Rohit Chopra, the Assistant Director for Students at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, is doing an AMA on student loans right now on Reddit. Ask him a question! Or lurk in the threads!

Thread is here.

Yesterday she introduced a piece of legislation (her first!) that would cut student loan interest rates to the rate banks pay to borrow money (when rates rise in July, students will pay nine times what banks pay). WARREN FOR EVERYTHING.

My husband lost his job about a month ago and his emergency fund has run out (we keep our finances mostly separate and it works for us, I don’t want you guys or any of the readers judging the size of his emergency fund). We are very fortunate that our expenses are manageable enough that he can contribute what he’s able to from his unemployment and I can make up the difference to get the bills paid. I’m the main breadwinner and do well enough for myself that I don’t mind, but I might have to put my aggressive debt reduction plan on hold until he starts working again.

So here’s the thing: I’m in grad school, but have continued making student loan payments to try and make a dent in the principal before I graduate. I also am using the snowball method to pay off my credit cards. If I ultimately have to either stop paying my loans (which are in deferment while I’m a student) or go back to paying just the minimums on my cards, what’s the better choice? The dollar amount I would save monthly is the same. — J.

You’ve done the math. Honestly, if the dollar amount you’d save is basically the same, do what feels right to you. Financial experts like to tell people to prioritize student loan debt over credit card debt because if you ever have to declare bankruptcy, you can discharge your credit card debt but not your student loan debt. The federal government can also garnish your wages if you default on your student loans.

What if I had to declare bankruptcy!? Correct me if I’m wrong, but I reckon you won’t be declaring bankruptcy anytime soon. A person who is in aggressive debt payoff mode is probably not worried about declaring bankruptcy. If I were in your position, I’d defer the (probably lower-interest) student loans, and focus on getting rid of the (probably higher-interest) credit card debt. Once the credit cards are paid off, I’d start tackling those loans again. But again, do what you feel is right—if the student loan debt bothers you more than the credit card debt, continue throwing money at the student loans and pay the minimum on the credit cards until your husband finds work again. You can’t really go wrong. Best of luck to you and your husband.

Ms. O’Shaughnessy said she was trying to counsel a father in New Jersey who was on the verge of making a horrendous financial decision. His daughter had received a full scholarship to attend Rutgers University but her first choice was New York University, which, even with financial aid, would cost the family $32,000 a year. The father, an engineer who was also out of work, said he was going to send her to N.Y.U.

“I can’t even believe he’s considering it,” she said. “I was floored. It’s irrational.”

The Times debates: Choose the college with a more affordable sticker price, or pay top dollar for the one with a prestigious name? You know where I’d fall in this discussion—programs matter more than prestige, and I’d lean toward the one with the affordable sticker price (plus, if you really didn’t want to attend a college, you probably wouldn’t have applied to it in the first place). Also, I have an unemployed friend from Harvard you may be interested in talking to.

Penn State has a new financial literacy program that’s “aimed at helping students make better decisions about budgeting, borrowing and loan repayment.” When Billfold pal Helaine Olen asked the college how the program will help students deal with the rising costs of college, she received the following response from Daad Rizk, Penn State’s financial literacy coordinator:

Financial literacy helps students to treat education as an investment in their future. The real problem is not the rising cost of education, it is in the lack of financial planning and lack of financial literacy skills of making sound financial decisions.

Say what? As I joked with Helaine: Apparently, students just aren’t planning enough to face skyrocketing tuition and fees as state and local financing for higher education declines.

Photo: shidairyproduct

Mike: After reading some of the conversations we’ve had with high-earners, you got in touch with us and said you wanted to talk about what it’s like to not earn a lot of money. Can you introduce yourself?

Broke Person: So, I’m 25, I live in the Midwest, I work and live at a camp/environmental learning center, and I earn just shy of $15,000 a year. It’s pretty seasonal work, so I earn most of that between late April and early November. The winter can be pretty lean in terms of what we do for work, so most of us supplement it with a second job. Last year, I was a nanny for some family members, and this year I spent a lot of time traveling back and forth from where I live to where my mom lives (about six hours driving) and scrounging for extra jobs here and there.

