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Student Loan Scams 1 - Sallie Mae, Part 1

Sallie Mae is the largest student credit company. We look at a 60 Minutes despatch on Sallie Mae and how Sallie Mae, with the help of government ...

End of Year One Recap

The calender year has coming to a close and I am inching closer to 30. I have decided to provide a brief update to parts of my list as well as some things that are coming up. So here is my progress report:

Visit the Grand Canyon or Yellowstone National Park – I have talked a lot about doing this trip but have made no preparations. I might bundle with a trip out to Vegas so I can get a friend or two on board. Attempt to donate blood – I am planning to do this and wanted to host a blood drive. That was stalled when the Red Cross refused to park the bus outside my house and I have not found another location to do it. Still hate the needles. Hike the Georgia, Tennessee and North Carolina portions of the Appalachian Trail – I have not started and do not see this happening soon. Time is a huge issue. Sky dive – Ready to go any time. Money is huge concern right now as other things have become more important. Anyone want to pay for me to go or sponsor me, I will go. Pay off accrued debt with parents – I tried to pay this back but my dad told me to save it right now for my new car. Turns out that might have been smart, my transmission is almost kaput. Pay off one of my three student loans – I hate Sallie Mae but am still steadily paying it down instead of absolving it. Learn to Snowboard – I completed it this year and there is video and pictures to prove it. I am actually going back this year to get a little better. Kill a deer – Thinking this is going to happen with may car. This year alone, I have come within inches of hitting 8 deer. I almost went car bowling for deer when 4 of them decided to block my lane at once. The ABS breaks were thoroughly tested. Have inquired several times about going hunting with friends that do. Timing is everything right now. Learn to fly fish – Watching “A River Runs Through It” does not count. Catching a fish is not necessary but a concerted effort is. So far I have done neither. Make a wood desk or furniture item from scratch – Every time I sit down at my elementary school sized desk in my office, I think of this one. Again, money is a semi issue. I might just deconstruct the desk and build a new top to make it taller and wider. Kind of nostalgic about the desk in general. Read the Bible all the way through again – Knocking this out slowly. I have read Genesis, Exodus and some of the minor prophets. Play a full 18-holes of golf – I have enough friends that play golf. I do not have left handed clubs or friends with enough patience to walk the course with me. Give a ride to a hitchhiker – Not as many hitchhikers out there as you would think. Every time I see one, I’m not driving. Return to UT for a football game – Fail. Scheduled trip this year canceled. Rock slide dissuaded a make up date. Grow facial hair for a month just to see what it looks like – It looked terrible. There are pictures to show you the patchy disaster. Get licensed in Counseling – So close. I believe it is a matter of paperwork now. Hope to mail it off by the end of January and then wait on the Board to approve me. Get BachelorBytes website started – This project will change and be reflected in a few weeks to “Get CharlotteCounselor.org finished.” One internet project at a time. Get weight below 200 pounds – Holding steady. Not getting heavier, not getting lighter. Attempt to get at least one invention to prototype stage – No progress. Need a great idea first. Just discovered Everyday Edisons which might help advance this. Visit either Wrigley Field or Fenway Park for a game – I will have to wait until at least next season but with a few friends up in Boston, I am cheap flight away from doing this. Ride on a motorcycle – This was a blast. I have video and pictures up. Stop chewing nails and cuticles – I have gotten much better on the nails. Attempt a back flip off the ground – Done in my mind. Now to actually attempt. What does 3:00 PM look like for you? What paramedics are on duty? Nah, I need to become slightly more agile first. Back to stretching. Learn to sew on a button and fix a seam – I re-taught myself to sew a button still no go on the seam. Run a 10K – I was actually training for a half marathon but was injured 2 months into training. I had only made it three miles. Back is still acting up but it was my shins that did me in. Registered for the Cooper River Bridge Run to force me to train. More on that in the next few days. Get a dog – Darn roommate and his allergies. Watch The American Film Institute’s entire top 100 List – I have watched about 65 of the 100 movies but have been slack on my reviews. was going to try and review in order but finding a copy of Yankee Doodle Dandy is holding me up. Sponsor a child through Compassion International – It is pathetic that I have not already done this. I am afraid of getting hit by finances that would force me to abandon a child. Work on a Habitat house – Spent a week in Eleuthera working on a house. Lots of video, pictures and stories on this site. Learn to play five full songs on the piano – I am cutting this down to three I think. Every time I start learning, I get sidetracked for a few days and then come back to have forgotten everything. XHTML: You can use these tags: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <pre> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <strike> <strong>

Source: 30 Things to Do Before Turning 30

walking into spiderwebs

American College Graduates by Age 24

Young People from High Income Families 48%

Young People from Low Income Families 7%

-2001 by The Educational Trust, Inc.

