urg....

Now that I have grown up and have the responsibilities of an adult one of the things that seems to make a huge difference to me is money. I want to know exactly what I am spending my money on. Where that money is going and who benefits from it. Now like all of you I complain about taxes. I fully realize that taxes have a place, that it doesn’t matter which country you are in you are going to pay taxes. This is not really a beef of mine. I have decided that I can’t handle that. My tax money will help pay part of hospitalization cost or one of many other things I don’t have the time or ambition ot mention in this blog.
What has created a stir in me today is student loans. There are a lot of you out there who have managed to get away from student loans or who have managed to keep your student loans small. Congratulation I wish I was able to do that.
But there are many others out there who have decided to go onto higher education in an attempt to better yourself and find gainful employment after wards. Well if you are Canadian, the deal is you borrow money from the government and then you pay it back with interest. It doesn’t sound so bad if you are 18 and have several years before you have to even think about paying of the loans. For me the only time I even though about it was at the beginning of each year when I had to have a piece of paper filled in with the school signature on it so I wasn’t collected interest while I was still paying tuition. But now that time is over.
The catch is the interest. The daily interest on a $22 000 student loan is $4.00 (give or take a penny or 2). Let think about what I can buy for $4. Food wise I can get a bag of apples or bottle of ketchup, several chocolate bars, eat at Subway, if we want to talk other necessities it would take me about month worth of interest to buy a cheap pair of winter boots or jacket for the up coming season, or 15 days to buy a pair of jeans that are semi stylish, a day for socks or mittens, two days for a scarf or a hat. The monthly interest will pay my electric bill twice and my phone bill and leave some change.
I have discovered that there is no hope for this situation. I make my student loan payments on a monthly payment. I am charged interest on my loans. They tell me that if I reduce the principal that the interest will go down. Anyone who can do math can figure that out, however I found today of several payments and the reduction of my principal balance by a modest few hundred dollars that my interest rate has actually gone up. On my largest loan I went from an interest rate of $3.99 to $4.13. Wow 14 cents. Doesn’t seem like much, but let’s look at that numbers. $3.99 for a month (30 days) = 119.70 and 4.13 for a month (30 days) 123.90. This I guarantee will add up, we can all do the math on what this would be in 365 days.
The culprit for my interest hike is a floating interest rate. Interest rates for student loans in Canada are based on prime + something. So as the prime interest rate goes up so does the interest rate on a student loan. This can be helpful if the prime rate goes down but infuriating if it goes up. Students or student loan borrowers have no power over this. We can’t lock in our student loans at one particular interest rate.
They have given me 14 years to pay my student loans back. This means I will 40 years old and just finishing this. Man that sucks. The answer is simply to pay more on student loans and if you have the money to do this, I seriously suggest it. I would love to that but truly after all my education I am not making the hordes of money I once thought I would be.
I have looked around a bit. But I have been unable to find anything to tell me that all the interest I am paying is going somewhere useful. I am sure someone out there will find something more than I have. But if I am paying this money to a bank, which is were my money came from it makes me wonder if that money is not just simply going back to that bank.
This whole situation can make one feel even more infuriated when they find out the whole world doesn’t work this way. Many countries provide education to students with much better deals than our government. Perhaps the answer isn’t to complain as I am doing now, but start looking into ways to improve the access of education to our population. I am up to suggestions. My knowledge of how to get something in our government to work is not that strong.
All I can really say is now that I have grown up and I am paying my own bills I wish I had been wise enough to do a bit of research when I was 18. Maybe I would have chosen another path or at least tried harder not to use as much in student loans.