M: The federal poverty guideline for a single person is $11,490, and you are above that, but not by a lot.

BP: Well, that is the amount I filed for last year. I think I’ll earn a few thousand more this year because I have signed up to be a substitute teacher as well. I also have an extra six weeks of work at camp because I’ve been doing some maintenance work while somebody was out for surgery recovery. Because I live here, I’m paid a daily rate, which is $80 a day. That also means that I am currently living rent-free, which makes a big difference. I made about the same before I started this job, but also was paying rent from my salary, which was rough.

M: Can you talk a little about that? When you don’t earn a lot of money, I’m sure every dollar counts. Does it help to live in the Midwest instead of say, New York, D.C. or San Francisco?

BP: Absolutely. I did live in a city during this time, but definitely not a super-expensive coastal city. I was working retail, and my typical paycheck was about $450, I think. I paid $400 in rent, about $300 in student loans each month, which doesn’t leave much behind. For the most part, I was really enjoying myself at this point in my life: It was my first time living in a city, I had been living with my mom for about a year before that working for the same company and being pretty miserable. So in general, my lifestyle was on the up-and-up. I didn’t have a car, so I was biking around and taking public transportation, which when you’re first starting to use just feels so great, until about the 8th time a stranger tries to ask if he can be your man at the bus stop at 5:15 a.m.

M: What weren’t you able to do on what you were earning?

BP: The things that really sucked about having so little cash were not being able to go out with friends without asking them to buy you food or drinks, which is pretty humbling and embarrassing at times, and something you avoid by not being social sometimes. After rent and loans, my next biggest concern was food, and for the most part, I was fine. But when you’re broke at that level, you start to get pretty single-minded about food. When my roommate (who was at a similar income level as me, but had student loans deferred due to her job) would invite me to her parents’ house for dinner, it was always a relief in addition to all the normal reactions you have to a dinner invitation. When there was free food in the break room (this would happen about once a month), you sort of plot how much of it you can get away with eating so that you don’t have to spend money on food that day, or can save your packed lunch for the next day. For example, on pb&j day in the break room, you immediately eat a sandwich, with more than reasonable amounts of peanut butter on it at the beginning of your break, so that when you make one again ten minutes later, most of the people who saw you eat the first sandwich have filtered out of the room and you don’t feel judged for taking more than your share. I also would run out of money and have no cash and no money in my bank account occasionally for two to four days before a paycheck. If we were low on groceries, I would make toast from the butt ends of bread and fry an onion to eat with it, or buy Ramen for lunch at work with change from our change jar (17 cents!).

My co-workers and I noticed when the store we worked at raised the price of a single banana to 24 cents. A good friend of mine and I quit this retail spot for new jobs at the same time, and we would text each other things about our new jobs that seemed astounding to us. One of the things she noticed at her new job was that if you came in to work on a Saturday, the boss just ordered pizza for everyone. That was a revelation. At my current job, I eat for free a lot, because we have some programs where kids stay overnight and are fed, and I gained 20 pounds in the first six months, probably from overeating, which I’m pretty sure I do because I spent that time hoarding opportunities to eat for free. I mean, the price of bananas rising didn’t make a huge difference, but it was remarkable—a thing we talked about. I don’t think I would notice that now, with all of my access to free lunches.

M: Do you and your friends talk about money? You talked about having to ask your friends to help pay for you when you go out and how humbling that is, so I’m guessing that these friends can afford to do so and that they’re living at a higher income level than you. How do you navigate these relationships?

BP: I’ve been lucky to always have a few friends that I could depend on to talk candidly about money, and that I have mostly felt comfortable doing so. I think a lot of my comfort negotiating unbalanced financial relationships stems from a childhood friendship with someone whose family was much more financially stable than mine. She was always willing to finance entertainment for us when I couldn’t, and lent me money for tickets to concerts a couple of times so we could actually buy them ahead of time. Mostly, this was money her parents gave her, and I would pay her back from the jobs I worked in high school. But the important thing was that we talked about it, and that it generally was my decision to pay her back. We just wanted to do these things together, and figured out a way to make that happen.

