Why not. A BK is not really the nuclear bomb many think it is. You can start getting credit immediately after discharge. You can definitely get a new car financed and even credit cards within weeks of discharge, Keep your nose clean and you can even finance a new house in just 2 years from discharge.Then her parents are on the hook. Do they BK, too?
Yes.Keep in mind that there are companies that check your credit and if it is bad they will NOT hire you.
If her parents have stuff and a good income (and it sounds like they do–hence the lack of good financial aid for her), it’s not going to be that easy. Bankruptcy for people with assets and a good income is way less fun than it used to be, and it never was all that fun.Why not. A BK is not really the nuclear bomb many think it is. You can start getting credit immediately after discharge. You can definitely get a new car financed and even credit cards within weeks of discharge, Keep your nose clean and you can even finance a new house in just 2 years from discharge.
Or she can try to do chapter 13 too which will force the creditors to pretty much take what the creditor can afford.
Declaring bankruptcy when you have the funds to repay is immoral. It becomes stealing. Bankruptcy is for those who are in debt so deep they have no way out.If her parents have stuff and a good income (and it sounds like they do–hence the lack of good financial aid for her), it’s not going to be that easy. Bankruptcy for people with assets and a good income is way less fun than it used to be, and it never was all that fun.
There is the ethical question of borrowing $60,000 dollars and never paying it back! Creditors are not going to keep making loans to college students if they keep taking a bath on them because students who can default are regularly found acting on the obvious thought: “this paying back loans sucks and they can’t repossess my education, so why not?” An act that helps to make student loans more expensive and harder to get for everyone else is not exactly a stroke in favor of the advancement of society, even from a secular point of view.Why not. A BK is not really the nuclear bomb many think it is. You can start getting credit immediately after discharge. You can definitely get a new car financed and even credit cards within weeks of discharge, Keep your nose clean and you can even finance a new house in just 2 years from discharge.
Or she can try to do chapter 13 too which will force the creditors to pretty much take what the creditor can afford.
Yes, except that if the law is abused it does not “become” stealing. It is stealing.Declaring bankruptcy when you have the funds to repay is immoral. It becomes stealing. Bankruptcy is for those who are in debt so deep they have no way out.
This is something to pursue. The lending agencies will not always give you information that is to your advantage. Some pay their agents to defend their advantage and leave you to defend yours. If you do not say, “hey, this is my right” and force them to say, “Oh, that. OK, fill out this form,” some of them will leave you in the dark. It is unfortunate, but because of both strategy and lack of care or even inexperience or obtuseness in the agent you have dealing with you, they will not always be upfront about what their obligations are to you.Is there no way to adjust payments? When I signed my promissory note I saw language stating that payments couldn’t exceed a certain percentage of my income, 20% as I remember.
No it most certainly was not. The big banks bribed the right politicians and worked out a sweetheart deal with the government where they get to lend money risk free to the young and impressionable. The universities are in on this too because the geyser of federal money this generated enabled them to greatly expand their bureaucracies and offer even more worthless degrees.Since she legitimately owes the money, advice to run out on the debt is not a good first choice. Everything possible should be done to pay them – the money was lent to her in good faith.
It’s not a federal loan. It is a private loan. Just like if she’d gone to borrow for a car, or a boat. She was unable to secure federal aid due to family assets/income exceeding the need-based criteria. So this is between her and her bank, period.No it most certainly was not. The big banks bribed the right politicians and worked out a sweetheart deal with the government where they get to lend money risk free to the young and impressionable. The universities are in on this too because the geyser of federal money this generated enabled them to greatly expand their bureaucracies and offer even more worthless degrees.
The federal government likes this program most of all because they now have legions of people beholden to them that they can more easily manipulate. They don’t particularly care about the money, they have a printing press after all. It’s about control (need to win an election? Dangle the idea of student loan forgiveness). If you have a federally guaranteed loan it will follow you around your entire life and they will even garnish your Social Security payments (no other creditor can do this, SS is judgement proof). That is the definition of debt bondage.
Companies make bad financial decisions all of the time, and they don’t hesitate to take advantage of the remedies available under law to get relief. If you insist that the OP and those like her repay these crushing debts no matter what, then who is going to buy your house when you are ready to sell it? Not people who are so buried in student loan debt they can’t qualify for a mortgage.
I got that part, as you can see from my earlier posts. I just get a little worked up over student loans as a whole because the system has done tremendous damage to the economy and wrecked a lot of lives.It’s not a federal loan. It is a private loan. Just like if she’d gone to borrow for a car, or a boat. She was unable to secure federal aid due to family assets/income exceeding the need-based criteria. So this is between her and her bank, period.
ETA - well, it’s between her, the bank, and apparently her parents, as they have guaranteed the loan. But it has nothing to do with the feds directly. (I won’t address student loan policy in general…beyond saying this is why, when I agreed to guarantee my oldest’s college loans, it was on the condition that he studied in a field that would generate the income to cover his debt. Had he wished to study philosophy, rather than computer engineering, there’s no way I’d have agreed to guarantee the loans. Sad, perhaps, but practical.)
