I hate talking about it.
I'm not going to lie.
That's why I didn't even want to do this.
Because I hate talking about it.
I did not really think about the finances, you know.
Looking back now, seeing state school was so much less.
That never crossed my mind.
I knew that college was expensive
and I just thought everybody took out student loans
and that's just how you did it.
You know, unless you had millionaire parents
or something.
I think my mom believed, like me, that it was just a process.
If you do the right things, if you go to college
and you get the good grades, then it should all just kind of
work out.
So I don't think she really worried
about the finances as much.
She did make it clear from the beginning
that she wouldn't be able to pay for it.
And that it would be all on me.
I, myself, didn't go to college.
So I didn't have a whole lot of experience with it.
And Jessie was the first one out my kids
that was going to college.
So I didn't ever really plan on it, I guess.
I went to La Salle University and I
majored in criminal justice.
I chose La Salle because, in my mind,
it was what college should look like.
And this is another reason why I feel like 18-year-olds
shouldn't be allowed to make these huge decisions
on their own totally.
Because I just thought it looked like a nice school.
It was a small campus setting.
I had the ability to be a big fish in a little pond there,
which I liked.
I just viewed it as, well, I'm going
to take out these loans anyway.
And at that time, I was working at Wendy's.
So if you were telling me $18,000 vs. $35,000 a year,
it all seemed like a million dollars to me.
Growing up, it was just my mom and my two sisters
and I. I didn't know my dad.
I met him when I was 18, actually.
So it was just us four girls sticking together.
I had my aunts and uncles and my grandma in my life.
They were heavily involved in everything.
So it was like it takes a village, you know.
Well, when they were young I pretty much
was in the restaurant business.
Because I didn't want to put them in daycare and I
didn't want to not be there with them during the day time.
My sister raised her family in our hometown
for the first part of Jessie's life.
And we did everything together.
We spent regular evenings together, birthdays, vacations.
My mom really didn't let us in on how much things cost
or bills.
And I think that was a part of her
not trying to put that burden of being
a single parent and any kind of struggles on us.
We shopped at Kmart.
She always went to yard sales.
So I knew that saving and being frugal was important.
But beyond that, not so much.
Well, the reason I decided first of all
to not co-sign or take out any loans for her first year
was because I wasn't in a comfortable spot
with her behaviors at that time.
When she was in senior year, she started coming home
with different friends.
And I was not loving these relationships at all.
I just didn't trust her.
So that's why she had to call my sister
and asked her for the loan.
Which did make me feel pretty bad.
But I said if you make it through the first year,
I have no problem.
She was about to go down one path or the other.
And I figured that first year was going to make or break her.
Jessie called me and asked me if I would co-sign a student
loan for her.
And I loved her very dearly.
If you don't help someone that you love, who do you help?
I did understand that there was risk in that.
Because I knew that that was going to be
tied to my financial history.
There was an understanding that it was her responsibility
to pay it back.
It was always that it was going to be
a loan that was in my name.
But Jessie was solely responsible for paying.
I said, if you want to go to school,
then you're going to pay for it.
I believe my first student loan payment was about $140 or so.
Which I thought, oh, this isn't bad.
And that's because I put them all on the lowest
payments possible and put them on deferments and forbearances.
So they weren't all quite in repayment.
So by the following year, it was already up to, like, $600.
When I was signing for my student loans,
I had absolutely no clue what that would mean
for me in my current life now.
I never even bothered adding up how much it was.
I thought, you know, surely I would
be able to pay for these loans.
They wouldn't set me up for failure, right?
The community that my mom lives in now
is definitely more of an urban area.
It's not really the safest, cleanest.
We're on our way to American Education Services,
where I ironically used to work as a loan collector there.
It just really opened my eyes as far
as what I was going to probably be dealing with myself
in the very near future.
So it scared me a little bit.
At that time, I was just really looking for any kind of income
knowing that I was going to soon have to start paying back
my student loans.
I think their starting wage at AES was about $12.50 or so.
I had only ever really made minimum wage.
I had only made maybe, at the most, $8 an hour.
I talked to a lot of moms that were, you know,
they're telling me I'm not going to pay this.
