There is student loan reform, but not complete forgiveness. When are you going to talk about that? I'd like to point out that a number of young people do manage to pay off our loans and don't end up in extreme trouble, as this message board would say. That doesn't mean there doesn't need to be reform, but after I've worked so hard for years to pay off my student loans, I don't see why there should be a complete bailout of all student loans.
I ask because working hard for years to pay them off puts you in a different time bracket than many of us.....which changes cost of everything and interest rates on loans.
I would be for any sort of reform that would actually help me. Forgiveness would be the best possible option. Hell, I would be ok with passing the debt swap bill so all of my loans were taken over and turned to federal loans. Take 10% of my salary and after 10-15 years of payments forgive the rest. That would be grand. What I am NOT for is watching my balance grow...and grow...and grow.....until it has tripled. I will pay back a very nice, large 5 bedroom home and i took out a tiny apartment. Paying $600/month in INTEREST ONLY payments is insane.
So yes, I am for other options. If you worked so hard and paid them off may I ask what your loan amount, interest and when you graduated so I can get a better idea of how you managed so well?
i'm not a big fan of self-righteous sour-pusses of the type exhibited above, i must say. while their efforts and triumphs are surely nothing short of commendable, the self-inflicted martyrdom just warrants no transfer in my humble opinion.
my friends often call my partner and i the quintessential suckers. we play by the rules, obediently, non-demonstratively, suffering inside for our - let me dare say - sub-perfect past choices. they joke about our meticulous budget planning, our daily sacrifices of indulgences, our modest self-evaluations at workplaces and interviews. but unlike most likeminded goody-two-shoes, i actually dig the humor.
our choices, for one, are those of fear, not of virtue. i don't stand around preaching the overall goodness of the system enveiled in some vomit-inducing flimsy fate-infested logic that what is is what was meant to be, and that everyone finds their way if they just put themselves up to the challenge.
newsflash, people: it is THE SYSTEM that SUCKS. if we (my partner and i) ever make it out of our debt-ridden sh*thole, it'll sure as hell be ALL OUR OWN DOING against the immense challenges that have faced us, and that might continue to face a lot of you at this hypothetical triumphant moment of ours. if we ever do "strike it stable middle-class" after spitting out blood from all the facial orifices that'll expel it to get there, i bet you my post-struggle afterlife you won't see me sitting in on some BS interview (or blog like this) preaching to the down-trodden how if i could do it, anyone could. and how unfair it is that suddenly they get a break when i had to traverse the 9 circles of hell. and how lazy they must be not to subject themselves to the deprivation-saturated eternity that is currently my life.
but that's just how i roll, i guess. jealousy never computed well inside my head...
If you search through the 'student loan discussion' forum, you will see that the issues you raise have indeed been commented on, time and again.
Just because some stupid bill has passed doesn't mean that there "has been reform." My life, for instance, is held hostage by unpayable, rising defaulted student loan debt; this bill has done nothing for that, so let's not buy into the claim that we wanted "reform" in the abstract, and because some bill has passed the PR system can tell us that thus we have what we wanted, when we obviously do not.
I suggest you aim your bitterness at having been forced to work harder than you wanted to to pay off student loans not at social justice movements, but at the highly unequal system that put you into those circumstances.
I have read through the posts. Nor am I bitter, but I'm not seeing many comments on this start. Though I don't believe in across the board forgiveness, which would raise the cost of borrowing or make it totally unavailable, with all of us picking up the bill, I have commented in the past about what I think needs to happen regarding income modification, getting private loan sharks out of the student loan business, limiting the amount of a time that a student needs to pay back the loans, eliminating interest during periods of unemployment and so forth. Not everyone, as this board would seem to indicate, who takes out student loans ends up in trouble, but that doesn't mean there doesn't need to be major reform. This is particularly true now. The current tag onto the Health Care Bill is a start.