My Student Loan Story, and Some Fun Facts to Put It All In Perspective

When I enrolled at Kansas State University in the fall of 1990, a semester’s tuition alone was under $800 (room and board, books, or other supplies not included). By the time I graduated in 1995, tuition alone was a little over $1,200 a semester. I borrowed about $19,397 to pay for my Bachelors degree. That’s what I started paying on in the summer of 1995. My monthly payments then were a little shy of $200, and I never defaulted.

In the spring of 1999, those loans were suspended when I entered graduate school at Naropa University. No interest was calculated during that time. In May 2001, I finished my Masters degree and entered repayment again on my loans in November 2001.

According to the Dept. of Education’s records, I borrowed $31,700 to pay for my Masters degree. Add that to my undergrad total, and I’d borrowed a grand total of $51,097.

In November of 2001, I consolidated my undergrad and grad school loans with my servicer, Sallie Mae (later Navient). My total balance, which included the first slug of interest, was $52,202.

From November 2001 to July 2013 I made regular payments, but used several months of economic hardship forbearances to put my loan payments on hold. During those twelve years, I spent nine months unemployed, plus I had to pay for medical bills out-of-pocket because my employers did not offer health insurance and the ACA wasn’t passed until 2010. My highest annual salary during those years was $25K.

By 2009, at the age of 38, I finally had a job that paid well enough (nearly $40K), and offered decent health insurance, so that I didn’t need to put my loans in forbearance again to get through an economic upheaval.

In 2013, I consolidated my loans with the Dept. of Education in order to get them out of Navient’s (formerly Sallie Mae) control and to take advantage of the lower interest rate the Dept. of Ed was offering (6%, which was a few points lower than Navient’s rate, which I don’t remember).

In July 2013, my consolidated loan balance was $81,108. $30,000 more than what I’d originally borrowed.

Since 2013, I’ve been in repayment and have never defaulted, and never used any of the voluntary economic hardship forbearance time available. During the first year of the pandemic in 2020, I continued to make my $500 a month payment despite the national emergency forbearance, but since 2021 I’ve been taking advantage of the national emergency forbearance.

So, all total, I’ve been in repayment for my undergrad loans for 26 of the last 28 years, and I’ve been in repayment for my grad school loans for 22 years.

Remember, I’ve NEVER DEFAULTED. According to my payment progress bar on the Dept. of Ed website, I’ve paid a total of $43,265 — or roughly over half of the total I consolidated in 2013. Remember, I borrowed a grand total of $51,097 for my two degrees. I’ve paid back $43,265, but because of interest, I still owe $68,495.

I’m $7,832 away from paying back what I originally borrowed. If I hadn’t been unemployed for 9 months in 2004, I could have paid about $4,500 more, reducing the difference to about $3,332. That $3K amounts to about 7 months of payments, which accounts for some of the other forbearance time I took between 2005 and 2013. If I’d been on an IDR plan since 2001, I’d have had my loans “forgiven” two years ago.

So, because I’ve passed 240 payments (twenty years) OR 300 payments (25 years if you count my time in repayment since 1995), I’m eligible for the IDR adjustment that the Dept. of Ed is using to cancel student loans for about 800,000 Americans, and reduce the remaining amount owed for thousands more.

This, of course, is pissing off a number of people who are ranting that this effort to cancel student loan debt isn’t fair to people who didn’t go to college. Their argument often involves some variation on the idea that “tax payers” shouldn’t be forced to pay for supposedly “reckless” education choices and poor financial decisions by those who went to college and didn’t get degrees for job that pay high salaries.

The truth is, that sentiment has always baffled me and the best way to explain it is a list:

1) We bail out the reckless financial decisions of banks all the time.

2) The majority of jobs that require bachelors degrees or masters degrees are not high paying jobs. The annual salary for a school counselor can be as low as $43K, or $20 an hour.

3) PPP loans were cancelled, often without anything ever being repaid. The government just wrote it off. That means the people who worked for PPP loan recipients (some with college degrees and student debt, but never got paid via those loans), paid off their boss’s loan.

4) I’m a tax payer, too. Going to college and taking out student loans didn’t excuse me from paying taxes just like everyone else, and often higher taxes than a lot of people who didn’t go to college.

5) Everyone’s taxes are pooled together and that money goes to pay for lots of government and social things we never take advantage of, nor approve of, like reckless military spending, propping up War-Mart’s substandard wages, bailing out Wall Street banks, or paying the salaries of useless state senators like Jerry Moran and that idiot Dr. Roger Marshall, or my House Rep, the repugnant jackass Ron Estes.

6) All the taxes I’ve paid in my adult life on my piddly annual income could surely cover the $7,832 that will be “forgiven” (say cancelled), by this IDR adjustment. Just move some numbers around in your mind. Take a little from that bloated military budget, or imagine that $7,832 will be recouped when Diane Feinstein or Mitch McConnell dies and we don’t have to pay their retirement salary.

7) Writing off debt doesn’t mean someone else has to start paying it, it means the government simply won’t collect it. It simply stops existing.

8) And yeah, medical debt should be cancelled, too.

9) And debt that you acquire in order to meet any requirements your employer place upon you should be forgiven as well. No one should go into debt to secure reliable transportation to a job, or acquire suitable clothing to wear at a job, in other words, no one will notice the cancellation of my $7 grand if we all get a $10K a year raise.

Here’s some other fun facts related to income, income taxes, and student loans:

K-State football coach Chris Klieman was paid a $3.7 million base salary in 2022, which translates to $1,778 an hour, or $14,000 a day. I’m basically getting half a day (4 hours) of Klieman’s pay “forgiven” by the IDR plan adjustment. Klieman gets paid $71,154 a WEEK, which is $1,000 more than my annual salary.

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, who’s gotten bailed out by our tax money at least twice since 2008, is paid an annual salary $34.5 million, which translates to an hourly wage of $16,586. I’m being “forgiven” what Jamie Dimon gets paid to take a half-hour shit while he’s in his executive bathroom. In one day, Jamie Dimon is paid $132,692, which translates to about two months less than my total salary over 2 years — and I’m sure I spend way, way more time in the office than he does.

So, $7,832 is hardly anything to get worked up about for those paying taxes on their annual salary that amounts to one-third ($44K) or one-fourth ($33K) of what Dimon makes pretending to work remotely on a Monday from his mansion.