10 years of hotdogs and ramen
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Topic: 10 years of hotdogs and ramen
Posted By: Spinney
Subject: 10 years of hotdogs and ramen
Date Posted: 23/October/2005 at 7:42am
I'm pretty sure that's all my food budget will have room for.
I started my computer science degree in 1998, and graduated in 2004
with the BCS and a BA. Because of my massive loan debt I got a $4000
millenium bursary when I graduated, which was immediately applied
against my NB loans bringing my total debt down to around $50,000. I
moved to Halifax since there wasn't any IT work in NB, and spent about
18 months there looking for work.
When my interest free period ran out I was approved for interest
relief, and during that period I finally found some work...at a call
centre. It was the only place I could find that would even interview
me, everywhere else I was either over or underqualified. It's very hard
to find work in IT when you don't have experience, especially in the
maritimes, since the BCS degrees don't go into specific technology
buzzwords. Everywhere else people looked at me like I had 2 heads when
I applied. I actually had a restaurant manager ask me, "What makes you
think you're qualified?", when I brought in my resume. Anyway I managed
to hang on at the call centre for 2 months, which is amazing
considering how mismanaged the place was. Apparently my whole training
class including the trainer had quit by the month after I left.
So finding myself underqualified for meaningful work I decided to go to
a private college to get the buzzwords I needed...at a price of
$14,000. I knew it would probably make my debt near unmanageable, but
at that point it was either that or welfare for the rest of my life
heh. I quickly found out that the college was a scam (CDI College),
$14000 for an education worth closer to $100. This past summer I
decided to quit that diploma, sell the few remaining things I owned,
like my computer, and move to Vancouver. I've been here about 9 weeks
and I'm starting to get a lot of interviews but now I'm seriously
wondering if I can afford to actually live. With rent as high as it is
in Vancouver I'm starting to think that the only way to bring the
payments down to a manageable level is to extend the repayment terms so
far that the debt will never be repaid.
On the normal 10 year term my payments will be over $720 a month, so it
seems I can qualify for debt reduction as long as I'm not making more
than $40,000. The problem is that in order to qualify for debt
reduction you have to exhaust interest relief, and I'm reasonably sure
you can't get IR while making that much. I'm worried that my payments
will become so high that I won't be able to pay rent, at which point I
become homless and lose whatever job it is I've found. It just seems
that the whole student loan repayment process is designed to shoot
itself in the foot...maliciously remove the student's ability to repay
and then suck interest payments out of them for the rest of their lives.
I used to think that I'd never want to leave Canada and refused to even
consider moving to the US, but there's no way with my work experience I
can command a high enough salary in Canada to actually pay rent,
student loans and still eat.
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Replies:
Posted By: Spinney
Date Posted: 23/October/2005 at 8:01am
Oh yeah, I forgot this interesting little tidbit. In 1998 one of my
loans was with National Bank, and has never been rolled over into the
NSLSC loans. When I returned to school and got new loans I apparently
owed an interest payment of $30.99, except they never told me this.
When I called them to let them know I was returning to school they
mentioned something about a payment, but no amount was ever specified.
Of course this didn't make much sense to me, taking a payment out of
someone's student loan to pay down a student loan.
Anyway time went by and I never received anything in the mail from
them. I did get a couple of completely incomprehenisble phone messages.
The French accent was so thick that none of us could understand who was
calling, why they were calling, or what their phone number was. I
finally got a message I could barely understand a few weeks ago, and
discovered I was about to be passed off to a collections agency over
$31! It seemed completely unethical but I sent them a cheque anyway,
even though I can't afford it right now. I've spent the last 8 years
getting an excellent credit rating with my credit cards, and I'm
getting the feeling that these student loans are going to kill it for
me.
Banks are really starting to piss me off. My dad had an issue with his
mortage through TD, where for 20 years they didn't put any money
towards his principle. Add on top of that the fact that the banks now
charge you an arm and a leg for the priviledge of letting them use your
money to make more money. It's an industry that has turned from helping
to build the country to feeding off it like a parasite.
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