I fucking HATE math.

[dragonlady7]

I am trying to consolidate my student loans.
I have a lot of student loans.

I think, actually, I have only two. When I say, "a lot", I mean, in the number of digits that come after the dollar sign.

I have been repeatedly told that now is the time to consolidate, now before they continue hiking interest rates. now is the time for cheap debt.

Fine, fine. But how???

So, here is all I can figure out about my loans, which remain, despite my having spent the last two years struggling to repay them, a thing of mystery.

It seems that I have two loans. One claims to be from the University of Rochester (which I attended), but whenever I send them anything, they're in Wisconsin, and if I call the first thing they ask me is what college I went to.
So obviously the U of R has little to do with this, and it's some loan sharks out in Wisconsin that UR is paying for the privelege of having their name on this loan.

Apparently it's a Federal Perkins loan. Go figure. I'm not positive it is, since it only says that sometimes. It's a very nebulous thing. You'd think that people I've been sending checks to for two years, I'd know more about. But I really don't.

I originally owed them $2,350.00. I have, despite long stretches of unemployment, managed to pay them $494.97 so far. I have paid an additional $145.03 in interest. The payments are due monthly, and the interest accrues at a ridiculous rate of 5.0%.
I don't know if that's simple or compound, I don't know how often it's assessed, I don't know how it works. That's all the information I have. I'm not even sure who these people are, as I've said.
But I still owe them $1,862,76.
This month's payment is overdue since I didn't get the bill until 2 weeks too late. Oh well. I guess they've still got my old address, and I will have to figure out how to change that with them.

But that's the small-potatoes loan. Oh yes, I have another one. And this is the one that hurts me to look at.

So.

This one says "Direct Loans" on it, and has a subheading saying "William D. Ford Federal Direct Loan Program."
They seem to actually be involved with the government somehow. I don't know how. They don't really explain, but the bottom of the page says U.S. Department of Education. Which is just spiffy. And so informative that they don't bother giving a URL. Just you try being brave enough to search for info on consolidating loans on Google, without a URL to start out with. I sure as hell am not.

This one I've managed to get deferments on, but I was not able to figure out the paperwork to get a forbearance while I was unemployed. They needed all kinds of things I didn't know how to get. So, I will have to pay interest on the period of the deferment, which I shouldn't have to do, but fuck me if I can sort out the goddamn forbearance.
So, for that I owe them $285 in interest, though I shouldn't have to pay it. Mystery suits them, in this case, because I don't think i can get it retroactively taken off now. Fuckers.

The amount of that interest should give you some insight into just. How. Much. Money. I. Owe.

Oh yes.

I started off owing them $17,125.00.

Feel free to let your eyes boggle there. I earned that much last year, once you take out taxes, but then I had to pay, y'know, rent and stuff. And oh, I'm fond of eating sometimes. That didn't help.

I've paid off $1,170.28 of that in two years. (Yeah. I'm doing really well. Considering that in the last 24 months I've spent slightly more than 12 unemployed.)
I've also paid them $461.70 in interest in that time.
(Interestingly, in another column, it tells me that the capitalized interest is $438.16, and I have no idea why I've paid more than that.)

There are a lot more numbers on this thing, and I couldn't tell you what any of them mean. I can tell you that in one place it explains that after figuring in this deferment, I should be able to pay the loan off in 2013, having paid them a total of $19,000 and some change.

There's a bunch of crap in this letter about coupons. I don't have a fucking clue what the hell coupons are. I also can't find any information here about what my interest rate is.

I know that I had interest-free loans for a while. I think those were only while I was in school, though.

You know, I fucking hate money. If I could go live in the wilderness and eat, I don't know, weasels or something, and acorns, and braid my hair with sticks and twigs and clothe myself in leaves, I totally fucking would. As long as I didn't have to deal with NUMBERS.

