This Picture Will Make You Think Forgiving Student Debt Isn't So Crazy After All

[abelenkpe]

33. Maybe she can't afford to do that

And sometimes when student loans are consolidated the terms don't allow one to increase payments. It all depends on the terms....

What happens is you get out of school and they want payments right away. If it takes some time to find a job one has to defer their loan and it increases by leaps and bounds due to interest and non payment. So people consolidate usually into a twenty year loan with insane terms to try to get a handle on things and go for the lowest monthly payment. When their circumstances improve banks often refuse to renegotiate the terms. My loan (from the early 90s) was at 8 percent and citibank refused to let another bank or even the government take over my loan at a lower rate. So while people with mortgages were refinancing into lower rates all through the late 90s and early 2000s many students did not have this option. The banks know they have the upper hand because these loans cannot be discharged and have every intention of squeezing all they can from every student loan.

I would really love to see someone compare terms of a car loan to a student loan. I had 27,000 in student loans which was less than many of my friend's car loans from the same time period. They had paid off or moved on several times before my student loan was taken care of. Gotta love a society that favors buying an expensive car over getting an education.

You know what kills me though? In order to qualify for financial aid in college one has to have gotten great grades in school or excelled in a certain area. Their reward for doing well? Twenty years of debt. It's crazy. We should have more scholarships available for the gifted, lower education costs and not have private banks providing student loans. The government should do this directly if at all.