Amanda Lynn Tully told the New York Times that she fled the United States to escape paying off her student loan and would never return to the United States.
Amanda Lynn Tully, a student at the University of Oregon majoring in art history, criticism, and conservation, left the United States and moved to Prague to escape paying off her student loan because it was psychologically taxing.
The issue came to the fore because of a New York Times report detailing how a record number of student loan borrowers became delinquent and then left the country to relinquish their loans. Tully graduated in 2017 with a master’s degree with $65,000 in federal student loans and no job in hand. She waited no more than a year to find a job and decided to move to Prague, completed her internship, and fell into default on her loan. She has not paid any money for more than seven years. She made no secret of her plan never to return to the United States. The New York Times report said Tully was on an income-driven repayment plan, which allows borrowers to forgive their remaining debt after 20 years of making qualifying payments. For her, the qualifying payment was $60 per month. But she said it was psychologically exhausting. “The payments weren’t even paying the interest, so it was frustrating,” Tully said.Although the New York Times story mentioned similar cases, where these individuals chose to be in default on their loans, Amanda drew criticism.
Social media users noted that she couldn’t afford $60 a month, but she was wearing headphones designed to take photos for the New York Times. One wrote: “You borrowed money. Spent it to no avail. Pay it back or stop complaining.” Amanda’s LinkedIn profile shows that she is open to work and is now an eLearning content developer, something she has been doing since 2019 after working as a freelance English teacher in the Czech Republic for the first two years after fleeing the US just to escape loan repayment.
