TEXAS - 2004ish
Ooooookay. So.... a little backstory before I dive into the real problem at hand. When I graduated high school, my mother refused to fill out a FAFSA. I did not find out why until several years later. When it became evident that she hadn't paid taxes since 1989. Without her tax info, I was not able to fill out a FAFSA. I joined the military straight off thinking that would pay for school, but I was discharged for medical issues less than a year later. After trying in vain to make ends meet on $6 an hour jobs and no skills, I decided that I needed to try to do SOMETHING to make more money. I found AIU Online and thought that I could finish out an associate's in business administration while working full time (still on $6 an hour, mind you), and when I spoke to the advisors they thought that the best route for me to go would be to take out a private student loan through Sallie Mae. I did this, and I believe (without having information in black & white in front of me) that I tried two terms (about 6 weeks, it was an accelerated program) before calling it quits due to impending homelessness on my part. I had signed up to pay the interest while attending classes and the first year afterwards, but never received any kind of statements telling me how much I should be paying. My mail was being sent to my mother's house at the time, because I was living in my car and in and out of hospitals at the time (uninsured, no less). Alright, things had gotten as bad as they had ever been at that point, so I sold my car for a bus ticket and one month's rent in a strangers house in:
PORTLAND, OR, 2006
Here, I finally managed to get on my feet, have a good job that pays me enough that I didn't have any sort of problems paying the payments that they had finally started sending me statements for (after they capitalized the interest that they had not given me any sort of statement to pay - bringing the loan for 6 weeks of school at an ONLINE program to $18,000). I paid on time, the exact amount that was due, for about 6 months until I ended up having to move... the second I knew that I was not going to be able to make that first payment after I moved into my new place, I applied for a forbearance and again was told that I could pay the interest, but that nothing was technically due for 3 months at which time I could extend the forbearance or resume payments on a new payment schedule. I, again, never received a single statement telling me what the interest WAS that was being added every month. I got that revised payment schedule today and the APR is now 18.125%. The interest has been capitalized again and puts the principle to just under 20k. The lifetime payments will equal to over 55k (once more, for less than 6 weeks of an online "school"). The new monthly payment is now MORE THAN MY RENT, and I cannot pay it. I called Sallie Mae and they said that they can extend the forbearance or lower the amount due by all of $10. I took the forbearance, and I will not make the mistake (again) of looking for some kind of notification of how much interest is being earned on the loan, and will be giving them about $250 a month, but I am terrified of what the revised payment schedule in three months will look like this time.
Anyway, I was young and stupid and desperate to try to make something work out. It didn't work out, and while I managed to luck out enough to avoid any kind of delinquency at this point, I just don't see how this is going to end well. Is there any way to get that APR lowered? Or should I be looking into going after the school to address their grossly irresponsible method of a) encouraging a 19 year old to try to pay entirely by private student loan and b) somehow managing to charge $14000 for 6 weeks of school?
I am more than willing to make payments for the rest of my life for this stupid move that I made out of desperation, but I need there to be some kind of REASON applied here. Does anyone have any advice? I'm sorry about the novella length post, too.

