I owe $125,000 in private student loans to one institution. How to get them to settle?

[Anonymous]

So wait a minute: you are in nursing admin because you can't cut it on the floor? Sorry, but you need to buck up, dust off or acquire some actual skills, and get to work. You can easily work an extra shift a week on a per diem job, and if you have real skills you will make enough money to make a dent in your debt.

Alternatively, head a couple hours out of dc---there's UVA, Richmond, Rockingham Memorial in Harrisonburg---though that last hospital is awesome and I doubt that they'd want your whiny butt---and work. The salary isn't that much lower but the cost of living is half or less that of dc. I had a spiffy awesome 3 bedroom townhouse in Harrisonburg half a mile from the hospital for $950 a month. You can even go skiing---massanutten is right there.

However, stupidity doesn't mean you get a free pass out of paying for it. Even in dc, $3500 a month after your debt should go far enough. Especially since admin works 9-5 m-f. Quit whining and looking for an easy way out. You surely didn't need either a bsn or a masters to work in nursing.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am enlist in the military. What if I get deployed? What exactly will I do with my kid?

I worked full time when I was in school - well, practically full time. The choices of schools I had to go to we're limited because I neede to take the nursing courses at night, and do evening and weekend clinics. The community colleges (this was in MNat the time) did not have the option of doing nursing classes and clinicals on evenings and nights. In fact, it was the only school in my city (where I used to live) that offered that type of program.The 125 K was not the amount of the loans that I borrowed. It's the payoff amount for all of the loans if I were to pay them off today, with the capitalized interest. It was a 3 1/2 year Associate's program. That's less than 40k per year. Books were 700 a semester. I had to pay a sitter for when I was in school. I did not take any private loans after my associate's program. I did take federal stafford loans throughout my program, but they didn't even cover half the cost of tuition.

That being the case, why did you not just go ahead and select another major in school and go to cheaper community college?

I know you are going to say something about it being your "dream" to be a nurse but education isn't a dream. It's usually a means to an end - that is a decent paying job. There are plenty of adults who picked majors to ensure they would have a sound future vs. picking the major they longed for. Most of the people I know who pursued their passion so to speak in college had parents to bank roll their education and beyond.

[Anonymous]

I thought some of those for-profit colleges were parties in class action law suits or maybe it was they were investigated by the govt. It's worth check out if that happened and if your school was involved. That might offer you some relief.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I feel for you somewhat. But you had to know that "private" school of any nature was going to be more expensive then public. I think even 17 yr olds get that concept.

As for getting rid of the debt - charge your living expenses on credit card but continue to pay your loan then declare bankruptcy to clear your credit card debt? Not saying it's a great or good solution but it is a solution.

I had to go the private school route because I had a GED because I got pregnant at 17 years old. I proved myself when I graduated with honors. But no lower cost, higher ranked school would have taken me with a *GED*. Thus, I had to sacrifice my huge amount of debt in order to get a higher education.

Does NOVA's nursing program do this? I would have thought you could have done NOVA's program for much less. They may have required you to do some extra classes, but it wold have been much cheaper.

[Anonymous]

^ I'm pretty sure she said she was in MN, not nova.

[Anonymous]

Plus hospitals often pay for you to further your education.
Why didn't you look into that.

[Anonymous]

Op is a marked woman. GED and a teen mom, to have gone to college is not enough to redeem yourself, that is meant for the children of the wealthy with daddy pays mentality


Suffer !!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Op is a marked woman. GED and a teen mom, to have gone to college is not enough to redeem yourself, that is meant for the children of the wealthy with daddy pays mentality


Suffer !!!

Oh bullshit. She is certainly not bright, but then she is in admin, so she is just annoying, not harmful. Poor choices compounded by more poor choices---I suspect she couldn't cut it on the floor, so went for more education. I have some sympathy for the first, not much for the rest. I got my ADN in 2.5 years, including summers. RN to BSN was 18 mos and I was working full-time, with three kids. So----and if she had a job, she would have had tuition reimbursement for everything once she was working.

I can feel sorry for the first goof. However, when you are in a hole, stop digging! She needs to own it and quit looking for a bailout.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Well, first things first. Get out of admin and get onto the floor. You can work night shift and make good money, and then pick up a per diem job for another 12-24 hours a week. You can surely live on that. Find a nice older person who will feed your kid dinner and put it on the school bus in the morning: you can get a slightly bigger place and offer room and board for child care. Since your kid ought to be at least 10 by now, they don't need all that much supervision.

