Paying Back Student Loans Sucks!
Apr 12th, 2008 by gtull1
Alec decided to let me (George) write a post by myself finally since he has been out of touch with LSU football stories, so I want to warn a few of you about student loans.
I graduated from LSU (after the Air Force) back in 1995. While I was going through college, I was trying to take care of my little family. Times were tough, money was more than tight, and we were desperate. How did we make it financially? Student loans. I literally applied for, and received every type of student financial aid that I could get. We borrowed a lot of money, and we felt like it was no big deal since we wouldn’t be paying them back in years, if ever.
It did seem like a good idea at the time. We needed money so badly just to make ends meet that I would have done almost anything for cash. Well, not really, but you get the point.
Everything went well. I graduated from LSU, got a decent job, and they deferred my student loans. Then, like a sinister beast, I got a letter one day telling me that it was time to start paying them back. I did what almost everyone does- I consolidated my loans and applied for extensions. That worked great for years, but eventually I couldn’t drag them out any longer.
When I finally figured out that I was going to have to start paying, I owed a very large sum due to the principal that I borrowed and the years of interest. I was sick, hurt, and in a hole again.
If I could go back in time, I wouldn’t have borrowed a penny. We could have gotten a cheaper apartment. We could have sold one car. We could have done so many things to lighten our budget, but we didn’t. Instead we lived off of the student loans, and it eventually came back to hurt us badly.
Maybe a few of you are in this position too. Maybe some of you are thinking about student loans right now. For what it’s worse, my advice to you is to avoid them like the plague. Do what you have to do to cut your costs. Do whatever it takes to not have to borrow money. In the long run, you will be much better off. You won’t get out of college, like me, with a huge debt hanging over your head. Your future will be much brighter than mine was.
In other words, paying back student loans sucks!!