OP knows his parents won’t be contributing to college. He came here looking for ideas on how to pay himself. It doesn’t help to brow beat people after they’ve already made a mistake. OP is probably only 19 or 20 and dealing with a worse family crisis than paying for school. I wish him luck.
You are in a tough situation I wish you and your family the best in these trying times.
I also am of the option that less loans now will be better in the long run. FWIW
Not judging. Not at all. I’m sorry that you are in this situation. I really am.
Here is what I see (objectively, not judging).
You have unsustainable debt. Whether it was a mistake or not is irrelevant. The past is the past. Can’t change a thing. You must look to the future. You are young and you definitely have a future. You have options.
When you are 24, you will qualify for financial aid on your own. That’s not forever.
In the meantime, you need to work and earn money. You need to find a job with upside where you can learn a business, move up, and get paid accordingly. Be really good at your job. Take on responsibility. Make yourself valuable. Learn skills. If your employer doesn’t reward them, these skills would be worthwhile to someone else. This is an adult approach to life.
You have to do the math and see if it makes sense to stay in school in some capacity part time to keep your loans at bay. It may or may not. It probably doesn’t. You don’t currently have a realistic way to continue on your current trajectory because the field that you are going for is not sufficiently lucrative to allow you to pay back the money that you will have to borrow to finish. You need to put it on hold and think about how you can earn money now. It’s not forever. Don’t give up your dreams. Just take a break and deal with a very difficult situation. Breathe. Cry. I am truly sorry. But it’s not forever. Pick yourself up and build a life.
What kind of work do you do now?
hey frayed…just wanted to send encouragement your way. i hear from friends in MD that UMBC is an awesome school. I think that you are going to make it, either there, CC, or at Towson. Deferring for a semester or a year could take some of the pressure off-- even with loan repayment looming-- and lots of people make it back and get to the degree. i believe you are one of them.
Maybe consider working at a place which supports schooling for employees. KOHLS and Starbucks for instance
There is a lot of things to process, so glad OP can reflect a bit, follow up on options, etc. Some people posting on this thread have some ideas based on experiences with some of the schools.
Glad the OOS voting has been corrected to in-state.
Most of the people on this thread do want to be of help. I think the theme is ‘you are where you are, so all you can change is today and the future’. It is a growing up thing to address problems and try to face the best solutions (and some adults even have difficulty with this).
You don’t have to give up your dreams, just have to make adjustments.
The student knows that his parents can’t help next year, but frankly, the student really can’t depend on his parents for assistance for the rest of his/her academic career. The sister’s costs for this next year will likely obligate the parents’ money for awhile, not to mention who knows if any add’l treatments will be needed.
That is why the student needs to determine the best way to:
Get remaining Gen Ed and 100/200 level courses at a nearby CC.
See if there’s a univ that he can later commute to from home to get the BA degree.
If you need to go into repayment on your loans, talk to your lender about forebearance. It might help you get through although interest would still accrue.
This is the kiss of death. Way to easy to get lulled into a false sense of security . . . while interest continues to accrue at a monumental rate! Taking advantage of forbearance time is what causes student loans to double, triple, quadruple . . . don’t do it!
Forbearance sure beats defaulting which comes with all kinds of collection fees and credit reporting. OP needs to build a life. It doesn’t happen overnight. Forbearance might make sense until he/she gets going on a reasonable trajectory. It’s at least worth knowing about the option.
Most of these loans are accruing interest right now anyway. Only the Stafford subsidized are in a ‘good’ place right now with the government paying the interest that is accruing. He might have $7000 in subsidized loans, but that’s nothing if he’s already borrowed $55k
I dont’ think there is forbearance on those private loans.
Hi, all. I wanted to update you all since I haven’t responded in a while. I haven’t really heard anything back from the FA offices, although I have been trying to get in touch with them. I went to UMBC today, and I think I have decided that I will be going there. My preliminary financial aid package offers a $5500 unsubsidized loan. Like I said, I still need to have further conversations with the FA office.
I’ve been going through all of your responses and making determinations about them. I think the best options for me are the ones that allow me to still attend school at least part time while continuing my degree. I have to talk to counselors at the CC and UMBC to see if doing the AA first would help me at all. I’m actually pretty close to completing the gen ed AA at the CC. I looked at the transfer agreements, and there is one that goes from gen ed AA to psych BA, but I’m not sure how flexible the program is.
