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Read This Before Signing for Student Loans

December 21, 2011 8:55 am by Rita Arens in Career
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Unless you've been strategically avoiding the news for the past six months, you know one of Occupy Wall Street protesters' complaints is the cost of student loans. I was extremely privileged not to have taken them out, but I did live through repaying them with my husband. If you've loved someone with loans, you know better than to ask what they were thinking when they signed on the dotted line for such a lot of money.

In some cases, as with Lindsey, the thinking was "this is my future; I have no choice." She writes of that moment:

But three weeks before my senior year, NYU and my dad informed me I needed to find the money to finish out my senior year. So, while working at a summer camp in Vermont, I contacted Sallie Mae from the telephone room of our old manor house summer camp offices which was really a converted coat closet. I quickly signed my life away for a $35,000 loan in between teaching eight year-olds how to canoe and keeping a watchful eye on a couple of my fifteen year-old campers who were trying to score some cigarettes.

Read on for what came next.

college textbooks

Credit Image: Billue_the_bear on Flickr

Read more from My Life with Sallie Mae: A Nightmare in the Making at Rewind Revise

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Lindsey Anthony
Lindsey Anthony 14 pts

Great comments and questions posed. I think what it is missing in the debate about student loan debt is that for many kids it is the only option out. And the decision to make such a serious financial commitment at a time when you are just finding freedom is a lethal combination. As the oldest child in a single parent home, I thought I was an adult. I thought this was responsible and I was confident that I would pay it off quickly without knowing about all the pitfalls, setbacks and basic financial stuff (no consolidation, interest rate, etc) But I was vulnerable, naive and scared that I HAD to find the money to finish college! I don't regret going to NYU, but I regret the rushed decisions, and I resent that there was no counsel as Melissa Gardner said. At 18, 19, 20, 21 you don't know what you are getting into. I wish I could say in hindsight I would have taken a year off and figured out another plan, but the truth is I was desperate to get out and into the world and I completely bought the whole private institution "promise" hook, line, and sink.

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Rita Arens
Rita Arens 67 pts

Lindsey Anthony My guidance counselor didn't really go through all the angles with me. I don't know how much counseling kids get these days, but it's definitely something to think about. It's such a big amount to take on when you are so, so young.

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sassymonkey
sassymonkey 379 pts moderator

Lindsey Anthony One of the things that prevented me from taking time off to earn more money between semesters is that as soon as I was out for six months I had to start paying it back. I wouldn't have been able to live, make loan payments AND save for another year's expenses all at the same time. Once you enter the cycle it's almost easier to stay in it.

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Lindsey Anthony
Lindsey Anthony 14 pts

sassymonkey I totally agree. To get out of the cycle would have been a very dangerous risk as well. I don't know if I would have gone back and I don't regret getting a degree.

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Conversation from Facebook

Celeste Douville
Celeste Douville

Went back to grad school about 10 years ago. Second career grad school, planned for it, saved everything we could for one full year before we went. Very proud to have gone thru 3 years of grad school w no debt, saw a lot of our friends get as much as they could in loans, living a lifestyle that we never should expect to live as a college student.

Skye Kilaen
Skye Kilaen

I didn't have a clue when I was borrowing, how much that was going to affect my life later. Part of that was my own cluelessness, for sure.

BlogHer
BlogHer

I know I didn't really know what I was in for when I signed up at 18, but I knew if I didn't sign up there would be no degree and limited prospects. I'd do it again but no one talked about paying the loans BACK at the end when I signed up, that's for sure. - Karen

Judy Schwartz Haley
Judy Schwartz Haley

infuriating. The loan sharking, and the attitude that some people are just too poor to get an education. Probably the same people that yell "get a job" at the unemployed.

Cheryl Muzynski Sorce
Cheryl Muzynski Sorce

No. Everyone thinks they are entitled to a college education, whether they can realistically pay for it or not.

Melissa Gardner
Melissa Gardner

As a financial aid administrator at an elite college, it makes me physically ill that anyone could let a student sign for a private loan without making sure that student knows that it can't be consolidated. It is one of the first things I tell students and families when they inquire about alternative loans. And I counsel them extensively that the debt isn't just for one year of school, its for 4 (often 5). How anyone in this industry could not is truly baffling to me.

SinitaWells.com- The Single Mom/Teen Mom Whisperer
SinitaWells.com- The Single Mom/Teen Mom Whisperer

That is a good question and I don't think so. Our kids look at the moment and not the long run. I know I didn't.