After paying $96,000 toward student loans over the past eight years, Sarah from Philadelphia thought she was finally done. She had faithfully repaid both her personal loans and the $50,000 her parents had taken out under Parent Loan for Undergraduate Students to help fund her education.

‘I Did My Part’

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“They kind of just like dropped the bombshell, like, ‘Oh, well, this happened… to make our payments lower,'” Sarah told personal finance experts Dave Ramsey and Rachel Cruze on “The Ramsey Show.”

Ramsey quickly jumped in. “No, no, no,” he said. “You did not make an obligation to pay your siblings' part. You made a promise to pay your part.”

Sarah explained that she had been paying her parents $1,000 a month for nearly eight years–money she believed was going toward her $60,000 portion of the Parent PLUS loans. But with her parents combining everything into one pot, she was suddenly on the hook for loans that were never hers.

Ramsey encouraged her to take a clear-eyed look at the numbers. “We’re talking about 96 months that you paid $96,000, including 7% interest,” he said. “That means I don't owe anymore. Sorry, Mom and Dad. The rest of it's on you and bro. I did my part.”

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Ramsey said that many parents who co-sign student loans never get a dime back. In this case, Sarah went above and beyond. “They're very lucky, honestly, as Parent PLUS holders, that Sarah actually has paid $96,000,” Ramsey said. “Ninety percent of the time I take this phone call, it's the parent griping because the kid has never paid a dime.”

Sarah acknowledged that confronting her parents could be tough, especially since they had supported her in other ways growing up. “They changed your diaper, but you don't have to pay them for that,” he said. “That's called being a parent.”

Ramsey was sympathetic, but firm: she had fulfilled her moral and financial obligations. The next step? Use an online loan calculator to run the math and show her parents in black and white that she's paid what she promised.

“This is a mess they have made,” Ramsey said.

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