When you think student loans you think the poor college kid, right? Well, a shocking number of seniors, not college seniors but people like 65 and older, are still paying off their student loans from the 1970's. CRAZY. This article tells the story of a few seniors who have accumulated student loans and have never paid them off. For example, Janet Lee Dupree, 72, owes $16,000 and Rosemary Anderson, (57 owes $128,000) . The department of education said it's, "Committed to working with older borrowers to help them understand and manage debt". Some stats from the article:
Being a future college student this worries me. I plan to avoid student loans as much as I can, but that would be in a perfect world. If I do have to take out a loan it would be small and manageable. Any kind of loans scares me though, I hate spending money. Anderson said, "Retirement is not part of my vocabulary," and, "I will never live long enough to pay off my loan." This scares me more than anything. Working till you are 80 sounds awful. I just wonder what happens to the organization she borrowed from when she doesn't pay off the rest of the loan? I guess they have already made up some of the money they gave her. I just think that this is a scary reality and as long as they are paid off quickly student loans are a tool.
• Outstanding student loan debt in the US amounts to $1tr
• 3% of households headed by individuals 65 or over carry student debt (706,000 households)
• 24% of households headed by individuals 64 or under carry student debt (22 million households)
• The outstanding federal debt for older adults grew from $2.8bn in 2005 to $18.2bn in 2013
• 27% of federal student loans held by individuals aged 65 to 74 are in default, compared to 12% of loans to people between the ages of 25 and 49
Being a future college student this worries me. I plan to avoid student loans as much as I can, but that would be in a perfect world. If I do have to take out a loan it would be small and manageable. Any kind of loans scares me though, I hate spending money. Anderson said, "Retirement is not part of my vocabulary," and, "I will never live long enough to pay off my loan." This scares me more than anything. Working till you are 80 sounds awful. I just wonder what happens to the organization she borrowed from when she doesn't pay off the rest of the loan? I guess they have already made up some of the money they gave her. I just think that this is a scary reality and as long as they are paid off quickly student loans are a tool. 
I agree. Paying student loans into old age would be horrible! I can't imagine not being able to retire. I wish our state-funded colleges could be like the free ones in countries like Germany. But then that would mean the U.S. would have already turned to socialism, so...maybe not.
ReplyDeleteColleges are greedy. Maybe if tuition prices were capped, it would help. The money for research, development, and construction comes from donors primarily anyway. Tuition helps pay for stuff too, and helps with the professors' salaries, but it is excessively high. Student debts are damaging to the economy too, they keep people from spending as much money because they are paying off debt. In reality though, how will the nation progress in science, medicine, engineering, and technical expertise if school is so expensive it deters kids from pursuing these important professions? Socialized school would be great, if we could swing it, but it likely won't happen in today's United States.
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