Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire interest on student loans

My niece has a student loan through Wells Fargo. She is paying about 12% interest. She is hell bent to pay it off and is paying $800 per month but can hardly keep up. Does anyone have experience on paying off the loan? She refuses to skip out and stick it to the taxpayers but needs help. Is there anyone out there that knows of a bank or credit union that is cheaper. Wells Fargo refuse to give her a break on the 12% interest. Any thoughts?

ihookem,



I can't help with the loan info, but I sure can with the skipping out. My daughter used to work for a company which searched for student loan defaulters. Once they were found the company would send the sheriff to the residence very early, like 5AM. The sheriff would have a crew there. They would literally take the belonging out of the house and sell them. They they would auction off the house. The company collected 5% for finding the defaulter.

She doesn't work there anymore. It is truly disgusting what our government will do.

Go to another bank and see if you can get a new loan of any type for the balance at a lower rate. Take out the new loan and pay off the old with the proceeds. No reason for the new loan to be a student loan, just any loan for the same amount. Best bet would probably be if the parents or someone were willing to take out a home equity loan for and let her pay it off. Of course, that does involve some risk for whoever legally takes out the loan.

Also...if it is actually a student loan...my understanding of student loans is that they can not be discharged (correct term?) in bankruptcy; I believe the only way they can be forgiven is if you can prove the school was somehow deceitful when they marketed themselves. Otherwise no one would make student loans because everyone would finance their education with loans and then declare bankruptcy the day they graduate.

Is it a federal Stanford loan or straight bank loan?
Either way a refinance is in order.
Would take some more info on where the loan is through to determine where to direct.
Bankruptcy no longer discharges student loans but if it is a straight bank loan it may not necessarily be student debt and might be dischargeable.. Most newer student loans are based on graduated income.

She can refi, and should. She'll get that rate under 5%, and likely under 4%.

As for skipping out; she can't. Student loan debt is the one debt that never goes away until paid off. It survives bankruptcy and in some cases even passes to a spouse upon death (no, I'm not kidding).

Refinance sap.

Also, have her look at consolidation of those loans. Odds are that she has multiple loans; one for each year, and perhaps more than that. She's paying a service fee on each, and other fees as well, in addition to the 12%. If she consolidates, she will have one loan with one set of fees and one rate.

Honestly, she should be able to get a credit card with a better rate than that these days.

She can't skip out, student loans cannot made to go away even in bankruptcy.

Hope she can pay it off, but I do not feel sorry for her. She is merely being asked to be responsible for her own actions. She is being asked to live up to a contract that she signed.

I got a 4 year degree and didn't owe a dime. I had jobs and worked my way through school.
Apparently that idea never occurs to young people today.
I am not sure if they can spell the word "work."

You're making a Hell of a lot of assumptions and insinuations, none of them good, about the OP's niece.

I often joke with my students about 'when I was a college student...' One of the things I tell them is that if you were willing to work hard, dirty jobs (e.g., in a steel mill) it was generally possible to work your way through college without loans 30-40 years ago. With college costs generally $25,000 per year now, and often over $50,000 per year, that's not realistic. I see a lot of students from the middle of the income spectrum working two or three jobs plus taking out loans just to make ends meet. Ironically, the easy availability of student loans has made things worse - colleges can charge higher tuition and students can borrow to pay it. As an accountant / professor with 30 years in higher education and teaching experience at 7 different schools I really believe our higher education (sic) business model is broke. Problem is, higher education is often regarded as a sacred cow that can't be touched. And tenured faculty (I am one) is perhaps the biggest most powerful union there is.

I have a buddy paying 8% on his son's student loan. 12% is ridiculous.

College tuition has increased 5.2% per year the last 30 years. The rape of college students and parents has got to go "Bust" soon. The liberal intellectual elite on college campuses have screwed all of us. Our kids have become slaves to the Gov't before they have their first career job.

Doc

I've worked in student loan collections for years, and I'm calling BS on this. No way the US DoE did anything of the sort. They might take a persons taxes, or wage garnish them. Hell they will even offset your SS if you manage to still owe them when you retire, but they are not throwing people out of their homes and selling their possessions.

As for the OP, at 12% it is not a Federal subsidized student loan. Most likely it is an old private student loan or what we called a gap loan. The tax payers aren't likely on the hook for that one. She should be able to find a number of lenders that will refinance that loan and get her into a better situation, especially if she is current on the loan (most people that hold those high interest loans are not). She might need a comaker though unless she is a professional or has collateral.

You must mean letting WF charge 12% on the student loan while paying depositors 0.55%.

bbassi,



We all have ignorant prejudices. You can continue in your ignorance or not. All collection companies are not the same and all sheriffs are not the same.

Tuition is a bubble caused by government backed student loans. The government has absolutely priced everyone out of higher education. Or more effectively created a generation of debt slaves to the government.

This is the 2nd time I've seen someone call you on your bullshiet and the 1st sentence in both replies are the same. My take is its happened many more times and you have it all down pat.

12%, man what a blow. I graduated 5 years ago and have an average rate of 6.8%. 12% is criminal. As others have said, can't skip out on it. Looks like Bbassi has good advice there.



Haha, when did you graduate? What was tuition, like $800 a year? Give me a break.

You old timers are out of touch. Cost of education isn't what it was 20 years ago and it's getting to criminal levels.

I was paying $10k a semester for in state tuition my last year of grad school. I bolded that so you can see that it likely would have been worse had I gone out of state as some people have to do. Worked as much as I could (20-30 hours a week) while earning a doctorate. Between raising a family and paying a mortgage I had to take loans. Shame on me. Luckily I make good wages now and can afford to pay the piper. 6.8% is bad enough.

Boy us young kids are just idiots for getting educated and paying our tuition. Just because you old timers had good education for a reasonable price doesn't mean we are idiots for what is in place now.

You are repeating something you're recalling your daughter telling you years ago, and I work on a Department of Education contract that is audited for work practices and professionalism multiple times a year, yet I'm the one going off ignorant prejudices? OK there champ. Get your Google on and find me ONE news story of the Department of Education being responsible for what you are accusing them of. We will all wait.

I'd like to see it too.