I try and give you folks a lark with some good-old fashioned bro humor. I had a great story about a bro who opened a puppy rental stand who paid this slam piece to jerk off guys she saw walking said puppies and suggest that for paying off high interest private loans. But you people need help. Serious help. So instead I am going to explain to you something you should have learned growing up watching sports.

Now here is how I know there are no sports fans on this site. One if there were ballets among you you’d have gotten scholarships. Two if you could converse about sports with people you’d be less miserable at work, more pleasant to be around, less likely to lose your job and more likely to find a new one if you do.  And before you get started yes I am going to make a sports analogy BUT I am going to explain it so even those who think Jordan was the greatest football player because he scored the most runs in history can understand.

You are playing a game, say basketball, (round ball, bounces, played indoors) and your opponent is debt. Whoever has the most points at the end of the game (aka the amount of time you want/reasonable amount of time to take to pay off your loans is) wins. Debt is winning by the amount you owe, aided by crooked refs we’ll call interest.

Now the first thing you’re thinking is debt’s baskets count more than yours. You feel like you made one decision aka to go to school, and debt racked up a huge lead. Wrong. Every day you stayed in school was a day debt scored points and you scored none, just like every day you go to a high paying job (such as the one I have) is a day you score points and debt doesn’t.

Now in a close game a team can do what it’s used to doing and have a fair chance of winning. For most people this is working in either there chosen field or in an IT/government role in some cramped cubicle, collecting a check and making payments.

But this isn’t a close game. Moreover if you’re like Benito the opposing team might have shutdown your best player (let’s call him job). Either way though you need to find more ways to score. My homeys on the street refer to this as “hustlin’ “. Please note that this term does not denote illegal activity such as prostitution or selling drugs.

So you want to hustle. Great! There is just one problem; injuries to your roster, particularly the player known as “credit score.” Credit score would be the player that would allow you to get a traditional loan from a bank to start the sort of entrepreneurial venture most individuals associate with the American Dream. Next, if you’re underemployed you also have an injury to the player known as “time.” So in other words, it takes money to make money and time is money and you have neither. Hah!

Sorry. I’m an asshole. But seriously, it’s not all bad. Even you who are ignorant of sports are familiar with the term “comeback.” Games that are so famous that even you’ve heard of them are probably comebacks where a team that fell way behind was able to come back and win. And that’s what greatness is.

Here at Debtor’s Prison we are in the market for a new writer.  Specifically, we are looking for someone who is underemployed.  By that we mean someone who perhaps experienced a period of unemployment and was forced to take a job in a different industry making substantially (35% less or higher) less or are managed by someone who is younger, less well-educated and/or has inferior experience to you.

Many of us here at Debtor’s Prison (myself included) think the storm ends when you find a new job.  That is not true from the stories I hear.  First, you have an enormous hole to climb out of.  I’ve heard it described as trying to climb out of a 200 ft. hole with a 30 ft. rope.  Next, the indignity and shame of being unemployed is replaced with the indignity and shame of working for your ex-girlfriend’s little brother who drank too much and dropped out of his division III school after loosing his football scholarship and has an Associate Degree from a school advertised on TV between the hours of 2 and 5 AM.  You’re forced to constantly answer the question “why are you working here?” or lie about your age and academic pedigree. 

Let’s also not forget once you start working again…you’re working again.  That is to say you’ve still got predominantly the same issues and problems but on top of that you’re working and a great deal of your likely pathetic salary is taken up with NEW expenses CREATED BY your job, such as transportation, clothing, lunches and drinking with your new coworkers who you are beginning to dislike as much as your old coworkers who managed to weather the storm.

What I’ve taken from my friends who’ve taken the first steps toward recovery or as they say, have filed through the first bar in their cell in debtor’s prison is that 1) not much changes 2) what does change is often not positive.  They also dispelled several myths, like it’s easier to get a job once you have a job.  News flash: You can’t spend 10 hours a day looking for a new job once you have a job.  My favorite myth is that five years from now none of this will matter, your career will be back on track, and it will be like this little hiccup in the economy never happened.  Somebody sure did fail economics.  Dollars you make early in life are mathematically worth more than dollars you make later.  This means that to TRULY be where you would have been in five years if none of this horror never happened (we’re talking purely financial, not physical, mental, emotional or psychological) it’s not enough to find a job.  It’s not enough to find a job that pays as much as the one you lost.  It’s not enough to find a job that pays substantially MORE than what you used to make.  You need that last job AND a windfall sum of money equal to what you would have made plus interest.

*sigh*

The bottom line is I can’t do this perspective justice and a number of individuals I have approached about it don’t want to write  about it for fear of endangearing their current job or because they just feel overwhelmed.  If this describes you or someone you know Puh-LEeZe let us know.

Based on the comments there might have been some confusion on my stance with respect to bankruptcy for student debtors.  If I were king of the world I would certainly grant student debtors bankruptcy protection AS WELL AS instituting a policy capping payments as a percentage of gross income as well as setting limits in terms of how long payments could be required to continue.  I would appoint Alpha Man as “student loans czar” and let him have at it.

