5 Facts You Don't Know About Student Loans But Should

In the current economic environment, one impact of the credit crunch is that it's getting harder than ever to obtain loans of all kinds, including student loans. Unfortunately, millions of Americans rely on loans to pay for a college education. That's why roughly $730 billion in federal and private student loans are outstanding, and only 40 percent of it is currently being repaid, according to FinAid.org, which tracks student loans.

If you require loans to pay for your education – or your child's – you need to arm yourself with information to be a smart borrower. Here are five facts you should know in order to do just that.

Fact #1: You can eliminate or reduce student loans by squeezing more free financial aid out of a school

Slash your need for student loans by getting your college to give you a better financial aid package – especially scholarships, grants or work-study awards. You may be able to do this if your family situation has changed substantially since you applied for aid (i.e. a divorce among the parents, a death of the family's main breadwinner, serious illness, etc.).

At your request, a helpful financial aid counselor may also reconsider your initial financial aid award if you can demonstrate that the package offered is significantly less (at least $2,000 or so) than the cost of attending the school.
Fact #2: Student loan rates and terms are negotiable

Every July 1, Congress adjusts the interest rate caps charged on federal student loans. However, contrary to popular belief, Congress doesn't "set" the rates for federal student loans. Instead, the feds impose a "maximum" interest rate that lenders can charge, then lenders set their own rates based on what the market will bear.

Therefore, if you're willing to negotiate and ask for more favorable rates and loan terms, you can find many lenders that will agree to charge a lower rate than the federal maximum interest rate. Ask for lower interest rates based on:

a) Having payments automatically deducted from your checking/savings account.
b) Making a set number of 'on time' payments (24 to 48 months of on-time payments often qualifies you for a rate cut, and a few lenders will give you break even sooner).
c) Earning good grades or qualifying for any other incentive programs a lender offers.

Fact #3: If you must borrow, always seek federal loans first – not private loans

Federal student loans have better loan forgiveness, forbearance and deferment options than do private loans. They're also much cheaper loans – and they'll be even less costly in the near future. Right now, the federal cap on Stafford Loans, the most common type of federal student loan, is fixed at 6.8 percent for undergraduates. It's 8.5 percent for PLUS Loans – loans awarded to graduate students or parents to pay for their kids' education.

The good news is that any student taking out new, subsidized Stafford loans will have progressively lower interest rates now and in the future, thanks to the College Cost Reduction and Access Act of 2007. Subsidized loans are the ones where the government pays the interest on the loans while the student is in school.


For the 2010-11 school year, the interest rate on subsidized Stafford Loans gets cut to 4.5 percent. In 2011-2012, rates on subsidized federal loans drop again to just 3.4 percent. By comparison, private loans currently have variable interest rates and can average about 10 percent, depending on a student's credit and whether or not he or she has a co-signer.

Fact #4: Your employer can help eliminate your student loans

A little-known way to get rid of college debt is to have your boss pay it off. Many employers will do so if you sign an employment incentive contract. This means that as a "bonus" or "perk" to you, your job pays your student loans. In turn, you agree to be a loyal employee and remain with the company for a given time period, say at least two to three years.

So the next time you're up for a raise or performance appraisal, raise this subject with your boss. If you follow this advice, you may not have to pay your student loans at all – your employer will!

Fact #5: The federal government will pay up to $60,000 of your college debt

The government's Federal Student Loan Repayment Program can be a huge windfall to anyone with federal student loans. Administered by the Office of Personnel Management, this program allows any federal agency that you work for to pay off up to $10,000 annually of your student loans, up to a maximum of $60,000.

What's the catch? You simply have to agree to be employed by a federal government agency for a set period of time, usually at least one or two years.

For detailed advice about managing student loan debt, pick up a copy of my book 'Zero Debt for College Grads: From Student Loans to Financial Freedom.'

Packers' Al Harris Aims to Spread Christian Message with Rap

While sports fans and pundits are having a great time riding and clowning on Denver Bronco Tim Tebow and his Christian beliefs, Green Bay Packers' cornerback Al Harris is taking his evangelism a step further – he's making a rap album.

Harris connected with childhood friend Kevin Soto to create a rap album with a Christian influence. Harris says that he plans to drop the album later this year on his recently launched label, 31 Entertainment.

"We're trying to start a movement with this music," Harris told the Sun-Sentinel. "We're trying to say that you don't have to cuss, or have to sell drugs or whatever, to be cool. You can still be cool and fly, and love the Lord."

While Harris was making his way to the NFL, Soto was in and out of jail. He turned his life around and hope to send a message that there's another way to approach life:

"A lot of the album is about being a man," Soto said. "A lot of it is telling everyone what I've done, and this is what it can lead you to, and what [Harris] has done, and where that hard work can lead you to."