As an adult, my close friends know that I don’t have money, and many of them are in similar situations. I think the thing that varies the most are people’s levels of debt. I do have friends who make significantly more than me though, and sometimes they buy stuff for me. Mostly this is in the form of meals or drinks out, although it has also happened when I’ve traveled to see people. I’ve told friends “I can buy my plane ticket, but you’ll have to feed me while I’m there.” I don’t usually agree to go out if I don’t have the ability to pay for myself, definitely not without saying “Hey I’m broke, I can’t really go out this week.” Sometimes, friends offer to pay so that I can come anyway, and sometimes, when I’ve gone out anticipating paying for myself, they’ll offer to pick up my tab when the check comes around. I have a few friends in particular that have been pretty generous. A couple of them know they earn significantly more than me, but have also spent time making terrible money or using all their income to pay off debt.

The thing that has been tricky to navigate is keeping these relationships honest, and not expecting my friends to pay for stuff for me. There have been times when I’ve ended up putting things on my credit card that I didn’t intend to because I anticipated somebody else offering to pick up the check and they didn’t, all because I didn’t want to say that I was too broke to go at the outset. Those nights are not my most fiscally responsible decisions. Also, some people with money are way more generous than others with their broke friends, and it can be hard to let yourself be okay with that. There are times I have to remind myself that it isn’t the responsibility of everyone around me to make things come out more egalitarian. I definitely believe that people’s money is theirs to do what they want to with–I’m grateful when that includes helping me out, but I do occasionally have to coach myself to not feel like friends SHOULD be paying for me. It can also be hard to feel and show gratitude without overdoing it and letting yourself feel inferior. My friendships shouldn’t make me feel bad about myself, even if I can’t really get them back next time. Sometimes I’ll buy when we’re at a cheap place, or just getting one round of drinks, or getting ice cream instead of food. Being gracious can be challenging, and it’s unfair (and not good for my friendships) if I say “Oh, I’m broke” with the expectation that somebody will pay for me just because I said it.

M: Can you talk about your student loan debt, what kind of school you went to and if you feel like you got what you wanted out of your education?

BP: I went to a private liberal arts school (which I doubt people will be surprised by), and I did really, really enjoy my time there. I graduated with about $28,000 in debt at a time when it was abruptly much more difficult to find a job in my field specifically, and in general. I don’t think I would make the same school choice again from the perspective I have now, but I don’t exactly regret my degree or the school I went to either. There are some things I DIDN’T get from school that I probably needed but didn’t realize at the time, though. I think more honesty about the likelihood and rates of tuition increases from the admissions staff may have changed my choices.

I had the opportunity to go to a state school in my hometown with no debt for about $1,500 a semester, if I recall correctly, but the programs, faculty, distance from home and all of the brochure-ready things from the private school were so much more appealing! I ended up paying the same cost up-front due to a hefty academic scholarship, plus the maximum amount of federal aid, but I took on a debt load that got larger every year. My first year in school, the tuition price tag was something like $27,000 a year, but by my senior year, it was $36,000. I think that even at 18, I would have known the amount of debt I had to take on to do that was unreasonable. I was aware that because it was a private school, tuition wasn’t frozen, but I had no concept of how quickly it would rise. The other thing that I think I missed out on was intentional career counseling. That was something that was available, but I didn’t take advantage of. That school costs even more now, over $40,000.

M: What kinds of careers were you considering before you graduated?

BP: Teaching, in a really crowded subject area, which I didn’t even think about or hear mentioned until about my 7th semester. I applied for jobs after I graduated—probably not as aggressively as I should have—but nonetheless, I was seriously looking, and despite graduating with honors from a regionally-recognized school, didn’t get a single interview. I know people who applied for hundreds of teaching positions at this time and were interviewed at just two or three schools. I didn’t do that, but I did consistently apply for teaching and other relevant jobs, including lots of part-time stuff and things I was clearly over-qualified for over the course of about two years before I found something part-time with the organization I work for now.

