Student loan borrowers skip payments: It's "an act of civil disobedience", 1 in 10 say they won't pay

Real talk - How will not paying convince conservatives to be for student debt forgiveness? They’re the ones blocking loan forgiveness, and this is a demographic of people that does lean toward them, so why would they listen?

IMHO, showing up to vote is what would actually put the fear of god into these politicians. Not paying a loan will totally fuck up your ability to rent, get a credit card, get reasonable car insurance, and even get a job. Bad credit is no joke.

It won’t, but I hope most of these people realize the only way it’ll change is consistently going to vote and keeping their family updated on what to vote on.
- you voted for the most liberal candidate you had available for presidency already.
Yeah these people are only hurting themselves. The US isn't hurting for cash and sooner or later those loans you're avoiding turn into garnishments.
- And they’re not eligible for bankruptcy relief either
strikes* will put the fear of god into politicians, if we vote they will just give us all crappy options.
also the benefit of not paying off those loans is they are actually left with a bit more money.
- strikes* will put the fear of god into politicians,
  Striking of matches, maybe.
Not paying a loan will totally fuck up your ability to rent, get a credit card, get reasonable car insurance, and even get a job.
I don't agree to credit checks from landlords.
I have reasonable car insurance.
I don't agree to credit checks from employers.
I do have a credit card and I test it once a month on a small purchase, usually coffee.
Any other dire warnings you wish to inform me about that do not match the real world?
- Don’t match the real world? Just because you have been lucky to avoid that stuff doesn’t mean that a LOT of us haven’t experienced that stuff.
  Credit checks are common in housing markets with limited supply, all the largest auto insurance companies in the US now do credit checks, and jobs in industries like finance and security often add a credit check during your pre-hire background check.
  And god forbid you ever need some serious financial products like another loan. That is off the table.

Can't say I blame them at this point but the consequences of that are probably going to suck for them.

Counter argument--having bad credit is also meaningless if you can never afford to purchase something like a house, and you're ok with purchasing used vehicles and renting from smaller landlords and not property management companies.
- Credit is a fucking scam to begin with. It's insane what companies like Equifax have gotten away with.
Paycheck to paycheck and your payment is more than you spend on groceries. And your loan has doubled in size because of interest. And will continue to grow. Meanwhile your credit is garbage and you can't get ahead. Bad credit? Crappy car, needs fixes. Higher interest rate. I'm 41 and trying so hard to get ahead of it.
At the very least cap the interest for people. Or how about no interest. You can't chip away at something that's growing faster than you can swing at it.
- Best we can do is crippling debt in a dystopian shitscape to pay off the degree they lied to you about being able to get a good enough job to raise a family because you got that degree, taking on tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt.
- I agree with you here. I've always said, if you're putting in work to get an education, the interest on the loan should be zero. Yes, zero.
  Over time it means the lender (read: govt) loses money, so what. The increased tax income for an educated employee more than accounts for that. Even if it didn't, what's the downside to an educated workforce for anyone but those in power?
  Education should not be a for-profit scheme.
The consequences already suck. It's damned if you do damned if you don't. At least I can keep (some of) my money this way.
- Do you though? Don't they garnish wages over it?
Definitely encourages people to work under the table.
- Part of the reason there's such a push for cashless payment.

Reminder that student loans, like mortgages, are rolled up into an investment vehicle called the SLABS, or Student Loan Asset Backed Securities. Student Loan Forgiveness would tank the value of the SLABS, and I guarantee you our elected officials have money tied up in them. Since a student loan can't be discharged through bankruptcy, it's typically a very safe investment.

It is absolutely HORRIBLE and immortal to have an investment that gains money of others being in debt. That is SO fucked up
- Welcome to capitalism.
  Inb4 all the MBA nerds come to chime in about why making money off of someone else's failure is a good thing...
- What..... What do you think a loan fundamentally is?
- It smacks of the subprime lending that caused the Great Recession all those years ago. History doesn't repeat but it often rhymes.
- Especially when it's funded through our own taxes.
Government student loans can't be discharged.
I got private student loans, and eventually stopped paying and they were discharged. The discharge counted as income on my taxes, but still way cheaper than paying criminal interest for 30 years.
- It may be technically possible to get private student loans discharged, but from what I understand, they've made it incredibly difficult.
I should do is make a SLAB composed of borrowers who are never going to pay back and ones that certainly will. Then convince pension managers to buy those SLABs from me.

Not very effective when they can just garnish your wages, your taxes, and your social security. I'm fully on the side that believes student loans desperately need reform, and Biden's forgiveness plan getting shot down has definitely negatively impacted my life, but I'm not dealing with ruined credit and the stress that not paying causes when I know they'll find a way to get their money unless I basically throw away my career to work cash jobs. That would impact my life way worse in the long run.

