Reply to Canceling $10k of student loan debt is stupid.

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote]Anonymous wrote:
No one keeps track of how student loan money is spent either.

There are many kids who use loans to fund their spring break trips. Hell, while I was in grad school, we had a guy in our program take out $40k in loans so he could buy studio equipment for his side rap career/hobby. I know tons and tons and tons of med students who took out student loans 'for med school' and used it to spend on going out to the bars every weekend, traveling during the summer, and for all other stupid garbage. But yeah, let's forgive it all without tracking how any of it was spent.

It's safe to say that at least 10k per borrower went towards tuition[/quote]

I would like to know exactly what kind of loans those were. I thought many loans were transferred directly to the college bursar's office for tuition and housing expenses. ??[/quote]

They are private loans, which usually have much higher interest rates and I also don't think would count in the forgiveness program anyway. I saw this in grad school too -- people who took out student loans to pay for vacations, engagement rings, etc.

But here's an interesting point of anecdata: I was living in an absolute sh!thole during grad school because it was all I could afford. A friend suggested to me taking out a private loan to afford to live somewhere nicer. But I looked into it and I would not have been able to get approved for one even if I'd wanted to (once I saw the interest rate on it I... lost interest). I was a working class kid with okay credit (like not bad credit but also not impressive as I'd never had a credit card before) and very limited credit history -- they weren't going to approve a 10k loan for me for non-school expenses, even living expenses. So how did my classmates get 40k loans for world travel? I'm guessing they'd had credit cards from a young age (likely paid for by parents) and had probably built excellent credit histories via their parents' largesse. Or they'd had good-paying jobs between college and grad school.

None of the people who took out loans like that struggled to repay them later -- they were fine. Meanwhile, I took out only federal loans and struggled to pay them because unlike my classmates, I was paying not only for my own life but also working to help support my family, and my loan payments were hard to make. My rich friends were still on their parents cell phone plans, and were gifted large sums to help them by homes. I'd bet they paid back those private loans quickly (with decent financial advice from family).[/quote]

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