Author Topic: Sallie Mae execs go to Maui while student debt crisis tops $1.6 trillion!  (Read 3218 times)

ducky19

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Saw this one yesterday, and it really pissed me off... some excerpts:

"Sallie Mae brought more than 100 of its employees to Hawaii in August to celebrate a record year — $5 billion in student loans to 374,000 borrowers." - This equates to an average loan of $13,368.98, but clearly they are taking advantage of people...

Then they get into the "woe is me, I was taken advantage of by a big company" bit - this is where I lost it:

"Paige McDaniel, 39, took out a federal Sallie Mae student loan to pay for her undergraduate degree 20 years ago. Six years later, before the Sallie Mae split with Navient, she took out a private loan with the company to pay for her grad school.

'I thought they were the same kind of loans,' McDaniel, of the Denver suburb Elizabeth, said. A mother of two, she borrowed $120,000 for her tuition at Lakeland College for a master's in business administration, to help with the cost of living as she worked through school.

The agreement, which included a warning to read it before signing, said the interest rate was variable, but she says she doesn't remember being told the rate was much higher on the private loan.

After graduation, Sallie Mae expected McDaniel to pay 'well over $1,500 a month,' she said.

'When I told them that, you know, I couldn't afford that, could we make some payment arrangements, they essentially said, 'So sorry, we'll put a lien on your house and garnish your wages if you don't make those payments,'' McDaniel said.

Now, McDaniel owes $304,000, even though she declared bankruptcy to protect her house after being unable to make her payments. She’s hired an attorney to sue Navient, arguing that bankruptcy should have cleared her debt because it was a private loan.

'There’s no way anybody can ever dig themselves out from underneath that,” McDaniel said. "They just don't see that there are families on the other side of this. It's not just my generation cause I have the loans, it affects my children. How am I going to send them to college?'"

So let me get this straight... you went for your MASTERS DEGREE in Business Administration, took on an additional $120,000 in debt to "help" while you're going to school, don't pay attention to the terms of your loan agreement, get upset that you can't just make the debt go away, then expect me to feel sorry for you and your kids??? Hopefully the kids learn from their mother's terrible example. I just... can't... wow...

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/sallie-mae-execs-tan-maui-retreat-while-student-debt-crisis-n1063826
« Last Edit: October 18, 2019, 10:40:44 AM by ducky19 »

Samuel

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So let me get this straight... you went for your MASTERS DEGREE in Business Administration, took on an additional $120,000 in debt to "help" while you're going to school, don't pay attention to the terms of your loan agreement, get upset that you can't just make the debt go away, then expect me to feel sorry for you and your kids???

They don't teach "read the contracts you're signing" until year 2.

kite

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Lakeland University tuition for their MBA program is $629 per credit.  An MBA requires 33 credits, for a whopping total of $20,757 in tuition.  Even if you pad that with a 50% extra for books, fees and incidentals, there is no reason to have borrowed almost 6 times the tuition rate.  None.   
Someone had very high living expenses while they went to school. 

The_Big_H

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Reading this makes me want to go buy NAVI & SLM stock.

Does this make me a bad person?

cliner

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So let me get this straight... you went for your MASTERS DEGREE in Business Administration, took on an additional $120,000 in debt to "help" while you're going to school, don't pay attention to the terms of your loan agreement, get upset that you can't just make the debt go away, then expect me to feel sorry for you and your kids???

They don't teach "read the contracts you're signing" until year 2.

One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

Not There Yet

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Quote
However, to the best of my knowledge, private student loans are dischargable in bankruptcy, so I'm not sure why they would be having these problems.

This may be true in other countries, but isn't true in the United States. 

joleran

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One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

What was your other option though, withdraw from the school?  There are a lot of contracts where you're already super-committed and backing out over anything is going to cause major hardship. 

TheGrimSqueaker

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One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

What was your other option though, withdraw from the school?  There are a lot of contracts where you're already super-committed and backing out over anything is going to cause major hardship.

Exactly like the non-compete contracts, overtime banking agreements, and payroll deductions for company related expenses. People sign them because they're a condition of employment, but later on the company gets to claim the employee "voluntarily" signed away key rights. But in reality they sign under duress because they're over a barrel.

saguaro

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One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

What was your other option though, withdraw from the school?  There are a lot of contracts where you're already super-committed and backing out over anything is going to cause major hardship.

Exactly like the non-compete contracts, overtime banking agreements, and payroll deductions for company related expenses. People sign them because they're a condition of employment, but later on the company gets to claim the employee "voluntarily" signed away key rights. But in reality they sign under duress because they're over a barrel.

Yep.  The day before we were going to close on our house, I learned that my attorney's fees were going to be higher than quoted.  Not by a huge amount, but we were under a tight budget with getting this house, so I was surprised.   Now one possible mitigating factor here was that my original attorney died while reviewing our sale contract and this was his associate taking over who had to get up to speed.

At 11 PM that night, my loan officer phones us, telling us that we should fire our attorney at the closing table.  I told him we were going through with it because what were we going to do?  The sales contract stated that if we held up closing, we would be accessed a fee for every day we delayed closing, that money would more than make up the difference in the attorney fees. Plus our apartment had been rented out to the next tenant.  It was just not an option.

Undecided

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One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

What was your other option though, withdraw from the school?  There are a lot of contracts where you're already super-committed and backing out over anything is going to cause major hardship.

Agreed. Still worth reading them later, but not much reason to insist on reading something like that before signing. When there’s a real decision to be made, it’s a different story. Private student loans (vs. reducing living standard, getting a second job) seem more like the latter, to me.

Travis

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Re: Sallie Mae execs go to Maui while student debt crisis tops $1.6 trillion!
« Reply #10 on: October 24, 2019, 01:19:38 AM »
One of my most concrete memories from university was during orientation, when we went up with our families to tour the campus to enroll in classes, see the dorms, get our university IDs, etc. When it was my turn to get my ID, I had to sign a sort of waiver/consent/privacy form. I signed it immediately without reading a single word, and the woman issuing ID cards refused to accept it until I had taken the time to read the entire form. She said, "Never ever sign something without reading it." One of the most important things I learned at university, and I still think about her any time I'm asked to read and sign anything.

What was your other option though, withdraw from the school?  There are a lot of contracts where you're already super-committed and backing out over anything is going to cause major hardship.

Agreed. Still worth reading them later, but not much reason to insist on reading something like that before signing. When there’s a real decision to be made, it’s a different story. Private student loans (vs. reducing living standard, getting a second job) seem more like the latter, to me.

It's not the worst habit you can develop.

 

Wow, a phone plan for fifteen bucks!