Right now borrowers are incentivized to keep low income jobs and avoid settling down (they can’t buy houses anyway) which isn’t exactly excellent from a state perspective.
- That kind of sounds like when people say that anyone on welfare could be doing better but chooses not to so they can keep their benefits. Of course there will always be people right on the cusp who determine that the little extra money they'd make by working more hours or trying to get a slightly better job won't make up for what they'd lose (either in benefits or in savings from a lower student loan payment), but anyone who can afford to do significantly better generally tries to do that for a lot of reasons.
- Not factoring in the borrowers that still have student loans from a decade or two or three ago and can’t just upend their now-established lives by halting payment. They’ll be forced to keep paying and keep that turd floating, not by choice, mind you.
- borrowers are incentivized to keep low income jobs
  I don't believe this at all.

I mean... right or wrong, FAAFO with banks does not sound fun, I hope they have an exit strategy like to live with someone else as they drop off the grid.:-|

I agree. More power to them, but I'm way too risk adverse to personally stop paying. I genuinely hope they can induce some change. I guess that makes me a scab.
I hope this debt is forgiven someday, but I don't have enough faith in the powers that be to risk my future on it.
- I mentioned to someone else replying at the same time as you did:
  Don't beat yourself up - ~~that's the banks job~~.
  Like if someone scams you and you follow them to their house, break in and take your money back... you become the assailant at that point - e.g. if someone spots you, maybe not even the owner, and shoots you dead or whatever, then the fact that it's their house is all that police are going to see and care about.
  Movies and TV shows about vigilantes are fun to watch but the reality is that it is quite dangerous. Right or wrong, they have the entire weight of society behind them.
  Find a way to resist that does not involve the likelihood of losing everything you have.:-)
Yeah, much as I'd like to participate, I'm scared into being a scab. Life is hard enough as it is.
- Don't beat yourself up - ~~that's the banks job~~.
  Like if someone scams you and you follow them to their house, break in and take your money back... you become the assailant at that point - e.g. if someone spots you, maybe not even the owner, and shoots you dead or whatever, then the fact that it's their house is all that police are going to see and care about.
  Movies and TV shows about vigilantes are fun to watch but the reality is that it is quite dangerous. Right or wrong, they have the entire weight of society behind them.
  Find a way to resist that does not involve the likelihood of losing everything you have.:-)

As someone who was bright-eyed and bushy tailed when I started college, I was not expecting that being a student was a constant bleed of money.

The college partnered with some student loan vendor? and that vendor issued only a debit card which only worked on campus at specific ATMs. There was no apps for this shit. There was no bank withdrawal. Is was only the card and the ATM. They charged a fee for every use of it. So when I need to get that tuition money, I had to pay to get my money. It limits at 300$ so you’d have to repeatedly get charged to take multiple sums out. Tuition was exorbitant too. Didn’t include cafeteria or anything else. Books also out of pocket and 3-4 new ones each semester. We were also forced to pay ‘health fees’ for access to the newly built rec center, which you paid whether you ever stepped foot there or not.

Look it’s one thing to have a ‘way about things’ but by this point it was more like an excuse to fleece us for everything we had and more.

After 2.5 years of it I finally had to get a job on top of everything just to afford to be there. The job then took most of my time and it was not easy working around the school schedule. I finally had to quit school. What did I do? I stayed in my job because it was the only income source I had as a young person without a college degree and at least I was literally getting working experience.

Tell me, who benefited here? You can argue it was me, but I have no degree in my hand. I have now almost 20,000$ on top of my original amount (40k) due to interest. I’ve always struggled to make ends meet and I’m essentially trapped with this debt. Is this really fair? I didn’t know the true consequence of these loans adding up. It was only after I got so far and saw how big a problem was growing that I had to bail. There was no way I could afford it. I was a kid, I was told I had to go to college and I had no choices in life unless I did that. So much pressure growing up.

I was not expecting that being ~~a student~~ alive was a constant bleed of money.

Civil disobedience is making a comeback.

I'm here for it!

Beene added that there are other options if you want to make your viewpoint on student debt forgiveness clear that don't involve risking your financial future, like protesting and writing to your elected representatives.

"But have you considered begging?"

All of that relies on the belief that anyone with any significant student loans have a financial future. Most of us are so far up shit creek, give me that civil disobedience paddle.
And when you consider that the debts are packaged into an investment vehicle, there's no fucking way they're going to vote on student loan forgiveness. Don't want the value of all those securities to tank.

I've said it once and I'll say it again: if you need your citizens to have a post-secondary education to keep your country humming along, MAKE IT AS EASY AS POSSIBLE FOR PEOPLE TO GET THE EDUCATION AND NOT BE BURDENED WITH BULLSHIT DEBT. FREE COLLEGE. FREE UNIVERSITY. FREE TRADES SCHOOL.

