These Americans fled the country to escape their giant student debt [View all]

[Demovictory9]

These Americans fled the country to escape their giant student debt
He left for Ukraine, she's in Japan and another lives in a jungle in India.
These borrowers point to their student debt as the reason they couldn't make it in America.

https://www.cnbc.com/2018/10/26/he-moved-to-a-jungle-in-india-to-escape-his-student-debt--and-hes-not-alone-.html

Chad Haag considered living in a cave to escape his student debt. He had a friend doing it. But after some plotting, he settled on what he considered a less risky plan. This year, he relocated to a jungle in India. "I've put America behind me," Haag, 29, said.

He now lives in a concrete house in the village of Uchakkada for $50 a month. His backyard is filled with coconut trees and chickens. "I saw four elephants just yesterday," he said, adding that he hopes to never set foot in a Walmart again.

His debt is currently on its way to default. But more than 9,000 miles away from Colorado, Haag said, his student loans don't feel real anymore.

"It's kind of like, if a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really exist?" he said.

The philosophy major concedes that his student loan balance of around $20,000 isn't as large as the burden shouldered by many other borrowers, but he said his difficultly finding a college-level job in the U.S. has made that debt oppressive nonetheless. "If you're not making a living wage," Haag said, "$20,000 in debt is devastating."

He struggled to come up with the $300 a month he owed. The first work he found after he graduated from the University of Northern Colorado in 2011 — when the recession's effects were still palpable — was on-again, off-again hours at a factory, unloading trucks and constructing toy rockets on an assembly line. He then went back to school to pursue a master's degree in comparative literature at the University of Colorado Boulder. After that, he tried to make it as an adjunct professor, but still he could barely scrape a living together with the one class a semester he was assigned.

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Moving to another country to escape student debt is risky, experts say. If the person wants or needs to return to the United States, they'll find their loan balance has only grown while they were gone, thanks to compound interest, collection charges and late fees.

Although the Education Department typically can't garnish someone's wages if they're working for a company outside of the United States, it can take up to 15 percent of their Social Security benefits when they start collecting.

"The loans do not disappear when you become an expat," said Mark Kantrowitz, a student loan expert.