I hate numbers. I loathe numbers. Numbers make me feel stupid. On a bad day, I cannot tell you whether eight is more or less than seventeen. I cannot do simple arithmetic without devoting my entire brain to it. I cannot divide-- period. i just can't do division.

I cannot calculate interest. i do not know if 5% is a good interest rate, except that I know I get something like 1% interest on my checking account which everyone says is great.

I have no idea how much it has cost me to have B.A. on my resume. I know what it has gained me-- a fat lot of abuse-- but I don't know what it cost. I don't know how much financial aid I got. I don't know how much money my parents spent. I can't imagine how long it's going to take me to pay back this.

But I can say this: I pay off my goddamn credit card bill every month (at least, every month that I get the bill. I missed last month because they sent it to my old address and the post office didn't forward it like they were supposed to).
I don't spend money I don't have. I don't buy things. I bought myself a pair of sneakers last month and it was the first money I'd spent on anything but food and my utility bills (and rent) in about six months.

I don't spend money. I don't earn money, and I don't spend money. I hate money.

If I understood it, I wouldn't be a fucking English major, now would I? I'd be an accountant, because accountants can have jobs and the such. Or maybe I'd be a scientist. I like science. I was good at science. Until the math got too hard.

Math got too hard for me in fourth grade. Before that, it made me cry approximately weekly, because I thought I was smart and it made me feel dumb. But after I got to fourth grade and they started long division, math made me cry EVERY DAY. And then I hit puberty.
LIFE IS CRUEL.

So there I was, with braces, boobs, cramps, zits, and fucking LONG DIVISION. God had forsaken me.

Every day I have to do math, I am reminded that I am the stupidest human being that ever drew breath on this earth.

When you throw in semiliterate telephone debt collectors, and math, you have my own personal hell.

So why wouldn't the goddamn website just let me do my thing and look at it all on paper without making me talk to anyone? Why did it have to not work, and make it so I can't figure out how to consolidate my loans? Why does it have to be a mystery? It's just like getting the forbearance on my loan-- I couldn't figure it out and so I'm getting raped on interest. Now i can't figure out loan consolidation, and they're going to rape me again because I'm stupid.

Why, in paying for my freaking education, am I going to have to so repeatedly get smacked around in a pecuniary kind of way because I'm stupid?

ARGH.

(I went to the website of the direct loans people to try and figure out how to consolidate, because one of their reps helpfully told me I could do so via the website. To start with, nowhere on the piece of paper does it mention the URL for their website, which is something convoluted and unmemorable. So I had to Google it. I made it to the website, but mind you, I have no idea whether this is the right one. but the login form was familiar, and needed specific information I remember the one on the site I went to last time needing. So I entered it, including the PIN I KNOW they sent me. But they rejected it, and say I'm not in their records.
So the mystery remains. Are they a different institution with the same name? Am I in the right place? Will anyone answer the email I sent through their "HELP ME FOR THE LOVE OF GOD" form? Who are they? What are they? Can I actually do what they said I could? Or am I going to get taken in by one of the innumerable companies that send me snail-mail spam about consolidating my loans, masquerading as bills from the loan collectors themselves?

I don't know. It's all STUPID.)

Comments

i know what coupons are!

[(Anonymous)]

Coupons are these little coupon-shaped booklets, and you rip one off each month and send it in with your check (it says how much you have to pay on it, and the date, each month).
I don't understand loans either...I thought I was doing pretty good, I've been paying for 2 1/2 years, and I only owed $2500 to begin with, so surely I'd be almost done by now, right?
I have mine set up as direct withdrawal from my checking account, so they reduced my interest rate. So I was sure I was doing well.
Then recently I checked my account and found that despite paying every month for 2 1/2 years, I still owe about $2200.
All I could guess is that they have a murderous interest rate, but it was like 4 percent or something. Lie you, I have no idea (since it didn't do anything as useful as state this) whether it's compound interest or not.
I would say 5 percent is high.
But I don't really know.
Good luck...
Kat