Sallie Mae Be Driving Me Crazy

Over the weekend, I received a letter I've been both eagerly anticipating and passionately dreading: an official verification that my federal student loan consolidation application (try saying that ten times) was accepted. Anticipating because I knew the sucker was coming but didn't know when, making it hard to plan each month's bill cycle. Dreading because holy crap, now I actually have to start surrendering hard-earned money to these people.

This realization has triggered a brand-new bout of Freaking the &*%$ Out. What happened to the days when a fifty-dollar paycheck from Sam Goody could last two weeks? How can I be expected to make a car payment and keep up on my rent and pay down my Visa bill and plan for a wedding and have babies and even think about being a stay-at-home mom when I now have to find an extra two hundred and eighty dollars a month for Sallie Mae? And that's just the federal loans. The bill for the private ones will be coming around Christmas. Do they plan it this way on purpose?

The Freak Out is further fueled by the fact that Luke is still temping and I did not get any kind of raise after my September review, a raise that was neither promised nor implied but simply fabricated out of my own wishful thinking and desire for more money.

I know I'm lucky. I have a great job that's enabling me to repay my educational debts, a job I wouldn't have even qualified for if I hadn't financed my schooling. I have all the insurance I could possibly need and a 401(k) plan that offers a company match, of which I am taking full advantage, even with all this nickel-and-dime chaos going on, don't you worry, Suze Orman. I'm lucky in that respect, too. Not everyone can afford to invest in their future.

And I could have made some better choices along the way. If I'd been more careful, I wouldn't have totaled and lost forever my beloved, precious, still-miss-her-to-this-day Cavalier, which was only two and a half years away from being fully paid off. I didn't have to buy a brand-new car, a car that would bring me my second accident in three months. It was my own pride that talked me into buying extravagent presents at Christmastime, so that my parents and siblings would have physicial evidence of how well Frema was doing on her own. And honestly, how snobby am I to complain that I don't have enough clothes to wear when I was spending two hundred dollars at New York & Company every other month, the last spree taking place the week before Luke moved in? Am I that shallow?

Moral of this story: I'm a big girl who made her bed, and now I have to lie in it, in blankets and sheets that will be made to last for the next five years, because who can think of blankets and sheets when I'm buying generic dishwashing detergent? It may take some time to feel financially secure again, but I thank God that at least I have the resources to do so.

And yet...I STILL hate Sallie Mae.

Comments

[Liz]

Oh, Frema. Sorry you are feeling the pinch. Want to borrow my fluffy pup for a while? Instant happiness. And he doesn't eat too much... ;-)

[Number Twelve]

I'm still sick (so much for Recovery), husband is sick in bed as we speak and you made me laugh. Especially when you say, or write Freak the &*## Out.

[Mandy]

I've been a member of the Sallie Mae and Great Lakes club since November 2002. Welcome aboard! :)

[Bearette24]

I'm a member of the loans club too...hello, law school! (Wish I didn't go.) Did you consolidate your loans?

I thought you deleted your blog because I couldn't find it earlier! But now you are back on my blogroll :)

[Sambo V.]

Well, Sallie Mae can suck my big bunioned left toe!! I think that they really do plan payments around Christmas, because that's when mine kicked in and kicked my ass last year. You'll get used to the payment schedule and adjust. You're also coming to realize that even if you shopped at the Thrift Store (great bargains!), your family would still think you are doing AWESOME. Just think of how bad poor Andy had it in "Pretty In Pink"!

[Lisa]

Amen, sister! I'm feeling your pain. I'm school-loan free so far, but grad school will change all that (if I get in!?). And I've racked up enough credit card debt in the past year to make Suze cry.

[Liz]

Sallie Mae is trying to take over the world, I'm certain of it.

[Mabel]

I've been dying to go back to school for 3 years. Why haven't I? Because my student loans are finally paid off. (((hugs))) of understanding.

[bdogg_mcgee]

I hear you. You don't even want to know how much I pay a month to those people, and the private student loan people. It's not terribly bad, but man, I hate having to give them my money every month.

DH and I have already started arguing on how we're going to pay for our kids' college (no baby on the way yet). I paid my own way through loans and part-time job, and his parents paid his entire way. I think we should have our kids take out some loans and we pay for part, and he thinks they should have their education paid for by us. Boy. Arguing about things at least 20 years in the future. We're dorks.

[Luke]

I don't even have to deal with Sallie Mae, at least not directly, and I hate them so much, I wish I could hate them more.

[Mrs. Zan-man]

So, Luke - why do you hate them? I will tell you what - they are a repugnant boil on the back end of society.

After paying them for 5 years - and I have no problem paying for the loans I took out - they seem to have gone out of there way to make my loan-life impossible.

My husband sent in our regular monthly payment and accidently included a check to a different creditor in addition to the SM check. SM cashed BOTH checks through ACH (Automated Clearing House) and waited for us to tell them it was wrong. When we got that straightened out, we told them not to process our checks via ACH any longer and told our bank to decline ACH transactions from SM. We wrote them a paper check and want them to process it as a paper check. That was all back in April of this year.

Six months go by with no problem. Suddenly, in October I received a letter from them that stated the bank rejected my payment because "customer declined payment". We called and spent a good 45 minutes or an hour on the phone - the call went something like this (after we got through who we were, what we were calling about, etc):

Mark)Can you send me a copy of the documentation you received that states my bank refused payment.

SM) No sir. We don't have anything like that.

Mark)Then how do you know they declined payment?

SM)Because they sent us a notice.

Mark)Can you send me a copy of that notice?

SM)We didn't get a notice.

Mark)but, then, how do you know they declined payment?

SM)Because they told us.

Mark)how did they tell you?

SM)they sent us a notice.

Mark)Will you send me a copy of the notice?

SM)We don't have a notice.

At this point we asked for a supervisor, who continued this exact same conversation with a bit of a twist:

Mark)How did you process my check?

SM)We processed it through ACH

Mark)Do you have record in my account that ACH is not to be used?

SM)Yes sir.

Mark)then why did you process it as ACH?

SM)because that's how we process payments.

Mark)According to your letter, if a check cannot be processed through ACH it will be processed as a paper check - did you process it as a paper check?

SM)Well, sir, your bank declined payment

Mark)But how did you process it?

SM)we processed it as ACH.

Mark)Did you try to process it as a paper check?

SM)Your bank declined payment

Mark)according to your letter, you will process it as a paper check - did you?

SM)Your bank declined payment sir.

Mark finally got the supervisor to agree that, if we got a letter from the bank they would apply payment on the date received and waive the accrued interest charges.

We went to the bank, got a letter on their letterhead, signed by the bank manager that stated Sallie Mae presented NO document for payment, either ACH or paper check, in the time frame indicated, but had they presented a paper check, it would have been honored.

We sent that letter to Sallie Mae, who kindly responded by telling us that our bank declined payment, we were delinquent, they were right and we should pay up or die.

Our solution was to simply pay them off - it was a large amount of money - more than some houses cost in certain parts of the nation - but we are WELL rid of them, although I still have $1000 worth of interest to battle over...