Getting Out of Student Loan Debt

After being laid-off (technically fired illegally) from a job, I chose to return to school to get a degree in business management believing it to be a promising vocation. I did this only 3 weeks prior to my unemployment running out. Believe me, stress was at an all-time high for me right about then, but I stuck with it and stayed in school.

Three months later, I ended up cashing in my 401k followed by an $8/hr job an hour drive away one month later. I held that job until I was laid-off 3 months later. Over the next 9 months I was laid-off and brought back to the same job 5 times!

I continued my education with no further income other than my wife's minimum wage job and eventually got my degree in January 2008 from the University of Phoenix-West Michigan. With minimal income and a family of 4, I was under the impression that my grants were able to handle the tuition without problem. Each class ran about $900-1200 during the time I was in school.

With having 27 seperate classes, that brought my total education costs to around $32,400 (if every class had been $1200 each, which they were not). Somehow my student loans ended up being roughly that amount. Just where did my Pell Grant money go? The amounts of the grant rose periodically as the number of credits completed reached certain levels (similar to going from sophmore to junior to senior).

A few times I received a check from what seemed to be overpayment usually running a few hundred dollars. All along I believed that the grants were taking care of my education especially with being an extremely low income family at the time. I was surprised to find out that I was now in debt for almost $30,000 two classes from completing my degree. By this time, my vehicle had been repossessed 6 months earlier (so finding or acquiring a ride to school an hour away became a stress factor I hated with a passion...even missed a weekly class due to no way to get to school).

My wife and I ended up filing backruptcy about 2 months after the repossession of our vehicle, which still left the student loans hanging over our heads. He employer has closed its doors about a year earlier so her meager unemployment was all that we had to live on.

All during my schooling I looked for employment but found nothing. Not even a minimum wage job!! My wife's unemployment has now ended and we are living off her babysitting outside the home and cleaning for people. I have already deferred my loan payments twice and don't know what else to do. Repeatedly looking for work is depressing and with Michigan being especially hard hit in that regard, I don't know what to do.

Having an "iffy" past due to an almost 20 year old arrest is yet another hamper in finding employment. It has even cost my wife from getting certain jobs as they associate my past with hers. Driving an unsafe car with bad brakes and a cracked frame isn't helping matters. This limits job searching for both of us to the immediate area. STRESS IS HIGH!!

J Hay of MI 11:16AM June 03, 2010