Robert Freeman, 13-Year-Old Boy, DEAD: Shot 22 Times While Riding Bike

Theresa Lumpkin was, until Thursday, the Mother of 13-year-old Robert Freeman Jr. of Chicago. Her tenure as his parent ended when the young boy was shot and killed on the South Side of Chicago in what many believe to be a case of mistaken identity.

Witnesses say, though, that the murder was deliberate, as the gunman shot the young boy multiple times.



"My baby was just lying there,'' said Lumpkin. "He tried to get up. He tried to fight for his mama. He tried to fight for his life.''

Neighbors who saw the incident did not want their names to be published.

"I was running out [of] the door to say, Stop shooting that baby," one neighbor said.

Robert had 22 bullet holes in his body, according to doctors. The people of the community say that he was apparently targeted because he had the same complexion, height and hairstyle of another boy who was the actual target. Police are investigating whether the shooting was due to a dispute over drugs or money.

This was the fourth teen shooting in the area this week.

The amount of violence occurring in Chicago over the past two years is shocking and simply disgraceful. The number of youth murders in Chicago over the past several years parallels the number of soldiers who've died in Iraq. If this does not call for a state of emergency, I don't know what does. The federal government must become involved, since young people should not have to endure such tragedy at any age, let alone at 13 years old.

The murder of Robert Freeman is also disturbing because it almost seems as if people would be less sympathetic if he were not a victim of mistaken identity. Let's be clear: No 13-year-old child should be the target of homicide. Kids that age should not have to worry about being shot on the way to school.

Have we become so insensitive as to forget the long-term psychological damage that this kind of trauma can cause to the children in this neighborhood? If four kids had been shot in my neighborhood in such a short amount of time, I would have seriously considered carrying a weapon to protect myself, even as an eighth-grader.

When I was younger, my best friend was shot in the head in a case of mistaken identity. Some people were looking for drugs and money and he was shot and killed in front of his 3-year-old daughter. Since he was a black man who lived in the poorer side of my hometown, the media overlooked his case and the police only worked part-time to find the killer. In fact, his family has known for years who the killer is, but neither the police, nor potential witnesses, have been willing to step forward.

That same week, a white woman was murdered in a wealthier part of the city. The public approach to her murder was dramatically different from that of my best friend. Her death was featured as the lead story on local news for several days. There was a $25,000 reward put out to bring her killer to justice. The suffering of her family was featured in the local newspaper, while my friend's death was mentioned in the bottom of the very last page, likely in the "Another ni**er died this week" section of the paper.

It was disheartening to watch the suffering of my best friend's family go completely ignored, primarily because he was a lower-class black man. It is equally disheartening to watch the public and the federal government ignore the deaths of scores of black and brown youth in the city of Chicago - all because they are not wealthy kids from Martha's Vineyard.

Hundreds of millions of dollars needs to be invested to provide additional resources to fight youth violence. Also, the neighborhood where almost no one will speak up publicly on who killed Robert Freeman must find unique methods to police their communities to ensure that predators are extracted from their cities. This murder was tragic, painful and shameful.

Stop and Frisk: What Racial Profiling Looks Like in Brooklyn

As progressives unite this summer to fight racial profiling of immigrants in Arizona, a New York Times investigation in July offered a stark reminder of how routine profiling has become in some black neighborhoods around the country. The Times reviewed data on stops over four years in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Brownsville, a predominantly African American community that's dense with public housing. Reporters found police made nearly 52,000 stops in an eight-block radius over just four years. Just 1 percent of the stops yielded arrests and cops found only 26 guns.

ColorLines spent an afternoon last week in Brownsville. We visited the Brownsville Recreation Center to speak with the young men NYPD's stops have targeted. According to the NYT, cops use expansive authority for investigating trespassing in public housing as a pretext for many stops, often with the explicit goal of boosting stats showing enforcement actions. The Brownsville rec center we visited serves the nearby housing projects, and the young men who come there say stop-and-frisks are now a routine part of their lives. Watch them speak for themselves in the video above, then grab the embed code and pass it along.

New York Gov. David Paterson signed legislation this summer prohibiting the NYPD from keeping names and other information on the people cops stop but don't arrest or cite. He allowed the stops themselves to continue, however. Meanwhile, House Judiciary Committee Chair John Conyers has introduced the End to Racial Profiling Act. The bill's not likely to see congressional action soon.

The stop-and-frisk debate is not a new one. Dr. Harry Levine, a Queens College researcher who recently published a study on racial disparities in California's marijuana-possession arrests, says police departments began using the tactic in the 1990s and it has increased over the years. The NYPD's stop-and-frisk campaign has garnered lots of attention thanks to criminal justice watchdogs like the NYCLU and the Center for Constitutional Rights. But the city is not alone.

