My Story, Part Two

With the exception of these loans, I have become somewhat financially sound. I paid off everything else I owed except my house. And I'm not flush with money by any means. I have never owned a new car and likely never will. I have no children. I work hard, but I can barely support myself and try when I can to save a little for emergencies. I have a much older home with a reasonable monthly payment and decades to go before it is paid off. I live in a rural area which requires a long commute to a town of any size and with little access to jobs. I got sick and even with health insurance I burned through a chunk of my 401k to cover the bills. I don't go out or to concerts. I don't eat expensive food except what is required by my special diet. I no longer even have pets as their upkeep was too costly. I have a belief system which doesn't support owning a lot of personal possessions, so I barely even own any furnishings. Most people couldn't live as I do and be happy, but I am, most of the time.

In attempting to advocate for myself, I sought out a bankruptcy attorney. She reinforced what I'd already discovered through my own research, that these loans are practically impossible to have dismissed and will not be relieved through bankruptcy. She offered me a little hope, thankfully. She told me of a foundation which may help and she gave me a script to read to the loan company. She said if this didn't help, to get back in touch. Bankruptcy would mean another expense, but the attorney would be able to help me delay payment and maybe get a more reasonable plan for repayment. As the loan company wanted twice my mortgage payment per month and wouldn't take a penny less, I was ready to try anything. (Wait, that isn't completely true. On the phone with one of their representatives, I was offered a more fair payment. It was five dollars less than the original payment demand.)

I took her advice and got back in contact with my loan company. It took several attempts and I did so via regular mail so I would have hard copy proof of what I was told and what information I gave them. I also did so in order to avoid the sometimes quite nasty agents I had to deal with each time I called. In the past, they had been nothing but friendly and helpful. This new company was not, or at least some of their personnel were not. The first responses to my mailings were to send me more deferment and forbearance paperwork. I filled them out again as I thought maybe they'd decided to give me an extension. When these were again (still) denied, I wrote to them and asked for someone to please pay attention to what I was saying, that more paperwork wouldn't help me. Finally someone read my letter and responded in a helpful manner.

The attorney told me to say: My attorney has advised me to offer you XX amount of money toward my loans as a monthly payment as this is all I can afford. If you do not accept, I will have to declare bankruptcy and because of my income, you will only be able to obtain that same amount from me once everything has settled. I hope you will save us both the bankruptcy expense and hassle and agree to accept this payment amount for a period of time.

They finally did listen. I'm still not exactly sure why my requests for postponement of payment were denied, as by every calculation I performed (and all the proof I sent them) I was well within the range they stated for subpar income, which should have enabled me to have the postponement. But ultimately, I was given another year without having to pay. I am about halfway through that period now.

I'm hopeful that a new program I heard about will take effect and I will be able to begin making affordable payments on the loan. The program is supposed to allow borrowers to repay based on income, with the balance of the debt to be dismissed in twenty years. I keep my fingers crossed that this will happen as the article stated.

For too long I have had this debt out there, looming, waiting to fall and crush me. It is on every credit report. It affects my score. It affected the purchase of my home. I couldn't control how it influenced my financial life; I could only control how I allowed it to affect me. I mainly dealt with it by pretending that it didn't exist. Much like my 401k balance which was suddenly halved this past fall when the markets collapsed, it was all figures on paper, not completely real. Maybe it was wrong of me to think of it that way, but when I could do nothing else about it, why should I have also beaten myself up regularly over it?

I thought I was doing what was expected of me by my family, my society. I educated myself and tried to go out and become a productive citizen. I had no idea that nearly two decades out of school I'd still be saddled with those loans and unable to pay. I had no idea how little advantage my degree would offer me. Not until I found myself time and again at jobs where I was working alongside people who didn't even make it out of high school, earning the same wage for the same work. I wonder now if I shouldn't have found a trade early on and worked at it instead of heading to college. Maybe I'd wonder at the dreams I surrendered (which I eventually traded for other dreams anyway), but maybe I'd be free of debt and have a more financially sound life.

I look around me and I see people who have money and I wonder what I've done so wrong, so differently from them. Some people could pay this debt in a year. There are people who *waste* that much money in a year on frivolous garbage. There are people who are foolish, mean, stupid, and lazy who see more money in a year than I may make over the course of the rest of my life. I had no inheritance, no family business, no assets to support me or to fall back on and I still don't. I'm a regular person who works hard to scrape by and provide for myself. A person who fears what will happen when I reach retirement age or if I get too sick to work. When I hear the crushing economic news about people who lost positions paying $80,000 a year or more, I feel better- a bit guilty for feeling that way, but better. Because I *wish* I could see $80,000 in a year. One year. I wish I could see half that, a third of that. I still have many working years left. It could happen, just like I could win the lottery. But what I have seen transpire thus far hasn't given me any reason to think things will change.

This year I actually considered returning to school. That is how desperate things seem. I cannot believe I thought about acquiring more debt, but I was interested in a specific job, teaching, and the pay available. I had hope that I could return to university for an accelerated program and be granted a license to teach in about half the time it would normally take. I found I would need an extensive number of extra classes in conjunction with the program and I don't feel comfortable investing another three years or more hoping I'll make it, building additional debt, trying at my age to juggle school and work while squeezing out any kind of life I can manage from the time remaining between the two.

That is my story.