Starting next month, borrowers enrolled in SAVE who took out less than $12,000 in loans and have been in repayment for 10 years will get their remaining student debt cancelled immediately.
I also don’t qualify, and I’m saddled with $60k of student debt for the foreseeable future with very little idea of how to ever change that depressing fact, but sure, congrats to those who do qualify! Sucks to suck for us, eh
44k over here, down from 60. Also, SAVE raised my payments considerably since it’s still measuring on 10% of disposable income. It may save me money once it goes to the 5%, but I’m hoping to have a job that gives me a 40k raise by then so it may be moot for me.
But I’m super happy these folks are getting it and that Biden is making progress on this front.
How’s disposable income calculated? Also, once you have your raise, I assume that while you payment might be at a similar level, your take home would still have increased?
Discretionary income is actually the correct term, I mis-typed when I said disposable.
And it’s anything over 225% of the poverty level in the state you live in. In my case, anything over $33,885 is considered discretionary. Last year my gross comp was $110k, so the payments were 10% of 76,115, which shakes out to about $630/month. I’m looking for work in the 120-140k range, at which point I’ll just be dumping gobs of my money into my student loan to get it paid off in a few years and be done with it.
I’m not desperate for forgiveness by any means, but life would have been much easier without these payments up until now. The 3 year hiatus gave me the opportunity to get ahead in so many things, including being positioned to buy a house a year and a half ago after a small bit of help from my (now ex) wife’s rich aunt/uncle. The gift wasn’t enough, but it got us over the hump after we were able to save all that money we were putting into the student loans.
Why tf did you take out a 60k loan on a career that won’t be able to pay it back? I paid cash for college by going to a cheap community college part-time while working full-time and now I’m making 6 figures with no debt. It’s not rocket science.
They never said it wouldn’t pay it back. But 60k is a lot, and it’s going to take many years. We don’t know their financial situation, and it may have changed recently. The job market for some people is pretty volatile right now. If they are a software developer right out of college, now is a terrible time. They would be fighting for jobs alongside laid off veterans who will work for less than usual. They’re fucked.
Someone gave me double that amount when I was 17 because I had a co-signer (my death-bed grandmother). That’s really the problem. Education costs too much and I was told, “if you don’t go to college, you won’t get a good job, and you’ll be poor all your life,” by every teacher, guidance counselor, TV show, and random person on the street. I wasn’t old enough to make decisions like that.
same. i only left college with about 8.5k in debt, but i want to see more people not saddled with paying fees and actually put the money into the market instead of into someones. wallets which will likely just sit there being unused because some sycophant wants more of it.
I qualify! While my loans aren’t as burdensome as they are for many other people this will be a big help to my small family.
Here’s hoping this program continues to evolve and expand. While this is just a band-aid on a broken education system that’s pretty much all we do around here anymore.
I love education and think people should have access to it without qualification or question. Even if they just want to study underwater basket weaving.
But in a world where people have to take out actual loans to get those degrees, the loans probably shouldn't be going out to degrees that do not fairly guarantee ROI for the person receiving them. Still kind of feels like usury to me.
Probably more of a problem with wage stagnation and society-at-large than with any particulars about the degree though.
Even degrees that are more likely to get you a job won’t guarantee you a job in that field or a job in that field that doesn’t pay enough and you could easily be laid off and unemployed for an extended period of time.
For sure, there's always risk involved. But I get a smell from it based on the fact that the risk is essentially entirely on the student, which means there's an incentive to give out the loans without judging the "business plan", so to speak.
Doesn't happen with business loans. Give out a bad loan to a business and the bank just loses the money when inevitable bankruptcy arrives.
I went to (literal) clown school. Red nose and everything.
I learned so many transferable skills. I’m an excellent public speaker and writer, I can communicate complex ideas in simple and entertaining bite-sized presentations. I had to learn how to market and sell my small touring comedy troupe and in doing so had to make marketing and advertising work on a budget. I planned travel itineraries, I filled out risk assessments, I fire-proofed storage facilities, I handled people who were incompetent, I helped under performing people get better, I handled psychotic meltdowns and screaming tantrums from divas.
if I’d actually gone to business school I would be a lot worse at doing business.
The value of a degree isn’t “does the name of the degree reflect trends in what Forbes writers jerk off to” but “what skills are transferable.”
If you can underwater basket weave I’d bet you’re one hell of an expert in safety protocol, materials procurement, design and application of product, self-management, communication under pressure and you’ve created a niche product with a unique sell prop with a story based marketing campaign.
I’d take that over “what are the 4/5/7/9/11/15 P’s of marketing” any day.
Any amount of assistance is a good thing but doesn’t this seem like a pretty low impact program? I graduated from college 10 years ago and at the time I was in school $12,000 was maybe one year of tuition and book fees. I went to both a community college and an in-state public university. I imagine most people who took out loans and finished their degree borrowed more than that over 4 years. If I’m reading this announcement correctly that means most people don’t qualify for assistance and those that do are either those who had some outside financial assistance or those who never finished their degree. I think we can do better than that.
As long as Democrats keep trying and this isn’t a “we fixed everything forever now shut up” announcement, I’ll hold my peace on this. At least until they show the first sign of letting up.
Right. Use this as moving the line to the next step. If this much help is palatable to the ones who typically object to doing things for those in need, then maybe chipping away at something else will be too. It's better than trying to help most everyone and getting shot down.
And it totally sucks that we live in a world where we have to play that kind of game to get anything.
Next step: several states are making progress on free community college or even two years at public universities. Hopefully we can do something at the federal level too, so everyone can get two years of college debt free
Next step: several states are making progress on free community college or even two years at public universities.
In my experience, when something happens at the state level such as cannabis legalization, increased minimum wage, legal abortion, etc., we see a “got mine, fuck you” attitude from the Blue State Eloi that get the benefit toward the Red State Morlocks that don’t. Why would an Eloi State senator stick his neck out to get a benefit his constituents already have for some contemptible flyover Morlock? Advances for blue states make nationwide advances less likely, and nationwide advances are the only hope anyone in a red state has.
Gone are the days when we can do something like we did with gay marriage when the states can do the right thing and get the Supreme Court to equalize the right thing nationwide by applying the 14th Amendment.
Due to the SCOTUS ruling, any debt cancellations have to be pretty limited in scope to survive legal oversight. I honestly really respect Biden continuing to chip away at the issue where he still can instead of just giving up after the SCOTUS loss. It doesn't magically solve all problems for all people, but for the people affected, this is a massive help.
Due to the incorrect, illegitimate, political SCOTUS ruling.
Just feel a need to add that emphasis.
The SCOTUS's entire "major questions" principle is entirely unconstitutional. They do not have the right to selectively decide when laws do and don't apply based on their own subjective judgement on the effect of those laws.
Congress passed the HEROS act. It is and remains law. It gives the DoE full authority to modify or cancel student debts during a state of emergency, which we were in. There is absolutely no reasonable question that the Biden administration had the authority to do that cancellation that the SCOTUS ruled against. The SCOTUS was legislating their preferences from the bench. The legal backflips they did claiming the partial cancellation was neither a modification nor cancellation is absolutely absurd and shameful.
I used to think that as well: how does this help when it’s such a low amount. However that means it helps more people and it means proportionally more help who needed loans for even community college or public universities.
Those of us fortunate enough to have reason for larger loans to be manageable don’t get proportionally the same benefit but that’s only fair
Add comment