Tag Archives: Student Loans

by

The Corporations and Our Money

Ideally, this post would be an intelligent and informed commentary on greedy corporate America and how it affects the lowly people and their pockets. However, my intelligence is questionable and I’m not quite informed on the world of economics to discuss how this hurts our pocketbooks. What I am is a sarcastic and bitter critic of everything, and comments whatever comes to my mind regardless of things like actual facts and statistics.

After months of my health insurance company not giving me a straight answer on my appeal for the claim of “why do I owe $700?” and finally my bill going into collections as a result, it led me to wonder why I even bother with insurance. Granted, living in Massachusetts makes it cheaper to pay $700 a month on insurance than it does to pay the fine and not filing taxes. It does work out in the end as what could’ve easily been a $2000 bill, might only cost me $100 in the end since my deductible is slowly reaching its limit. Even still, I couldn’t help but to wonder why something like a single blood test costs $800, or how can you pull a kleenex out of a kid’s nose with a pair of tweezers and have it cost $400. I’m sure I could’ve taken it out of my son’s nose myself for $1, the price of tweezers. Maybe the problem isn’t that insurance costs so much, maybe it’s because the doctors and labs charge an obscene fee for seemingly simple things. Greedy doctors or greedy insurance companies or a combination of the 2? Does it really matter? It still hurts as you write out the check for the bills.

Then, there are student loans. In a previous post, I went off on a rant about the incredible rudeness of these loan companies and the fact that their interests rates are more than my husband’s car interest. I’m sure it also was a commentary on how they were pissed I was off by 5 cents on one of my payments. When you’re complaining about 5 cents, you really are greedy. They gave me the best news this week though, by lowering the monthly payments on 2 of my loans. Sure, it may only be $10 I’m saving a month, but when you consider that’s a box of diapers every month you get excited. I hope this isn’t the calm before the storm though, the idea of Senate not getting their heads out of their butts worries me because I don’t want my interest rates to go up as a result of our government being morons.

I could be missing the big picture by saying these companies are greedy. Maybe they have costs I don’t understand, that doesn’t count the big wigs of these companies clearing millions of dollars every year. I could just be a cynical bored housewife, or could I be right that these companies aren’t getting increased expenses but getting increased want of a nicer lifestyle at the costs of the lowly people bordering middle class and poverty. I’m all for a free market and people making it without having to apologize. Hell, I want to make it and have a fortune at my disposal, and I think most people in my position agree. What I do wonder is if maybe those big corporations are parasites living off us. With that logic, why do we complain about our money going to welfare people to live off of while we fund all these rich corporations to?

by

College Graduation

When I graduated college, our class sat on while all our speakers went up to give us something inspirational. Well, we waited for them to give us something inspirational, but it ended up we got a reality I’m sure we didn’t expect on a day of celebration. One speaker started off by saying “Normally I say to expect the greatest out there with your degree, but the truth is you’re graduating at a bad time in our economy. Best of Luck graduates, you’ll need it.” The sad truth of our times, it’s not a great time to graduate unless you picked the right degree and got the right amount of luck.

I expected it. I knew when I dropped my Education major and went full major in English; that I was going to have issues. I also knew that I wasn’t going to be happy going into that field, and the classes made me miserable. I also knew that dropping out wouldn’t be an option, so I went head on into my English classes, and graduated with a shiny degree in English. A seemingly laughable degree, something everyone gets to laugh at anyways.

I remember being in an English class, and one of the Education majors was sad. Her daughter is going to school to get an English degree at a fancy college. She felt it was a waste of money, what could you possibly do with an English degree? Of all people to say that to, she says it to an English professor. I laughed a little at the idea she would say that to him. He also laughed, but responded back with “There are worse things in the world, like being a philosophy major. Not by much, but it is.” So true.

It really is though, because you can’t quite teach with an English degree unless you get lucky to get into a private school. Then, you can’t really get into a job at a Wal-Mart or another department store because you’re “overqualified”. Really because of your fancy degree, they just don’t want you to want an actual pay rate or the fear of you leaving for something better. Assuming there is something better.

People aren’t so lucky. We tell our children to go to school and you’ll get a fancy job. Adults go back to school to get better opportunities than they had before. But times changed. Getting a degree doesn’t guarantee you anything but a pride of achievement. A pride of achievement that you’ll be paying back for the rest of your life, with that minimum wage job you get if you’re lucky.

I’m by no means saying that you shouldn’t go to college. Education is something no one can take from you. I’m saying a lot of people can relate to this. Sometimes following dreams leaves you behind, and you’re left with a lot of time on your hands and you’re not making money. I get to write, I get to be with my family, I was lucky. Some aren’t as lucky though, and I hope things will get better for them soon.

by

Legal Robbery?

