This makes me sad. https://www.texastribune.org/2019/10/23/student-debt-not-just-millennial-problem/. and she is not alone. In Texas alone,
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I am afraid that if I hit the “like” button on the bottom of your post, that it will send the wrong message.
Thank you for posting this sobering news.
@Publisher- maybe that’s what the “agree” button is for. The person highlighted in the story lives in a trailer with no running water in 5 years.
And apparently there are many more like her 
I read that article, thinking it would be money she owed from her kids. But it’s for her education that she never finished in the 80s/90s. OUCH. that’s a rough story.
I am 10 years or more younger and maxed out my loans from the guaranteed student loan program when in school. At that time the repayment period was 10 years and while tough I managed to pay them off on time. I can not fathom how over 200,000 people in Texas alone can still have close the the maximum available 30 years ago outstanding.
How sad.
I can understand this. My student loan balance is close to $40,000(interest adds up) and I graduated in 1997. When I graduated we were already paying on my husband’s student loans so I had various deferrals and then forbearances since our income wasn’t very high. I thought that after his was paid off that we would pay mine. He got fired, we had to sell our house and move in with parents. We couldn’t afford to pay his loan payments so his parents paid what little was left(I think they had cosigned), later when I ran out of forbearances and was a sahm he said that my loans weren’t benefitting him so he wasn’t going to pay them. Luckily they had introduced income based plans and my payment is set at $0, but they aren’t going away(we had to file bankruptcy but of course that doesn’t cover student loans) and I’m not getting any younger. We are now divorced, I am 46 with total household income under $20,000 and loan debt of about $40,000. As my kids get older and my household size shrinks it may change the payment amount, but at this point I have no idea how to get out of these circumstances. I did graduate, but it seems that my degree in management isn’t all that useful in getting a job.
In the divorce, were debts split equally and he got other debts of the marriage?
What was the loan balance in 1997?
I’m sorry to hear you have this burden.
Oh, I definitely understand how this can happen. I have worked with too many students who just kept putting their loans into forbearance, and the interest kept adding up. In the past, there were no income based repayment plans, so if you couldn’t pay the standard repayment amount, forbearance was the only option. After income driven plans were offered, many borrowers still didn’t qualify, based on when they borrowed. Even after the REPAYE plan was added, borrowers didn’t necessarily understand their options. Borrowers would call to request an extension on their forbearance & it was granted. The servicer’s rep should have explained repayment options & helped the borrower get into a plan. And about getting into a plan … I could tell you horror stories about that. The structure is in place to lend money, and the structure is in place to collect money. What is missing is a structure to best serve the borrower (and efforts to change that have been repealed).
Using up all deferrals and forebearances early on is a guaranteed way to default on loans and end up with a higher loan balance than you initially borrowed.
I guess I still don’t see it. I understand that things can happen (job loss, illness, etc.)but we are talking about almost a quarter million people, in one state, that have had 40 years to figure out how to pay these loans off. In my mind it looks an awful lot like people never intended to pay them off and they are now getting to the point that they will saddle their kids with a debt attached to the estate.
I graduated in 1991 and if I recall correctly my monthly loan payments (with a 10 year repayment period) were about $300. I had maxed out the guaranteed student loans available over 4 years. I was making $22,000 a year in my first job. This equated to, after taxes, health insurance, etc. about $1,000 a month in take home pay of which I knew $300 was going to the loans. I lived in a small studio apartment at about $400 a month in what I soon realized was not a good area, and drove a 15 year old car I had inherited from my dad. After the loans and rent I had $300 a month left over for all other living expenses.
Times were lean but not once did I consider not paying the loan in order to move to a nicer safer area, or get a new car. Marriage and kids were out of the question until the debt was paid down and my finances became stable. Guess what… It worked. The loans were gone before I got married and had kids, my credit was good so we could get the house in the suburbs, with great schools and work to the point we are today where my kids can be full pay and not have to go through those lean years I went through. I guess it is just priorities.
The lady profiled did take out the loans for herself, but the article says that many of the loans were by parents for their children’s education.
“the article says that many of the loans were by parents for their children’s education”
I have noticed in filling out NPCs that it does not seem to help if the parent is retired and past the age of 65. I do wonder how universities think that parents in their mid to late 60’s are going to repay the loans, or going to replenish funds that I thought were retirement funds that they thought should be used for education. When you are retired, you can’t have all of your “retirement” money in 401k’s and IRAs because you have to pay this week’s bills.
Fortunately in our case there were academically very good affordable alternatives that were a good fit. I can see how the excellent but affordable options that we found would not apply to everyone.
It is easy to see how parents who have their kids in their 40’s can end up with college loans when they are 65+.
While I understand that many people take years to pay off their school loans, it does appear that many find themselves in dire financial difficulties due to a series of poor financial choices. Financial illiteracy is a huge issue in our debt-happy society.
Credit score or debt-ration isn’t a consideration to qualify for student loans. The universities are not lending their own money but are processing loans for the federal govt or providing information (COA, credits taken) to private lenders.
The article links to https://files.consumerfinance.gov/f/documents/201708_cfpb_older-consumers-and-student-loan-debt-by-state.pdf which shows that percentage of seniors with debt, amount of debt, and percentage in default has generally been increasing across most states.
How much of the debt in question is from professional school (versus undergraduate)?
We had filed bankruptcy the year before our divorce so there were no debts except the mortgage and my student loans. Our vehicles were older and paid off, we each got one, and I kept the house which doesn’t have a lot of equity. We didn’t have any other assets except his retirement with the state(he doesn’t have in enough years, but of course does own the balance in the account) and my two small 401(k)'s.
I was always a saver growing up and am pretty frugal with money now(otherwise we wouldn’t be getting by). However, I made some bad choices. I got married while still in college to someone that I hadn’t known very long, determined to make it work I spent over 20 years and allowed myself to be influenced very negatively as things got progressively worse. I had thought that when my kids were in school and I was ready to go back into the workforce that it wouldn’t be a problem, but that has not been the case. I’ve only had 2 interviews in the last 5 years and haven’t been able to get any kind of somewhat decent job.
I’m thankful that I have been able to get by and don’t mean to sound like I’m complaining. I guess I just don’t know where to go from here, nothing I have tried has worked out and I feel like I might have wasted my chances and abilities.
@heartoifdixie Have you looked at any of the programs that assist women who want to go back to work? A friend of mine found help froma resource like one of those in this article.
.https://www.workingmother.com/on-ramping-programs-for-working-moms
That’s probably nearly 3x what she was making at ”Walmart and Office Depot, at food establishments and hotels”.
If you thinks times were “lean” at $22,000, what would $8,840 (No vacation, no sick days, working every day, at 1991 minimum wage) be like?
Like food?
I paid 100 percent of my school costs in the mid 80s for a really good state flagship. I had loans. Just pulled out my last payment invoice from 1991. My entire Stafford loan was 3800 per year. Seemed like a lot at that time but what a bargain in retrospect!
I think staying out of the prestige rat race for most families and students makes so much sense in the big picture. But try to get many to agree with this on CC or when it’s their child, it’s hard to be pragmatic with these choices.
And the cost of schools today is just so outrageous. Even my state school is 50k a year for oos. This story will be a drop in the bucket compared to the articles written in twenty five years.