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.

Yours in forgiveness,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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A Twelfth Open Letter to the School District

Dear folks in charge of the decision making down at the School District,

I am writing you today to inquire about getting three or four student loans going. I’m not sure about the process for getting student loans for boys that are still in middle and high school, but I definitely know I want them.

I read the news recently that repayments on student loan debts have been frozen for a few years now, due to people’s inability to leave the house and get to the mailbox during quarantine. The government just voted to extend the freeze a while longer, and they are pushing for total forgiveness of up to $50,000 for any loan.

So, obviously, I would really like to get four separate $50,000 student loans going right away.

Most of the cost of public school seems to be built into my taxes, but with sports, school fundraisers, clothes, food, and the big three – masks, Clorox wipes, and hand sanitizer – educating our three boys has EASILY cost us more than fifty grand each over the past few years, so I should have no trouble qualifying.

I will also gladly sign up for a class or two at our local junior college to get the ball rolling on my own $50,000 pre-forgiven student loan. I’d like to look into a psychology track, but if they also have classes on basic math, personal finances, civic responsibility, compound interest, or what a loan is, I think those could really benefit everyone involved here.

Any information you can give me regarding applying for this fantastic “loan” opportunity would be greatly appreciated.

On another note, I’d also love to renounce my citizenship and become an undocumented immigrant, if that’s possible. Our governor here in California is giving out cool free stuff to them, and from what I understand, I would no longer have to pay taxes. So that seems like something I’d be very interested in exploring.

Let me know if that’s your department, or if I need to contact someone else. I am absolutely willing to cross either one of our nation’s borders and then sneak back in if that’s what’s required.

Thanks in advance!

Yours in educational excellence through continued partnership,

-Smidge

 

Copyright © 2022 Marc Schmatjen

 

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The Mortgage Jokers

Did you know that the word mortgage means “death pledge?” That should tell you almost everything you need to know about borrowing money to buy a house.

We recently refinanced our mortgage down to a significantly lower interest rate, and since we re-upped the loan for another 30-year stint, our monthly payment is a lot less. To compensate for adding additional years back onto the loan, we are making larger-than-required principal payments to reduce the length of the loan, and minimize the amount of interest we’ll pay.

At least, we tried to do that. The bank looked at our first larger payment and immediately chose the most inane way imaginable to allocate the funds. I won’t tell you the name of this whiz-bang financial institution, but it rhymes with Wells Fargo.

Here’s what happened: (I have chosen round amounts for simplicity, but not because I think you, the loyal reader, couldn’t follow along. I am attempting to make this as simple as possible in case anyone from the bank reads this, so they might have a fighting chance of understanding it.)

Let’s say our total loan amount is $100,000, and our monthly scheduled payment is $500. We sent them an October payment of $1100.

If we were to pay the scheduled $500/month for the next 30 years, we would pay a grand total of $180,000 to the unnamed bank. We would have paid them the $100,000 principal back, plus $80,000 in interest. We don’t want to pay them $80,000 in interest, so if we pay them $1100/month, paying an additional $600/month toward the principal, it only takes 9 years to pay them the $100,000 back, and we only pay $22,000 in interest.

Simple, right. We thought so.

Not to them, I guess. They took our October payment of $1100, looked at it carefully, and decided that we must have wanted to pay our standard October bill of $500, pre-pay our November bill of $500 -- $400 of which is interest -- and put the remaining $100 toward the principal. They sent us back a statement telling us that’s what they did with the money, and the good news was that our next payment wasn’t due until December!

An open letter to our mortgage lender:

What the hell are you guys smoking over there? You geniuses actually looked at my more-than-double-sized mortgage payment and concluded that I wanted to pre-pay next month? Really?

Has anyone in the history of the mortgage ever pre-paid a month? That is some serious outside the box type thinking right there, fellas!

You guys seriously thought that I am sending you extra money so that I can get a jump on paying you the entire $80,000 in interest as scheduled in the 30-year payoff plan? It didn’t even cross your minds that I might be trying to pay down the principal faster? Really!?!

So, by that same superior banker’s logic of yours, if I came into a bunch of money and wanted to pay off my mortgage tomorrow, and I sent you the entire $100,000 principal amount, you would naturally assume that I wished to pre-pay the next 200 months’ payments, so that I wouldn’t have a care in the world until the year 2028, at which time I would happily resume paying off the remaining $60,000 loan balance with interest over the next 160 months?

That makes perfect sense.

Now, I understand that I just sent the large payment in without any specific instructions. I can kind of see where you might have thought twice about what to do with the money if I had sent it in as a check, with no instructions, and the amount had been exactly two payments. Maybe you might have thought to yourselves, “This man will obviously be out of the country next month, and unable to send his November mortgage check to us on time, so he is obviously sending us that money now, so as not to disturb our fragile cash flow situation here at the nation’s fourth largest bank.”

I mean, if I squint really hard, I can almost see that scenario playing out at that think tank you guys are running over there. But, fellas, seriously… This payment came in electronically from my bank. Do you brainiacs think that I was smart enough to set up an online bill payment account with my bank, but I wasn’t smart enough to find the “recurring monthly payment” button?

This isn’t looking good, boys. You guys are facing the same conundrum that most of this country’s politicians are in right now. You can’t be even remotely mediocre at your job and screw it up this badly, so you are left with two unpleasant choices: Either you have to admit that you are about as smart as a box of hair, and unfit to run your own life, let alone a bank, or you have to admit that you are a crooked cheat. It’s either one or the other, because nobody with an IQ over room temperature would make that kind of mistake in earnest.

Thanks for giving me the loan in the first place. I really do appreciate it. But, play fair, or I swear, I will go through the long and painful process of refinancing my “death pledge” again, just to make sure you never get another penny of my money.

Sincerely yours,

Smidge

Watch your bankers closely, folks. As with our politicians, something tells me I already know the answer as to why the “mistake” was made.

See you soon,

-Smidge

Copyright © 2012 Marc Schmatjen

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