Horrible student loan lenders

[bainsidhe]

I can't even begin to imagine the standard loan amounts you see nowadays. The 22.5K loan bill I had in 1999 would easily be triple that today with the way tuition has been rising. I was a naive college student and I lucked out with good advisers helping me along the way. It's too easy to sign on the dotted line with no real understanding what it means to owe thousands of dollars once you leave school. And of course we expect to be making big bucks after graduation. A friend of mine has a 30 year loan plan and her payments are still over $400 a month.

[ShadowBall]

I haven't had a load of trouble with Mallie Sae yet, but I know once I get out of school and my deferment ends, I will. I know I'll be using one forbearance and deferment after another because I won't be able to find a job.

The thing with Mallie Sae is they will give anyone a student loan for any amount of money. People who are desperate to get an education who can't afford it are the targets, and substandard schools usually have Mallie Sae as their primary or sole lender. Usually students won't research their school and whether or not it sucks, and then they won't research or ask questions about who they borrow from. The end result is someone in their twenties with six figures of student debt for a bachelor's in philosophy or something equally impractical (philosophy is cool and all, but it's not a degree you can really get a career with unless it's to teach philosophy).

Pretty much all the staff at my first school were idiots...the academic advisors were morons, the entire financial department were morons, the career advisors were morons. I was put in the NHS twice because my school forgot I was already in it. I tell ya, if I could prove what a shitbag undergrad was and how the degree I got will never ever benefit me and doing so could help me get rid of my loans, I would totally do it. So many people are damned to having so little or being totally poor because they are at the mercy of loan sharks.

I hate to say it, but I think when I reach the point where I just cannot afford to pay back my own loans and I'm out of forbearances and deferments, I'm just going to not pay. Mallie Sae sucks, they have no interest in trying to establish affordable payment plans with its borrowers, and therefore they can't want to get paid too badly if they're just going to sit there like homeless people and shake their money cups at you without putting forth a tiny bit of effort themselves. I would never encourage defaulting on one's loans, but I think that's going to be the reality for myself and many others one way or another, so I figure I'll just go with it.

[jiarby]

when I reach the point where I just cannot afford to pay back my own loans and I'm out of forbearances and deferments, I'm just going to not pay.

Then get ready for bad credit reporting, they will seize your income tax refunds, may garnish your paycheck/wages.

You won't easily be able to borrow money for a car, or home. You will pay higher interest rates for EVERYTHING, if you get approved at all.

Oh yeah... then they will add default fees, jack up your interest rates, put you out for collections. The next thing you know your 50k in student loans (for the degree you never finished, in the major where you can't get a job anyway) is doubled or worse.

You will pay eventually. Not just in money... but years of frustration and anger.

My advice...

Don't borrow money to go to college. It's a bad investment.

Can't afford it? Join the military. They will pay. Or, get a job, save your money and take night classes that you pay cash for. Get good at something and get a scholarship.

[ShadowBall]

Yeah, but the thing is I think the military is like the Peace Corps and they only pay like $3000 a year for you being there. And truth be told, I couldn't handle the military...I know I couldn't. I'd be someone who hated the sergeants for doing their jobs and secretly looking for ways to kill them, or having a nervous breakdown every day. I think as far as military rejects would go, I'd fall into the "too fat" and "too nuts" categories.

And I understand the consequences of not repaying my loans. I would likely need to look for work under the table and simply try to pay everything in cash since I wouldn't let Mallie Sae seize my bank holdings. It'd suck, but given the choice of being able to have a few hundred extra dollars a month and be able to afford to live and being sucked dry by a lender that doesn't give a fuck if I live in a box, I'd take the first.

And I'm not good enough to get a scholarship in anything. I applied for scholarships all throughout undergrad (and before), and I continue to apply during grad school...haven't gotten one red cent. I hear there's something like seven million dollars in free money out there for students, but I sure as fuck don't see it.

IMHO, I think there needs to be something like grants and scholarships solely for college grads. Like you write essays or do art or enter contests and get money toward your loans. Or you can get money based off your income, ethnicity, military status (or those of relatives), major...basically anything that students can get, only it'd be for grads. I've actually applied for a few scholarships multiple times to see if I could apply scholarship money to my existing balance after graduation.

I kind of see Mallie Sae as bad drink that will forever be topped off. You might chip away at it a little at a time, but soon it goes right back up to where it was and it's as if the effort you just made didn't even happen. So you're back to square one, only you feel like crap from trying to make it go away.

Now imagine sitting in the same place, chipping away slowly at the same drink for a decade, only to find that because you weren't emptying your glass fast enough, you not only have one full glass of this shitty drink, but a second glass to catch the excess. Basically, I feel like the only way I could get away from something like this is to just leave that drink and never look back....if it happens to drown me in every possible way, then I have to deal with that while knowing I tried to make it go away and failed. I'd rather drown and not have the horrible taste in my mouth.

Sorry if that made no sense...I think I had a little too much NyQuil and my head's been kinda funky for the last hour.

[thatcrazyredhead]

I'm so sorry you're having such a hard time! One of my student loans is through them, but I've never had a problem with it. I'm actually paying it off on Thursday, thank God!

[Mytical]

Look into government guaranteed consolidation loans. I believe it covers all loans gotten while being a student. Even unsubsidized. You end up paying a bit more over all, but the monthly payments are generally reduced.

[camjuniper]

I've got just under a f*ckton of loans with that company. I've been doing okay with it--paying the same amount as my monthly rent, though. My brother, on the other hand, has been royally screwed by them.

