this post was submitted on 04 Sep 2024
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[–] fishpen0@lemmy.world 3 points 1 week ago

I had a loan like this one. Probably a plus loan. For a while the rates for plus loans eclipsed 8% and plus loans accrue interest while you are in school. So if you don’t know what you’re doing, you can take on 4 years of interest before you even start paying. Turns a $20k loan into a $30k loan before you even graduate. Plus loans recapitalize interest whenever they come out of deferral so you actually pay interest on the interest as well. So by the time you pay the loan off that is then $41k in total payments for what was originally a 20k loan

Do this 4 times for each year of undergrad and you’ll have 164000 in total loan payments over your lifetime.

Plus loans are a government backed scam to fuck over poor kids who can’t front the cash for what the federal aid program covers. My base grants were only ~40k over 4 years and my federal unsubsidized and subsidized loans only were ~24k over 4 years.

Meanwhile the prestigious university I was accepted to charged 24k per semester. So I had 64k of aid and low interest loans to pay a tuition of 192k. After my work study added an additional 20k/yr I was still short 48k and poof there the plus loans were to “help” me.