Los Angeles, for example, is another city grappling with a deteriorating relationship between the police and people of color. In a report commissioned by the ACLU of Southern California, called "Racial Profiling & The LAPD: A Study of Racially Disparate Outcomes in the Los Angeles Police Department", blacks were three times as likely to be stopped as whites. As the report explains:

These disparities are not justified by crime rates in different neighborhoods where people of color live. In regressions controlling for both violent and property crime rates in the area where the stops occurred, the stop rates were significantly higher for people of color than for whites. Nor do the disparities arise because more police are assigned to black or Latino neighborhoods. In fact, there was a greater racial disparity in stop rates in predominantly white neighborhoods than predominantly non-white neighborhoods.

"Stop-and-frisk comes out of a Supreme Court case, Terry v. Ohio, which allowed police to do stops and frisks when they had reasonable suspicion that a crime had been or was about to be committed," explains Steven Zeidman, a CUNY School of Law professor and director of the Criminal Defense Clinic. "But now we allow police to stop people on virtually no information whatsoever." "Hunches" and "whims," says Zeidman, should not be enough to employ a stop-and-frisk.

Most academics agree that "Terry" stops, as they are sometimes dubbed, are used in police departments across country. Still, Jeffery Fagan, sociology professor and researcher at Columbia University, stresses that few "use this tactic as extensively as does New York" or with so little respect for the "reasonable suspicion" standard.

Guidelines put in place in 2001 compel the NYPD to report quarterly data to the City Council on who it stops and for what reasons. Those rule sprang from public outrage over police brutality after the 1999 shooting of Amadou Diallo, thouh NYPD has often drug its feet in complying. The data reveals that, since Diallo's death, the number of stop-and-frisks has in fact gone through the roof--last year a record high of nearly 600,000 people were stopped.

"It's too easy to say, 'Well, that's where crime is,' " says Fagan of the stops being clumped in black neighborhoods like Brownsville. "Once you consider that the stop and frisks are being conducted on so little actual basis of any criminality, you realize it can happen anywhere."

New York Knicks' Amare Stoudemire in Israel to Trace Hebrew Roots

While a lot of pro athletes spend their off-season partying and vacationing, New York Knick Amare Stoudemire is on a different level during his. There's always a time when you're looking for something deeper and more meaningful in life to help make sense of the world and life you're living.

For Stoudemire, he's looking in Israel. He discovered that he may have some Jewish roots on his mother's side, so he went to the Holy Land to research Judaism, its practices and history.
While in Israel, Stoudemire did an interview with Tel Aviv network Sport5, explaining why he was there, what he's finding and what he hopes to accomplish:

"One thing I wanted to do was try to find my original," Stoudemire said. "I'm very spiritual, and this trip actually helped a lot in finding the original culture. ... I knew my personal history. I knew it began here. It was a great opportunity for me to travel and learn this culture, so I can now apply that to my everyday lifestyle."
When the interviewer specifically asked Stoudemire if he thought he was Jewish, the baller responded that everyone is:
"Through history, I think we all are," he said. "It's a beautiful culture, it's the original culture. From a spirituality standpoint, this is where it all started. I feel blessed to be able to come to this understanding at a young age."
Stoudemire also says that he'll be celebrating Shabbat, Passover, Hanukkah and all the other Jewish holy days, because it's now "a part of my culture and a part of my lifestyle."
It appears that Stoudemire is sincere in his new direction and is not on some "publicity stunt" like some critics would believe. We'll see if he keeps up with the holidays and Hebrew lifestyle once he returns to the States. Check out the interview and see for yourself:

Tyler Perry To Produce 'We The Peeples' For Lionsgate

Through his 34th Street Films with Lionsgate, Tyler Perry will help finance the comedy ''We The Peeples.'


The film is written and will be directed by Tina Gordon Chism with the story centering around a young man enduring the weekend from hell when he surprises his girlfriend by showing up to meet her parents during the family's annual end of summer celebration.
Gordon Chism previously wrote the screenplays for 'Drumline' and 'ATL.'

Perry just finished his feature adaptation of 'For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf,' which hits theaters on January 14, 2011.

Along with Oprah Winfrey, Perry was an executive producer on 'Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire.'
Shooting on 'Peeples' begins in September.

Warning Signs That You Have Too Much Debt

A lot of us are in denial about whether we have a problem with debt and credit management. If you're making your payments on time or if you have a reasonably high income, you might not realize you are in a "danger zone" in terms of your debts and bills. But don't be fooled. You have too much debt or are mismanaging your credit if any of the following apply to you:

• You are maxed out on any credit cards – or very close to your limits

• You use credit card checks to pay for other credit card bills

• You skip payments you can't afford

• You don't even know how much debt you owe in total

• You switch cards to get lower interest rates just so you can afford the minimum payments

• You argue a lot with your partner about bills

• You lose sleep or feel stressed out over your debts

• You get turned down when you apply for new credit

• You receive phone calls from creditors or bill collectors

• You need to use credit for everyday purchases like gas or groceries

• You have a low FICO credit score because of the debts you carry.


