A blog to vent about the evils of the legal profession, the law school scam, and being jobless with a JD. A blog about the legal profession and various aspects of it.
This site has a ton of information about what your rights are against debt collectors and how you can fight back. Unfortunately, in the government’s never ending quest toover the educated, many of the defenses don’t apply to school loans. Well worth a look.
In the comments of the post above, Liz discusses how she beats the system with her repayment plan. Liz sent in a detailed explanation of the how her repayment plan works. Here it is:
The rules on student loans ARE different from most other consumer debt – the banks compound the interest daily, based on the total principal FOR THAT DAY.
And when the debtor makes the monthly payment, the banks can apply the payment FIRST to interest, based on the NUMBER OF DAYS since the last payment. The thing is, that proportion changes every month, which affects your principal outstanding, which in turn affects your daily interest charge.
So say your bill is due the 8th of the month, and you make your payment on the 3rd one month, but the 6th the next month. They’ll calculate the portion of your payment that goes to interest based on 33 days (in a 30-day month), and whatever the total principal is the day the payment is applied. Whatever is left over after covering 33 days of interest will be applied to principal. So you’re paying a little less in principal some months. And they’re calculating your daily interest based on the higher principal. So the next month maybe a little more goes to principal, but not necessarily enough to make up the difference in carrying a higher daily balance on a six-figure loan. Get it?
It’s not like other loans I’ve had, where I just make the payment and the same amount goes to interest every month. With this calculation, the debtor can never pay more than 365 days of interest a month, butthe debtor CAN pay interest calculated on a higher principal several times during the year. And the slightly larger portion of some payments going to principal a few months per year will NOT make up the difference.
That’s why the loans keep going up even for students keep making the payments. You actually have to pay extra every month just to keep the loan from growing, because they’re calculating your interest based on the principal outstanding EVERY DAY. And some months you’re not lowering principal as much as others. Subtract a few annual fees from your payments, including, ironically, “default insurance,” and you have a loan that will just never go away, even for a responsible borrower who makes every single payment.
Anyway, I have no problem paying my debts. I borrowed the money expecting to pay it back. But I do think this system of calculating interest is about as messed up as everything else about the legal instruction industry right now.
Albany Law School, a fourth tier New York toilet, is cutting its enrollment by 10 students to 240. Well, it’s a start, but unfortunately they should be cutting it by 250. There’s no reason for fourth tier law schools to be open, no law firm is going to hire from them in this economy. Fourth tier jobs went to India a couple of years ago.
The exciting news was that law school applications were down 20 percent this year, and that means that not only has the word gotten out, OLs are actually listening and making wise decisions not to go. The law school scam is starting to suffer losses, and that makes me very happy indeed.
When your wife asks you if she looks fat, be sure to say no if you’re in France. This story came out last year, but I just found it and thought it was fascinating. There’s a new French law that makes “psychological violence” a crime, punishable for up to three years in prison. Could have used a similar law here for my last relationship…
The bill, which has been unanimously approved by French MPs, defines mental violence as “repeated acts that could be constituted by words,” including insults or repeated text messages that “degrade one’s quality of life and cause a change to one’s mental or physical state.”
With the new legislation, couples can call witnesses to testify including using doctor’s records that show depression as a result of the rude comments.
“The judge could (also) take into consideration letters, SMSs or repetitive messages, because one knows that psychological violence is made up of insults,” she added.
However, French judges don’t seem to want to get in on the party and were “deeply sceptical” about the new law. Even though the law was modeled on worker’s sexual harassment judges fear that witnesses in domestic case won’t be objective.
True, one man’s fat ignorant slut is another man’s skinny smart dream girl. There’s really no accounting for taste, so who is going to judge whether someone is being insulted or just told the truth?
New lawyers need a bail out for student loan debt, but since we can’t pay lobbyists five billion dollars like the Wall Street whores investment banks can, we won’t be getting one. Paying off lobbyists is why they got 700 billion dollars of TARP money to bail their asses out for making incredibly risky and stupid investments that anyone who had and ounce of common sense would have known not to do. But the big boys need to play…
Add in that our government supports usury by banks and allows them to commit crimes that ordinary Americans have to serve time in prison for, and it’s easy to understand why these greedy mother fuckers bankers raked in $135 billion dollars in pay in 2010. The average Wall Street employee made $141,000 last year. Most of them do not have advanced degrees; all that is required is college, white skin and a penis.
How’s this for unfair?
• Goldman made over half of its 2010 revenues from trading. Many Wall Street firms borrowed as much as $30 for every $1 of capital it traded. And, according to PBS, Goldman often uses what it knows about clients positions to place its own bets.
•The U.S. government cushions its losses. As we saw in 2008, when the financial crisis hit, Washington (aka taxpayers) bailed out Wall Street with the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) and a total of $23.7 trillion in cash and guarantees. After pouring $5 billion into the coffers of Washington politicians and lobbyists between 1998 and 2009, Wall Street got a great return on investment.
This pisses me off so much I can barely type right now. Obama promised change. There’s been no change. NADA. Banks are still screwing over Americans, and the government is still helping them do it. I think it’s time to walk like an Egyptian – let’s take this to the streets. I’m sick to death of living in The United States of Goldman Sachs.