While I often extol the virtues of such things as socialized basic medical coverage, there are some things that capitalism does infinitely better. One of those things is student loans.
Jeremy and I have two American student loans, and three Canadian student loans. I am in the process of trying to organize all of these loans and get the payments caught up so that our credit ratings don't die a horrible, painful death. Yesterday, I drew up a little chart of all our loans and interest rates and monthly payments (well, most of them, my Canadian lines of credit have yet to be figured in). Jeremy's subsidized US loan has fixed rate at 4.25%. But my Canadian student loan, the one that is government sponsored and subsidized, has a variable rate that is currently at 8.0%! That loan ALONE is costing me $6 A DAY in interest! (Not to mention the fact that a Canadian dollar now costs me $0.88 US, when it used to cost me $0.66, so I am spending almost an extra quarter on every Canadian dollar I buy.)
It's frustrating to sit down and calculate how much my education has set us back. For all of my frugal living and more-with-less cooking and thrift store shopping, I am spending the equivalent of eating a meal out every day just on the interest on my student loans. I'm starting to think that going to law school was the most irresponsible thing I have ever done with my life.
5 comments:
I concurr. Each time that I think about my student loans, I think that going to Houghton was the most irresponsible thing of my life. It would have made more sense to go to the University at Buffalo and commute from home for two years and then transfer...i'm sure that I could have saved ten thousand dollars, at least. Unfortunately, rebellious teenagers don't think that far ahead.
oops, that last comment was from me.
~Marlene
jule ann you can apply for interest relief on your canadian student loans, which means the gov't pays the interest on your behalf for six months as long as you fall into a certain income bracket...don't know if this will help
Lisa:
Thanks for the suggestion. The main reason we are in such a mess now is that we were without any income for four months. It's the catch-up that's really killing us, and if I had been responsible and applied for the relief/deferments when we qualified, we would be much less badly off now. But now, we are both working, and we are living rent-free, so it's just a matter of getting caught up on all the behind payments, which add up to more than a month of paychecks.
jule Ann: when you apply for interest relief all they take into consideration is how much you make and how much you and hubby have in student loans (they don't ask about rent, car loan-- or in our case the cost of keeping a kid in diapers :) ) they also can back track interest relief for up to 3 months back (i think it's three months) so you would have a few months to play catch up. Just a thought.
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