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How are people with tons of student loans getting by right now?
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Given how difficult it is to get hired right now, even for fully qualified people, I was curious what backup plans exist for truly desperate people who for some reason can't get a job that can keep up with rent/student loans/food, like military service or something.
How difficult is it to get a government job if you know Chinese/Arabic/Persian/Other language we need?
How difficult is it to get a decent officership/enlistment in the military that can keep up with one's student loans?
Is the job market really that shitty that you have to live in a tent to keep the student loan legbreakers at bay?
How available is any of this to someone disabled but still able to work? I know military enlistment is off the table to someone in a wheelchair, but what about some kind of government job?
I know this looks like a H/A thread, but given the complexity of this question and the sheer number of people in this position it looks like a D&D thread.
How difficult is it to get a government job if you know Chinese/Arabic/Persian/Other language we need?
How difficult is it to get a decent officership/enlistment in the military that can keep up with one's student loans?
Is the job market really that shitty that you have to live in a tent to keep the student loan legbreakers at bay?
How available is any of this to someone disabled but still able to work? I know military enlistment is off the table to someone in a wheelchair, but what about some kind of government job?
I know this looks like a H/A thread, but given the complexity of this question and the sheer number of people in this position it looks like a D&D thread.
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H/A : Help and Advice (things you want)
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Go post this on H/A. The folks there are quite helpful and knowledgable.
Edit: This goes into more detail on it.
I was more wondering what people in general are doing with their student load debt right now, what people have historically done with their load debt, how people with this kind of debt are getting by, that sort of thing. I still have a year left of college, and by the time I graduate circumstances will most certainly change too much for this thread to be relevant.
It does have something to do with me, but not me specifically, kind of like the health care thread (go read it, it's awesome, and it will make you hate our medical establishment with a passion).
Very interesting, and scary as hell.
*Looks at Visa bill* Oh man debt sucks. Well, hopefully all the babyboomers retire tomorrow causing a huge increase in jobs.
It's better than not deferring them and not paying them at least.
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I think I'm going to have to do the plan where your payments increase every two years. Hopefully in 8 years my earnings will be up.
Here's the scary part: I'm moving this weekend and don't have a job waiting for me, just some fly by the seat of my pants consulting work. Now the question is if I can defer my loans under the guise of unemployment even if I quit my job to move. At least the wife is working...
Spaceships are better than relationships
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The way it works here in Sweden is that we have CSN (Central Study-somethingsomething) that manages student loans.
There's a part that's a completely free grant, no payback needed, of about 1700 SEK (~218 dollars in a straight conversion), and then you can apply for loans on top of that. There's a limit on how long you can get student loans and a requirement on how much you need to study over two-week periods to get different percentages of the max loan size.
Currently all loans need to be paid back before the age of 65 (or was it 55?), but the yearly payback can't be more than 4% of your yearly income. There's some magic with interest too that I never really read up on.
CSN wants to change this so that loans are paid back in full within 20 years, period. I don't know whether that will go through or not or how/if the yearly limit will change.
edit: and currently you don't have to start paying until the year after you're done studying, no less than six(?) months.
Failed an Engineering degree half way through, transferred to a four year Industrial Design degree in Melbourne and received almost no credit for prior learning. 2 years of Eng at ANU at 4.5k a year, then four years at RMIT at 6k a year. So it's closer to 33k.
Currently $15k in debt, will be ~$20k in debt when I graduate this year. Once I start earning the above amount (which will probably be at the end of this year/beginning of the next) it's automatically taken out of my pay. If, for whatever reason, I don't get a job for a year or whatever I'm no worse off on that front.
To be fair, ALOT of jobs like seeing a college degree in their applicants, so it's not like art degrees are totally worthless.
Oh, and I just got my pay bumped up to 30 grand a year, which isn't great or anything, but considering it's entry level I'm really happy. I don't have to stress so much about my loan payments as I was a couple of weeks ago.
I have about 30,000 in undergrad debt, and I will be attending law school this fall, and will end up with approximately 70,000 in additional debt. My school just e-mailed me yesterday to see if I would be willing to defer my admission to next year (2010) and receive a 10,000 non-resident tuition scholarship, renewable for the next two years. It gets complicated because my school is one of the few schools that allows students to qualify for residency after one year, and if I can negotiate with the admissions director to extend my scholarship to my resident tuition, it would bring my total law school bill to $40,000, which is mighty, mighty tempting. If I can't get the scholarship extended to resident tuition, it would only bring my total bill down to $60,000, which I don't consider worthwhile in exchange for the extra year loss of income.
Opinions?
I just graduated this May from law school with about $130k in federal debt (stafford, grad plus.) And while I'm currently studying for the bar/trying to find a job I'm living off of a $15k private bar study loan. Funny thing is currently the interest rate on my bar study loan is less than any of my federal loans, but required a co-signor with excellent credit.
To say that I'm worried would be a vast understatement. After doing all the calculations I will need a minimum salary of $60k a year to make my payments and live in the exact same manner I am now (better than a college student, but not by much.) My minimum payments for all of the loans will be about $1200 a month and that's on a 30 year graduated plan. The worst part is that there are no foreseeable jobs in the market at all right now. I have six months before I have to start making payments. It really is a huge gamble right now, if I don't get a job that will allow me to at least make rent and minimum payments, I'm pretty much screwed.
The worst part again is the market. No firms are hiring attorneys right now. Even my friends who graduated in the top of the class don't have jobs yet. And the ones that do have jobs either had to take large deferred start dates or were forced to take the option of $50k to not work for a year and come back. However even in that case, since this is an employment at will state, the job is not guaranteed to be there in a year.
Right now the prospect of going to lawschool/starting as an attorney is incredibly frightening due to the potential for a hugely ruinous financial outcome.
Thanks for the notes. Yeah, I have heard about the sketchiness in the legal market for a while, and I have already been taking steps to maximize my marketability post-grad. Because of my education (I was going to be a pharmacist) I am eligible for the patent bar, which I know is a plus in my favor. Also my school offers an MBA/JD joint program (4 years instead of the usual 3) which I am also thinking about going into, just because it probably wouldn't hurt.
Plus it was only from 6-9 at night (or usually 7 in my case) Monday-Thursday so there was plenty of time to work part time and apply for other jobs during the day.
Unlike most socialist countries, the United States encourages people to get useful jobs that generate income and actually make the country wealthier. Playing "artist" or "actor" is quaint and amusing for those fresh out of college but we insist those people get their shit together by the time they are 30 and go get a real job, pay their bills and stop being a fucking leech.
Sometimes those people do just that. Other times those people whine about how they don't make enough money and decide the best way to get around this is not to get a job but rather to lobby political resources to steal it from productive people.
:winky:
Ok fine the post was intentionally incendiary.
For the record my degree was in.... English Literature! I opted to not go to law school and not become a teacher. This renders my major essentially worthless from a professional standpoint. I ended up going back to school to get a cert that was professionally relevant.
Yeah I don't think art degrees are devoid of value. But I have witnessed art majors get out of school and do little productive with their degrees. Go be a curator or something, or write a blog about art, or teach, or continue higher education relevant to your field of study. Those are all viable things to do with an art degree aside from actually making art. For the 1 in a million who strikes it rich as an actual artist? Fantastic. For the other 999,999 who don't? Please get a real job and stop flailing around the circuit making no money at the age of 35.
I pray I get this job I just applied for.
Arch,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_goGR39m2k
The market for regional/urban planners and development officers seems to be alright and will be steady into the future so I'm hope this all works out.
QEDMF xbl: PantsB G+