Author Archives: Jeremy Cole

Sallie Mae Confused?

So I logged into SallieMae.com today to make the final payment on one of my student loans (yay!) but I’m in a kind of weird position now. According to the billing summary and the “Make a payment” page, I should pay $239.34. But when I go to actually make that payment, I get this error:

The following errors were encountered:
1. The payment amount for a billing group cannot exceed the 5 day payoff amount of $238.83

What do I do now? Guess I have to call them. It won’t let me pay the amount I supposedly owe, and I can only imagine the mess if I underpaid by 51 cents. Ugh.

Upping the Ante

Since when did they up the ante? While most Americans are simply struggling to rent a place paycheck to paycheck, and can’t even think about buying anything, in their article Buying the American Dream, Forbes has now declared that the “American Dream” involves:

a nice, but not opulent, life–private schools for the kids, a large house in an upscale neighborhood, a weekend retreat, a pricey night out once a week, a couple of very nice cars

And it costs, too, to live their version of the American Dream out here in California, you’d have to be making nearly $370,000 per year—after taxes. By “large house in an upscale neighborhood” they mean a $3M house. By “weekend retreat” they mean another $950k for a house at Lake Tahoe. By “nice cars” they mean a BMW 325i and a Lexus RX 330. Who the hell dreamt up this version of the American Dream? When did it go from “a small house, maybe a couple of acres of land” to “a rich playboy’s life”? Oh wait, maybe this is only the dream of Forbes editors.

Thanks to Jeremy Zawodny for providing the link.