There’s a woman in my life who is a pure she-devil and just takes and takes without ever giving. I mean, I hand her over half of my paycheck every month and it’s never enough. She doesn’t let me do what I want, never lets me live out my dreams, and I’m only allowed to do things on her terms.
She’s the biggest bitch I’ve ever met. She only cares about herself and refuses to negotiate. She takes advantage of me every chance she gets.
And her name is Sallie Mae.
While in my glorious years of college, I had to take out student loans, like most kids nowadays. I didn’t come from a wealthy family that could pay for my education. So even though I did get several scholarships and a few grants, I still had to pay for the bulk sum of my tuition and housing on my own.
One of the lenders I went through was Sallie Mae.
That little whore has taken me, and millions of other folks, for a ride. And she’s laughing all the way to the bank. (Laughing to herself?)
In 2008, my sophomore year, I took out a loan for $10,600 to make up for what I didn’t get in aid. The interest rate was a criminally high 9.5 percent.
9.5 percent.
Having no other options, I signed the paperwork. And interest immediately started to build.
I graduated in 2011, and six months later, I got a pretty fantastic job at a union—a job I still have today—just in time for my loans to start rolling in.
Did I say rolling? I mean barging, surging, gushing, flooding. You get the idea.
I was lucky enough to afford the payments, but I still needed to consolidate all of my loans, both federal and private, to make ends meet and to make the process simpler.
Of course, not all lenders allow their loans to be consolidated or refinanced. Sallie Mae is one of them.
When I called her crying, asking for a lower interest rate due to my excellent credit, she balked and said, “Not my problem.”
So I sucked it up, and I’m still sucking it up, making my enormous payments.
I recently decided to look into refinancing through other institutions, which required me to look at my account summaries and total balance.
If you ever need to get the hiccups scared out of you, contact me and I will show you my student loan statements.
When I did, I was equally horrified yet also not at all surprised.
The $10,600 loan I took out in 2008 at an interest rate of 9.5 percent reached over $13,500 at its peak in 2011. Now, in 2016, after consistent payments for over four years, the loan is now at $10,200.
A mere 400 dollars less than the original loan amount in 2008.
This is America’s reality. And by reality, I mean nightmare—a nightmare for so many students and graduates, like myself, who make payment after payment and barely make a dent in their debt.
Each time I make my $205 monthly payment on that higher than high-interest Sallie Mae loan, $85 goes towards the principal.
And $120 goes towards interest.
This doesn’t even include the other student loans I have, which, if you add to my Sallie Mae balance, brings the total to $50,000.
I currently pay more in student loans every month than I pay in rent. I have no future prospects of ever buying a home. I contribute nothing to a retirement account because I can’t. My savings is non-existent, and I get by through making purchases on credit cards, which, inevitably, puts me in even more debt.
And I’m not alone.
The average student now graduates college with $30,000 attached to their backs. Education loan debt surpassed credit card debt in 2012 and passed the $1 trillion mark that same year. If this isn’t a financial crisis, then I don’t know what is.
This is a result of a combination of things. First, education funding is constantly being slashed, and even if it wasn’t, government grants would fail to keep up with the astronomical increases in college costs. Private schools, in particular, are finding ways to gut their students’ and their families’ pockets.
In 1970, tuition for a year at Harvard University was $4,070. Even at the time, that number was appalling. And now, tuition and housing at the prestigious ivy league school will set you back $60,659 a year.
And people who say education costs have to increase due to changes in the economy clearly don’t know the fact that tuition and room and board have risen far faster than the rate of inflation for decades.
Student debt is also running amuck due to the Wall Street culture created for, and by, the 1 percent. Private, predatory lenders like Sallie Mae can charge students their first-born children and get away with it. The fact that anyone is allowed to profit, or profit as much as they do, off of education is sickening.
And instead of changing the way the game is played, instead of restricting the interest rates that lenders offer, instead of addressing rising education costs, everyone would rather point their fingers at us—the students.
Every time we speak out about this issue, we are immediately bombarded with and scolded by people who didn’t go to school at all or who attended at a time when costs weren’t out of control.
We’re told we made mistakes. We’re told we should have chosen different schools or different majors. We’re told we’re stupid and uneducated and entitled.
We are being blamed for the actions of despicable student loan lenders just like women are often blamed for getting raped.
You were asking for it.
What were we asking for? We were asking for an education, and a good one. We were told we could have a better shot at life than our parents if we went to school no matter what and worked hard. We were told we could buy homes and save for retirement. We were told all we needed to do was simply get loans. We were told they exist to help us.
Well, guess what?
They’re not loans. They’re chains.
I’ll be stuck in mine until I’m 42, along with so many of my peers.
How much longer will we let this go on? If Wall Street, the folks who created this mess, got bailed out, when are we going to be set free?
We’re not asking for our debt to be erased. We’re not asking for a free ride. We’re asking for fair financial treatment.
People like me proudly earned our diplomas. But a diploma shouldn’t come with shackles.