Like every other day, I check out my bank account to make sure everything is fine. Usually everything ends up fine, but yesterday wasn’t one of those days. Seeing a “-$490” dropped my jaw to the basement. Not the floor, the basement floor. How could this have happened?! My heart raced, oh what happened? Though it scared me, I needed to see what happened. I looked, and realized I shouldn’t be scared; I needed anger. And boy was I livid beyond extreme.

My monthly check I send to Sallie Mae for one of my many student loans was cashed. I’ve heard horror stories about people who set up automatic withdrawals from their bank accounts to their loan companies. So, most bills I pay online but with my student loans I take care that I sign the checks myself. Now, I realize why. They had cashed my $51.62 payment, and somehow between me sending the check and them depositing it, my check became a $516.62 check. I couldn’t believe what I was reading.

My first instinct was to call my husband to have him talk to the bank. My second instinct was to call them up and try being calm about being overdrawn as a result of their error. (Note: I did try being calm.) So I speak to a guy, obviously someone not in this country anywhere near the PA office I send my checks dutifully to. He comforted me, assuring me that he would start the process for a refund. A process for you to refund my money? You didn’t need to go through some lengthy process to steal my money, but I need to go through one to get it back? I fail to see the logic of this. If it took you 2 days to screw it up, I shouldn’t need to wait 10-20 days to get it fixed. This wouldn’t do.

Luckily, my bank is amazing. “Would you like to fill out an unauthorized withdrawal to get your money back today?” You bet I would. In fact, that would make me happier than you can imagine today. And with a swift sign of my name, every cent returned to my account. That wasn’t enough for me though, causing me to call the company back. I wouldn’t settle for less than a supervisor. I rescinded my refund with them, making sure I stated that my back was taking my money back from them. I also restated many times that this better not happen again. One can hope it doesn’t.

This led me to visit lovely Google to see if anyone else had this problem. Not surprisingly, thousands of posts on forums about how loan companies constantly screw over the people they lend to. Luckily I can afford my payments, though I’m well aware that paying them monthly doesn’t reduce the payments at all. It’s abhorrent they get away with this. I don’t think anyone likes that they can pay loans their entire life, to not be able to even dent your loan amount. Sorry, not your loan amount, the obscene amount that ends up after you get the loan when they tally up interest. And these are the companies that needed the bail outs.

It’s sickening that I have a $25,000 loan with one company, which really ends up being far more than that as interest. Even worse, I don’t even remember agreeing to a Sallie Mae loan. I feel ripped off. I feel like my money is stolen from me only worse; they can legally do this to me. It’s heartbreaking to see some of these people and their stories. They can’t get a job, and let’s face it, not many can in this economy; but now they have student loans that they can do absolutely nothing about but get harassed. You can’t file for bankruptcy to get rid of them. You really can’t do a thing to make them act less cruel. You can’t really do anything about them. They can just do what they do, and keep doing it because no one will stop them.

In reading all this, I came across this website (http://www.studentloanjustice.org/ ) and read about how they want to make the public aware of this. To me, this is a grassroots organization worth following. I don’t care about paying my loan. I care that they can steal money, and screw up credit without repercussions, even if the person didn’t do anything wrong. I also care that when you want help, all you get are rude people who don’t listen to you. Hell, I would’ve even just taken an apology for them and their $500 screw up.

That’s when it hit me. It’s not just about the idea of being robbed blind helplessly; a lot has to do with the people robbing you. It seems to leave less of a bitter taste in your mouth when the person at least apologizes, and not making you feel like you did something wrong. Maybe if they showed some sort of compassion of how they ruined your day and how maybe they need to be calm instead of rude or snotty sounding. Customers want to know that someone is listening without them having the urge to yell to get heard. Especially if those customers are well aware of the fact that no one will regulate the companies that are essentially scamming them. I would like to see a thief steal stuff from your house, and turn it around on you saying “maybe you shouldn’t have nice things, and I wouldn’t steal them”. The thieves wouldn’t get away with it, why should these loan companies.

I understand, the reason these companies make money is the large amount of interest you have to pay. I understand that any loan has interest on it. I’m not an economy major, but I know the reality. But somehow, car loans stay in business and you don’t look at your bill going “well, I started off with a $20,000 loan and now I end up with a $40,000 one”. And if you can’t pay it? They either repo your car or you file bankruptcy and keep it. You don’t get this option for student loans, and that seems vile to me.