I don’t plan to ever pay my student loans unless I have an eight figure bank account. Before you say that’s ridiculous, say I get $1 million tommorrow. After Taxes that’s 600k. If I were to pay off my current loans and the ones I plan to take out I’d have what? A buck eighty for my troubles? That’s a first year associate’s salary plus bonus. What the hell I am I supposed to do with that? Certainly not start my own practice or business.

But say I had 7 million. Am I paying off my loans? No. I’d just leave the country for a tropical paradise and live off the interest of my stock portfolio- avoid taxes AND loans. While this is mostly a commentary on the perverse incentive structure student loans create don’t count me out. It’s called a class action settlement.

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Ever wonder how rich people have such screwed up lives? Particularly rich kids? I mean all you have to do is keep your head down, follow a pre-set plan, maintain the fortune built for you and spend the rest of your time at leisure. Also don’t have kids. But somewhere one gets the idea that one should be successful in one’s one right, to do it one’s one way to get some sort of satisfaction outside of material comfort. Foolish definitely – but quite prevalent. Of course in so doing not only do the rich kids fail at their new endeavor but squander what’s been given to them.

So I got straight As and made Law Review. Yeah. If you recall I drank the semester away, used psychological warfare on fellow classmates and wrote tests ignoring the questions posed but simply regurgitated journal articles they’ve written blended with answers from old tests. Some questions were exactly the same. Now I am in a bit of a quandry. Do I continue with the Debtors Prison inspired plan or do I do my own thing and try and make a traditional go at this whole law school thing?
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By Louise Baker

It’s a proven fact that people who achieve higher education have a much higher earning potential over the course of their lives. But going to college or a technical institute can be an expensive process that not everyone can afford on their own. Student loans exist to offer opportunities to people lacking the financial means to pay for school on their own, but they do eventually need to be repaid, adding to the cost of living over one’s lifetime. Weighing the cost of student loans versus expected earnings from your career path is important part of higher education, and can ensure that you don’t spend a lot of money on a career path that will leave you unable to repay your loans in a timely fashion.

The first step in figuring out what exactly your higher education is going to cost. After you’ve been accepted into a program, you need to figure out what that particular program will charge in fees. Then, you need to research student loan providers to figure out how much they are willing to lend, and what sort of repayment plans they offer once you’ve finished your education. Some loan providers will only offer a partial loan, while others will let you borrow the full amount. Look at the interest rates that you will accumulate on your loans, and what the likely monthly payment will be from loan providers, and definitely shop around. Also look at scholarships and if working while in school is a possibility to offset the cost of schooling as much as possible. While working a lot while in school may not be desirable, any money that you don’t have to borrow is money that you don’t have to pay back.

Next you need to look at the types of careers people with your degree program typically go into, and what the average salary of these careers is. This will ensure that you don’t spend tens of thousands of dollars on a degree that won’t lend itself to a high paying job. Not all college degrees are created equal, so it’s important to find out what degrees lead to strong careers and which degrees don’t lead directly to jobs or don’t many openings in that field. By finding not only a career that you love, but one that also has many openings for people fresh out of school, you can make sure you don’t waste your time and money on a bad career path.

People looking at higher education shouldn’t be afraid of the potential costs, as there are many options to finance one’s education. Just do your research beforehand and explore all your options to find the path that is right for you.

Louise Baker ranks online programs for Zen College Life. She most recently wrote about getting a stenographer degree.

We all know how I feel about Sarah Palin.  Also random, pointless atrocities are usually Icarus 30’s department.  So I felt no need to comment on the Tuscon Shooting and Sarah Palin’s supposed link.  I know we (and by we I mean I) stretch the premise of this blog to sort of talk about what we want to talk about BUT I actually do not see a link between mass-murder/mass-murder-suicide and student debt.  Sure, kids have no options, there’s no hope, yadda yadda yadda but let’s think about this people.  Anyone who is willing to roll over and take the constant abuse from the for-profit and student-loan industry probably just doesn’t have enough of the will to act, for good or evil, to either perpetrate or try and stop an attack like this.  But then as always…Sarah Palin rears her head and now I have to rant.  The day after the Dr. King holiday no less.

Look, Sarah Palin just got unlucky.  She put up cross-hairs on some congressmen and congresswomen and one of them actually got shot at a bad time for her.  She of course responds by accusing the shooter of being “Left-leaning.” Alright, that’s pretty reprehensible but here’s what REALLY urks me, Palin’s mention of Dr.  King in her most recent garbage memoir.

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It’s been a hell of a two weeks. The shooting in Arizona. The character and fitness failure of a public defender due to excessive student loan debt and somehow the whole OJ thing got stirred up again. Not surprising. I mean if we are going to repeal healthcare and the 14th Amendment while we’re at it why not?