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Being from a family that made under ________ a year and about to start my last semester of my undergraduate career, it is plausible that come May I will be a part of that 7%. Now, this statistic is from the last  US Bureau of Census’  Educational Attainment Report, which was about nine years ago; however, from what I’ve read, discrepancies in educational attainment is only becoming more demarcated. For the fiscal year 2007, according to the “School District Financial Survey”, the New York City School District spent $16,443 per student, Philadelphia spent $8, 620, and the Davis County School District in Utah spent $5,580. The numbers are all over the place across the country, and as one would surmise, the wealthier areas of the country spent more per capita and the numbers get even more interesting when compared between certain districts. In a wealthy school district in NYC, where students score in the 95th percentile, $17,266 is spent per pupil per year, and in a lower income area, where students score in the 5th percentile, only $6, 806 dollars are spent. In Philadelphia, $13, 141 is spent in the wealthier areas, and $8,080 in lower income areas. This only measures public school, throw the top private and prep schools into the mix and the number gap widens. I am not convinced money makes quality education, but I do think the numbers highlight a problem.

Philadelphia

This week money has been very much an issue in the front of my mind–truthfully, it often is–with Sallie Mae’s new loan policy. For many years, Sallie Mae, which is a private company that provides federally guaranteed student loans, has been the first stop for students who can’t afford college. Their policy, like other private lenders, was that your loan repayments start six months after you graduate. This seems fair. Now, with the economic climate, things have changed, and this year, Sallie Mae replaced that method with the Smart Option Plan. The Smart Option Plan requires students to pay the interest of their loan while they are still in school. In addition, many student loan interest rates have skyrocketed from about 4.5-6% to 10-11%. What does that mean for students like me? Well, I am paying over one-hundred dollars a month this year for my loan interest and I will be paying 16,445.50 for my $10,565.01 loan.

I am elated that this change happened as I end my undergraduate career and sad to say the same isn’t true for brother, who is only a sophomore. What is very difficult about this plan is that he will need to pay the interest for his loans from this year until he graduates and in addition, when he takes out  loans for his junior and senior years, he will need to pay those interests on top of the previous years’ interests.  This means he will be paying over three-hundred dollars a month at the start of his senior year. This type of loan only makes it tougher for lower income students to have an equal education as their wealthier counterparts. For example, paid internships are very hard to come by and if you need to work, it can be very tough to fit an internship (which usually requires at least fifteen hours a week) into a schedule that includes at least sixteen credits and perhaps, twenty hours of a paid job. Furthermore, you have less time to devote to studying and less time to join clubs and sports.

Philadelphia

It is ridiculous that I attend NYU, but the truth is, I wanted it more than I ever wanted anything. At seventeen, I was smart, had done very well on my SAT (despite not having money for the best private classes and tutors), and I believed–and still do to some extend–that if you worked hard, you could succeed. I was also somewhat naïve and overly competitive. A part of me thought I deserved NYU because of how hard I had worked, but I now don’t feel the same way. With that said, I would never in a million lifetimes take back my decision to attend NYU.  What is funny is I thought the students in my high school were wealthy, but in reality, I hadn’t seen real wealth until I came to NYU. I’ve mentioned before that I was one of three on my freshman floor of forty that had a job my first year here. In later years and with the economic turmoil on everyone’s tongue, a lot more students at NYU have jobs. YET, there is still a huge difference between having a work-study job or regular job to pay for entertainment, going out, et cetera, and having a job so you can attend school. You either know what it is like or you don’t.

