Part 2 - A Tale Of Caution: Student Loan Hell

“The trap had a ghastly perfection” ― Stephen King, The Gunslinger

Via quickmeme.com

b/c you can keep deferring your loans in college

Crisis Mode

I was looking at over 75,000 dollars in debt with repayments starting in November of 2011. I felt a cold sweat come over me as 1,000 thoughts ran through my head.

75,000? How could I owe that much? Maybe it's a mistake. I need a job. Why didn't I get better internships instead of working at summer camps? What if I can't pay? What if I don't get a good enough job?

I decided then and there to go to grad school at Rutgers. It was probably not a great idea to decide this while panicking, but it sounded rational. I mean, the economy only crashed a few years ago and the job market still sucked for incoming grads.

I latched onto grad school like a Titanic passenger latching onto a lifeboat. "It will work out," I told myself again.

I found myself at the same fafsa form that I completed four years before. I still remembered my pin and it had all my information still stored, as if it knew I was going to come crawling back.

Applying as a graduate student, I finally got government loans, some subsidized and some not. I didn't need to take out any private loans this time around.

Again, I ran headlong into my two year full-time program, which I just took out about 60,000 dollars for. This time, I know what I'm doing. I'm getting a business degree, with a concentration in actuarial sciences. I can make a ton of money by the time I get out of school.

Yes, this would work. It had to work.

In the meantime, while I was working part time and commuting to classes, all my existing loans were deferred while I attended school part time.

While I was not required to pay the loans, it meant the interest kept accruing on them and the expiration date to pay them (like 25 years) never gets extended.

So, I would owe more money, with less time to pay it.

What could go wrong?