forgivestudentloandebt.com

[aka name]

http://www.forgivestudentloandebt.com/content/about

[I hope this helps people who deserve help.]

About
My name is Robert Applebaum. I am a 35 year old attorney from Staten Island, NY and the founder of ForgiveStudentLoanDebt.com. This movement began as a proposal I wrote one morning on a Facebook Group called "Cancel Student Loan Debt to Stimulate the Economy." This is my story:

I am a 1998 graduate of Fordham University School of Law - an education I financed through the Federal Stafford Loan program. By the time I graduated from law school, I had amassed approximately $65,000 in student loan debt.

Starting in 1999, I began working as an Assistant District Attorney in Brooklyn, N.Y. where my starting salary was $36,000 per year. With a strong desire to use my education to serve my community, I was forced to place my loans into forbearance because I simply could not afford to make student loan payments while paying rent at the same time.

Thanks to "capitalized interest" - a racket whereby interest continues to accumulate, which then gets tacked onto the principal, the amount I owed grew exponentially over time. After five years of service as an ADA, while watching my student loan debt grow at an alarming rate, I was forced to make the unfortunate decision to leave a job I loved simply because I felt that I needed to begin to pay down my student loan debt. But for that debt, I likely would have continued in public service indefinitely.

For the next five years, I made regular payments on my student loan debt, never once defaulting on my loans and I continue to make payments to this very day. Despite five years of regular payments, and because of the first five years during which my loans were in forbearance, my principal loan balance is more than $20,000 higher today than it was on the day I graduated. Unfortunately, I'm not alone.

I started the Facebook group in late January, 2009, frustrated with all the bailouts of the very institutions responsible for the mess we were in. News of lavish vacations, exorbitant bonuses and office redecorations infuriated me. Not being a blogger, I decided to post my thoughts to a Facebook group, never imagining that I'd attract more than 100 members or so.

After the first week, a few hundred had joined. By week 2, the Huffington Post article came out and that's when things started to really take off! People were joining by the thousands and reporters and producers were contacting me to write about the growing movement. With each successive story about the group, membership grew by leaps and bounds.

I decided to start this non-profit organization, Forgivestudentloandebt.com, Inc., so as to take this growing movement to the next level. When I initially posted my proposal, I never imagined it would turn into a full-fledged movement, much less a full-time job! This non-profit and website allows me to start taking action to make the proposal a reality.

Thanks for being a part of this new endeavor!