A. (Citibank), transferred the servicing of my loans to Firstmark, and I had to create an account with them
On top of all that was a dreadful anticipation that any day now I might hear from the credit bureau and my life would somehow bottom out
Throughout this misery, my father had reacted with what I suddenly realised was stoicism, but which I had long mistaken for indifference. This misunderstanding was due in part to my mother, whom my father mercifully hadn’t lost, and who had suffered perhaps most of all. Not that it was a competition, but if it were, I think she would have taken some small amount of satisfaction in winning it. The loss of home and finances felt at least like a worthy opponent for cancer, and yet here was my father telling me that none of this was the end of the world. I felt a flood of sympathy for him. I was ashamed of my selfishness. The lump in my throat began to feel less infectious than lachrymal. OK, I said to him, and that was that. When I got home I scheduled an appointment with a doctor.
M uch of the dilemma about being in debt came down to numbers that I could only comprehend in the Burlington lenders payday loans abstract. There was $38,840 at 2.25% interest, and a notice that in the interest would increase to 2.5%. And a $25,000 loan at 7.5%, to which my family and I had contributed, over the course of three years, $12, and on which I now owed $25,. More than what I started out with. I memorised or, more often, didn’t seemingly crucial details about my debt that turned out to be comically meaningless: a low-interest loan from Perkins was serviced by a company called ACS, which had rebranded to Conduent Education and sent out notices with their new logo and the message Soon to be Conduent. Citibank, referring to itself as Citibank, N. In 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau sued Navient, alleging that it systematically and illegally [failed] borrowers at every stage of repayment.
Navient released a public statement in reponse to that suit, which said: There is no expectation that the servicer will act in the interest of the consumer. When I received a notice from Navient in that my monthly payments would be increasing, for reasons I did not comprehend, the email came with a note at the bottom saying: We’re here to help: We’re happy to help you navigate your options, provide you with resources, and answer any questions you have as you repay your loans. The company’s motto is, hilariously, Solutions for your success.
Student loan firm Sallie Mae’s lending arm span off into an independent company called Navient
These announcements flooded my inbox with subject lines declaring Important Information, but none of them altered my fate. Sometimes the monthly payments would go up, sometimes my salary would go up, sometimes I made a cheque out to a different company. The only stable thing was the money I owed, which never seemed to get any lower. And so the cash would go out to the various lenders with the blind hope that it was right.
In some twisted way, I wanted it to happen. My mother’s cancer went into remission, and both of my parents found, in their 60s, new careers in New York. I maintained steady employment in journalism since finishing school, and in 2016 I was hired as an editor at the New York Times. Was it possible we had become lucky? I had spent so much time wondering what life’s nadir looked like that I was now curious whether it had already come and gone.