I said or implied nothing of the kind.. By your logic, all borrowers - whether of car loans, mortgages, or the like, – should get to walk away if they borrow and find it hard to repay, under the theory that the lender is bigger than they are. .
Outside the last sentence, this is totally wrong.I say BK it. The government says it is ok to BK you debt if you meet certain criteria so what is wrong just getting rid of that debt so you can start your life. There is even biblical precedent for this as God commanded the Israelites to forgive debt and release slaves from bondage every seven years right. Seems to me that you are both in debt and a slave so if the government has a path for you to do this then do it. Otherwise you will be stuck like this for quite some time I fear. You should have gone to trade school instead and learned to weld or be a plumber or something.
I don’t think she should take on debt, but at the same time, I don’t think she should pursue either social work, criminal justice or work in the prison system, unless those are actual passions that she has, she understands what the work entails, and unless she has the sort of personality that would work in that context.Those are concerns to be considered *before *you choose your degree, though. It does not do her much good now–besides, we don’t know that she did not go into this area with both eyes open, via internships and the like.
**Well, it doesn’t sound like she was thinking about the career side of it, just what she found intellectually interesting.
OP?
**
Once you’ve chosen a path and gone up to your neck in debt to choose it, you’d better get what money that education can net you until you can find a financially-sensible way to do something else. She took out a lot of loans to pursue this dream. Why not find someone who can help her realize it? Maybe social work isn’t a lot of money, but it is more than she is getting now, and unlike many other things she can do it is a job she dreamed of having.
Is it really, though?
By the way, any mentors in the field she can find would also be good people to consult. She’s cast her lot with social work. I say, until you find something that you know will pay you better, don’t invest another penny in something else. You do not need any more debt that won’t give you a positive return on investment.
OK, but she did not say she didn’t like social work or any particular job in her field. She said she was anxious about the amount of her debt. Why go after a problem she didn’t say she has instead of facing the one that actually concerns her?I don’t think she should take on debt, but at the same time, I don’t think she should pursue either social work, criminal justice or work in the prison system, unless those are actual passions that she has, she understands what the work entails, and unless she has the sort of personality that would work in that context.
I once spent much of a day with a sweet young social worker. She was investigating a case where an older brother had been doing sexual things with at least two sisters in a large immigrant family. (That’s why I was there–the social worker needed a translator to talk to the mom.) Anyway, I don’t think we really talked much to the kids, if at all, but we talked to the mom, and she was simply shattered. It was an absolutely terrible experience to have to deal with that situation, even as an outsider, and only spending one day on it. I count it as one of the worst days of my life and I think even the sweet young social worker found it pretty harrowing. If I could go back in time and delete a day in my life, that one would be in the top 5.
The turnover rate for social workers is very high, because it’s such a terrible job, especially considering the pay:
“Turnover rates in the state’s urban areas — primarily Louisville and the Kentucky suburbs of Cincinnati — have soared. In 2014, nearly half of the workers in northern Kentucky and one in five in Louisville walked away, according to numbers from the Cabinet for Health and Family Services.”
courier-journal.com/story/news/local/2015/02/06/social-worker-turnover-leads-high-caseloads/22983561/
“Sara Barth had nightmares about the mounting pile of cases on her desk: children covered in bruises, kids confessing they’d been raped, mothers dead of drug overdoses.”
““How do you ever stop thinking about those kids?” said Barth, a state social worker for more than a decade. “I wasn’t able to sleep. It was so consuming. The expectation was higher than anything you could ever meet without breaking yourself.””
"James went personally last year to every social work college in the state, hoping to recruit bright, committed social workers. They offer tuition assistance for those willing to commit to public service. Often they start but leave quickly, sometimes after only a day, when they see what child welfare actually entails.
“Barth said she’d been threatened by a parent wielding a hunting knife. She dealt with filth and lice. She was screamed at, cursed at, called a “baby snatcher.””
Obviously somebody has to do it, and I’m glad they do, but is it the right place for the OP to go?
OK, but she did not say she didn’t like social work or any particular job in her field. She said she was anxious about the amount of her debt. Why go after a problem she didn’t say she has instead of facing the one that actually concerns her?
**Well, she hasn’t mentioned any particular field that she wants to get into.
Having been there done that, I suspect that she chose majors that were intellectually interesting to her as academic subjects, without thinking very hard about what happens after college. In fact, that’s more or less what she said in the OP.**
Her take-home pay is much less than someone in her field typically makes after 2-3 years of work in the field. Granted, in that position, she might easily still pay 25% of her take-home pay to her student loan, but that is far better than where she is now.
**But if that’s not what she wants to do with her life long-term, it’s a waste of valuable time to go down that road. Any of those fields could be a soul-crushing dead end if you go into them just for money.
If I were a single person with no dependents, I would literally rather live in a homeless shelter than deal regularly with molestation victims or gruesome car accidents.
If the OP feels differently–fantastic! But I would encourage her to think seriously about what she wants, who she is, and the likelihood that she could deal long-term with a stressful and depressing work environment. Down the road, could she make love to her future husband after dealing with a child rape case all day? Could she work on an infant battering case, pick up her own baby from daycare, and then have the heart to drop her baby off the next day?
It is worth asking, even if one of these professions works for her now, will it work for her long term?
**