A RUNAWAY TRAIN, STUDENT LOANS, A DEATH KNELL?

A RUNAWAY TRAIN, STUDENT LOANS, A DEATH KNELL?

(Al Jazeera, David Meyer, Alex Tabarrok)              

(National Association of Consumer Bankruptcy Attorneys)

(Frazer Chronicle)

 

I touched on this student loan thing in a previous blog, but barely touched the surface, this issue of run-away educational loans so that young people can get an education is just another in a long list of what our way of government, our clamoring for the almighty dollar bill, and our life-style is doing to not only older people, but how it is wrecking our young people.

 

Talk about your disillusionment, hell I’m kicking the tires on 70 years of age, and I’m so damned disillusioned that I’ve been jumping to conclusions…..and I think that I’ve lived a pretty full life. But for a kid growing up in a middle class family, in a middle class society, and going to school in pretty much a middle class atmosphere…..going away to college can be what might be termed a culture shock.

 

I wonder if they (high schools) still have career days, you know, where military people have a spot, and several colleges can sit, pass out brochures, and give pennants, or buttons and a crap load of information on why kids should attend their school. I really hope that they don’t do that anymore, it touched so few students…..and come to find out much of the information was bogus as hell.

 

Maybe today college’s should simply bill prospective students and their parents, just to see if they are close to being able to apply and gain approval for student loans, and all the other cash that they’ll need for little Johnny’s education…..he’ll make Mom and Pop so proud.

 

It’s almost the initial cud of misinformation that both student and parent will have to swallow as their journey begins in Johnny’s pursuit of a degree that can be hung on an office wall by Johnny after his graduation.

 

It’ll be clear sailing for Johnny days after his graduation, once he’s secured that pie in the sky employment that his school councilor kept telling Johnny was just over the next financial hump. No funds, gee fella, call Ma and Pa, they’ll bail you out…..after all, they’ve got quite a vested interest in Johnny’s education by his junior or senior year…..and post graduate work…..PLEASE NO!

 

AFTER GRADUATION

First year freshmen at college can face a myriad of first time decisions to contemplate, and often times do not have the proper time to think about their decisions as college administrators push for answers. There is a bigger picture out there that most kids, yeah that’s right…..kids, these college students for the most part of just kids and need all kinds of advice, even when they think that they don’t

 

A key element of decision making is experience, and few kids possess the mentality to make rational decisions that will make a possibly poor situation better. Usually the choice involves money, and we’ve all made poor decisions with regards to money. But the pitch to young people, and make no mistake, credit cards and such are a pitch,  what the money will get you, where it might take you, and finally at the end of the sales presentation….. the numbing reality that you’ve gotta repay it. However the repaying factor is flossed over not dwelled upon…..and you soon forget the numbing of the pay-back reality.

 

Many graduates can command as much as a thousand dollars a week…..times 52 weeks…..$52,000 a year, not a bad figure for a 1^st year employee. Of course when you have accumulated school loans and credit debt in the amount of $2,000 per month, that $52,000 paycheck tends to cover only minimal living standards.

 

For some people, college graduates, smart young people, eager to tackle the world, and to fix what their parents and grandparents broke, reality is a sobering, kind of like a shock and awe experience. The same could be said for many parents of their graduating kids, they resign themselves to years of payments for their children’s educations, SAY IT AIN’T SO!

 

Yes actually it is so, and sadly I’m not kidding, I’ve had firsthand experience with student loans, granted it was some thirty years ago, but the premise was the same then as it is now…..get both the student and the parents on board with the idea that the most important part of college entrance is to pave the students college years with unfettered financial problems, and have all the concentration zeroed in on gaining that diploma.

 

What it is, is a many headed monster that, after college graduation attempts to gobble up every penny that it can to satisfy an unsatisfiable hunger. The myth is propagated not only by the loan companies, and the credit card people, oh no, the colleges get right into the act, and can be a bigger distraction to a student’s financial life than a loan company, or the credit card industry. They all end up in a feeding frenzy that is a student’s wallet or purse, and the parents as well…..no wallet or purse is safe.

 

A HUGE MISCONCEPTION

Student loans are never ever forgiven, the Federal Government will follow a person to his death, and attach whatever they can to settle a loan, and if the fed isn’t satisfied, they just might dig up the body. College loan rates need to come down, college tuition needs to be addressed, and the exploitation by banks and lending institutions needs to be better monitored by the fed.

 

It really pisses me off when I read about some sort of governmental action moving with the same viscosity as molasses in January moves. JPMorgan Chase announced that it was dropping out of the private student-loan market, leaving a smaller number of banks, Wells Fargo, Discover Financial Services and SLM Corporation still providing student loans to students beyond the four year limit of $31,000 for federal loans.

 

What makes me mad is the fact that JPMorgan Chase has for years gouged young college students as well as their parents with regards to loan practices and collection procedures that are at best thuggish. But it is the American way, this deficit spending, this attitude of “paying back later, for a hamburger today.”

 

The Federal Reserve Board of New York, reported in March 2012 that borrowers ages 30 and under carry $322 billion of the nations student loan debt; those 30 to 39 carry $321 billion, and those 40 and older, $323 billion, with 12.5 to 16.4 percent of the older group 90 plus days delinquent on their payments.

 

Only 37% of federal student-loan borrowers between 2004 and 2009 were able to pay off their loans without postponing payments or becoming delinquent. Borrowers who default on federal loans face the possibility of garnished wages, collection fees, and seizure of state and federal tax returns, Social Security and disability income as well as other consequences, big brother my friends is alive and well and living right here in the good old United States of America.

 

And ya wanna hear the kicker, according to Matt Taibbi, the United States Government…..over the next 10 years stands to collect an estimated $184 billion in new federal student-loan system. How you ask, hyper inflated tuition costs, fueled by a government-sponsored predatory-lending program that makes even the most ruthless private credit-card company seem like a “Save the Panda) charity.

 

HAVE A NICE DAY!