Posted 2/16/2010 05:28:00 PM by Douglas

Some claim that ignorance is much more expensive than education. If that's true, this woman is incredibly wealthy.

When Michelle B-----, a 41-year-old family practitioner in Columbus, Ohio, finished medical school in 2003, her student-loan debt amounted to roughly $250,000. Since then, it has ballooned to $555,000.

It is the result of her deferring loan payments while she completed her residency, default charges and relentlessly compounding interest rates. Among the charges: a single $53,870 fee for when her loan was turned over to a collection agency.

Catch that? This interest is "relentlessly" compounding? What errant bullshit. You take a loan, you have to pay it back. Guess what? You put money in the bank, the interest accrues just as "relentlessly," right? If only understanding compound interest was as easy as medical school. Or as easy as a student loan to "wiggle" out of:

Unlike other kinds of debt, student loans can be particularly hard to wriggle out of. Homeowners who can't make their mortgage payments can hand over the keys to their house to their lender. Credit-card and even gambling debts can be discharged in bankruptcy. But ditching a student loan is virtually impossible, especially once a collection agency gets involved. Although lenders may trim payments, getting fees or principals waived seldom happens.

Well good. Student loans are the easiest to get and the easiest to pay back. You shouldn't be able to get out of them. If you don't have more sense than to assume responsibility for a financially crippling amount of debt, I don't think society should have too much sympathy for your situation.