The $555,000 Student-Loan Burden

snip - When Michelle Bisutti, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.

::gets mail::
::sees student loan repayment notice::
::goes online to defer loan, again::

Interest is a powerful tool.

Now that the government is going to make all student loans, no one will be taken advantage of like this again.

<----- enjoys a 2.375 fixed rate

Order of evil things:

Satan himself > The Exorcist > Payday loans > Private student loans*.



*edit: Yes, I realize there is a time and place for these, and in the end the person responsible signs the papers. But seriously, I've seen some garnering 15-20% interest, adjusting every quarter. Also, you can't discharge them in bankruptcy!

Apparently you didn't have private loans?

Evil bankers

Wow. I sure am glad I paid my student loans in a timely manner.

I don't have a problem with the bankers, where there is a need a product will be created, however not being able to discharge private student loans in bankruptcy is kind of

not being able to discharge taxes is kind of ...

I have Nelnet.

They were consolidated from HSBC loans.

NO WAY! When did you consolidate?

Me too!!!
Bottom line, is this another one of those stories where someone didn't pay what they were obligated to pay?

I admit, when the bear had her liver transplant, I took a forbearance on my student loans for a year, as I took a 3 month unpaid FMLA LOA. Then we consolidated the loans (one for each year) and locked in our super low Salliw Mae rate. I have the payments directly taken out of my account monthly. My student loan papers stated that if I defaulted on them that I would not bw able to qualify for any other federal loan program (which I understood meant FHA, Freddie, and Fannie, etc). Why is it OK to sign on the dotted line, promise to pay, and then skip out of it?

[/soap box]

<--On some sort of a wicked roll today.

QCL- if this is the same story I read about over the weekend she just deferred payments like crazy and interest did the rest.

Musta been fall 2004 right before I started paying them back.

From the story:

It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.

Looks to me like she stopped paying and never felt complelled restart paying after 2003. She deferred payments until her residency was completed. After that time she was supposed to start paying again. So what happened?

Then the other guy, ...Mr. Tellez says that when he signed up, the loan wasn't explained to him well, though he concedes he missed the fine print.

Well, I wonder what this story will do for the doctor's reputation.

Even as a freshman in college I was a fine print reader. I guess I'm in the minority. But I think if more people would pay attention to what they are signing, then most of the issues with credit would not be what they are today.

I think that's true QCL. I didn't read any of my student loan documents until AFTER I got into banking. Then I read them like Dickens classics.

I do have to say that I paid (well, am still paying) for college on my own, but while I was in school my parents and I spilt making monthly interest payments on the amount of outstanding money. Then when I graduated, I didn't have all the capitalized interest to begin paying first.

Big bad banks. Lets bail her out.

One of my awesome roomates:

Yeah, I heard you should just defer the loans as long as you can. You don't have to make any payments for a couple of years! That's what I'm doing.

I had a roommate make pizza once and burnt his tongue trying to eat it.

We told him to let it cool for a little while and he wouldn't burn his tongue.

He never learned and everytime he made pizza he always burnt his tongue.

I think today he may be running a Fortune 500 company.

Stop copying me!

so this doctor's income must be $1 million annually now, so why can't she pay what she owes?

That is not a lot of debt for an MD is it?