The purpose of this blog is to tell the stories of real people who took out student loans in order to pursue their dreams and are now struggling to see a return on their investments. All of the stories that appear on this web page are about real people that I’ve interviewed, though in some instances names and identifying details have been changed at the interviewee’s request. I am particularly interested in the stories of people who couldn’t have gone to college or graduate school without loans and have faced or are now facing tough choices about their careers, their dreams, and their ambitions because of the debt they are carrying. If you would like to be interviewed on this blog, please email me at studentloanstories@yahoo.com.
While between my husband and I, we have $100,000 of student loan debt, we are getting by. We struggled when I stayed home with our baby for a year, but my husband got a raise and I am back at work, so we are getting by fine again.
My loans are about $50,000. Only $10,000 from undergraduate degree, but $40,000 from teaching certification and masters degree (that student teaching will get ya). When I was looking to consolidate my loans, I requested information from Next Student, but did not end up choosing them. I conolidated with AES/Brazos. Eventhough I consolidated all my loans with AES/Brazos, I was getting bills for my undergraduate loans from Next Student. I had never signed anything, just requested information from them online. I wasn’t paying them and no amount of phone calls could fix the problem. Negative reports were being added to my credit reports – these would be impossible to ever fix. Eventually, Next Student, aka ACS bought all my loans from AES/Brazos. All without me signing anything. The problem is they added the whole amount $50,000 to the $10,000 they were already charging me. It took me about 2 years to get the whole mess straightened out. I probably spent over 20 hours on the phone and wrote several letters. Finally I courtesy copied a letter to the US Department of Education with attached documentation providing proof of the total amount of loans I had received and the problem was fixed. But, I hold a grudge and if I could switch companies, I would in a heartbeat.