<p>From the Wall Street Journal on-line:</p>
<p>Yikes. A cautionary tale indeed.</p>
<p>The daughter of a friend of mine had racked up $150,000 in student loans by the time she graduated from law school. So this extreme case is not too hard to believe.</p>
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“Half”?? No - this is all her fault IMO. She’s the one who took out the loans, she’s the one who deferred payments, and she’s the one who failed to make payments so it ended up at a collection agency. I sure don’t want a doctor who doesn’t pay attention to details like this.</p>
<p>I sympathize with her predicament but I don’t think she had to look at fine prints to know what to expect. Her loan was $255,000 in 2003. She didn’t pay any of it back. Should it surprise her that the loan became about twice as big 8 years later? People say assets increase roughly about two fold every ten years. Unpaid loans will increase more, wouldn’t it?</p>
<p>Largely self inflicted. She belongs in politics more than in medicine.</p>
<p>Since she is a medical doctor, shouldn’t she be able to pay off her student loan debt pretty easily? I mean doctors shouldn’t really worry about student debt since they will make the money back. It is the students who have degrees in Film Studies and English that have a lot of debt that I’m worried about.</p>
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<p>I do feel sorry for anyone who has managed to mess up her life this badly. But, gee, the article says she also had credit card debt and that is why she couldn’t make the payments on the student debt.</p>
<p>There can’t be a lot of people like this out there. </p>
<p>Right?</p>
<p>What an idiot. Shows how dumb Americans can be at times…</p>
<p>Here ya go. Prepare to be surprised. <a href=“https://www.aamc.org/download/152968/data/10debtfactcard.pdf[/url]”>https://www.aamc.org/download/152968/data/10debtfactcard.pdf</a> Or, as the parent of med student at a private med school, should I say “horrified”? ;)</p>
<p>Yes, part of this is her fault, but a $50K plus fee for going into collections? That’s obscene. She should pay the money, and the interest, and reasonable late fees.</p>
<p>Actually upon reading the article closer, $555,000 in loans is too much even for a doctor. Never mind what I said in post 7.</p>
<p>^^^chaos, the major point of the article is not that she had a half million in loans, because she did not have that much. She had $250K. Then she proceeded to ignore payment schedules, deferred, defaulted and pretty much acted as if they would go away if she just closed her eyes real tight. Compounding interest, penalties and fees have caused the initial loan amounts to double.</p>
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<p>I’d say that too. But, actually someone else set her up, just like the easy mortgage loans 5-6 years ago. I’d call it overconfident about our own future. Well, that’s the American way, we are to raise the debt ceiling soon.</p>
<p>"Or, as the parent of med student at a private med school, should I say “horrified”? "</p>
<p>– Ah but your smart med student had a smart dad and will come out of her private med school in excellent financial shape. Cheers to Curm.</p>
<p>I wish I was surprised, but I am not. I regularly talk to students who insist they have never been told about interest, repayment, etc … even though they did entrance counseling in order to borrow the loans in the first place. They do not know how much they owe (scary, since they should be making sure the loans attributed to them in the government database are correct). They don’t know what repayment will be. They ignore requests for repayment when they have been out of school or less than half time for more than 6 months. They don’t realize that they owe more than one lender (pre-DL). They move & don’t update their address. Etc, etc, etc. </p>
<p>What part of "borrow"do people not understand? Borrowing implies that one will have to repay the money. There are rules associated with borrowing … repayment rules. These include the fact that a certain amount is expected monthly, on time. They include the fact that there is interest associated with borrowing the money.</p>
<p>The internet is a tool so many young people use daily. It is as useful for understanding loans as it is for updating friends about your amazing Friday night. </p>
<p>I do exit counseling for graduating students. Most barely pay attention to what I am saying. It is really sad.</p>
<p>[National</a> Student Loan Data System for Students](<a href=“http://www.nslds.ed.gov%5DNational”>http://www.nslds.ed.gov).</p>
<p>If you are a student who has ever borrowed a federal loan, please visit this website.</p>
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<p>Re: post 12…read the article again. You missed the important points in it.</p>
<p>Kelsmom, we live in a crazy world. Kids this age may not be able to handle money issues. Does you office allow kids to bring parents to these meetings?</p>
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<p>$50K to collect $550K is about 10%. It doesn’t seem too outrageous. This “kid” was in the late 20s or almost 30 years old when she decided to defer any payment on $255K debt. When do we get to hold our kids accountable?</p>