M: And since you wanted to get into education, you knew you probably weren’t going to be earning a lot of money right after graduation? Did you think a lot about what you wanted or needed to earn?

BP: Honestly, no. I had a general concept of what teachers made, especially to start, which at the time (and probably still) was about $25,000 a year. I also knew that if I worked in rural or poor urban areas, I would most likely be able to have a good chunk of my student debt forgiven. I didn’t think about it a lot though.

M: When you found the job market to be particularly challenging, and found jobs that didn’t pay too much, did you consider moving back home with your parents to save money? Was that an option?

BP: During my student teaching, I was living with my mom, and I spent another 10 months after that there as well. I moved out to go to a city, be closer to friends and have more job opportunities. I wasn’t happy in my hometown, not really because of living with my mom, but because I felt stuck in general. I worked with kids who had been my students, which did not feel great. My mom also was not in a great financial state, so I was paying her some rent (less than I did after moving) and taking care of my own expenses.

M: Do you not have health insurance now?

BP: I do until I turn 26, through my mom’s workplace, which I pay her for. Then there’s some mumble mumble Obamacare something happening at my job, which may or may not apply to me, based on some complicated stuff with hourly requirements vs. a daily salary that none of our supervisors are talking about yet, probably because they don’t have any more clue than I do whether we’ll qualify for insurance. I’m pretty sure I will have a gap before whatever that is kicks in (if it does).

So I will be figuring that out this summer. I have had a gap in insurance before, which didn’t really mean anything because I was lucky enough to not get sick, and I got insurance at my retail job before I was desperate for new eyeglasses, then some legal thing changed and I could get back on my mom’s insurance by the time I left that job.

M: Since you’re not earning a lot of money, are things like savings and retirement far from your mind at the moment?

BP: I do have some savings right now, about $1,000. I debate whether this is a good financial idea, because I also have $2,500 on a credit card. I used it to pay for incidentals on a trip to west Africa I went on a couple years ago (the trip was mostly paid for by other people, but not entirely), and to visit friends, once on each coast. I also occasionally use it irresponsibly to buy dinner or booze out when I’m out of money, but want to hang out with people anyway. I have been much better in the last year at paying it off aggressively and only using it when I know I’ll pay the amount I put on off before the end of the month. I like having savings though, because then when my car stops working, I can take it to the shop.

I feel like being poor often means all of your stuff is half broken, and I would prefer to be able to fix the big important stuff without using my credit card. I also will lose my lovely free housing if I leave this job, so I like knowing that I could actually afford a deposit and first month’s rent if I suddenly got a job that paid better, but didn’t pay better until four weeks after I started. I really don’t like carrying debt, and most of the time I have money left from a paycheck, or money that’s comes in outside of my budget (like tax returns!), I use it to pay down my credit card. It should be paid off by the end of the year, according to my Excel chart.

M: Good ol’ Excel.

BP: Yes, because I am a nerd. I don’t track all of my expenses because that is A Lot of Work, but I do auto-deposit into several savings accounts for specific things, and I made a chart to show me how much money I will have in those accounts for the next six paychecks or something. This is mostly a tool to keep me from constantly borrowing money from my savings account when I want to buy stuff. If I do, I will have to make some red numbers in my chart sometime, and watch my financial dreams of being able to replace my computer when it inevitably stops working, or taking a trip with my sister or whatever else tick back down and take another two months. I also use this handy thing I got off of the Consumerist forever ago to track my student loan payments and see the date many years in the future when I will be debt free, unless I had to buy a car or something before then. I will, probably—my car is twenty years old.

M: Can you lay out how much you typically spend on things like groceries, utilities or dining out in a month?

