Just a Smidge: forgiveness

Showing posts with label forgiveness. Show all posts

Wednesday, July 12, 2023

A Second Open Letter to the Student Loan Department

Dear whomever is in charge of the student loan forgiveness program,

I wrote to you a little under a year ago regarding getting the ball rolling on forgiving our past and existing student loans. Since Son Number One was still in high school at the time, we were mainly discussing you guys paying back all of our costs to date, with the housing, food, and transportation of our three students, from preschool through twelfth grade.

I haven’t heard from you guys yet on all of that. Those costs are still piling up over here with his younger brothers, so the sooner the better!

In addition to following up on that enormous bill, I’m writing today about forgiveness of a new student loan I just received. I realize the whole forgiveness program has been in a bit of a start/stop turmoil lately, but I’m confident that when you hear my tale of woe, you’ll be persuaded to do the right thing.

Here’s the situation: Son Number One is starting his freshman year at the University of Nevada, Reno this fall, and his first tuition installment was due this week. I logged into his school account last night to figure out how to make that happen. Imagine my surprise when I was presented with two options to pay – via electronic check, or with my credit card.

“You can pay for college with a credit card?” I asked out loud to no one in particular. Again, imagine my surprise when I investigated further and discovered that not only could I pay with a credit card, but there were no service fees, or convenience fees, or fees of any kind attached to that option.

“You can pay for college with a credit card!” I exclaimed out loud, again to no one in particular, although at that point I actually wished more people were around to share in my happy discovery.

So, guess what I did last night, student loan folks? Yep, I racked up a butt-ton of credit card rewards points when I paid my son’s first college tuition payment with my credit card. Boo-yah!

So, here’s where you guys come in. I now have a relatively small student loan, by national standards, but with an enormously large interest rate. Come next month, those credit card vultures are going to be coming after me for as much as 30.90% APR. Now, I’m not completely up to date on the student loan rules and regulations, but that interest rate seems like it should be criminal.

You can now see my obvious and immediate need for swift student loan forgiveness before this predatory compounding interest, being perpetrated on our nation’s poor, defenseless youth, gets out of hand.

You will be saving this great nation more than 30% per year (compounding!) by jumping on this right away, before my next billing cycle. I know you’ll do the right thing.

And remember, UNR is on the semester system, so we’re going to need swift credit card student loan forgiveness a minimum of twice a year for the next four years.

Thanks in advance!

Yours in forgiveness,

-Smidge

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Wednesday, August 31, 2022

An Open Letter to the Student Loan Department

Dear whomever is in charge of the student loan forgiveness program,

Son Number One is a high school senior this year, so he’ll be off to college around this time next year. We’re all very excited about your new plan to wipe out student loan debt, and we plan to take full advantage of that next year.

Originally, we were thinking he’d need to stay in our home state of California for college to avoid those high out-of-state tuitions, but your new program has really opened up the possibilities. Since money is no longer an object, I think we’ll have him try to get into some of those famous schools that always seem to produce good results, like Harvard, Cambridge, or MIT. However, I’m not sure if he really has what it takes, grade-wise, so we’d really appreciate it if you could put in a good word for him. Thanks in advance!

I’m really writing today to inquire how to get started on the forgiveness of all of our past and existing student loans. I noticed that the program was entitled “Student Loan Forgiveness” without the “College” qualifier, and that’s great for us, because we’ve had student debt for years now with the three boys.

Let’s start with the obvious one – our mortgage. We’ve been housing up to three students here for the last fourteen or fifteen years, ever since Son Number One headed off to his first day of preschool. That obviously qualifies under the “room” section of room and board.

We’ll obviously split the mortgage amount by three-fifths, since my wife and I aren’t students anymore. Just let me know where to send that sizeable bill for forgiveness. Will you work directly with the bank that holds the mortgage, or will you send us a check? Either way is great. Whatever works best for you.

Now, let’s talk food. We’ve also been feeding these young students the whole time we’ve been housing them, which falls under the “board” portion of room and board. (Interesting side note, in case you were unaware – the term “board” means food because it refers to what folks used to eat off of before plates were invented.)

Based on our current weekly grocery bill, I can get you a fairly decent estimate of the total for the last fifteen years. Again, I’d be happy to split it by three-fifths, which in this case is extremely generous on my part, because these boys eat waaaay more than we do. You’ll obviously need to send me a check directly for the past amounts, but going forward, I’m happy to have you send me a credit card that I’ll use only for the boys’ food. Just make sure it has a high credit limit. I think they plan to start dining at some pretty fancy restaurants.

Besides tuition and room and board, transportation costs to and from school are the only other thing I can think of that needs forgiving. Son Number One and Two drive separately to school because of differing schedules, and Son Number Three has to ride with whomever lost the Ro-Sham-Bo that morning. We have never had any car loans, mainly because no bank will loan us money to buy cars as crappy as ours, but also because I have an aversion to financing anything that can roll off a cliff.

That’s all going to change now that student loan forgiveness is in full swing. We’ll start shopping right away for new cars for the boys. I’m thinking we should just get three new cars now, since Son Number Three will be learning to drive in about a year. Might as well handle all the paperwork at once to make things easier on you guys. You’re welcome.

We’ll want to go mid-upper level with the new rides. I’m thinking in the BMW/Audi/Maserati arena. We both obviously want to get something reliable, but I don’t want to spoil these kids, you know? Gotta keep them grounded and teach them how the real world works out there, right?

Do we call you from the dealership to handle the loan side of things, or do you want to just send a check in advance? Again, whatever works best for you.

We just can’t thank you enough for this new program. Super helpful! Looking forward to hearing from you soon about moving forward on all this, and we’ll be back in touch again next year for the college costs.