Go Figure . . .

Once upon a time, I had a student loan.

Like most of the world, I defaulted on it.

I knew it was going to happen. I called them and warned them. I asked to refinance . . .

And they refused to even discuss it.

So I defaulted.

After the Department of Education sent me a few thousand trees worth of mail, and several billion phone calls, I finally talked to someone who grasped the concept that if I could pay off the entire thing, it would have already been paid off.

That person refinanced the loan.

Everything was wonderful.

And then we had a spat of trouble, which readers of the previous blog may recall.

And I called the Department of Education, and explained what was going on, and that feeding The Boy was a much higher priority than a student loan I had already defaulted on once, and could I refinance again to bring the payments down?

Again . . . wouldn't you think they would have learned? . . . they refused to even consider the idea, and refused.

And no, partial payment was completely unacceptable. I tried that -- they sent it back and informed me that they could not accept less than the full payment each month.

Despite the fact that they had told me that I was very lucky that they had refinanced the loan, and any default would result in wolves (and possibly vampires) being borrowed from the IRS to be sent to my house, I defaulted again.

At that point the actual LOANS had been paid off. Just not the 42% interest, compounded hourly, and the zillion dollars in service changes and fees involved in renting wolves and vampires and the other fun things anyone who has ever been late paying off a student loan can tell you about . . .

Today they called me, and demanded full payment.

I thought it was funny.

I explained that if I had that much handy cash, it would have been paid.

Or at least not defaulted . . .

So they offered to refinance it.

Again.

At lower interest rates, payments, and vampire-to-wolf ratio.

The same thing I was trying to get them to do when I had to default it . . .