(C) Daily Kos
This story was originally published by Daily Kos and is unaltered.
. . . . . . . . . .



Student Loan Forgiveness is Happening [1]

['This Content Is Not Subject To Review Daily Kos Staff Prior To Publication.']

Date: 2023-08-25

I despaired every time the topic of student loan forgiveness would come up on Kos because there seem to be perhaps a majority of folks here who think student loan forgiveness is somehow morally or ethically objectionable. The age/financial sophistication of the borrower, the pressure they were under to go to college, the tough breaks they might have had, the impossibility of bankruptcy discharge — those seem to be irrelevant to some folks. “Well, they were adults and they knew what they were signing up for!” or “I paid off mine, why should theirs be forgiven?” are attitudes that I see here a lot.

I have student loans. I recognized in high school that college was the way to move up in the world, but in 1987 at the age of 17, I mostly saw it as a means to get out of my small rural town and try to get somewhere a young gay man could come out and have a reasonably safe life. College seemed like the way to go.

Getting there was always set to be a struggle. While I was an exceptional student, the rural school I graduated from did not adequately prepare me for college, and no one in my family had gone. My family was poor and had no expectation I would go to college, and my father made it clear I would be on my own financially if I wanted to go. I received no academic advisement and in spite of exceptional grades in difficult classes and a long list of student activities, I received only one small scholarship.

Architecture had always been a hobby of mine, and I applied to Tulane’s architecture program with my small portfolio of house designs and I was thrilled to be accepted. I desperately wanted to attend, but had no way to pay for it. I ended up going to a state college for reasons of affordability, but struggled academically and foundered financially. Three years in, I found myself still three years away from graduating. Overwhelmed, I dropped out.

The student loans I took out dogged me from that time forward. I wished to convert them to income driven payment plans, but the loan servicers always refused, instead granting deferments or forbearances, and always capitalized the unpaid interest so the balance was constantly increasing. My loans went into default more than once during times of economic hardship, racking up additional penalties and fees. At many points I despaired, sometimes to the point of considering suicide, over this debt and my inability to pay it.

Before I even I went back to finish my degree a decade later, what had originally been $32k in loans on my first college experience had ballooned to nearly $54k. At 33, I returned to college to finish my BA (two years, another $12k) and went on to complete an MFA (two years, $22k), which brought my total to $88k. It took me nearly a decade after graduating with my MFA to work my way up in my profession to a level where I had the income to pay my loans consistently, and with deferments and forbearances on the loans I took to finish school, the high water mark of what I owed was $111k.

According to my repayment schedule, I would be paying a $778 monthly loan payment until I was 81. Had the original loan forgiveness the Biden Harris administration proposed gone through, I could have paid off my balance by retirement, so I was very discouraged when it was rejected by SCOTUS.

But I looked carefully at the new program that the Biden Harris administration rolled out. I applied to convert my loans to the new Income driven repayment plan — what I read seemed too good to be true, but I was hopeful this might finally be the way to get out from under this debt. Today, I was informed that all of my student loan debt that was older than 24 years was forgiven, which accounted for 2/3 of my remaining debt. I’ve gone from owing $90k to owing just over $30k.

I was so overwhelmed with relief I sobbed for twenty minutes. This changes EVERYTHING. I can actually save adequately for retirement. There is even a hope that I could become a homeowner. I feel like I’ve been let out of a prison.

Maybe you are one of those who think I shouldn’t be given this break, that I should live with the consequences of the decisions I made at 18, 19, 20 years old, even if it meant me having to pare away a portion of my retirement income to pay for classes I attended fifty years ago. You are entitled to that point of view. As it stands, I will end up paying the majority of the money I originally borrowed, just not the penalties and interest. Is that fair? Perhaps not, but neither was being saddled with ever increasing debt that was not dischargeable by bankruptcy at 18 years old.

You should know that I am grateful that I got my college education. I recognize that I would not have gotten to a level of financial stability I currently enjoy if I had not completed my education (however belatedly). I am also very angry that I lived under the stress of carrying this debt like a millstone for three decades already. But mostly, I am thankful that there are people out there that have recognized that the system we have had for paying for college is deeply flawed and has been for a long time, and student loan debt can crush the lives of the people it is meant to pull out of poverty.

From my point of view, the Biden Harris student loan program is life altering. I hope that the skeptics on both sides will come to see this as perhaps the finest policy the democrats have implemented. I also hope that many others will get the relief so many of us have desperately needed.

[END]
---
[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/8/25/2189678/-Student-Loan-Forgiveness-is-Happening

Published and (C) by Daily Kos
Content appears here under this condition or license: Site content may be used for any purpose without permission unless otherwise specified.

via Magical.Fish Gopher News Feeds:
gopher://magical.fish/1/feeds/news/dailykos/