op is a fucking idiot for ever paying them. there are zero meaningful long-term consequences to just defaulting. usury is a societally-destructive scheme in which...money lenders punish honorable people who make earnest attempts to pay their debts, and forgive pieces of shit who simply don't pay and ignore attempts to collect, because it simply isn't worth the trouble. by the time the delinquent debt is sold to one debt collector and then sold again, the price paid at the second sale averages like 12c on the dollar. interest that compounds over the course of years to eventually equal double the original loan principal while it is paid off slowly literally pays for all of the bad loans these fuckheads write. it is so, so, so easy just to punish them for running this racket. yes, you can't discharge it in personal bankruptcy. yes, the interest will continue to accrue. yes, your credit score will be too low to every buy a house at a reasonable interest rate. but let's face it: if you can't pay down that amount of debt quick enough to avoid being upside down on it, you're probably not worried about that kind of stuff anyway. do the sensible thing. take your college degree, and just ghost them.
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