[internisus]

I think I've probably made this thread before, but I need to do it again. I'm pretty lousy with money in the long-term sense of planning out how to manage expenses and debts. I don't even seem capable of researching and understanding my relevant options. Currently, I do not have a place of my own, so my monthly expenses include only my cell phone bill, a $100 payment to a debt collector for a years-old insurance-disputed medical bill, and my student loan payments. Plus whatever groceries, etc. I have never had a credit card.

I "paid" for college entirely by myself, and I have something like $25k federal and $80k private loan debt. I had a problem with my private debtor being totally unreasonable, asked to whom I should send a letter, and sent that letter twice with no reply. A phone rep told me that my letter was received and my case being considered. Soon after, I was contacted by a debt collector. So the entirety of my private student debt is with a collector now. My credit fucking sucks, and my dad, as cosigner, took a hit that's been hurting him with regard to his mortgaging capabilities and such. It's quite a bad situation.

Anyway, the bills I have for student loans together come to like $1050 per month. This is the chief reason why I have failed so far, at nearly 25 years old, to not live with my parents. These loans are unconsolidated. I don't even know if I can consolidate the private stuff that's with the debt collector now, but in any case all I've found when I've gone looking to consolidate are interest rates and payment plans that fail to reduce my monthly payments.

So I'd to get some perspective. A lot of you do or have gone to school, and, if you don't mind sharing, I'd like to know how much of the burden you are or have been personally responsible for and how you have handled that. If anyone knows a lot about how to manage this stuff or has any other advice for me, I'd sure appreciate it. I'm trying to get myself out of a 2.5 year-long rut, and I've never really known what I'm doing in this area.

If it's of interest, I'm working (primarily) as a freelance proofreader. This month happens to be a very good month for me, and I'm bringing in $2400. The workflow is extremely unreliable, and this is around triple what I can expect most months as guaranteed. I'm working hard to find more work of this kind; it's a very good match for me, and I'll be great once I have enough work. I'd like to be making more than $3000 per month as a minimum, and I don't think that's unrealistic. Once I find the work to make that much, I won't really be that uncomfortable with my student loan situation anymore, but I'd still like to know how I can better manage it.

I don't mean for this thread to be only about me. I know not everyone is comfortable talking about these things, but, for those who are, I'm curious to hear about other people's financial situations and how they handle them, even if it doesn't help me in any way.

[internisus]

It's cool, man. I actually take a selfish comfort in hearing of someone else whose folks make so much money that financial aid is out of the question but who won't contribute a dime to education costs.

What kind of law are you going into and what do you plan to do with it down the road?

[internisus]

A judge! Are you going to be a district attorney along the way, do you think? That always looks exciting. I think it's cool that you plan to both prosecute and defend, and that makes sense for a judge's credentials. That's the limit of my ability to say anything about legal professions though. Anyway, it sounds like you'll have an interesting and important life.

[internisus]

It's not as clear-cut as that sarcastic political line. Financial need is determined very simply, based upon your family's income. They don't factor in your family's debts or cost of living. The reason why my dad didn't make the expected "family contribution" is because, although he makes like $90k/yr, the cost of living in New Jersey is extremely high and he has lots of debt that eats into his income. Plus my family had a lot of medical expenses during that period. So FAFSA and my school determined that I was ineligible for financial aid because my father has a sizable income, but I didn't have anything going into school with which to pay. While I was coming from a place where I had a roof over my head provided for me and obviously didn't live below the poverty line, those facts had no relation to my actual financial need in attending college.

[internisus]

I'm forced to acknowledge that my selection of college (ignoring outright cheap public institutions) was based on the same thought-process as that which led me to college in the first place: the cultural and familial expectation that I should go to college and go to "the right college for me." If I had had the perspective then that I do now, I might not have gone to college at all. Due to the subsequent debt and the uselessness of my degree in getting jobs, I often feel regret that I did, but at the same time I value much of my time and education there. I was able to attend many small, highly participatory classes that made an important impression upon me.

This is largely my way of eschewing responsibility for the choices that led to my burden of debt, from one perspective, but it really is the truth. In any case, the road not taken doesn't really matter when it comes to planning a logistical future.

[internisus]

[internisus]

[internisus]

Yeah, it is. I'm kind of depressed about it because the slow pace and missing this deadline are canceling out my earlier feeling that I was doing alright and making decent money for the month. But it really is interesting--I think I'll actually buy this book at some point. It goes into detail about the history and relationship between all these different theories of how people learn to read, an incredibly complex process that involves parsing, decoding, meaning-making, etc. The theory stuff alone is just so interesting.

As an aside, maybe some here will be interested: in the past half-year, I've worked on at least four education books with contributed chapters by experts in education, psychology, economics, psychometrics, statistics, etc. Over and over, I've read different cases from different corners that all come down to: No Child Left Behind is a horrible, horrible thing because it wants to pretend that education is simple when it's really incredibly complex. In the area of reading comprehension, just for one, NCLB has brought us back to before the 1970s.