He's kind of a slacker, so some of it is probably his own damn fault. However, when he calls, makes a payment over the phone is told it's applied to loan XYZ and ASKS if there's any thing else he needs to take care of, why in the hell didn't the useless bastard on the other end tell him about the loan that hadn't been payed for SIX MONTHS? (Why hadn't it been paid? Cuz over the six months, each time he makes this call, they don't apply ANY of his payment to that loan and they don't TELL HIM ABOUT IT!)

So I hate them on his behalf (I figure my own loans are my own fault. I mean, no one told me I shouldn't take on that much student loan debt, but then again, the people who could've probably didn't know any better themselves--since they went to school back when you could pay your way through by working on the side and in the summer) and now on yours and everyone else who's gone through hell with them.

I must say, though, that their online interface has improved. New gov't regulations? Or finally ponying up to the complaints? I can now designate where any overpay goes (before, I SWEAR they deliberately applied the majority of it to the smallest loan with the lowest interest rate). This, at least, pleases me.

[UncleImpy]

If you have absolutely no choice and you've looked at other options, Bankruptcy DOES remove even student loans. IN my case (I filed Chapter 13 - Debt Repayment, last year), Im not voiding out what I owe, but it stopped all the interest and fees and turned everything into one lump sum that a trustee pays for me. Essentially, where I was paying approx $3000 a month before and still couldnt keep up, I now pay $888 a month already garnished out of my paycheck, and in 4 more years I will have no debt whatsoever. I had a Mallie Sae loan of about $6500 that I had been paying on since '98, always on time, always the full amount, and I think the principle had gone down maybe $400 since I started the loan.

I've been living completely free of credit since that time and damn, it feels good. I dont think I'll ever get another credit card or loan again. It makes some things harder (rental cars, I have to pay for everything up front + a deposit), but now IM able to put away a huge chunk each month into savings and CDs to save up for the car I know Im going to need to buy in a couple of years when the POS van dies on me.

[ralerin]

This is why I really, deeply, deeply, deeply wish with all my heart that student loans here would work like student loans in the UK. If you make over £15000 there, the loans are automatically garnished from your paycheck. If you make less than that...you pay nothing.

[ShadowBall]

I kind of wonder if you could get a loan from a bank (or a credit card you can max out), use it to pay off all your student loans, and then repay the bank on more bearable terms or get it discharged via bankruptcy. Thing is Mallie Sae is also real good at losing payments. I've read many complains about how people will send hundreds or even thousands in payments and somehow they get withdrawn but not applied to the person's account. One story in particular I read involved someone who managed to get $12,000 and used it to pay off their remaining balance...Mallie Sae took the whole check and only applied $2000 of it. The other ten thousand dollars just kind of vanished.

I guess I don't get what makes some cases of bankruptcy more special than others that some people's loans will be discharged and some will not. Surely if you're filing for bankruptcy, you're fucking broke one way or another, so why is one person's poverty worse than another when it comes to bankruptcy and student debt?

[ralerin]

Much as I hate to say it, Kevin Trudeau wrote a book on debt repayment (which is basically him gathering stuff you can find yourself for free into a book and adding a healthy dash of his trademark repetitiveness and "OH MY GOD!!!" and charging $25 for it). I read that book and one bit stuck with me. Those who pay their loans on time and have good credit are, to some credit card and loan companies, "deadbeats" because they cannot bilk the good credit holders out of thousands of dollars in fees and interest. People like you and me and most of the others in this thread are the sort of people these credit card and loan companies love because we have to cherry pick our loans or not pay them, period, giving them more opportunities to tack on the fees.

[emt_cookies]

I'm actually surprised they put you on a deferment automatically like that, rather than a forbearance. For anyone who doesn't know, both of these will let you stop making payments for a period of time. The difference is the interest. If you're in a deferment, you don't get charged interest while you're in it. With a forbearance, you have to either pay the interest each month, or have it rolled into the principal, and then you end up paying interest on the interest as well as the principal.

Ah, that's what it was. I was still upset about the forbearance. Either way, I wasn't in it so I was pretty upset.

There are different types of loans, but I wasn't eligible for federal aid that year because I was switching schools.

The biggest issues were with their phone support. Avoid their phone support and the person should be fine. My issues came from the lies that they told me in regards to the account.

[Kaylyn]

I'm finding this whole thread odd. I've had loans with SM for a while, dropped out of college in 2000 in my fourth year. I've actually never had a single problem with them. I've got a flat fee on my loans, just under $90 each month. Yes it's taking forever to pay off, but it's a rate I can handle, it's all done automatically, and I've never gotten any nasty calls from them. I can check on my account online and it's all working out well.

After reading everything here, I think I somehow got AMAZINGLY lucky not having any student loan issues.

[Aethian]

I'm finding this whole thread odd. I've had loans with SM for a while, dropped out of college in 2000 in my fourth year. I've actually never had a single problem with them. I've got a flat fee on my loans, just under $90 each month. Yes it's taking forever to pay off, but it's a rate I can handle, it's all done automatically, and I've never gotten any nasty calls from them. I can check on my account online and it's all working out well.

After reading everything here, I think I somehow got AMAZINGLY lucky not having any student loan issues.

You did...

[Sapphire Silk]

I'm finding this whole thread odd. I've had loans with SM for a while, dropped out of college in 2000 in my fourth year. I've actually never had a single problem with them. I've got a flat fee on my loans, just under $90 each month. Yes it's taking forever to pay off, but it's a rate I can handle, it's all done automatically, and I've never gotten any nasty calls from them. I can check on my account online and it's all working out well.

After reading everything here, I think I somehow got AMAZINGLY lucky not having any student loan issues.

You are probably paying an interest only loan, which means you pay the interest first, which keeps accumulating until you start paying principal. This leads people to pay double the original loan amount over the term of the loan.

NOT a good deal.