Where I disagree with Alpha Man is with respect to the wisdom of spending our finite resources campaigning for renewed bankruptcy protection given the history of student loans and given alternatives like the President’s proposal.  I simply don’t think it’s realistic that these giant profit mills are going to take it from both sides, aka taking on the added risk of bankruptcies AND the added risk that individuals will only repay a portion of their loans over the course of the allotted time with a restraint on the amount of a student’s accessible gross income.  I just don’t see it.

Of course I supported Secretary Clinton in the democratic primaries, not because I preferred her as a candidate but because I honestly didn’t think this country would elect President Obama.  But look, here we are.  I certainly don’t want to rain on anyone’s parade or steal anyone’s thunder.  I would certainly sign a petition for bankruptcy protection, vote for candidates in favor of it, etc.  When it comes to the day-in day-out advocacy that it would take to get that something like that passed, I’m not sure if I add my name to that list.

To use another political metaphor – student bankruptcy protection is like the public option for health care.  Everyone knows it’s a good idea.  But where decent people can disagree is whether you hold fast for the public option and risk losing health care reform entirely or if you take what you can get when you can get it.  I am in the latter camp.  Let’s get a cap on the gross income a student can be required to devote per month to student loan payments and let’s get a twenty year time limit on these things.

Hi kids.  I am sure you have heard about the petition going around trying to drum up support for bankruptcy protection for student debtors.  But who does that help?  Is that really the answer?  I am going to put in my two cents before I leave it to the gang to discuss.

Essentially I don’t think it’s the answer.  Here’s why.  At the end of the day the man gets his money and lawyers ruin everything.   Here’s what I mean.  Collectors collect.  We as a group lost bankruptcy protection when newly minted lawyers declared bankruptcy, discharged their loans and then went on to lucrative careers with the inconvenience of paying a higher interest rate on credit cards and mortgages.  If bankruptcy protection returns, these people will game the system again and collectors will simply find some other way to get their money.  One way could be to astronomically increase interest rates on student loans.  Another way would be to demand parent cosigners for student loans (thereby eliminating bankruptcy as an option if you care about your family).  The point is, we’re not slick compared to the man.  The man will get his money.

Read on as I finish my thought and the gang ways in

But let’s take a look at bankruptcy law for a minute.  Would this help the AVERAGE student debtor?  I don’t think so.  If you are employed at all you probably possess too many assets to declare bankruptcy.  If you have substantial savings, own a house, have another source of income, own a business, etc bankruptcy probably isn’t an option for you.  Basically bankruptcy only helps folks like me who have been unemployed for a longtime and have moved back in with family.  If I could declare bankruptcy I would, take a DEEP breath, try and get a job, live at home for seven more years until my credit becomes respectable again, and maybe I could find and marry a shy second grade teacher, buy a little house and try and have a normal life starting at age 40.  Hey, it could happen.

However, putting my own personal self-interest aside, I still have to say that the President’s approach, capping maximum student loan payments at 10% of income for 20 years, 10 if you enter public service, is the best approach.  Now under that system I could stand to do worse, particularly if I found a job immediately after declaring bankruptcy, but the President’s approach would help ALL student debtors, even Mike Triforce who, though he’d hate to admit it, still pays more than 10% of his income each month to student loans, and wouldn’t be anywhere NEAR close to paying them off in twenty years paying his minimum payments.  Now let’s leave it to the gang.

This might sound like I am trying to have my cake and eat it too, but can’t we do both?  I too agree with the President’s plan but I feel that students who can show undue hardship deserve to have their loan discharged like any other.  I think we have to remember that being deeply in debt for an education that has proofed useless is VERY psychologically damaging.  We owe students their sanity and their dignity.

I’m against it.  Bankruptcy protection will cause students to borrow even more irresponsibly and reward failures who will have their debt load carried by the rest of us in the form of higher interest rates.  I am not completely sold on the President’s plan.  Ten percent for twenty years is still plenty of time for banks to sponge off people and it simultaneously sends the message to students that these loans aren’t for life.  What we NEED is to control the cost of education at every level and make laws against institutions, public and private, gouging people.

I personally don’t understand why there simply can’t be a law stating that you can’t declare bankruptcy to discharge student loans until five years after you graduate.  I think that closes the loophole on scummy lawyers who have ruined it for the rest of us.  Or heck, make a law that says law students/lawyers can’t declare bankruptcy period.

As someone on the borrowing instead of the paying side of this whole equation I am against this and anything else that might stop the flow of essentially free money into my pocket.  To me, bankruptcy isn’t some complicated legal thing, it’s a state of being.  If I don’t have the money, the bill ain’t getting paid.  I don’t mind changing my phone number, recycling debt notices and using my mother’s credit card.  Now don’t get me wrong, if someone gives me another free pass I will take it and save a few trees but hey at the end of the day I don’t want ANYTHING spooking these banks.

Declaring bankruptcy amounts to pissing in the cupped hands of a dehydrated man in the middle of the desert.  Student debtors need a well and a path out of the wilderness.  Otherwise you are simply arbitrarily changing the location of a generation’s worth of bare, bleached bones.