Sallie Mae’s Incompetence

I stumbled across the 3 Things About Money blog today and I found the author’s post about how she sends micropayments each Friday to Sallie Mae. These payments are made based on whatever she can pull together.

Pulling together one dollar a month extra (204 dollars total over the life of the loan) and paying it to principal saves me 2 months of payoff, netting a $710.13 savings. Just for squeezing out four quarters a month. Noodling up an extra 50 bucks a month makes a huge difference. I intend to pay this off by September 1, 2008 and the journey so far has been intense. But even if I don’t make it, I will be leaps ahead, and will save thousands of dollars for the effort. Makes doing without take out coffee, selling off old textbooks, and scrounging change worth it.

Check out her site for information on calculators and the decreased life of her loan based on even 1 dollar more per month.

Micropay Your Way To Student Loan Freedom

A recent follow up on Micropayments to Sallie Mae

So apparently the person in charge of mailing letters with loan payoff amounts to consolidation companies is different form the person in charge of sending them to individuals.  In yesterday’s mail we got Amber’s loan payoff amounts for federal and private, valid for 10 days.  Now we need to call AES and Wells Fargo and determine if we cna act as an intermediary and fax these letters to them.  Who knows if this will work.  If not, I am plannign on calling Jim Jordan, our congressman (who I have actually met!) and having a lawyer send Sallie Mae a letter, sometimes its who you know or the esquire on the letterhead that gets problems solved.

Sallie Mae recently pledged 1 million towards programs and agencies in Texas to increase college attendance in the state. They will partner with various groups to give grants and scholarships to students in order to boost college attendance.

This is great and all however, 1 million won’t put many students through school without leaving a gap which will need to be made up for with loans, and who will be there to rob these kids blind with thier uncaring enterprise funded by your tax dollars? Sallie Mae will! 1 million is a lot for myself and for most of you, however when you pay your CEO 3.3 million I would think you could scrap up a few more dollars to endow a program in Texas. The problem is the more Sallie Mae covers the less students need toborrow from them. Essentially this “donation” is advertising with a Tax Break.

Nice try Sallie, but too little…too late!