Dear Mr. President and/or Presidential Intern:
I am a freshly-minted attorney working at a small-ish firm in Boston, Massachusetts, and I am writing with a concern -- and a suggestion.
I graduated from a private liberal arts college in May 2000. I was fortunate enough to receive a scholarship, as well as help from my parents, and made it through college with only $26,000 in loans. And I like to think that’s no small feat, given the cost of that Bachelor's degree ($120,000+).
When I decided to attend law school the following fall, I did so without any outside scholarships or grants. My parents, who divorced during my undergraduate years, were unable to contribute further to my education, and I amassed a sizeable amount of graduate school loans – to the tune of $160,000. But the school was prestigious, the degree was worthy and full of potential, and in many respects I was led to believe, however naively, that the investment would pay off, and rather quickly at that.
My current position as an associate attorney is what I would call "my first real job." I make $60,000 a year – an amount that a few of my classmates might scoff at from the benefit of their Big Firm offices, but a salary I feel generally good about. After all, with only a year of experience under my belt, I earn almost double what my mother made after nearly thirty years of teaching reading, writing, math and science to first grade students in Small Town, Iowa, where I grew up. And we can all agree her job was a lot more important than mine.
I do not live an extravagant life. My fiancée works for a genetic research institute – she’s an academic, through and through – and plans to pursue her Master’s degree in genetic counseling this fall. We live in a cheaper suburb of Boston, in a neighborhood largely populated by undergraduate students. We opt for IKEA over Crate & Barrel, and have filled our apartment with discount furniture. We try not to use our credit cards and have cut back on shopping and eating out. We walk and take the metro as much as possible, rather than use the car, and do our best to waste as little as possible.
Because with close to $200,000 in educational debt, my $60,000 salary, after taxes, strains to cover my loans, rent and monthly expenses. Not to mention we’re trying to save for a modest (but kickass) wedding.
Now, I don’t pretend to know very much about the economy. I mean, I was an English major. I barely survived my financial accounting course (seriously, it was a train wreck). But it occurred to me the other day, as I was looking for the new weekly deal at the grocery store, that my $60,000 salary would go a heck of a lot further if the tremendous pressure of my loan payments was lessened. I have often dreamt of a scenario in which my federal loans suddenly and gloriously evaporated (okay, my private loans, too), but that’s not what I’m suggesting.
See, I’ve already taken advantage of my economic deferments, because after graduation I was making a distinctly unimpressive $15 an hour as a law clerk. Not exactly the $135,000 salary we all thought we’d be pulling in after law school orientation, but still, better than unemployment. I’ve now resorted to the more costly forbearance option on a few of my loans, so I can more comfortably pay down the others while searching, hopefully, for a better paying job. This was a difficult decision to make, because I’m adding interest to my loan principals. Hardly ideal.
But I started thinking, what if there was another option for me and the thousands of similarly situated post-grads? What if, in the absence of an improbably broader loan forgiveness program (tragically, I am not a nurse), there was an Economic Recovery Deferment available instead? A way to postpone payment -- without penalty -- and free up a significant chunk of income that can help the economy sort itself out?
So much attention is being lavished upon homeowners and the mortgages they took that they could not or cannot now afford -- but what about students who took on the massive loans necessitated by ever-increasing tuition and costs? What about the bright-eyed shmucks folks who invested years and hundreds of thousands of dollars into their education, only to graduate with credentials that have lost their value in a failing job market?
I am doing what I can to rescue myself, and I take a certain degree of pride in that. But the sort of help I’m suggesting would not only lift punishing weight from the shoulders of a significant portion of my demographic, it would also serve to energize the economy. Why? Because we’re young. We're savvy. We like to buy new toys and go out for drinks and pick up flowers for our girlfriends on our way home from work. We’re more optimistic about the future. Which is to say, we’re far more likely to spend our liberated monies and actually stimulate the economy, rather than hoard it in jars under the floorboards as our grandparents might advise.
Anyway, it’s just an idea. Kick it around and get back to me.
Respectfully,
d.
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