If any of these symptoms describe you, trust me, you are likely operating in a danger zone with your credit cards and your debts – even if you don't yet realize it. Start making a plan TODAY to get rid of excessive credit card debt, or read my book, 'Zero Debt,' to learn how to become debt free once and for all.

Woman wakes up to find intruder in her bed - Get Yo Cuzin

HUNTSVILLE, AL (WAFF) - Huntsville police are searching for a man who broke into a home and got into bed with a woman.

Police say it happened about 3:10 Wednesday morning on the 500 block of Webster Street.
Kelly Dodson woke up to find a stranger in her bed. Her brother heard her scream.

Antoine Dodson rushed to help and struggled with the man who got away through a window.
"Seeing my sister when I walked in, he had his hands around her neck. First thing I did was pull him off her," said Antoine.

Kelly and Antoine said the suspect left behind his shirt and fingerprints.
A crime scene investigator photographed and dusted for prints on the lid of the garbage can and the window pane and ledge.

Dodson says he's never seen the suspect before but sends this warning to whoever is responsible.
"You don't have to confess you did it. We are looking for you. We gonna find you. I'm letting you know now so you can run and tell that homeboy," said Antoine.

No one was injured in the incident.

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Gone Up Yonder: Gospel Great Walter Hawkins Dead

Gospel music legend Bishop Walter Hawkins has died at age 61.
The Grammy Award-winning contemporary gospel singer succumbed to a two-year battle with pancreatic cancer at his home in Ripon, Calif. on Sunday.
"Today, I lost my brother, my pastor and my best friend," said Hawkins' brother, Edwin Hawkins. "Bishop Hawkins suffered bravely but now he will suffer no more and he will be greatly missed."
During his 30-plus-year career in gospel, which consisted of at least 14 albums since 1975, Hawkins created an extensive catalog of music both as a solo artist and with his family ensemble.
Songs like 'Thank You,' 'Marvelous,' 'Going Up Yonder,' 'Holy One,' 'Be Grateful,' 'It's Right and Good' and countless others have become anthems, earning Hawkins an induction into the Gospel Music Hall of Fame as well as a Trailblazer Award by his music publishing company, BMI.
A singer, songwriter, producer and arranger, Hawkins found himself collaborating with artists from rocker Van Morrison, R&B star Jeffrey Osborne, actress Diahann Carroll and the late disco king Sylvester to gospel greats like Richard Smallwood, Donald Lawrence, Mississippi Mass Choir and the Williams Brothers.
In 2006, Hawkins along with brother Edwin, ex-wife Tramaine Hawkins and sister Lynette Hawkins Stephens famously performed during Oprah Winfrey's Legend's Ball Gospel Brunch.
Hawkins was also the pastor of the Love Center Church, a ministry he founded in Oakland, Calif. in 1973.

He was married to gospel great Tramaine Hawkins but the two divorced.

Hawkins is survived by his two children, Trystan Hawkins and R&B singer Walter "Jamie" Hawkins, Jr. ; daughter-in-law, gospel singer Myiia "Sunny" Hawkins; two grandchildren Jamie-Daniel and Jahve; a host of nieces and nephews; and his siblings Carol, Feddie, Edwin, Daniel, and Lynette.

Funeral arrangements are pending.
*****
The music industry was saddened by the news of Hawkins' passing.
Gospel veteran Kurt Carr told BV Buzz that the first gospel song he ever learned was by Hawkins.
"'Jesus Christ is the Way!' That's the record that drew me to Christ. I learned to play piano to that record. Picking out the parts is how I learned to teach choirs. It was the first gospel record I had ever heard," he shared before adding: "To later work with Tramaine was the ultimate full circle moment in my life."
R&B singer Dave Hollister posted on his Twitter page: "R.I.P. to a gospel icon and trailblazer Bishop Walter Hawkins! My heart is deeply saddened! You will be missed!"
Many artists joined suit in the social networking realm to share condolences.

"Please be in prayer for the Hawkins Family, the Love Center Church and ALL of us in the passing of Bishop Walter Hawkins." – Asked Richard Smallwood.
"RIP to Bishop Walter Hawkins...a pioneer in Christian Music Ministry. You are forever loved and cherished." – Said 'American Idol' finalist Anwar Robinson.
"RIP Bishop Walter Hawkins! Ur gift has affected generations!" – Wrote worship leader JJ Hairston of Youthful Praise.
"My heart is so heavy. Bishop Walter Hawkins gave us more than just songs. I hope he's dancing with the Angels right now. May he Rest In Peace!" – Posted Erica Campbell of Mary Mary.