age were effectively prevented from learning about many things, including and especially financial management. Education beyond cooking, sewing, licking men's dicks if you're marriagable (pretty) or being a schoolteacher or librarian if you're not (ugly) were the vast majority of women's options. Kindly don't quote the exceptions -- they were by far the tiniest fraction and dependent on being born to a decent father that would educate you.

Hell, I'm only 55 and have been forced by circumstances to do the same thing she was at my age -- take on student loans. I saved my whole life, paid off my 1st mortgage at age 45, bought this place cash and had a nice nest egg. I didn't vote for * either time. I didn't cause the high-tech crash. I didn't cause a former colleague to use his and his wife's positions (VP at pension manager) to steal my identity. I didn't cause the registered sex offender to move in next door, nor did I cause him and his gang to harrass me. It's not my fault the cop's hands were tied. I *did* under duress, choose to move to a rural state where sex offenders are taken seriously. Unfortunately for me, they also hate transplants, and trashing my property and robbing me are cause for their police to look the other way. And I'm not employable because I'm not local and have a college degree. JSo yeah, I made mistakes -- under duress -- and someday I may be praying my student loans are forgiven.

And news for you, the financial management courses that were offered when I took them, and the financial counseling provided by my credit union, were filled with lies. If I'd followed the damn teachers advice, I'd be in far, far worse shape than I am now because I wouldn't even have been in a position to escape the fucking criminal next door.

[SheilaT]

6. I've long thought that all school loans

should be through the federal government and have an interest rate of maybe 3%, just enough to cover administrative costs. And perhaps the loans should be forgiven if someone goes into certain fields, such as public school teaching.

More than thirty years ago I had a conversation with someone who bitterly regretted having taken out any loans whatsoever to pay for college. She said at least she should have waited and not borrowed anything until her last two years of college. And she only owed about $2,000, but in 1977 (when this conversation took place) she was finding it a burden.

I have never forgotten that conversation, and that's why I will always tell anyone who doesn't come from a rich family and who isn't eligible for merit aid not to borrow, at least for the first two years, but start out at a community college instead, and then attend a state University to finish up, taking out as small an amount in loans as possible. Work full time and take longer to finish. There truly are alternatives to taking on huge debt.

Meanwhile, for all those who did borrow large sums to get through college or grad school, there should be a moratorium of some kind for them, and a significant reduction in their interest rates. We're throwing the bailout money at all the wrong people.

[aikoaiko]

7. Investing in careers is like investingi in business - sometimes it pays off and sometimes it doesn't

Its a rough economic world out there.

Oh I almost forget. In these threads I always advertise GA because if you graduate from a GA high school with a B, you won't have to pay tuition for any public university. Plus you get a couple of hundred for books. You can even move to GA, pay your first year and earn a B GPA, and then get the same scholarship.

[Libertyfirst]

9. You must be mistaken. Last time I looked Georgia was in the South (horrors)!

[DemBones DemBones]

10. Georgia also gives HOPE scholarships to attend private colleges

to students who maintained a B average in high school and continue to do so in college. Thus students have a choice and all colleges and universities in the state benefit, too.

And who started all this? Governor Zell Miller! He wasn't always crazy.

[proud2BlibKansan]

14. My student loan payments were $15 a month

Of course that was back when we valued education in this country.