It's already free. Everything is on the Internet. We need employers to step up and put in their own tests, questions, etc instead of relying on degrees to create a pool of potential employees. Some places already do this.
- We need employers to step up and put in their own tests, questions, etc instead of relying on degrees
  Oh yeah, let's put control of post-secondary education into the hands of corporations. What could possibly go wrong?
- In the age of free information, you need to pay a small fortune to live in a dormitory surrounded by drunk teenagers ... so you can get educated

All these comments whining about how this will hurt credit scores, pay attention to the laws that we have currently. Student loan companies cannot take any action on unpaid loans for 1 year from the start of repayment. Interest still accrues but they cannot garish wages like all these morons are saying. That means for most, you don’t need to pay anything until after the next election. Use the only leverage we have and don’t pay back the loan for at least a year. Make them earn the vote and do something else to cancel these loans

One year isn't a long time. That's quite the limb to go out on without any kind of certainty that it won't ruin your credit in a year.
- Fuck credit you are never going to own a new car or a house.
You go from saying it won't happen to saying you have a year countdown. Make up your mind. No one is saying it's going to happen tomorrow.

I was gonna do this, then my partner badgered me into it saying she wanted to buy a house someday, and my credit being crap would screw that up.

Your partner wants to finance a house someday. I know I'm on the losing side of this battle but I really wish people would stop associating BUYING a house with taking out a LOAN from a bank.
It just feels like people are only deceiving themselves by saying "I need good credit to buy a house" when what they really mean is "I need good credit so I can take on a lot of debt and pay out hundreds of thousands of dollars in interest over the next 30 years."
- One way or the other, you're paying every month. Either it's rent (paying for the landlord's house, including taxes, insurance and interest), or you're paying towards your own. The general populous has never really been able to buy a house outright. One way or another you're mortgaging your time to spread out the time to either pay for a house, or pay for property and building your own.
  Yes, people have been going WAY to far into debt, pushing the size and prices of houses to unsustainable levels. Hell my mom grew up just fine with 5ppl (2 parents, 3 kids) in an 800sqft house (plus a tiny finished attic) with 1 bathroom. Nobody really needs 2500-4000sqft houses.
  But even if we go back to reasonably sized homes, in no realistic world are mortgages going away.
  The best you can hope for is to live as cheaply as possible to save up a large down payment (and emergency fund), and buy only as much house as you really need, for as little interest as you can manage, and then pay it off as quickly as you can.
- Yeah, I paid cash for my house at $60k.
- Eh, I bought a house in 2020 just before the pandemic hit, and by the time I sold it late last year it had appreciated in value enough to completely offset the money I'd put into the mortgage. Essentially I'd lived there for 3.5 years for free.
How precious, your partner thinks housing will be affordable some day.
- In 30 years they'll be able to afford a shack in the middle of the Texan wastelands once global warming desolates the place.

hard af.

can't you all clown on them in the facebook comments? AKSCHUILLY the government will always win yeah no shit thanks

I took out my student loans to get a teaching degree. I worked full time during school, but tuition at my public university was 10k$/year when I was making $16k. My state has effectively made it illegal to be transgender in a public school, so despite a devastating shortage in my area of expertise, I can no longer work in the career I took the loans out for. My option is now to take out more student loans to pay for a masters degree and hope that I’ll be able to save up enough to move out of state, because I want to do the thing that I love to do and am good at. I will be a debt slave for the rest of my life.

You should look trying to move to a state before taking the loans. Plenty of states need teachers and are willing to pay for you to get your master's as part of retaining you.
- Yeah, when i was in high school in NY, you were allowed to teach as long as you are in a masters program.
What the fuck? What state?
- The state that just hired the LibsOfTikTok person to evaluate school materials… and is going after a principal’s license for dressing in drag on the weekends. Imma be vague because my life sucks enough without getting Chaya involved…

Is this one of those things where is enough people don to pay, one of the financial systems will be ripped down?

Worth a shot.
2025: The Supreme Court reinterprets the 14th ammendment and allows debtors prison

Refusing to make payments on a debt that can never be repaid is smart.

That guy wrecking his credit over $1200 is not.

Student loans are rarely $1200

Pretty sure this "story" is sponsored by Sallie Mae.

If so joke’s on them, they didn’t put the propaganda in the headline so this will just make more people boycott. And if it leads to financial ruin for 1 in 10 borrowers that just costs the taxpayers even more.
I’d Freddy Mad still around?

Can we start doing that with rent payments en masse? I really wish there was a big, organized campaign around this to force rental companies to stop charging these outrageous made-up numbers for rent based on "market value" (which they themselves set).

With student loan payments, I sympathize and hope they all ultimately get their loans forgiven, but ultimately I think the rental situation is the worse offender that's driving more of the issues that we're seeing today. I try to pay on my loans/debts religiously, even if I hate the idea of paying all this extra interest on top of it.

