One on Student Loans

I've decided to veer a bit from the path I've been on in the last few posts, regarding my personal money story. I'd like to change the subject for just a minute to talk about student loans. I am sure that student loans serve their purpose in many instances, but for my family, student loans have been a nightmare. My brother and I were raised by soft 90's parents, who told us that we were beautiful and special and intelligent and deserving of everything in the world.... and we grew up believing this. I'm not faulting my parents. They had this mentality that because they had not gone to college, that by brother and I would, at any cost. However, if they had forced us to take a more pragmatic approach to our educations, we could have avoided a lot of woes later in life. Although my parents could not have known that "following our dreams" would land us in financial trouble, perhaps I can make someone else understand the dangers of student loans.

By the time my older brother began college, my parents had fostered our pipe-dreams to the point that he signed his life away to a fancy art school to the tune of about 25K per year for almost five years. You are reading this correctly, my brother graduated from art school with roughly six-digits of student debt. I muddled my way through college, not knowing what I wanted to do, uncertain what path to follow. Because my aunt desired that I attend her expensive alma mater, I found myself barely a sophomore and already nearly 15k in debt myself. This debt was even after federal pell assistance AND a scholarship. Then, came disaster. My mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer. My brother was defaulting on all of his student loans and the bills began pouring in..... to my parents house, because my brother wasn't paying. For whatever reason, my father did not sit down my brother to explain to him what a burden the student loans were. Instead, my father began to pay my brother's student loans for him. The monthly payment to Sallie Mae was my parents third largest monthly expense, outside of rent and my mother's cancer treatments.

They paid more in student loan bills than they spent each month on food, because they couldn't tell my brother he was burdening them. I remember one time, I had lunch with him, to try and explain to him that his bills were burdening mom and dad. Perhaps I didn't articulate myself effectively, because my brother replied that he felt my father wanted to pay for his college and had been unable to do so at the time when the loans were drawn up, and now this was dad's way of getting to pay for his college education. I shrugged and asked then, why weren't they also paying my student loans? Why was I writing a check to Sallie Mae myself every month, if mom and dad wanted so badly to pay for our educations? It turns out he had several separate loans. One paid by my father and mother, one paid by his biological mother and one or two that he "paid" (defaulted) I roughly added the sums in my head and my guess is that between the three families, we were all paying a combined total of about 800-1,000 per month for an art degree. I used my brother as a shining example of how NOT to college.

I moved home to stay with my mom and quit attending the expensive university (it was actually a relief because I resented the school by this point) and vowed never to take another student loan. I also started making payments on the interest of my student loans, so the number wouldn't continue to get larger. I enrolled at community college part time during my mother's illness and paid for it myself. Every month, in addition to paying Sallie Mae, I wrote a check to Snead State Community College for 113.00 to cover my books and tuition. I was really proud of myself. I worked hard and raised my GPA while there. Sadly, my mother didn't live to see me graduate from junior college or proudly accept my full ride scholarship to Athens State University. So, here I am.... 27 years old, finally a senior in college. My path has been arduous but I feel it will be amply rewarding. I've been studying acquisition and contract management and I'm excited to graduate this upcoming fall. My scholarship and pell grants have paid for every penny of my tuition at Athens. I've been paying down my student loans while attending school and have almost paid off all the interest I accrued of the 8+ years I spent in deferment.

So what have I learned about student loans? A few things.... first, CONSIDER the risks and TAKE LOANS WISELY. I have a friend whose nephew is about to go to full sail university to study music production to the tune of 40k a year... I see my brother's future for him and it scares me. I feel like, if you're not going to be a doctor, nurse, lawyer, dentist, medical professional, or going for some other type of professional degree with a promising job market.... it's probably a bad idea to take on a lot of student debt. What are you going to do with that liberal art degree when you graduate with 100,000+ in student debt? Secondly, I feel like deferment is kind of a cop-out. Pay something, ANYTHING, while you're in school or the scary interest monster will haunt you in your sleep when you finally graduate. Finally, I feel like perhaps college is something we need to approach more pragmatically. If I hadn't been urged to go to a school that I knew I couldn't afford, because it was "prestigious" then I wouldn't be in this situation I'm in, now. I am infinitely more proud of the degree that I will earn with my diligent and earnest efforts than I would have been of the liberal arts degree financed by Sallie Mae. However, this is simply my personal story and opinion. Your experience with student loans may differ. In my opinion, the less student debt you can get away with, the better off you'll be when you do graduate.