While we’re on the subject of OJ, let this be a lesson to establishment types: if you do something wrong enough, it will eventually come back to bite you in the ass. When planting evidence to circumvent due process becomes the usual path to conviction, complete with dehumanizing racial slurs, eventually there is going to be a colossal fuck up.
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I didn’t get much out of the other responses.  Erin is kind of a bitch, Alpha Man is a downer, Icarus is a drunk with less lyrical skills than your average rapper whose claim to fame is being shot and Simon’s Girlfriend is extremely self-absorbed.  I did get the message however that they are at best indifferent to Benito and Triforce’s call to arms.

First, I am not sure if Benito is being serious or if this is, as I first took it, simply an attempt to change the subject of the discourse of this blog from identifying the problem to what can be done.  Ok, you’ve borrowed a ton and now are precariously, under or unemployed.  Now what?  If this is a call to answer the MUCH MUCH harder “now what?” I’d be happy to see that, and even suggest dividing the “now what?” into long-term what should be lobbied for and how to change as a society and a what to do personally in the short-term. I think that’s a laudable goal – particularly considering the point that Alpha Man once made and Simon’s Girlfriend almost made before her dripping superficiality leaked out – the real debt we have is to each other and that can be serviced by helping people like us.

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The main thing lacking in Benito’s little manifesto was any sort of idea.  If we assume by default that he is just going to go along with whatever morally reprehensible, legally questionable idea Mike Triforce has in order to turn a buck then naturally I am somewhat skeptical.  However, I don’t have a strong response ala Erin or Alpha Man.  It could be that I just don’t care.  When life and death becomes routine, anything else can seem trite.  However, if I am honest with myself, another HUGE part of it is that it’s tough for me to put myself in non-medical shoes.

When I think of earning X amount to pay off Y debt I immediately think to myself – what kind of specialist has X amount of disposable income? I read Benito’s manifesto and started thinking about Dermatology or Lasik eye surgery in a market like LA or NY where looks mean alot.  After that, I started thinking about other ways doctors make money when their mid to high six figure salaries just aren’t enough – starting one’s one practice, investing and of course selling out to the drug and insurance companies more completely than we already do.

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Sigh. I don’t really know how to respond to this. If it weren’t for the fact that Benito and Triforce regularly blog about the plight of a student debtor, I’d say they were experiencing the same type of denial that a graduate six months out feels. But surely, years after the fact, they must have come to accept certain realities…right? Wrong. Here is why they think they will succeed despite the odds and here is why I hope they fail, for their own good.

Sometimes a loss is so horrible that the grieving process, denial, anger, fear, self-pity/bargaining and acceptance literally just starts over from the beginning. Now I hate Elvis Presley. He was a racist son of a stupid bitch who stole music and dance moves from blacks. All he had going for him was his white face. However when he died, some of his fans literally couldn’t take it and so they started seeing his dumbass everywhere. Similarly, Benito sees a way out that’s not there. Mike Triforce suffers from a combination of this and his own ego. They are the death row inmate literally strapped to the chair who can almost hear the governor’s voice in the phone they are sure is ringing, the sound just hasn’t quite hit their ears yet.

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Put 2010 behind you.
Look forward to a debt free 2012
Sure. Why not?

But I’m through putting things behind me
I am keeping the past in front where I can see it
Besides the present is ugly
And I can’t see the future through the haze

Debt is literally the past coming back to haunt you
Debt is like a gas station a block away on a one way street but in the wrong direction. And you are just about out of gas. If only you could go back- but you can’t. Instead you’ll have to push a car a long long distance which will take a long long time.

What were you thinking a block ago? You knew how much gas you had…but you believed the lies they told you about the mileage. Now the red light is on but it’s too late to go back.

You get out to push. You expect the mocking jeers of those with gassed up cars but you never expected the insults and the rotten vegetables from the pedestrians who never drive. They remember the scorn of those driving by and their j willingness to slow down as they crossed the street. They think you’re still one of them.

You want to abandon your car but what if their is a gas station just over that next hill?

By the time you find a gas station you find the fuel is only compatible with newer cars. You are already a dinosaur.
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As the person with the lowest loan balance and second-highest current income I feel it’s my responsibility to say “wake up guys.” Now I am not saying it can’t be done but what I am saying is that if Benito or Triforce had enough going for them that they could come up with 200k apiece after taxes, they probably wouldn’t have student loans in the first place.  Additionally, the amount of money they would have to make and the time they would have to do it in negates most if not all legitimate enterprises given that they have no access to capital.

So let’s start with the most financially successful of the two: Mike Triforce.  Given his womanizing ways and association with failed actors my gut tells me his best shot is setting up a porn site starring himself.  Please, I am not being glib and I am disgusted by the idea but porn is legal and I would not be surprised if his girlfriend has supplemented her income with occasional work in the industry. Ok, that was catty, I (should) take that back.
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