I have kids to feed.
And if I have to choose between feeding my kids and the loans,
you're not going to get any payments from me.
I discovered through consolidating and researching
a lot about the student loans that there's
this public service loan forgiveness.
So that's for government employees.
And my mom happens to work for the federal government.
After 10 years, if you make on time payments,
then you're eligible for forgiveness.
Whatever is left over at that time.
I can retire in a year from now.
But knowing that there's this forgiveness plan
makes me question every day that, what am I going to do?
Time to make some sales.
After AES, I went to work for Sundance Vacations, which
is my current employer.
They pay commission only.
So I help the folks that come in there try and find
a vacation package that would work for them.
When I first started there, I still
had the intentions of going forward with law enforcement.
I know myself a lot better now to know I don't
think I want to risk my life.
Right now I live in Northeast Philadelphia.
And I just rent a little bedroom.
It's $400 a month.
And it's the most affordable thing I can do right now.
I barely have savings in general.
The money I make is the money I use for bills and for living.
And I want to start saving.
They have an option for a 401(k) at my job.
But I just can't see them taking out anything more.
Especially since I don't get a steady paycheck.
And I don't know what to expect to make every time.
I had always thought this far out of college, in 6 years,
I would have pictured my life a lot more progressed by now.
I would have pictured me with a family, maybe buying a house.
You know, definitely at least living on my own
and being independent in that way.
How does the debt make you feel?
It makes me feel very sad.
And I feel like I'm going to cry,
so we're going to have to stop.
There was a time when she called me on the phone.
And at that point, she wasn't making it.
And she was just crying.
And I was crying.
And I'm outside my office.
And I'm hysterical, just like this,
because this is what it does to me all the time.
When we really start talking about it.
My head races a million different ways
of how can we do-- How can we get rid of this?
Like how?
I feel a ton of pressure that the loans are not
just in my name.
If they were just in my name, I don't
think I would be caring quite as much that they were always
on time.
So I would never do that to them.
I just couldn't do that.
I would pay those ones that have their names on it
before I pay my own.
This is my vision board.
This is kind of the main thing that I have on here.
You can see it's right in the center.
Because to me it's the most important.
If you can see, they say all the balances are zero.
So I just really believe that one day I will
have all these loans paid off.
When I was backpacking in Central America,
I actually took a tour-- it was called a "booze cruise,"
catchy title-- and it was just one of the most fun experiences
that we had down there.
And when I went to Panama, they didn't really
have anything like that there.
So we have the idea of trying to start a tour company down
there.
And hopefully it's that idea.
And if it's not that, then something else.
Other than my friendships and my experience
at La Salle you know, my degree is not helping me in any way.
So for that reason, I don't regret it.
But I do regret how I went about paying for it.
Do I think that Jessie's college education has been worth it?
$90,000 in debt is a large debt.
And she's not working in the field
that her college degree prepared her for.
It's a very high price to pay.
I feel like I'm being responsible with the loans.
I've never been delinquent or defaulted.
At this point, I feel like they're never going down.
So until I have $90,000, that's when
I feel like I'm going to be able to pay it.
Because the little payments aren't doing anything.
So whether I put it on forbearance for a month or two,
it's not really affecting, in my mind, that much.
I don't feel like I'm a victim because I did do everything
by choice.
Nobody forced me to do anything.
But I do feel like I was led into the situation
kind of blinded.
I don't think that I have a terrible life.
I'm not complaining.
I'm very blessed.
And I know there's a lot of people out there with way
worse situations.
It's not that everybody should care because I'm not
able to progress in life.
It's that it's affecting a whole generation.
If I could do it all over again, I
would have definitely went to community college
first and tried to pay my way through.
Or maybe even travel first.
There's a limited time in life where
you're able to just take off with no strings attached
and not too many responsibilities.
If you do that and come back and you know yourself
better than maybe before you invest $90,000 into something
you'll actually use your degree at the end.
I think what I would tell other parents at this point,
they really have to do the research.
And looking back at it now, I wish that I educated myself.
Because nobody's going to put more of their heart and soul
in it then you when it's something that you're
trying to do for your child.