- Consumerist Comments

The Walking Eye — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:20:30 EDT

@trecool95: Wow, how much did she take out and how bad was the interest? Cause it sounds to me that she's either got a ton of loans w/ a long pay off period, or she got absolutely hosed when she consolidated. However, if she had personal loans, rather than the standard Federal, then they may have screwed her that way as well.

I consolidated about $25K with Citibank over 20 years and got a 3.25% interest rate when I graduated 5 years ago with a terrible credit history. If I'd had a job at the time, I would have done 10 years though.

The Walking Eye

alpha — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 10:12:40 EDT

Man, that $890 suuure will go far.
I bet Congress had to scrimp and scrounge to figure out how they could ever POSSIBLY afford to come up with just a hair under a cool grand in the next 4 years...

OR, it's supposed to be million/billion and this is just another lovely Consumerist Typo (tm).

I'm too lazy to click through to the original article to find out.

alpha

forever_knight — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:50:30 EDT

@trecool95: if it's worth her time and money, have her take a class, take out an education loan to pay for it, then consolidate with another company. educational loan company has a nice incentive package.

forever_knight

MameDennis — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 09:28:30 EDT

Well, it's a move in the right direction. I wish this would kick in soon enough to help my students start their lives under less extreme financial pressure. Some of these people are graduating with 100K+ of debt. Of course, they will still have a healthy chunk to pay off by 2011, so I guess they get to reap *some* advantage from the reduction.

MameDennis

amalgamator — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 08:44:45 EDT

too bad it doesn't cover graduate students...

amalgamator

trecool95 — Thu, 12 Jul 2007 07:27:45 EDT

The interest rates on my wifes student loans are so high that she pays about $500 a month with less than $100 actually going towards the principal. Unfortunately this is because of consolidation through Citibank and no other financial institution will touch the loan so she can get a lower rate.

trecool95

timmus — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:19:04 EDT

I hope that's all it is... I plan to finish out my degree in a couple of years, so any news like this is good news. My wife thinks she overpaid her student loans and can't get Sallie Mae to give her any information -- she said she's called to get her balance but the Indian droids refuse to give information and start pitching mortgages. The system needs an enema.

timmus

Ben Popken — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:55:59 EDT

@timmus: The catch is that it won't be implemented till 2011.

Ben Popken

jdsmn — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:49:32 EDT

So I just graduated this spring, and payments on my $35K of student loans start soon - am I SOL? Is this something that has no benefit to persons like myself, only new students?

jdsmn

bohemian — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:32:14 EDT

I want to know when they are going to address some of the crazy practices in loan payments, collection fees charges if you default and the free for all in collection practices.

People are getting "collection fees" exceeding the face value of the loan. The dept of ED seems to be letting anyone who claims to be a collection agency get a hold of student loan files and there is little people can do about it.

The percentage max payback is a good start. But I know so many people who have had student loans get out of control more because the process is so screwed not their refusal to pay.

bohemian

Maurik — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 20:07:54 EDT

you still have to pay taxes? ^^

Maurik

timmus — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:36:08 EDT

What's the catch?

timmus