BP: Groceries are a total crap-shoot, because when I’m working a lot, I’m also eating for free a lot. Last month, I paid $200 for groceries, but really busy months when I’m working 12 days in a row regularly with 2-3 meals for free, it’s probably more like $50. Last month I spent $100 eating/drinking out, which is fairly typical. We don’t pay utilities because we have a fraught arrangement where we perform extra duties in lieu of rent and utilities, which are mostly reasonable but sometimes sort of crazy. I pay $35 a month for my phone, and don’t drive much because I live at my workplace, so I buy gas for about $50 a tank every two to three weeks. My health insurance costs $85 per month, and my roommates and I rotate our Internet bill around, so theoretically every four months I pay $45 for Internet, although we only decided to get it a couple months ago. I almost never shop for clothing, or anything else like electronics or whatever people at higher incomes spend their cash on, I guess I don’t really even know what people buy.

M: Do you think you’re finding a way to make it work, or have ideas of what you’d like to do next to start earning more money?

BP: I think so? The work I’m doing now is really great, even though the pay is terrible, and after spending my first season here just figuring out what is happening, I’ve started to get some experience managing programs and designing new stuff. I never got into teaching to make tons of money, because there is a lot of intrinsic awesomeness about hanging around kids, and providing them with cool experiences.

After not applying for jobs because I was so relieved to be here, I’ve started looking again, but in a much more direct way. I think what has been changing is not so much my odds of getting hired somewhere that does a better job of paying the bills, but that I’m doing a better job of figuring out how to develop the skills I have into more marketable things. And with some of the perks of my current position, I don’t feel like I’m drowning very often, the way I did when I worked in retail. And I do hope that I find something soon that is full-time, with health insurance, that is a job I feel good about doing. While poverty (or near-poverty) sucks a lot, I’m lucky to have some specific resources that make my aspirations to be not-poor feel attainable, if not now, then soon.

Interested in having a conversation about what you do, how much you earn, and how you make it work? Get in touch.

It’s time to check in on our debt payments and savings goals again. If you’re joining us for the first time, you can read about our decision to publicly keep track of our debt here.

Pull up your accounts, and let’s get to it!

Logan’s paying off a Barclay Card, which currently has an APR of 22.24 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $47.
Feb. 2013 Balance: $1,377.18
Mar. 2013 Balance: $1,124.95

I’m paying off one of my Sallie Mae Private Student Loans, with a current interest rate of 4.5 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $55.
Feb. 2013 Balance: $1,010.01
Mar. 2013 Balance: $921.36

Feb. 2013 Vacation Savings: $100.00
Mar. 2013 Vacation Savings: $175.00

And as always, if you pay off one of your debts, email me your address and I’ll mail you a note to congratulate you. And if you hit your savings goal, I’m happy to send you one as well.

See previous months here.

I am a graduate student in a science department at an Ivy League university, and I don’t have any student loans. I never have. But getting here was not necessarily a great experience for me. Navigating college was a difficult choice between following my filial duty and choosing to do what I wanted to do. My filial duty won out.

My parents and I emigrated here from Eastern Europe in 1999. My father came first, with about $1,500 and a guaranteed hourly job as an engineer at a small firm staffed almost entirely by other Eastern Europeans. He worked a ton of overtime. My mother was a doctor, but she could not get a medical license in the U.S. and was unable to get a job for a long time after we moved. By the time I entered college, we were still a one-income family. My father was in charge of every aspect of our finances. During the first six or so months we were here, we rented one bedroom that the three of us shared. This was made especially poignant by the fact that we lived in a very affluent town, the kind where all my schoolmates had their own ponies and lived in houses that could comfortably be on the Real Housewives of Wherever.

I was lucky enough to get a full two-year scholarship to a tiny private college. I’d treated those years as free college, but I now realize this wasn’t the case. My parents had to fly me out there (it was on the other side of the country), and they started giving me an allowance, a luxury I had not had before. I was there because they helped me be there.

