This month I reached a serious milestone. June 2019 is a month that I’ve been anticipating for quite a while.
Guess what the milestone was? Drum roll please..
My Student Loan Debt Is Killing Me
I got my student loan debt to under $10k! Now, that’s still a huge chunk of change, but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel! I’ll get my loans paid off in the next three to five years! Fingers crossed that I’m still employed during that time and the economy doesn’t crash, again. At the moment, however, my monthly student loan payments are killing me. I wish I could spend that money on having a normal life, but every month I have to abide by a strict budget just so I can make that payment.
These loans are from my Master’s degree. I already paid off over $23k in debt for my undergraduate studies, which I did within ten years of finishing my Bachelor’s degree. Not everyone can do that, however, because of their life circumstances. Once my undergrad loans were paid off, I cast off the chains of student loan debt for a brief moment and then WENT BACK TO SCHOOL AGAIN.
Don’t get me wrong, it’s an incredible privilege to get a Master’s degree. I even earned a nice, big scholarship to help with the costs of pursuing my degree, but I still managed to go over $20k in debt for grad school. And that’s not so bad compared to the average graduate school debt of $50k and up.
Even though I’m *CLOSE* to paying off my student loans, I still believe that student loan debt should be canceled for everyone else. Nationally, student loan debt tops $1.4 trillion. Americans owe more in student loans than in credit card debt and car loans. That means people can’t buy houses and cars because they have too much student loan debt.
One Million Virginians In Student Loan Debt
People shouldn’t have to go to the poorhouse while pursuing a higher education. More than one million Virginians have $39 billion in student debt. And a lot of them are dealing with sketchy loan servicers like Navient, which is being sued by attorneys general from three different states for harming student loan borrowers throughout the repayment process. Companies like Navient are eager to profit off student loan debt by lying to student loan borrowers about when their payments are due, not giving complete information about repayment options, and inventing loans that people have out of thin air.
Virginia can address this escalating crisis with student loan debt by passing commonsense legislation to help student loan borrowers. A Borrower’s Bill of Rights would require loan servicers like Navient to follow simple rules in order to protect consumers. Sign up to be a citizen co-sponsor of Virginia For All of Us to stay up-to-date on the work we’re doing to get a Borrowers’ Bill of Rights passed in Virginia!
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