It's your legal right to have debt collectors stop contacting you.

Best thing to do is send them a letter certified mail, and make sure you keep a copy of the letter and certified tracking.

This will require you to answer the phone and ask for their address.

Not paying the loans will cause your servicer to begin reporting late payments, and eventually your loans will go into default. You will still owe the money, but your credit score will be absolutely trashed for around 7 years. A low credit score will make it very difficult for you in the US to refinance loans, buy a car, qualify for an apartment, get a credit card or personal loan, or buy a house.

You could call your servicer and ask about other deferment options, such as in cases of hardship. When you refinance the loans, you could look for some that offer forbearance for foreign grad schools. Idk if they exist but it’s worth a try.

You could take out a grad loan but you might run into the same problem where repayment starts immediately instead of being deferred. You’d have to research your options carefully.

Is this a degree you can get in the US instead? You would be able to defer your loans if it’s a US grad school, right?

No, absolutely not. You'll have no leverage if something goes wrong.

Honestly, for a select few tenants I would probably consider this depending on my plans for that year. The issue with accepting prepaid rent from a tenant on the provider side is that it makes it a lot harder for us to evict the tenant in the case of lease violations. So if the provider is going to accept an overall decrease in rent plus the extra risk assumed by the tenant having already paid for 12 months of housing then it will need to be a very compelling reason and a very trustworthy tenant and no first year tenant is that trustworthy.

The landlord probably is paying for it, covering the cost in the rent. It would be difficult to determine for certainty without an electrician to verify how everything is wired.

If you have access to the utility room you can check if there are separate water heating units for each apartment in the building. If a single unit, or fewer units than there are apartments it's probably through a separate meter, however it is possible it goes to one apartment's meter.

Out of curiosity, have you checked with your neighbors to get a sense for how much electricity they use? Is yours abnormal for your building?

Edit: If you have access to the circuit breaker and meter you could also turn off the power to your entire panel and check if your meter stops running up and if hot water runs out. I doubt the landlord would appreciate this test, however it could technically be done.

Water being included is normal. HOT water is not usually included. Hot water is typically generated at your unit by your hot water heater. In your case, it’s electric so most likely you are paying to heat the water you use.

It’s been pretty standard for hot (re: coastal/urban-exurban) markets for at least 5 years. Does it make a difference - probably just a little on the margin. Won’t win you against a better offer but all things being equal if you can manage to make a connection in a letter, maybe gives you a slight edge.

>Could I be being charged for the water heater?

Do you have a water heater in your unit? Then you're being charged for it. Unless this is a studio attached to a SFH and you're sharing a water heater (which seems unlikely since you mention "building management") you are absolutely paying for the water heater.

>I suspected that I may be being charged for the wrong meter, but I doubt it.

If you are living in a cold climate, that's unlikely because the usage would be quite low for someone living full time in their unit.

I think it's safe to assume OP lives in a building with multiple units. It would be more economical for the landlord to have multiple units sharing a single water heating unit (on a shared meter where hall/common area lights and similar would be) and including the average cost of this electricity usage in the rents.

No, What if the house catches fire or floods or any number of things, you prepaid and it could be gone in the future

Thank you! So the landlord is supposed to pay for hot water. How would I know if they’re charging me or him for that?

My house is 2500 sq feet and we use 2200+ kw hours per month. Your usage isn’t crazy high but remember every area is different cost wise. Plus since you’re all electric that means that you do pay for hot water just as electric usage. Your unit might be incredibly inefficient. We can request the power provider to come out and do an efficiency review of our house to give us ideas how to make it more efficient.

When you say you don't pay for hot water, I'm thinking you mean you don't pay separately for water as in water usage is in your rent. However what makes it hot? I'd bet you do indeed pay for the electricity that the water heater uses. It would need its own separate electric meter if you didn't pay for it.

That money is better off in your savings account than it is in your landlords savings account. I’d keep the mo way in my possession for as long as possible

It's 14% and I will start as an e3 in submarine computer electronics, my school is pretty long with no break after basic. And no it's not fun this is super stressful.

Correct, you just need to pay the difference.

Car loan with bank A has a 18k pay off

Dealer agrees to buy for 17k

You need to provide 1k to the dealer so they can forward complete 18k payment to bank A

You sign paperwork that allows bank a to send title to dealer.

The difference can be provided in cash, credit card (up to a limit defined by dealer and may have fees, ach, check (some don’t accept personal checks), cashiers check.

I think prepaying by quarter is certainly the better option.

As someone on both side of the rental market (I’m a landlord for a house that I still own, and I rent in a different city), prepaying would make you more attractive as a renter, mainly because it gives the landlord the security, not only that you can afford it, but that you’re not going to leave if you change your mind. But it also puts you at a disadvantage if something goes wrong. Most disputes are not resolved in court because it’s a pain to go through it, so whoever has the money ends up with a huge advantage. I still have two tenants who owe me rent after they broke the lease, and they still haven’t paid.

Most people use term life insurance for your mortgage concerns.

Get term insurance with a death benefit for the amount of the mortgage and list her as the beneficiary.

God forbid you kick the bucket, the house will be paid off with the insurance payout and she won’t have to worry about it.

Get term life insurance with the death benefit for the amount of the mortgage and list her as the beneficiary

What does it show for date of first delinquency?

Yeah I usually say "let someone slip on some ice on your property, you'll find out fast who actually owns it, and it's not the bank"

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It’s been a couple of decades since I had a student loan, but they used to offer a forbearance as an option — interest kept accruing but payments were paused. If that still exists as a thing, you might want to run the numbers on whether that’s reasonable for you.

Okay thanks!

When my wife and I got engaged, we revised our wills and our lawyer chose some non-specific term like "my dear friend TholosTB" instead of fiance in order to avoid any weird loopholes as our status changed over time.