I Will Die With Student Loan Debt

[noamnety]

173. Yes and no. My college payment was a mess.

I paid for my BA with a combo of scholarships and loans to cover the gap. Edit to add work study while in college, I forgot about that. Then I ran away and joined the army which qualified me for loan repayment. But that benefit wasn't used because I didn't tell my parents I was enlisting, knowing they'd flip out about that. In the miscommunication they paid the loans off with their savings without telling me, not knowing it was unnecessary. Tens of thousands of dollars down the drain because I wasn't straight with them. So I'm not sure how to answer your question, because I had loans and made arrangements to pay them off myself and financially I'm in the same place as I would have been if the army had paid them off. (I don't believe people should have to risk their lives and endanger others by being in the army to pay for college! I'm just saying that was how I had it covered.)


I understand the point of your question is to hint that I'm perhaps too privileged to understand what it is to have to sacrifice enough to pay back astronomical loans. And the answer to the implied question there is again, yes and no. Yes, because I have my health, and was able to qualify for the military service so I knew I had a means to pay them back, and despite being in a shitty rural school district where only one or two graduating students a year went to college, I had parents who read to me and gave me a strong enough intellectual start in life that I could earn scholarships. And No, because many many people who claim they can't possibly pay their loans off also can't even conceive of dropping the privileges they take for granted that I've given up to make ends meet to avoid going into debt. Enlisting, of course - and I've been without health insurance, and been on public assistance (WIC). But also I lived for most of a year without running water or electricity or a phone, cooking on just a single burner coleman stove using a "disposable" ez foil pan to boil everything in. I'm adept at foraging for food - I would say 75% of my lunches have been foraged since October, and I'm good at funding other groceries with bottle deposits from cans I pick up while biking to work, etc. In the past I've posted some about my food/grocery bills here - I'm at about $1.25 per person per day for food, shampoo, toilet paper, over the counter meds, all the grocery stuff combined. I have good friends who say they will die with still unpaid college loans, but they go out to eat several times a month, and often spend as much in one or two meals as I spend for an entire month for food.

They also drive everywhere, even when they live less than half the distance to work as me. I only ditch the bike if there's a threat of lightening or wiping out on black ice, or if a meeting before or after normal work hours would put me biking for an hour or more in full darkness. I did one of my 24 mile round trip commutes by bike last month when it was 12 degrees out.

That sort of living is what allowed me to pay it forward on the loans my parents paid off - I was able to cover my daughter's tuition and in turn I expect her to pay for her son's. But more importantly I passed my frugal ways onto her. She's almost 30, she and her husband don't own a car, they both commute by bike and her husband is the master of dumpster diving for food.