Fed Financial
Trouble with sallie mae loan?
I'm a helicopter pilot student with a sallie mae loan. When I originally applied, I was under the impression that I could wait until I graduated/received my CFI certificate, to begin paying back the loan. then they started charging me 10.00 every month because it was a career loan and not a real student loan. Huh? I AM a student! Now they've started demanding these 268.00 a month payments. WHAT? I am a full time student and not working at all, so I can't pay this under any circumstances, unless I quit school and start working. My husband makes enough to support us at the moment, but not enough to just start handing out 300.00 loan payments. My dad was paying the 10.00 payments for me, just as a way to give me one less thing to worry about really, but he's not going to start making these ridiculous payments. I'm just not sure what to do. Does anyone know of a Helicopter school that will pay for training if you contract to work for them when you're done? Any other ideas? I did call them, and thought I had gotten somewhere when I sent a letter explaining my situation and asking them to, if nothing else, revert back to the $10 payments. I have heard nothing since, and several emails have gone unanswered. And upon calling them I could get nowhere with any of their phone staff.
Public Comments
- If you have your sallie mae bill find a telephone number on there and see if you can call them and explain your situation. The first thing you should have done was call them and clarify your situation. But since your fathers been paying for your $10 dues, maybe they thought you could start paying your $300 dues? I would definately call them. Good Luck!
- you are a student in a way, but not to sallie mae. educational loans are for higher education-comprehensive college education. you are in more of a vocational program training-I can see why sallie mae considers this differently. was this not discussed or researched prior to signing the promissory note? did you read the fine print? If not, you should have. I really think that you are stuck if you cannot get them to accept less
- It may be the case that while principle repayment is deferred until finishing your training, minimum interest payments are not. Confirm whether or not interest is deferred in addition to principle. Or, it may be that Sallie Mae screwed up your paperwork. You may just have to use some determination to fight your way through the bureaucracy until you find someone who can help. If I had to guess, it sounds like you've been misled, perhaps by Sallie Mae or perhaps by your flight school. Your situation may be difficult if you got a huge loan, up front, and it was paid directly to the school. This makes it hard to just repay the loan, because the school has the money, not you. Meanwhile, you are paying interest on the whole sum, even though you are only using a little bit of it at a time. If you went to one of those schools, that paints a rosy picture of the helicopter industry at recruiting seminars to lure in students, then requires up front payment for the entire program, I strongly suggest you look at those resources I mentioned in the other question. Find someone who has been there and get advice. Feel free to e-mail me if there is anything else I can do for you. Good luck and fly safe!
