From the New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/13/opinion/haunted-by-student-debt-past-age-50.html?_r=1
I have a friend in her late 50s who is still paying her student loan debt. Her husband, age 65, has more than $200,00 in student loan debt and is not paying it off.
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Her husband, age 65, has more than $200,00 in student loan debt and is not paying it off.
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Your friend’s husband has $200k of student loan debt and has ignored it?
I don’t know all the details (it’s quite a painful subject for my friend), but it’s my understanding that he’s attempted to get out of paying it by claiming that he’s depressed. And it’s possible he’s succeeded.
I would be depressed if I was 65 and had $200,000 in student loan debt. 
This is why AUTO MERIT money is so important to me.
Wow, I think ANYONE would be depressed at age 65 with $200K or more in educational debt! That’s a pretty heavy burden that just grows and looms larger and larger.
According to my friend, her husband mainly thinks it’s “unfair” that there is any expectation that he pay his student loan debt. He quit his Ph.D. program just before getting his Ph.D. and then went to law school. He has worked as a lawyer off and on but has rarely worked even 40 hours per week. I think of it as a series of unfortunate choices.
UNFAIR! I think it’s unfair that we can’t put people like @rosered55 's friend’s husband in jail. How DARE someone take out $200K in student loans and spend the rest of their life trying to get out of paying it back. IMHO, he’s a common thief.
Debtor’s prison?
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her husband mainly thinks it’s “unfair” that there is any expectation that he pay his student loan debt.
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Lol…sounds entitled. How dare the lender want its money back! The nerve!
Its probably $1000 in loans and $199,000 in interest!
He’s definitely the kind of borrower (and person) who gives student loan debtors a bad name. His wife (my friend), in contrast, has been very responsible. She went to college and professional school (both public) in state and has been paying down her debt regularly. It would never occur to her to put more energy into finding a way not to pay than into working hard at her job. Her husband’s Ph.D. program was also at the state flagship but he went to a private law school in a city with a higher cost of living than around here. As I said, he made a lot of bad choices.
@alh -
No, not debtor’s prison but prison for fraud and theft of services. I would never be in favor of jailing people who legitimately couldn’t pay a debt, no matter how large, but it sounds like this man resolved early on not to pay his loans back.
I guess I feel strongly about this because I got in trouble with the Feds years ago about this issue. Unbeknownst to me, my parents provided my sister with my SSN and she used it to take out student loans, which she defaulted on. Meanwhile, I was regularly paying my real loans off. Then, I started getting letters about my unpaid loans. It took me two years to straighten out - basically, I had to prove that i had never attended school or lived in the city that I supposedly took the loans out in. I don’t know if my sister ever paid the loans off - I don’t deal with her on any level any more.
I think that the man in question should have his disability or whatever cut off or reduced and given to the student loan program if it’s federal. That money is supposed to be used for the next group of students coming up.
@techmom99 OMG your sister! I can’t even imagine going through this.
Not just the sister, but her parents! Seems they put all the burden on tech mom. Yikes
I didn’t take it as they knew what the sister was doing-- did they, @techmom99?
I’m 54 and still paying my law school debt. Almost done! But I’m not “haunted” by it. It’s kind of like a mortgage, just one of the monthly bills, and has been for 24 years (I was 30 when I graduated, worked a few years before going back to school). I didn’t have a whole lot of debt (about $50K), but the interest rates were high when i graduated and I only got them down a few years ago (until then, it was not possible to consolidate or refi loans that had already been consolidated once, without losing the “death forgiveness” of Federal student loans, and I wanted that for my family - probably would have been smarter just to get life insurance, but I was kind of dumb). I just spread it out over a long time to keep the payments manageable. Probably not the brightest choice, but I’ve had a good life and no complaints. Very fortunate that I had no debt from undergrad, a manageable amount from law school, and I’ve always been employed.
Seems like you only hear about the people who pay it off quickly (smart, I know), or are unemployed or under-employed and really struggling. But some of us just deal with it. It never stopped me from buying a house, having a child, taking vacations (not many or extravagant), or otherwise having a fine life.
I’m certainly going to encourage my son to pay his quicker than I did! And he will only have $27K, and the interest rates are not at 9% (what they were when I graduated), so I think he can.
I’ll still be paying my student loans in my early 50s. I consolidated and have a ridiculously low interest rate and a monthly payment of around $250. I have no interest whatsoever in paying it off early. The government will get my last payment on the last due date and not a day sooner. My money is better saved than paying off such a favorable loan.
The NYT always seems to want to place the burden of one person’s bad choices on someone else.