David’s $55K Debt
It was originally $14,000.
My story is about as opposite as can be from Chad’s student loan story. I will skip the background for now, but my initial plan was appointment to a military academy due to my family history (blue collar, union, no college grads, rural community) and lack of money. However, after getting appointments to West Point and Annapolis, I got academic scholarships to a private university in the Midwest. I was going to study Pre-Med and the service academies require the first 80% (chronologically appointed) of each class to enter engineering. And then, even if I got through their biology/chemistry program, I had to go through med school, internship and residency THEN serve 6 years in the service. I didn’t mind being in the military, but that was a LOOOONG commitment! Plus I could play football and baseball at the private university. I graduated from the university in the mid-1980s.
At any rate, the private university was expensive but my scholarships covered all but $14,000 — which I had to borrow. Upon graduating, I began paying on the loans (two with the same lender) while working my first professional job. I had to travel a lot from project to project in my field and, during this time, my loans got transitioned from one lender to another and I lost track. I did get back on track with payments, but then my father got cancer and I had to quit my job (well paid, project manager and corporate safety officer) and get something local with no travel to help my mother care for him. I continued to pay and had the balance down to about $9K.
At this point I got married, my father passed away, and with all the stuff going on my loans went into default for a few years. After a move to Boston, I got a letter from NYSHED that notified me that the interest had taken it back up to $12,000 and that they had gotten a blanket Federal judgment that allowed them to assess $24,000 in interest and collection costs to ALL of their loans — meaning I then owned $36,000 on a $14,000 loan that I had paid a lot on. I had a problem with this. Unfortunately, my anger got the better of me and, being stubborn, I tried to fight this. With no luck. And more interest. So, in the end, I have a $55,000 debt on an original $14K loan — which I am now paying off. So I went in the opposite direction that Chad went.
To my mind, if the politicians wanted to relieve us older loan payers of some interest and penalties, it would sure going a long way to improving our personal economies.
