Solano Real Estate Scene: Jim Porter
Over the past 33 years, I have seen some student loan success stories and some sad ones. The saddest are the stories whose meanings. Bernie Sanders, Elizabeth Warren and President Joe Biden have spoken on the campaign trail for the past few years.
Free college and debt cancellation sounds good, but it means that all Americans who have not attended college and those who have in the past 40 years and paid off their debt will have to cover this multi-trillion dollar expense via more federal and state taxes.
The sad stories I’ve seen vary from the hard-working single mother who enrolled in a “for-profit” technical school, studied diligently, and successfully earned a certificate to become a medical assistant only to later discover that the job she would get pays $17 per hour, to the graduate-educated architect who graduated after six years of college with a starting salary of $75,000. The single mother owes $28,000 and the architect owes $375,000 and both now have federally insured loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy.
The saddest thing is that the single mother thought she was doing something to move on and transition into the middle class, and the young architect wasn’t financially savvy enough to avoid the huge amount of easy money that she was able to borrow for school fees. and housing.
The federal government now holds over $1.7 trillion in student loan debt, $400 billion more than all auto loans in America, and a ton of that student loan debt is in default, hurting to FICO scores and affordability.
The stories of successful student loans are plentiful here in Solano County. I have helped at least 3,000 people since 1989 buy homes that have benefited from their college degrees that have been smartly and carefully financed with federally insured student loans. I have also had to turn away over 1,000 people since 1989 due to default and/or excessive student debt.
I don’t have any brilliant ideas on how to solve this problem, but I can tell you that the key to a solution is to teach financial literacy and how to achieve the American dream from sixth grade and up ‘in high school.
Jim Porter, NMLS #276412, is the Branch Manager of Solano Mortgage, NMLS #1515497, a division of American Pacific Mortgage Corporation, NMLS #1850, licensed in California by the Department of Financial Protection and innovation within the framework of the CRMLA / Equal Housing Opportunity. Jim can be reached at 707-449-4777.
