Posted on 10/27/2012 6:50:47 PM PDT by SeekAndFind
Cyndee Marcoux already was stretched thin, thanks to the $80,000 in student loans she racked up after getting divorced and going back to school a decade ago. Her breaking point came in 2010, when her daughter defaulted on student-loan payments of her own.
That's because Ms. Marcoux, a 53-year-old library administrator in Seekonk, Mass., co-signed for about $55,000 of her daughter's loans. When the daughter was unable to keep making payments, Ms. Marcoux was on the hook—a burden that forced her to reshuffle her entire life. To scrape up the extra $550 a month she owed, she sold her house, then took a second job registering emergency-room patients on the weekend overnight shift. "You work your whole life and never pay a bill late," says Ms. Marcoux. "You don't ever think your kid isn't going to pay."
After years of facing all sorts of financial pressures they never expected, from adult kids moving back home to their own parents needing help to retire, empty nest parents are struggling with a new headache. Thinking it was only natural to want to help children and grandchildren, many co-signed student loans. Now, they're becoming the latest victims of the nation's mounting problem with student-loan debt, which surpassed the $1 trillion mark last year.
At a growing rate, young graduates who are either out of work or who didn't land high-paying jobs find themselves unable to pay their loans. When primary borrowers stop paying, co-signers are expected to pick up the tab—and soon find themselves fending off debt collectors. "People are confused about what it means to co-sign, and their ongoing obligation," says Deanne Loonin, director of the Student Loan Borrower Assistance Project at the National Consumer Law Center, a consumer-advocacy group in Boston. "When they come to understand that they are equally liable,
(Excerpt) Read more at online.wsj.com ...
So now that will be excuse to make the taxpayer pay these as well.
Needs subscription to WSJ to see it all.
Sounds like double plus unsmart for the parents who did this. It’s one thing to spring to cosign for a few thousand bucks of car loan that you could easily pay off, so a kid can hopefully get a credit rating going if all goes well. It’s another thing for these student loans and it really ought not to be easy at all to do it.
Who else?
She doesn't miss her loan payments, but said when she starts collecting Social Security, she won't be able to pay it but they will take it out of her SS check automatically. She wonders how she will manage to live then.
I am old and there was no such thing as a college loan when I went to college. My father bought stock in his company and when I started to college, that stock paid for my college. People either paid for their college right then as they went along year after year, or they didn't go.
The student loan “business” has become a sham designed to make debt slaves out of the maximum number of people.
Colleges charge outrageous amounts of money because they know thew government is going to step right up and “help” with easy money. There is no way for the average person to afford to pay for college. They take out loans. They have parent and grandparents co-sign the loans.
Student loans NEVER, EVER go away. They can not be discharged in bankruptcy. The US government will hound you until the day you die to collect - to even taking money from your social security checks.
Let’s see...Mom is a “library administrator.” We know who she and her daughter voted for.
Mom, being a innumerate Democrat, co-signs daughter’s loan.
Obama proceeds to destroy US economy per his handler’s instructions.
Daughter graduates, probably with a near-worthless degree and can’t find work.
Mom goes broke, contacts media, and wails her sob story.
The only thing missing in this real-life scenario is Obama forgiving all student loans in August or September 2012.
They can only take a maximum of 15% from a social security check. And you have to draw a check above a certain amount before they can deduct anything...not sure what that amount is though.
We need a surf class indebted to academia.
Don’t forget how colleges pressure young people to take out the loans in the first place - then pocket the money, and the student is left holding the debt and a worthless degree.
It really is a scam.
I remember a time when I was 5 or 6 years old that my dad was talking to another relative -- I still can remember my dad saying that if I wanted to go to college, I would need to work hard and earn scholarships.
I kept that with me the whole time I was in school (though my dad has since forgotten saying it). My parents were never overbearing about grades -- they expected me to do my best, and made it clear that they would always be content with my grades providing they reflected the best work I was able to do. I did well through high school, and was in turn able to get a full-tuition scholarship to a private Christian college.
My parents were content to pay my room and board, with the expectation that I would keep my grades up and would get a job on campus. Four years later, I graduated debt-free.
But it all began with the idea that if I wanted to go to college, I had to work for it -- and that if I didn't work for it, then it might not happen at all.
“Needs subscription to WSJ to see it all.”
Not usually. Try copying the headline into Google and hit the first two links. Usually one of them comes up with the full story - about 80% of the time for me, at least (including this article).
I’m with you! I didn’t go because my parents and myself could not pay for it. I refuse to pay for others college mishaps! I’ve put 1 child through with a second one in his 2nd year. Another wants to go next year, but we will have to see how that goes! She may have to wait a year!
That is crazy... what did she envision her ensuing career was going to be? While she may consider it a labor of love, that love won’t pay back this obscene thing.
It is going to blow up into a huge political stink, and liberals will find some way to make that happen during a conservative government.
Due to my fortunately living in the same city as a very competent engineering school, my father was able and willing to pay the relatively paltry in-state tuition. He did that for both my brother and I, and he earned good grades and I earned excellent grades.
Now my brother is doing the same for his kids, and it costs him over an order of magnitude more because the kids are attending an out of state school. I wondered why they couldn’t at least go to school in the same state.
As if those are two different sets of people.
I’m curious - why doesn’t the left go after Education the way they go after health-care and insurance companies? College costs have grown faster than health care costs, and more people are being broken by student loans than by health care expenses.
That would be to gore their sacred cow.
Because the universities are their mouthpieces.
Well, it’s a little group of taxpayers vs. a big one.
It ought to be very very hard to get one of these. Now some people just don’t plan wisely, and they may deserve the debacle they find themselves in, but that’s not the case for everybody who is trampled by this juggernaut that is even bankruptcy-proof. The only escape might be to leave America altogether for somewhere, like Singapore, which doesn’t extradite.
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