I’m not too keen about being able to get housing on campus, so I’ll most likely be commuting, which makes my immediate costs (tuition and fees) $10876. If they allow me to keep the unsub loan, then my out of pocket costs are $5376. If I work really hard this summer, I can probably manage. I know continuing to gain debt isn’t the best option, but the alternatives are less viable – either wait to go back to school and start paying on the loans (I can’t afford that) or somehow come up with $11k during the summer (very unlikely and not a reliable plan since I work in retail). But we’ll see what kinds of advice/options the schools can give me.
When you speak with the FA office at UMBC, ask if you’d be eligible for work study - that would help!
And don’t forget about the cost of commuting. You don’t want to end up short on funds because you forgot to add that into your calculations.
Good luck!!!
so glad to hear you are making some plans. keep communicating with UMBC and let them know how they can help to make it happen. if you need to take off college, you can consider that question again at the end of any semester.
Again, I’m sorry, but I just don’t see how your math works or why you can’t afford to make payments on your loan.
A 20 year repayment of $65K at 6.8% comes to $496/month. That’s almost $6000 per year.
In forbearance or non-repayment, the interest alone accumulates at $4420 per year (again assuming 6.8%). You would be borrowing new money at $5500 per year. That’s a total of $9920 additional debt burden over the next year! A year from now, you will be $74,920 in debt. To repay that over 20 years costs $572 per month. If you finish your BA two years from now, you will be $85,515K in debt and your 20 year repayment will be $656 per month.
You say that you can earn $5376 over 3 months in the summer in a retail job that you have. Excellent. That’s $1792 per month. If you earned that for 12 month that would be $21,504. Now lets assume that you can live at home, eat and do whatever you do now, at your parents expense. Your taxes would be small. Let’s say that you would keep about $18,000 of that. Apply it all to your loan at $1500 per month, and at the end of a year, you will only owe $47368 and be a year closer to applying for financial aid. You will also be a lot more experienced in retail and can probably earn some raises.
At this rate of payment, the debt vanishes after 43 months. By the time you are 24, your debt burden will be manageable or gone and you will qualify for financial aid.
Seriously, the problem that you face is that the accruing interest on your loan is a very significant fraction of your cost for college. It’s currently roughly $4400 per year. Unless you plan to live with your parents until well into your 30s, I just don’t see how your plan gets you to a place where you will be happy.
If you live at home now, while it’s not too socially unacceptable for you to do so, work full-time and put all of your earnings into your loan, you will be creating a more manageable situation that would allow you to pursue your rewarding but low paying career eventually.
When I say work really hard, I mean get a second job plus maybe another job on top of the one I have. I’ll probably have to work at least 60-70 hours a week. Even if my boss gave me the full 20 hours I expect as a PT employee, and I worked 52 weeks out of the year, my yearly wages wouldn’t even hit $9k. Most places around here don’t hire full time employees or pay more than the county minimum wage ($8.10/hr), and if you want to get out of retail/food service, you really need a degree or specialized training. I understand what you are saying, but there are just way too many variables at play. What’s going to happen in the four years I have to wait to be eligible for aid? How long will my parents let me keep living here? What if I never go back to school because I’m too busy working and can’t juggle the two? What if they won’t take my credits after 4 years and I have to start all over?
I won’t be making any final decisions until I am able to speak with my financial aid counselor. I still can’t get in touch with him via phone, so I sent him an email. I hope he responds tomorrow. If nothing happens, then I will consider deferring enrollment.
Also: People keep stating that I’m going to have a low paying career. The field I want to go into actually requires me to understand neuroscience (masters degree potential) and psychology (2nd undergrad major potential), so I will have degrees that give me a lot more options than just music.
Don’t do that! If you can’t reach him, then go over his head (all the way up to the director of financial aid, if necessary!) until you are able to get the answers you need. Your plan is a good one . . . hang in there! 
OP be sure to plan for a reasonable schedule - so you can do well in the classes you take and to stay healthy.
Try to talk to advisor and departmental people on degree plan if they don’t have a course outline with degree works, and make sure every class will count.
Glad you are finding more cost-friendly choices.
Again, I’m sorry for your situation.
Get two 20 hour per week jobs. You can stay on your parents health insurance until you are 26.
You will owe less money and won’t be compounding your problems with huge debt service. Even next year, your loan will accumulate $4400 if you don’t make any payments.
You’d better ask them because you are going to be living there A LOT longer if you follow through with your plan because you will owe so much money that living indoors on your income will be prohibitive. Student loans are rarely dischargable in bankruptcy.
It might happen, but you will still be better off or you might find something else that you’d rather do.
Ask them.
http://majoringinmusic.com/music-cognition-career-path/
Which one of these careers provides enough money to pay back your loans while simultaneously living indoors and eating daily?