Dalhousie student paying back debt, penny by penny
We’ve all heard that old adage: a penny saved is a penny earned.
For Dalhousie University student Sherry Benteau, this has never been truer, albeit with a little tweak in the wording: a penny saved is a penny closer to ridding herself of student debt.
In a feature published in Metro News Vancouver , Benteau, who works part-time at the Second Cup coffee shop in downtown Halifax, recounts getting the idea from something she saw on TV.
The premise: if all the pennies in Canada were collected, there would be enough money to pay off the national deficit.
Why not her student debt?
Thus, the goal of erasing her loans, penny by penny, was born.
Since beginning her collection in May, Benteau has received $300 worth of pennies—or 30,000 pieces—from friends, co-workers and customers at the coffee shop. That’s still a long way to go before she reaches her goal of raising 10 million pennies to pay off her $100,000 debt, but she remains optimistic about her crusade, considering it a challenge instead of charity.
Benteau holds a sociology degree (honours) as well as an English minor from Dalhousie, and is working on finishing a geology degree within the year. Because student loan repayment in Canada begins almost immediately after graduation, her status as a part-time student obligates her to make monthly payments of $1,000 towards her loan, an amount much larger than what she earns from her part-time job.
Last January, the Canadian Federation of Students (CFS) reported that student debt had reached a record-high $13 billion —the largest in Canadian history—not including the approximately $5 billion more in provincial student loans and personal debt from credit cards, credit lines, bank loans, and family loans.
In addition, about 360,000 students took out loans from the federal government’s Canada Student Loans Program this year to pay for tuition increases imposed by cash-strapped universities, which have been hit hard by cuts to post-secondary education funding.
The CFS estimates that the average student graduates college with about $25,000 to $28,000 in total debt.
Source: LAUNCH