Long story short....So I got a private student loan in 2004. Before I started school, they estimated my monthly payments would be $400 a month. But after I graduated in 2006, my first bill came and it was almost $1,000! Just going to culinary school and being a cook, there was no way I could afford this. They said I could lower my payment by consolidating but my credit score wasn't good enough to do that. And so I started putting my loans into forbearance. Which of course made my monthly payment even higher so I kept putting them off.....They weren't really giving me any kind of options that I could actually afford so I just gave up and let them go into default. In November of 2011, I couldn't take the phone calls that started at 6:05 in the morning and continued once an hour until 8:00 at night anymore so I called them to again see what I could do. They said if I could come up with $1,000, they would stop the phone calls and put me on a no interest program. I would pay $276 a month and that would go to my balance which was now $118,000. Or they would settle for $30,000, if I had that kind of money, I wouldn't be in this situation. I couldn't get a loan for that because my credit is not so good now because of my student loan. But I was able to agree to the $1,000 and $276 monthly and have been making every payment every month on time since then. I just recently viewed my credit report and realized that I am still getting charged interest because now my balance is over $122,000!!!!! I feel like I've just been throwing my money away. I'm at a loss of what to do. I want to take care of it but at this point I feel like I'll be paying this every month for the rest of my life with no results. Can anyone point me in the right direction? Thanks!
