Amount of debt: $6,000
Source: College
Estimated time until debt free: Paid-off
Almost 30 years ago, I “flunked out” of a tiny liberal arts school, Bennington College in Vermont. I left higher education – which in America is synonymous with saying I left college with debt. Over the first three years after I left school, I probably earned less than $3,000. I lived at home. I educated myself, and read lots of books. I also defaulted.
This all occurred sometime before the (still meagre) student debt deferral options available today. The only deferral plan I was ever informed of was the option to stay in school, and accrue more debt. But the problem with the student loan system then and now is that it is mercantile. The next step beyond mercantilism is when debt becomes a matter of law enforcement. And, sure enough, it wasn’t long before the long arm of the law started to hammer down on me.
A law office repeatedly called me demanding immediate payment. I consented to attempting to repay $100 a week. (Even though I knew I couldn’t afford that.) A woman from the state board of education called me to warn that my mother had co-signed the loan, and would be held responsible too.
I informed her that I was still looking for gainful employment; if she could provide me with employment then her office could dock the entire salary. She was unresponsive: “This loan has got to be repaid.”
One day, a sheriff showed up at my door with documents confirming that I was a student loan defaulter. A few months later a collection agency garnished 15% of my mother’s wages. That was not the most pleasant day in our relationship.
At least my debt was not terrifically large. I recall that the total (with collection fees added on) amounted to roughly $6,000. I eventually (I believe four years into my debtor’s years) found work as a parking lot attendant. I finished paying the remainder off myself.
I believed at the time that the student loan system was unnecessarily punitive. I had been encouraged to take out college loans. Society said “you’ll never have a decent job unless you finish college”: that message made taking out a “loan” an offer I couldn’t refuse. Yet many of us leave school and realize that accumulated debt may not have been necessary for the career path we imagined. The student loan system is seductively manipulative. It leads you to think it’s a good idea to pile on debt, even when it makes you worse off.
The years when I couldn’t return to school because I was a debtor with outstanding loans didn’t ruin my career. They may have helped push me into habits of auto-didacticism. In my early 30s, I transitioned into a career writing freelance magazine articles, without returning to school.
But the years of lawyer’s letters and garnished wages definitely left a deep fear of debt in me. I lived through the credit card boom in the 1990s, without feeling tempted. I have turned down every offer to have a credit card. I’ve learned to make do with a basic debit card that deducts funds as they’re spent .
I didn’t default on everything, thank God. I defaulted on a traditional career path. And I defaulted on the traditional notion that “debt” was an American panacea. Instead, I saw it for what it is: a pyramid scheme that hurts too many people to solely blame the individual victims.
