Student loan debt question

Income-based repayment.

 

In my state, funding for higher education by the state has been cut in half over the past three years. This has led to tuition increases of at least double-digit percentages each of the past three years. During this same period the university I work for has also had record enrollments, so obviously the costs aren't keeping people away.

 

When present-you isn't bearing the costs, it frequently ceases to inform your decision making.

 

I don't know why more students are not getting on the textbook rental bandwagon. It's freaking awesome and cheap. Hell, even the shipping is free. And the no gimmicks 30-day 100% refund is truly that. Anyone with college kids or those going to school really should look into it.

 

Or just get the reserve copy in the library, make photocopies of all the pages at your student job, and sell copies for half of the used price.

 

Also an option. But I like having a book in my hand. For the entire length of the class.

 

I've used all my forebearances. Income-based payment would work except Dr. J makes too much but he's paying off his loans, credit card debt and probably a used car in the near future (his died and we tried the one car thing).

We even tried to file our taxes seperately. The sad thing is, I could do the income-based payments.

 

Combined, do you make more than $100,000? Why can't you file seperate taxes? You can put both loans in income-based repayment and Dr. J can pay more if he wants to.

Have you checked the calculator? http://studentaid.ed.gov/PORTALSWebApp/students/english/IBRCalc.jsp

If for some reason you can't get IBR, pay the student loan before your credit card bill. The ramifications for going into default on your student loan is worse than not paying your credit card bill.

 

The state I live in had a statewide library system that allowed you to get books from any university or public library and keep them for eight weeks. I often had older editions, but I spent about $100 on books during college. I was always afraid to tell anyone else, because usually there were only five or six copies of each book in the state. In a lecture course of 200 kids especially,I didn't want anyone else getting to them first.

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I was pleased to get out of three years of college only $12,000 in debt. And that was finishing in three years. I paid it off in two years before the inevitable interest rate hikes come. Borrowing college money has been insanely cheap over the past decade. Probably too cheap.

 

How many forebearances did you use? I'm at about the 11 year mark. Still forebearing!

 

Question, again: Why doesn't some enterprising person open up a series of colleges - say, one in each state, give each one a different name (so that they don't get the kind of scrutiny of a University of Phoenix-type school) and just make them cheap. Get young (cheap) professors, offer a bare-bones campus and price it so that you can get a four-year degree for $10k or so?

Seems like somebody could make a killing doing that, what with student loan debt being the boogeyman in the news now. Parents would steer their HS seniors to a school like this, I would think.

 

While you can't quite do it for $10k, you can chop deep into your tuition costs by doing a couple years at a community college and then going to a state school. Students and parents are already not "steering" toward that option. Kids pick more expensive, private colleges for, in most cases, no tangible benefit once they enter the job market. I'm not sure what you can do to stop that, because they won't learn until they're older and paying off their pile of loans.