I, like many and hopefully some of y’all, stopped paying my student loans during Covid and never restarted paying because we’re supposed to have gotten relief from this debt that should’ve never existed in the first place. Now we have Trump coming back which kills the possibility of debt relief. So should I start repaying so I don’t get my wages garnished? Or do we think the government is going to be too inefficient to come after it?
Edit: At one point when I heard that it was the only way to get forgiveness, I moved all my debt from a third party to being a government loan. Does that change anything?
You’re never stopping predatory businesses from being predatory.
There are many ways to get assistance with student loans. There’s FAFSA before you start, there are federally backed ones that can’t pump up the interest rates, there’s income based repayment plans (that can go as far as full deferment), and if for some reason someone made the mistake of not using any of that there’s still options for loan consolidation/refinancing to better rates when better rates are available. On top of all that, most loan providers will work with you. They want your money, not the hassle of selling your loan to a collections agency for a lower amount.
None of that eliminates predatory loan providers, or the targeting of unprepared 18 year olds, but the impact can be blunted.
Beyond all that, at some point, some amount of personal responsibility must be taken for one’s actions. None of us will always have the capacity to fully understand every choice we make, or the knowledge to make those decisions from a fully informed position, but we all have to make certain decisions in life anyway and live with the consequences. Not fair, but that’s life.
In what other situation would we be okay with allowing an 18 year old with no income to take out tens to hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt? The system is purpose built to fuck over the better part of two generations of people.
Is that meant to be a counterpoint? It doesn’t counter anything I said.
I acknowledged that it’s a shitty, predatory practice. That’s not something that I think any reasonable person could debate against. It still doesn’t invalidate any of my points.
There are many resources out there to assist, and in life we are regularly made to make decisions we aren’t adequately prepared for while we are still responsible for the consequences.
Why should we be accepting shitty predatory practices? We regularly protect people from the decisions they’re not adequately prepared for, as I think we should.
You have vitally missed my point. I’m not arguing that it’s something we should be happy about or not trying to change, just that it is something that is.
Unfortunately, we are required to exist in the world that is, rather than the world that should be. You have to survive in reality to be able to make changes to it.
You’re more than welcome to call up your loan provider and tell them you don’t accept the terms you already signed up for. Let us all know how that goes.
The more people who don’t pay the harder it’d be for them to enforce it. How does accepting the situation now help me change the situation for the future?
By keeping the bank from bankrupting you and garnishing your wages. The bank will happily take money from your accounts without your consent when the government comes asking for it. They will also take money from any accounts you may be cosigned on (my parents got so late on bills that the bank drained my account when I was a minor living with them, and there is no legal recourse for this).
Pretty hard to effect change when you can’t buy food because the government came by and took all your money out from under you.
Look. You’ve been provided advice towards what options are available to you. If you choose not to take that advice and to make this the hill you choose to die on, the government and the bank won’t hesitate to assist you with the choice to ruin your life over this.
Feel free to debate philosophy with the bank and the government. I’m out.
That is a remarkably shitty argument. “Sure, I know the system is wrong and only hurts people, but it’s the system! You can’t just go and reform systems so they stop hurting people! Think of the investment bankers!”
We can and should change things, and part of that is helping the people who have been hurt by the system.
I know you can see my other comments. That isn’t what I’m saying at all.
You have to accept the reality of the system that exists, for the sake of survival in reality, before you can work on fixing it. This isn’t complicated, tacit acceptance of the shit situation, or advocating for non-action.
There are many indignities in life that you will have to accept for survival’s sake so that you are able to work on changing things.
Getting your wages garnished by the shitty system that exists, because you don’t agree with it and therefore decided to stop paying, doesn’t help anyone towards fixing it. It just makes your situation worse.