Student loan debt question

I finished up 3 years of college in 2 years while working full time at the paper when I lived in Alabama a few years ago. I used loans to pay for school, and every semester, I'd get a refund back depending on how many credits I was taking that semester. Usually a few hundred bucks, never more than a thousand. Most times, I sent it right back to them to apply to the loan. One semester, I said eff it and kept it, using it for the scam that is known as the textbook purchase and other, more important, things like pitchers of beer.

It was always tempting to keep it. All told, I was about 13K in the hole after finishing up. And that was after paying for the first semester (or two, I can't recall) out of pocket. And one semester was paid for while I "worked" as the "SE" of the "school paper." Still not bad.

 

Not bad at all. I know people who will chunk up $13K in one year of school with no job, and you can find them at the bar eight days a week. That's what gets me.

 

I'll bite. That's what I did. About 70% of my student load debt is from doing just that. I was young and stupid, and my parents in no way prepared me for the seriousness of what I was doing.

Now I'm totally screwed. After all of my other bills are paid, there is no money left to pay my loans, and all of my deferments are up. I'm scrambling to find a new job to make enough for the sole reason to pay off my loans.

I'm really at a loss of what to do.

 

Outside of those in math and science fields, no college student should be paying full price for books. Despite often having to buy 15-20 books a semester (some history classes had 5-7 by themselves), I don't think I ever paid more than $200 for books in a semester. Usually I was around $125-$150. With Amazon, Half, etc., there's no reason to be paying full price.

 

What sucks is when the professor assigns a custom textbook that you cannot get anywhere but the campus bookstore. And the textbook changes every semester, so there are no used versions available.

 

The new trend with books is to simply eliminate the used books market by creating new editions every year with something slightly different each year.

 

From my personal experience, that was doable in some cases. Certainly not all.

 

There are definitely exceptions, but in most cases, it's much easier for liberal arts students than science/math students.

 

An independent university bookstore in my alma mater's town last year sold its business for $1 mil and its property for $1 mil. Not toooooo bad.

 

I worked in a college-town bookstore one summer. The markup on used textbooks is insane. And you can pretend you're giving students a great deal.

 

Forebearance. You still accrue interest, but you can get up to a year without payments. Then you can renew after that.