It’s an idea that’s scary, smart or simply scary-smart.
LendEDU rightly notes that two government programs are operating at significant losses: student loans and Social Security.
The student loan website points to the recently proposed Student Security Act of 2017, sponsored by Rep. Tom Garret, R–Virginia, which would grant student loan borrowers $550 in loan forgiveness for each month they were willing to raise their full retirement age.
The borrower would be able to delay their retirement for six years and one month, for a total of $40,150 in student loan forgiveness.
Using this proposed bill as a springboard, LendEDU conducted a survey of student debtors to evaluate how such a program would work.
It found that 46.13 percent of student debtors would be willing to participate in this program, while 36.37 percent were unsure, and only 17.5 percent were against it.
The average respondent had $29,365.25 in student debt and would be willing to delay their retirement age by 22 months. This would cut $12,100 off their student debt and would leave them with a balance of $17,265.25.
Based on each respondent’s unique amount of student debt and how many months they chose to delay retirement, 37.64 percent of them would erase 100 percent of their student debt, while 8.78 percent would erase between 99 percent and 75 percent of their debt. Fully 24.48 percent would erase between 24 percent and 1 percent of their debt.
Just over half of respondents said taking out loans for a college education is more important than having access to Social Security to retire comfortably, while 24.71 percent chose the opposite, and 23.54 percent were unsure.
“This is an extremely timely topic and puts some numbers behind how such a program would work,” the site notes. “Right now, the Social Security’s Administration’s Office projects that such a program would save $725 billion over 75 years, not even including the value of erasing so many Americans’ student debt burden.”