Cuomo probes student loan lenders

When i got divorced, i did not have a high school diploma. Also i had no job no skills and three children. I got my GED and decided to go to college. Long story short i consolidated my loans with Sallie Mae. Not knowing better I locked into a 9% rate (with no way out) the original loan amount was aprox. 49,000. Today it is almost 65,000.It was up to almost 83,000. When i sold my house 2yrs ago I gave them 25,000. However I still could not ever get a lower rate. So I flipped the loan to Direct Loans so my rate could be 8.25% I pay 436.00 a month and it doesn't even pay the intrest therefore the loan rises daily. I have a full time job as a licenced social worker in suffolk cty jail and can't make ends meet. I Wrote to Hillary Clinton and Gov. Pataki(at the time) and not one would help.There is no relief and i feel like I'm in quick sand and going down fast. How in good conscience can I incourage single women to go to school when they can get more from social services..... I think it is a shame these lenders are allowed to rape you when you have no knowledge what u are really in for. Then you are at their mercy. How can we stay on Long Island, and survive....??????
Thank you,
Carol Mandarino lcsw,casac mandyrcs@aol.com

Dear Sir:

I obtain a loan from Direct Loan in 2003 believe to go to cosmetology school, whereas I stayed in the class for about 2 or 3 weeks. Dirct Loans is hassleing me constantly about the money although I never received the check the school did. Who signed that check and didnot reimburse the company after taking their fees? I went back to work that January. What can I do to get these people off my back.

I was divorced and working as a nurses aide at $4.25 an hour in 1971 and raising two children all WITHOUT public assistance. I graduated in 1995 and continued until I obtained my BSN in 1999. I filed a chapter 13 in 2000 because I co-signed on a mobile home. This pulled my student loans into payment on the Chapter 13. I went in owing about $56,000. I paid, through the chapter 13 bankruptcy $36,000 to AES. I am now out of the five year chapter 13. I now owe over fifty thousand dollars to federal student loans. I wrote an angry letter to our Rep. Weter who said they were right. The Attorney General said I needed to work with them as they were right. IF they are right, then something is seriously WRONG with the system. This makes me wish I had never become an RN because I will never live to see this LOAN paid off. And if our Federal Government can rip people off like this, it kind of makes me wish I wasn't even an American. I suppose if I spoke a different language my government would have PAID for my schooling AND I would have gotten more than $4.25 an hour. Considering that we now "buy" foreign nurses to come to this country due to the shortage. I feel I would have gotten a better deal from a loan shark. Which is what the Federal Student Loans pretty much present themselves like to the people who are stupid or desperate enough to deal with them. UNFORTUNATLY like a loan shark you don't know it until it's too late. Unfortunatly, I realized too late I was stupid.

In 1987, my husband and I moved to Chicago so I could attend graduate school at the University of Illinois. My husband was unable to find a good-paying job, so we decided that I would take student loans so I could focus on my studies, and not on how we were going to pay the bills.
I left the University in 1993, with 2 Masters degrees (Psychology and English) and $43,000 in student loans. I began making payments on the loans after the 6-month grace period had passed. Then, in 1997, my husband and I divorced, and I was left with the student loans and a substantial amount of other debt. I found the cheapest apartment I could find in Chicago (where I worked) and tried for several months to pay everything but, after a few months, I called the lender and told them my situation and they suggested taking a forbearance, to suspend the payments while I got back on my feet. The papers I signed said that interest would continue to accrue, but I didn’t feel I had a choice: I needed to have time to get on my feet and the student loan people were the only ones willing to work with me.(They neglected to explain to me that I was also eligible to take a “deferral,” during which time the government would pay the interest.)
I ended up taking two 6-month forbearances then, because my situation hadn’t improved, I declared bankruptcy to get out from under the other debts I had (except for my car payment). Without the other payments, I could make the student loan payments, so I began paying again.
After a year-and-a-half in my apartment, one of the men who lived in the apartment below mine began behaving strangely toward me, and I felt the need to move. The move put me back in the hole again, student-loan-wise, so I called them and they suggested another forbearance, which I took (for another six months), feeling I had no other choice. I had been looking for a better job since I left my husband, but could find nothing.
From that point on, I paid steadily for the next 2-1/2 years, then my loan was sold and my payments almost doubled, so in 2002, I consolidated and took a 25-year repayment term to get the payments back down to where I could manage them. When I consolidated, I was horrified to find out that my loan balance was now over $54,000! Since 2002, I’ve paid steadily (with some late payments, but I’ve never been more than 2 months behind), and my balance has gone down only about $4000, to a present balance of just over $50,000. I’ve done some “unofficial” figuring, and I think I’ve paid over $35,000 on my loan. Yet I still owe $50,000! This is not right!
I went to school to make a better life, so I could afford to save for retirement, so I wouldn’t be a burden on society when I retire. I’m not trying to avoid repaying the money I borrowed, and I’m willing to pay a reasonable amount of interest. The fact is that, even with a great education, sometimes things just don’t work out right, and one has to take a job after graduation – ANY job – just to be able to pay the bills. And sometimes, through no fault of our own, we fall on hard times, and can’t meet our obligations. The current system punishes people like me, instead of helping. I’m forced to believe that I was not told about the “deferral” option simply because the lender would make more money off me if I took a forbearance. This and the other tactics used by the student loan system constitute predatory lending practices, and should not go un-noticed – or uncorrected.
I worry all the time about money, and the future. I’m 54 years old now, so I’ll be retirement age in 11 years but, with this loan hanging over my head, I know I won’t be able to make the payments on a fixed income, so I’ll probably have to work way beyond retirement age.(Another option would be to declare Chapter 13 bankruptcy when I retire, I think.)

New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo can't even figure out who's banging his wife. Don't expect much to come of this investigation.

I am a nursing student looking for really cheap universities to finish my RN. I just want to know if there are any hospitals willing to assist you with student loans from banks if made a contract with the hospitals??? Thanks please email me responses to cibasco85@yahoo.com.

ciba