When my two-year scholarship was over, my father told me that I had to transfer. Tuition was over $40,000/year, and he told me that even with financial support from the school, I would be buried in loans. I didn’t want to transfer. I was upset about it. I was scared of losing the friends I’d spent two years making, and I was scared of trying to make new friends. My social life consumed my thoughts. My friends asked why I would just bow down to my father’s demands rather than try to fight back or get loans on my own.

Part of it was that I really admire my father, and I seek his approval in most matters—financial included. But I also knew he was right. The practical thing to do was to go to a state school to finish out my degree. It would be much cheaper, and the science program I was interested in was stronger. So I transferred to a huge state university in our hometown that cost about $8,000 per year, and lived at home with my parents. I am incredibly grateful to them, but I was resentful that I never had the free-wheeling college experience that seems to be glorified in the U.S., and I missed my friends and the small classes I used to take. My parents were paying my tuition, and I was living in their house. There were so generous, but I felt trapped by their decisions.

My parents do not expect that I will pay them back. Where we are from, family helps family. The money for college was never a loan. Sometimes I wish it were. If I had borrowed money from them, I think I would have felt more autonomy over my education—what to study, where to attend. Since it wasn’t a loan, there were strings attached.

There is little movement in this never-ending degree program, but I have no loans, I have a stipend, and in the end, I’ll have a Ph.D. I’m terrified of poverty and forced deprivation, and on this track, I don’t need to fear it. I’m passionate about cultural anthropology, and sometimes I daydream about taking off and teaching English in China. But I can’t square that with the person I’ve now become, after more than eight years of college.

I became a scientist because my parents were scientists. Other options didn’t seem as practical. The truth is, they weren’t. I’m proud of what I’ve accomplished, and my parents are, too. But I’m also looking forward to making my own decisions. Accepting the money meant I would do what they told me to do. I did, and now we’re done.

Camelia Smith is a third-year Ph.D. candidate.

I think it’s underreported how incredibly nice the customer service agents at Sallie Mae can be about you not paying back your loan.

Like a lot of people, I took out loans for college, and after graduation, spent my early twenties not making enough money to pay down my debts.

Eventually I took a job at an internet-y, start-up-y, new media, digital-type company where I was nicely compensated, and I started making payments on my loans. I was laid off after 18 months.

When I called Sallie Mae to break the bad news, the customer service agent sighed and told me it was OK, pumpkin—I could put the loan into deferment.

I asked how long I could do that, and I don’t remember what she said, but she certainly didn’t seem to be sweating it, so I figured I wouldn’t either. Pay it back. Don’t pay it back. Pay a little on it. Defer it. Whatever.

I hung up the phone feeling like a fucking champion. I had faced a major financial fear, and it had been resolved thanks to a mutual agreement to not worry about it.

Two years passed, and the loan collected about $15,000 in interest. I got more full-time work and started paying my Sallie Mae bill again, but it looked kinda ugly, and I began to consider deferring it again. They’d let me do it so many times before. I once deferred paying back the loan for a year simply because it was the only way I could afford to deal with the amount of late-charges I’d racked up.

Go to the website, click a few buttons, watch the amount due that month fade to zero, and chuck those payment slips in the recycling bin.

Pondering that option, the other day I logged into Salliemae.com and asked to reset my password—just how I do on the 26th of every month to pay the bill that is due on the 25th.

Right now I can pay a bill. And yet I cannot pay a bill. Paying a bill makes me upset. I get upset because seeing money that I have earned go toward something that will never go away feels futile. I looked at my outstanding balance and was struck by cold terror.

For about three months I’d been ignoring the $20 late charges and just paying the $247 due every month, thinking that the growing past-due balance would either disappear or get so big that it disappeared or… Obama? That $247, by the way, was only going to interest; it wasn’t even touching the principal.

So I called Sallie Mae to figure out what I’d done and what I could do. I started the call by telling the INCREDIBLY CHEERFUL agent that I’d been through periods when I couldn’t pay, but now I was ready to pay aggressively for however long it took to pay this thing down (hopefully not forever).

