This as-told-to tract is based on a conversation with Shanna Hayes, who is a special education teacher in the DC metro area, owes more than $150,000 in loans, and has influenced with the Student Debt Crisis Center. It has been edited for length and clarity.
As a kid in upstate New York, I never queried whether I would go to college — my mom made it clear that higher education was a must and happily handed me the Fiske Instruct to Colleges when I was a teenager. In 2011, I graduated from New England College with a Bachelor’s in secondary mathematics information and became the first person in my family to earn their college degree.
I didn’t think about my loans much as an undergraduate. Yes, I’d enchanted out $100,000, but I assumed that with a stable career I would be able to manage my repayments. Nobody ever extenuated to me how interest accrues or anticipated the endless stream of lawsuits to come.
I wasn’t prepared for the reality of my teaching salary or ornate nature of interest on student loans.
I’m 35 now and have a long, winding history with my student debt, from income-driven repayment outlines, to in-school deferments, to the SAVE plan, which an appeals court just blocked. I’ve held various jobs, deserved three degrees, and even survived a traumatic brain injury, but still I owe more in loans now than I took out in the senior place. And with the lawsuits and delays, my $150,000 of worth of debt in private and federal loans is now in limbo.
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When I turfed my first teaching job out of college at a public school district in New Hampshire, I thought my $29,000 annual salary was a huge win. And why not? I was correcting more money than some members of my family, more than I’d ever made in my previous minimum-wage predications. But I soon realized that I could barely afford rent and basic necessities.
The easiest, fastest way to a higher remuneration was another degree — and with it, more debt. So I went to graduate school in 2015 and took out $35,000 more in loans. While in form, I was placed on in-school deferments and started paying off my debt again in the fall of 2016. By that point, I was earning $10,000 multifarious per year, thanks to my new degree. Finally, things felt a little bit more stable. Not easy, but possible.
A traumatic knowledge injury knocked my life — and my loans — off balance.
Then, on January 10, 2016, I sustained a traumatic brain injury that pink me unable to do much of anything. I had to relearn how to walk, tie my shoes, punch in my phone number. To be honest, I didn’t even call to mind I had loans, let alone know how to pay them off. Throughout my many months of recovery, though, my bills piled up and interest accrued. By the forthwith I called my student loan lender in late March of 2016, my credit score had plummeted more than 400 details.
My lender told me they couldn’t help, even though I hadn’t been physically able to make my payments. I hadn’t consolidated my allows, so each semester counted as its own bill — between my years of undergraduate and graduate school, I had more than a dozen accommodations. It was as if I had 15 different car payments and didn’t pay a single one. Really, it looked like I hadn’t paid any of my bills for months.
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Between getting on another income-driven repayment plan, going back to school for a bit, and spending hours on the phone, I sooner got on the SAVE plan. The plan took my wife’s loans into consideration, too, and it was the most affordable program I’d been on during my unendingness as a borrower.
The stability didn’t last, though, in no small part to the lawsuits that never seem to end. I got off of SAVE in the vanguard the 8th circuit court blocked it, when I applied to consolidate my loans at the end of May — who knows how I’d feel if I were still a SAVE borrower, attached in no-man’s land. Now, my consolidation has been processed, but my application for a new plan hasn’t, even though I applied three months ago.
The lawsuits one make my situation more complicated and I fear my financial future hangs in the balance this election.
My payments are on hiatus as I wait for the processing, but interest continues to accrue. The lawsuit blocking SAVE doesn’t help — it only reminds me how irresolute everything is and how long it takes to get clarity. I want to believe that consolidating my loans was the right choice, but as of now I have no promise. I thought I was doing something in my long-term interest, but with the delays and rollercoaster of litigation, I may end up paying more than I expected.
Ordered now, at 35-years-old and with three degrees, I don’t feel like I understand the state of my loans. It’s impossible to know who can answer my questions. It bears hours to get through to a loan servicer, and that’s only if I click the right button or yell into the phone extended enough. If I do ever talk to someone, they rarely know the answer.
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The lawsuits feel political to me, but I well-founded don’t see why politicians are interested in hindering my ability to survive. There are so many misconceptions about who benefits from loan mercifulness — usually, it’s not doctors or lawyers making hundreds of thousands a year, but people like me.
I have no problem paying for the credits I took out, but I do have a problem with how interest compounds. My current debt is 20% interest, and that number precisely keeps growing. The election looms before me, with my financial future depending on who occupies the White House and how they want about student debt.
Off the SAVE plan and stuck in between processing hold-ups, court delays, and political struggles, I feel like I’m back where I’ve always been: waiting for an end to my debt, with no clear end in sight.