Philadelphia

I have a lot of guilt about my education, but I also appreciate it immensely. For starters, my parents have never been out of the country, they didn’t attend college, and I hassled them for years to pay for things like my science fair boards and supplies, my high school tuition, and even things like my braces. I always look at people’s teeth. At NYU, most everyone has very nice teeth. I didn’t have horrible teeth, but my front teeth protruded outward (buck teeth!), and I learned early on that most of the successful and educated people I saw in the city had nice straight teeth. Braces cost thousands of dollars. I begged. I pleaded. I got them, but my family sacrificed a lot for them. This would seem so silly to a lot of people I go to school with today, but it was the truth. In a lower to middle class neighborhood in Northeast Philadelphia, my family was definitely in the lower part, socioeconomically. I didn’t come into this world with any kind of cultural capital. My family was brassy. My dad and mom met when they were working at the same Philly bar in a sea of swashing drinks and cigarette smoke. My mom and  dad are good people, but we have less and less to talk about every time I go home.

The first house I lived in. The first place I lived was an apartment and after Oxford Ave. we moved to Alcott Street. There was a bar on one corner and a beer distributer on the other.

In my last semester of high school, I was required to go on a Kairos Christian retreat. This was right around the time I was shifting from agnostic to atheist, and I really didn’t have any interest in going. In a letter my mother wrote me (which was read aloud to all my school peers…gag!) she said, “You have always marched to the beat of a different drum from me and your dad, and while I have tried to keep up, I know I couldn’t, but I have tried.” My mother and I spent my high schools years screaming at one another. I think this is why I am so gentle now; I got all my screaming out of me early on.  She never worked. She was depressed. It was usually about money and I blamed everything on her. I used to be more selfish than I am now.  Even with my job, I couldn’t afford to do a lot of things I felt entitled to and that my classmates were doing. A big fight at the end of my senior year was about AP tests. Even with my part time job, at seventy or eights dollars a piece, they were way too expensive and I was in a bunch of AP classes.  The merit of them is that maybe I could have graduated a semester early, so I would have saved money in the long run, but my parents are very short term. At the same time, my parents  instilled in me a sense of what is important in life. They always put people first, over ambition, or money, or anything. They always believed in me, but they never had any expectations for me. I had very few rules growing up. From the time high school started, I was allowed out until whatever time I wanted, could throw parties, go to concerts on school nights, and I pretty much took care of myself.  My parents never worried about me because I did so well in school and they trusted me because they knew I was ambitious. I am glad they raised me this way, but I wonder how much of it had to do with my mother being inside her own head most of the time and my dad trying to take care of her. It was only when my neighborhood started getting more crime-ridden and  violent that they started to worry.

Where I live currently.

When they had money, they used it, sometimes in ways that didn’t make sense to me at the time. For instance,  when we had some extra money,  my dad bought my brother’s golf team new polo shirts, or a close friend of my mother’s was having a very hard time because her daughter was severely injured from an overdose, and my mom started taking care of the daughter’s child. When the woman went to pay her, my mother didn’t take the money. When I was younger and I saw my mom put the two fifties (or whatever it was) back in this woman’s hand week after week, I thought, Now, when I think about this, I think my mother did the right thing. That woman, money or no money, was worse off than we were, because money isn’t everything. Spending time everyday with a girl who is millionaire makes me understand this better. You see in how many ways money does not buy you happiness, as the adage goes, and most material goods are overrated.  I never want to spend my life praising the almighty dollar. You can make money a god too.

I think how much money you grew up with really plays a large part in how you perceive the world. A wealthy friend of mine says that you make it that way, but it doesn’t have to be that way. I like that idea too, but I don’t think he is necessarily correct. I think you can choose to let it affect you negatively by becoming bitter or being jealous, or you can you it as a propellor for looking into the issues of inequality and democracy in America, really. As I decide on graduate schools, money is a huge part of the equation. This is a large part of why I like Columbia and UPenn’s Higher Education programs because they are only one year (and they are in a city!). I don’t think this will be my last degree–I definitely want to get another Masters in English as soon as I can–so, I do not feel like I am taking the easy way out, but I really want to start working too. I don’t know how much of being the first person in my family to attend college has affected my experience here. I would say I love college, not just the academic side of it, but also the general atmosphere. The eagerness, the passion, and the community of everyone. I think being poor makes me have a little fire inside of me (AFI!), makes me a more empathetic person, and a better reader and writer; I wouldn’t change my background. I believe everyone has their own challenges to overcome and we all have so much to learn.

NYC

Source: Misconception of the Oyster