The agent told me I had set up a plan where I paid about as little as I could, but because of that, what I was paying was only going to interest, which was continuing to accrue. I could change the plan and pay more and some amount of it would go to the principal. This sounded good to me. This is what I wanted. I want to pay more, not less. But the agent kept bringing it back to paying less—so many times that it began to seem illogical to increase the monthly payment plan. I don’t think he was doing so for any other reason than he must get five billion calls every day from people who are like, oh my god, I cannot pay this bill. That’s gotta take a toll on a person.

In fairness, that’s been me for most of my relationship with Sallie Mae. But if a guy is telling you that you can lower your bill, and he seems really cool about it—shouldn’t you do that? Isn’t having a lower bill the point of life?

If I really dig in, maybe I can get the student loan bill lower than the cable bill.

It has taken me wa-a-a-ay too long to realize the difference between a loan payment and a cable bill. If you pay too much for your cable package you can cut back and get the plan that doesn’t include HBO, or you can cancel the whole thing. Don’t pay, and they cut your cable off. There’s no giant number that Time Warner has attached to your social security number that you need to pay down every month.

Loans, on the other hand, are a big number attached to your social security number, and you have to pay them back or the number gets bigger until you give them enough money to make it smaller. Buy some scratch-off tickets. Pack up your shit and disappear.

I’d figured this out with credit cards. Unlike Sallie Mae, credit card people are not very nice when you call them and ask for a lower monthly payment. Unless you can start throwing money at your credit card company in lump sums, you’re basically trapped in a cycle where your minimum payment goes only to interest forever and the amount you owe increases every month. They won’t help you. And so early on in my career as debtor, I paid off my credit cards.

But my experience with Salle Mae has been different. You can pay more to bring the debt down, but you could also pay less and bring the debt up, and they’re cool beans either way. You can also fill out a form and not pay it at all for a while.

Of course, I appreciate how nice the Sallie Mae customer service people have been to me.

I imagine they field a lot of rough calls.

I’ve definitely called them in rough times.

It’s just that there’s an institutional crack, a systemic fuck-up when no one—not even the people at Sallie Mae—acts like they expect these loans to be repaid. They’re just trying to figure out how to help you pay something toward your debt so you don’t get thrown out of a moving boxcar.

I am a person who has a lot of anxiety, embarrassment, and fear tied up in the debt that I owe. I will also admit to being kinda sorta clueless. So carrying all that baggage means that every few years when I experience a moment of clarity or something horrible happens to my ability to draw an income, I call up the owner of my student loan—and I get hosed.

You can’t get rid of student loans, not through bankruptcy or ever. If I’m allowed to grow a loan for YEARS after my education is complete, then who is the one making a living from my education? It’s not me.

Anyway, I visited the cold and logical Salliemae.com after this latest call and figured out a way to not just make payments, but to start paying the thing off. My loan will probably be paid off in ten years. At that point I will have been out of school for 23 years, which is how old I was when I had to make my first payment to Sallie Mae.

Frank Smith lives in Brooklyn.

We’re nearing the end of the month and it’s time to check in with our debt payments again. If you’re joining us for the first time, you can read about our decision to publicly keep track of our debt here.

We’ve also decided to start checking in with our savings goals as well. So if there’s something you’re saving for—a vacation, a nice pair of shoes, a wedding, a down payment—you should start tracking it here as well.

Logan’s paying off a Barclay Card, which currently has an APR of 22.99 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $47.
Jan. 2013 Balance: $1,424.11
Feb. 2013 Balance: $1,377.18

I’m paying off one of my Sallie Mae Private Student Loans, with a current interest rate of 4.5 percent, and a minimum monthly payment of $55.
Jan. 2013 Balance: 1,098.97
Feb. 2013 Balance: 1,010.01

Jan. 2013 Vacation Savings: $50.00
Feb. 2013 Vacation Savings: $100.00

And as always, if you pay off one of your debts, email me your address and I’ll mail you a card to congratulate you (I know I have a few outstanding ones to send out—they’re coming!). And if you hit your savings goal, I’m happy to send you one as well.

See previous months here.