Financial Aid (Pain!)

My daughter attends the Art Institute of Indianapolis. That's 150 miles away. She is now in her 2nd year and her loans are already more than she is going to be able to pay right out of school. I think that it is sad that education has to cost so much, and sadder still that the interest rate on student loans is higher than house and car loans! Unfortunately, we are not in a position to help her much financially. We provided a car for her and pay the insurance on it and I try to throw a few dollars her way on occasion, but for the most part she is living off the trust fund her Grandmother set up for her 10 years ago. Of course, with the stock market fiasco of the past year, that money isn't as much as it should be. Because her school runs on a quarter system instead of semesters, we have to refinance every 9 months. Oh, such a pain! And it seems she always has a different finance adviser. And...it seems like they don't really know what they are doing! We had a letter a month ago that said payment started this month. Whoa! I wasn't expecting that! So I sent her the letter and told her to take it into the school and get a deferment form. She calls me and said they said we had to get on Sallie Mae's site and download it from there. (Why does everything have to be so complicated!?) I tried. No joy. The username and password I had written down didn't work. So I tried to call. And got a machine with different options... none being one I needed. I think we have all been in that situation. Needless to say, I got frustrated. Started banging on the phone. My husband looked at me like I was nuts. (at that point, maybe I was!) But, hey, I got switched over to a live person!!! Who would have thunk it! Very nice man and he told me what to do. To conclude this rather long narrative, I took off work to day, drove to Indy and talked to a financial aid officer who actually seemed to know what she was talking about and got things squared away (at least for the moment!)