I'm refusing to honestly Even with the new saver plan or whatever it's called you don't save any money. Yeah the monthly payments go down but you end up paying almost 20k more through interest over a longer time. That's not saving

You're going to pay either normally or through wage garnishment. It's just a matter of where you want your credit sitting at when you start paying.
If you’re in the new SAVE plan the government picks up the interest gained each month despite the lower payment. Total balance will only go down on the new plan.

Oh hey this is about me 😂

They will get their paychecks garnished, or tax return checks garnished.

Exactly right. It's not like thesenare optional payments. You give them the money or they take the money, what'll it be?
- Take it. Please spend and entire year without me paying a cent, then five dollars once in a while, then they hire a lawyer to bring it to court, and I drag it out, then there is a judgement and I file an appeal to modify payment terms, then I get litetally any change of life circumstances and file for yet another modification. This continues on and on and on until I die.
  Please please waste piles of US taxpayer dollars. I want you to spend 100 dollars in paperwork and layer fees for every dollar you get. Or either that and wipe the debt out the way we as a society should

Before the concept of "tuition free classes" meant "it costs nothing", Britain was working with the idea of "anyone can take the class for free, but you have to pay a fee to take the final - and you can't pass the class without taking the final." Instead of having students take out loans and then something happens to them such that they can't pass the class or they get so far behind that they know they will fail the class, they make the decision a week or so before the class is over to take out the loan. With everyone moving to post-videos-auto-graded-homework-online-only, the only real per-student cost is grading the exams anyway.

I'm sure they will hurt themselves more than the bank

As the architects of this system intended

Also: "Incel Udent Debt"

Like housing they can't afford anyway?
If they system isn't going to give anything back for being a good citizen, then why would they? There's too much stick and not enough carrot.

Yea!!! I borrow money and then I dont pay it!!! Great!!!

What do PPP loan takers have to do with this conversation though?
- Can't wait to see their response. Oh wait, it will never come because they hadn't through about that.

Takes out loans for school

Expected to pay them back

Shocked Pikachu face

Has worked alongside colleges to artificially increase tuition costs to the benefit of both
Expects people to pay them for 90% of their adult life
Shocked pikachu face when people figure it out and are mad.
- Wow you're telling me tuition has gone up over time? I'm fucking shocked.
- I lived that exact experience and chose not to take the debt. I honestly have very little sympathy for this cause. Anyone with a degree can get a job way better paying than someone without a degree (me) so I'm not really sure why your friends chose to take what they did. I'm super fucking bitter to see this gaining traction to be honest.
  Why should people who chose to study something specific and then not get that job get to have everything paid for them? Are you saying that no one with a degree can get any kind of job that pays more than $25/hr? I'm not talking about some McDonald's janitor bs, but some management position, or some kind of office work that requires a degree. It pays way more than the shit work people without a degree are limited to unless you're in a union/trade.
  Source: I'm living it.
- How? How is taking a loan and then being shocked when you have to pay it back not itself moronic? You made the decision to take the loan and you chose what to study. Don't like computer science? Neither did I which is why I didn't study that, but those that did make bank. Study liberal arts and find it hard to find a well paying career? That's on you, not society. I was never the smoothest crayon in the shed, but even I knew this at 17.
  Yeah yeah fuck the banks, I'm with you there, but this was a decision. No one was forced to take the loans. You gamble on your own future. My gamble was to not take the debt and let me tell you, that did NOT pay off in the end. A degree helps you get way better paying jobs (that might not be your underwater basket weaving career you studied for) than not having a degree unless you're in a union or a well paying trade.
  Hot take I'm sure, but this whole thing is one of the more absurd things to have gained traction... Yes I'm fucking bitter. I followed the rules, chose not to take a gamble on debt and I'm suffering for it while watching people get their debts paid off because they don't feel like paying for their education that does help them whether they accept that or not. Put my resume next to yours, everything identical except education and you're getting the job not me.
  Edit: do I think all education should be free, YES! But this is not that argument. This is "I took a loan and now I don't want to pay."
They locked them into those contracts when they were still 17 year old kids. That's illegal. Except they decided it wasnt. Those kids were told their entire lives that college would open doors to great paying jobs and employers would love to hire college grads over dumb folks with just lousy old high school diplomas. Just sign here kid, and you can get an English degree! Of course, those lenders made sure nobody explained how compounding interest works beforehand. Then they packed all those young people together at the hormonal apex of their sexual torment, with booze and drugs and no supervision, just to see how well they could study Tolstoy. And all it'll cost them is 150k. But of course there's the interest to consider.
Why yes, we're hiring! How does $20 an hour sound? Or perhaps you'd prefer this unpaid internship?