Need Your Student Loans Forgiven? There’s An App For That: New Trivia Game Will Pay Them For You
College is expensive.
In fact, the average American who borrowed money to get through college owes roughly $30,000 in student loans, and many of them would rather not pay it back.
That’s where the new app called Givling comes in; it’s a crowdfunding trivia game that pays off gamer’s student loans.
In the pay-to-play online trivia game, users are placed in a queue to have their student loans repaid for them based on when they register.
Separately, users can also spend $0.50 to be put in a team of three answering trivia questions. Gamers answer true and false trivia questions to gain points until they get one wrong, and the team with the highest number of points splits $4 million.
There are also daily cash awards, and the first play every day is free.
Americans have borrowed $1.3 trillion in student loan, and Givling founder Lizbeth Pratt doesn’t think they should have to pay it back.
“Donald Trump, I, gamblers…we all declared bankruptcy. How could it be against the law for a student loan holder to declare bankruptcy, simply because he/she bought into the American dream of a college education?”
Givling launched in March and so far has completely paid off one student’s entire student loan debt and partially funded at least six others.
Kevin Foster borrowed $31,625 for a bachelor’s degree from Manhattan Christian College and was working three jobs to pay it back when Givling left a check on his doorstep funding the entire amount.
A Stanford graduate, Pratt says she founded the website after being ripped off by one of her business managers. She declared bankruptcy to escape the crushing debt she was left with, but later learned college students couldn’t do the same thing.
Unlike other debt, student loans are unlikely to be forgiven even if you’re disabled and unemployed like 45-year-old Monica Stitt who only makes $10,000 a year.
Meanwhile, Citigroup Inc and Discover Financial Services are both being investigated by the government for allegedly inflating consumer’s minimum payment amounts, engaging in illegal collection tactics, and giving out misinformation.
Also, the for-profit chain of Corinthian colleges, including Heald and Everest Colleges, abandoned 16,000 students when 28 campuses closed earlier this year after federal investigators discovered school officials had drastically inflated their student’s placement numbers.
It’s these and other stories that motivated Pratt to merge crowdfunding with a trivia game and form Givling as the nation’s newest answer to the student loan crisis.
Photo by Mario Tama/David McNew/Getty Images
