Can't pay?

[BlueRaiderFan]

Your student loans? The government will take your house.



On Adriene McNally's 49th birthday in January, she heard a knock on the door of her modest row-home in Northeast Philadelphia.

She was being served.

"They actually paid someone to come out and serve me papers on a Saturday afternoon," she says.

The papers were from a government lawsuit that represents something more than just an unwelcome birthday gift — it's an example of a program the federal government has brought to 19 cities around the country including Brooklyn, Detroit, Miami and Philadelphia: suing to recover unpaid student loans, like the ones McNally owes.

Every day, 3,000 people default on their federal student loans — and those lack of payments amount to an unpaid bill of $137 billion for the federal government. For decades, the government has tried to get borrowers to pay up by hiring debt collection agencies to call and send letters. But now the government is trying this new lawsuit strategy.

McNally filed for bankruptcy in 2006 and cleared out all her creditors — except for student loans, which are nearly impossible to get rid of in bankruptcy. As she and many others have found out, it's not easy escaping federal student loan debt.

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[JohnDavidBlue]

 

[sWiley]

Honestly, you should have to pay it back. I'm not so sure about taking someone's house, but at some point you've gotta pay when you borrowed. This is simple adult responsibility. Bankruptcy is absolute bullshit, and it's a good thing that student loans can't be dismissed. No debt should ever be dismissed IMO. Freezing interest rates and establishing a payment plan (to pay 100% back) is good and helpful, but that should be the absolute limits of wiping debt away. It's completely unfair to those who faithfully pay their bills. Why not just garnish the wages of those who money instead of trying to take their house?

The only exception I would make here is medical debt. There does need to be help and some changes made there. Those who incur supposed "$500,000" hospital bills should only be required to repay the average negotiated insurance rate, which is probably closer to $50,000 on that supposed $500,000 bill.

 

[SpaceRaider]

I know I paid my students loans back. $2400 sounds like pocket change these days, but in the early 70s it was a fairly large sum and I used it to when my own savings from several years of paper delivery route work in high school. I paid it off in about five years and lived frugally while paying it off.

It's only 'fair' - today's snowflakes should pay everything back, with interest. Welcome to the real world, snowflakes.

 

[MidTnBlues]

In 1970 $2400 is about $15,125.20 today considering an average inflation rate of 3.99%.

I paid my own way for the first two years in community college taking general transfer courses. When I moved out of my parent's house and into Murfreesboro, I continued to work full time, but all that money was dedicated to feeding and housing myself. I spent $42000 total on an education. Which would have been around $7700 in 1970.

While I only came out with $19k in college debt, I agree with anyone who says that people should be responsible when borrowing money and be responsible for paying it back. But the 70s are long gone and we have today's problems which could use an open mind and some critical thinking to come together so that the future generations can get the education they need and continue the tradition of being innovative. Or we can just call people snowflakes. Whatever works.

 

[JohnDavidBlue]

I don't think critical thinking is needed at all.

Like healthcare, colleges have become inflated bureaucracies. Separate issue than paying back a debt that you simply want to disappear.

Students know what they are getting into before they start college on day one. They can see tuition numbers for in state and out of state.

Pay the money you owe....snowflakes.

 

[SpaceRaider]

From a consumer standpoint, colleges should be required to track and document and publish how many graduates in each major are able to work in the fields they received their education in and how much they are paid on average the first year out and then five years out. Today there are so many bullsh*t majors (pretty much anything that ends in 'studies') in college that are absolutely worthless in producing intelligent and effective employees in the real world. Student loans should not be even made to prospective students that choose majors that do not prepare them to be able to pay back the loans in the first place.

 

[TheBigBluePeach]

I guess I am in the minority. I got one of those "studies" degrees, I am a millennial and I guess you could call me a snowflake(in today's rhetoric). I have a decent paying job, pay my taxes(that I am glad some can go to the underprivileged) and am a decent human being.

I wish you old farts would just worry about yourselves. Us millennials are paying social security for your over inflated ego's to retire on. I am not sure that I have ever seen a more entitled group of brats than you baby boomers who call the younger generations worthless.

 

[JohnDavidBlue]

I'm not a baby boomer. Not even close. That means that we are both generalizing.

I don't even look at Social Security as an investment instrument. If I had my say, I would sign a contract with the US government and request that I don't have to pay anymore if I could forgo any benefit withdrawal. I would get a heck of a lot of return in IRAs or Mutual Funds with that money. Unfortunately, it IS required for people older than me to stay afloat. I hate that....the money has been spent before it was invested.

I think the finger snappings, safe zones, and lack of personal responsibility of my generation and younger is what constitutes the word snowflakes. But the point of this thread is whether or not student loans should just be forgotten. Goes back to personal responsibility.

 

[BlueRaiderFan]

All debt goes back to personal responsibility, however, as our founding fathers knew all to well (many of them were heavily in debt), we are all humans and we all make mistakes. That's why bankruptcy is a constitutional right. Those that spew forth personal responsibility, where debt is concerned, are simply those that have made mistakes in other areas of their lives and like to look down their noses at those that have made mistakes in the financial area of their lives. It's a punk move.