Reviews About The Guerrilla Guide to Mastering Student Loan Debt: Everything You Should Know About Negotiating the Right Loan for You, Paying it Off, Protecting Your Financial Future (Paperback)

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The Guerrilla Guide to Mastering Student Loan Debt: Everything You Should Know About Negotiating the Right Loan for You, Paying it Off, Protecting Your Financial Future (Paperback) There is a common theme among college students these days, and those who have attended and quit as well as those (un)lucky multitudes who have graduated. Sometime during the senior year of high school, application forms to colleges are sent in, and admissions and rejection notices are sent a few months later. Along with the admissions forms comes another little form detailing the amount of aid that is extended by the college to the prospective freshperson. This is where all the fun begins, and it quickly snowballs into a pernicious form of indentured servitude.

Ms. Stockwell's book details in painful precision just what happens when a pimply-faced kid signs on the dotted line. First she begins by relating her own experience, and then she delves into the experiences of others. Along the way, she shows how many of us got into the student loan mess, how the financial aid system has evolved (or is it mutated?!) into the monstrous behemoth that it is today (actually at the time she wrote the book), some coping strategies (for it really can't be called anything else) for the inevitable missed payments and default, and finally some suggestions on how the system can(but will not ever) be fixed.

We live in an age of educational opportunity. Anyone with some combination of motivation and money can attend college. Indeed, attendance at college has become necessary in some professions just to keep pace. At any rate, it is a tremendous achievement that folks from just about all walks of life now have the chance to attend college.

However, this does not mean that the powers-that-be have made attendance easy or even free. There is a rather sinister catch attached to the proposition, and it always requires people of limited means to devote years of their lives and of their professional livelihood to servicing some form of debt burden. I have to agree with the author, who said that the best thing to do is to say NO! to all forms of debt- from student loans to credit cards to auto loans, as they all tend to lock you into cycles from which frankly there may be no escape.

This leads into another part of this sinister situation of Faustian proportions. Not long after the freshperson has signed on the dotted line, and just a few short weeks after parking his or her carcass in a smelly, roach-infested dorm room, the credit card people come calling. There literally seems to be a deluge of credit card applications arriving one after another in the mailbox. (However, these days, I have been told by more than a few distressed parents that the card companies don't even wait till the brats have donned their caps and gowns for high school graduation.)

Finally, sometime before college graduation, typically during the beginning of your senior year, some auto company like General Motors comes around and offers to 'help out' the soon-to-be graduated. It seems that they know you are looking for a job, and wouldn't it make a good impression on prospective employers if you rolled in a nice, shiny new car that shows that you are a professional and that you mean business? Fixing you up would be no problem at all- just sign here on the dotted line, and you'd better hurry, as there are only a limited number of this year's model left. Oh and uh, did I forget to mention that there's a really low 2.9% APR and uh, no payments for the first year?

In my mind, there is absolutely no doubt that there is a great deal of collusion between universities, credit card and auto companies in the ongoing mess of indebtedness seen among recent grads and post-grads. Here's a friendly tip: most aid packages have some combination of grants, work study and loans. You can negotiate the combination of the aid you receive. I strongly suggest that you negotiate to get as much work study as possible, and leave the loans, especially the Stafford Loans, as an option. It's what I did, and it meant the difference between finishing with a lot of debt (or not finishing and with a lot of debt as has happened to many acquaintances) and finishing with little or no debt. Too many friends of mine are broke, out of work, living in their parents' basement and have turned dodging dunning notices from student loan companies and collection agencies into a practiced science.

Anyone that is contemplating going to college should read this book. Although I must concede that the book is a a little dated, as there have been some significant changes in the student loan picture in the last six or seven years or so, it does precisely show the progression of events that do occur when one gets overwhelmed with student loans.

Yet, much of the debt mess we see among many students is indeed voluntary. No one is forcing kids to max out credit cards and purchase one (or more) cars before they graduate, but then no one is championing the cause of caution either with any form of credit. Many kids are not simply graduating in debt, they are now matriculating into debt in droves. Please note that all of this comes before contemplating the thorny proposition of a home mortgage!

In sum, in this age of job insecurity and galloping price increases, people need to know the risks when fooling around with any form of credit. I take my hat off to Ms. Stockwell, who had the courage to call attention to this clever ploy to re-institute feudalism among the masses.

All hail King George!