My rough math says that after loan payments and before taxes, you have about $3500 to live on monthly. Since you are single head of household, you don't pay all that much tax. Eat peanut butter. I'm short on sympathy: you had a perfectly marketable skill and went on to 6 more years of school. You surely weren't 17 at that point.

Your use of the word "it" to reference her child says alot.

Her child has likely already been abandoned by his/her father and your suggestion is for the OP to find an elderly neighbor to raise her kid while she works mercilessly to pay a debt she never shouldve been approved for in the first place? Would you leave your child to be raised by a neighbor while you worked around the clock?

OP, I agree that you need to see an attorney. If you can in fact walk away from this debt, I would take the credit hit and start over. I live abroad now as a single mom (age 30) with free housing and $1800/month here would still cripple my budget. How old are you now?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am enlist in the military. What if I get deployed? What exactly will I do with my kid?

I worked full time when I was in school - well, practically full time. The choices of schools I had to go to we're limited because I neede to take the nursing courses at night, and do evening and weekend clinics. The community colleges (this was in MNat the time) did not have the option of doing nursing classes and clinicals on evenings and nights. In fact, it was the only school in my city (where I used to live) that offered that type of program.The 125 K was not the amount of the loans that I borrowed. It's the payoff amount for all of the loans if I were to pay them off today, with the capitalized interest. It was a 3 1/2 year Associate's program. That's less than 40k per year. Books were 700 a semester. I had to pay a sitter for when I was in school. I did not take any private loans after my associate's program. I did take federal stafford loans throughout my program, but they didn't even cover half the cost of tuition.

That being the case, why did you not just go ahead and select another major in school and go to cheaper community college?

I know you are going to say something about it being your "dream" to be a nurse but education isn't a dream. It's usually a means to an end - that is a decent paying job. There are plenty of adults who picked majors to ensure they would have a sound future vs. picking the major they longed for. Most of the people I know who pursued their passion so to speak in college had parents to bank roll their education and beyond.

This is helpful how? Do you have a time machine? OP made a mistake accepting the loans, but that's water under the bridge.

[Anonymous]

I had the same balance and have it down to under 100K now. It's just a fact of life for most of us young people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:So wait a minute: you are in nursing admin because you can't cut it on the floor? Sorry, but you need to buck up, dust off or acquire some actual skills, and get to work. You can easily work an extra shift a week on a per diem job, and if you have real skills you will make enough money to make a dent in your debt.

Alternatively, head a couple hours out of dc---there's UVA, Richmond, Rockingham Memorial in Harrisonburg---though that last hospital is awesome and I doubt that they'd want your whiny butt---and work. The salary isn't that much lower but the cost of living is half or less that of dc. I had a spiffy awesome 3 bedroom townhouse in Harrisonburg half a mile from the hospital for $950 a month. You can even go skiing---massanutten is right there.

However, stupidity doesn't mean you get a free pass out of paying for it. Even in dc, $3500 a month after your debt should go far enough. Especially since admin works 9-5 m-f. Quit whining and looking for an easy way out. You surely didn't need either a bsn or a masters to work in nursing.

Not OP, but floor nurses have ungodly hours that wouldn't work as a single Mom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote: Educational loans are such a horrible racket. We will be paying off my husband's loans (he was an immigrant whose family lost everything to a nasty revolution elsewhere) until our oldest is ready to go to college. I'm glad he has his degrees, but I think it is criminal that there is a huge effort to help people who spent more than they should have on houses, but not a single care about those who are saddled forever for school loans. I'm pretty sure the public service programs that the PP mentions are only very recent, and don't apply to any of us who have been out of school for awhile.

The problem is not the loans. You signed on the dotted line and chose to keep going for more degrees.

The real crime is the over inflated cost of tuition. The universities do not need to charge what they charge. Just look at the size of their endowments. How much do the spend on fitness centers? On making the huge common areas look beautiful? On administrative costs.

The cost of college tuition is the issue here, not the loans. One can assume that if you are smart enough to earn multiple degrees that you are smart enough to do the math to see how much you are borrowing vs the earning potential of your career vs the price between some overpriced ivy or a reputable, less expensive school.

and how was your education paid for?

[Anonymous]

7a-7p three days a week isn't ungodly.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:7a-7p three days a week isn't ungodly.

Actually it is. I can find care from 7:30 to 6:30, but definitely not 6:00-8:00 with a commute.