Posted on 03/17/2012 8:57:01 AM PDT by Sub-Driver
Saddled with college debt By Melissa M. Horton, Published: March 16
“You can go to any college you want.”
“You won’t have to pay for college.”
“You’ll have lots of scholarships and financial aid.”
These are just a few of the things my parents said throughout my childhood. I am a second-generation U.S.-born Latina. Growing up in the suburbs of Fort Worth, I was a straight-A student in Advanced Placement classes, with many civic activities on my resume.
At 17, I never could have dreamed that my parents’ promises were lies.
A decade-plus later, I, like many millennials, have more than $100,000 in student loan debt, most of which can be directly attributed to my parents’ unfortunate placement smack in the middle of the middle class and the fact that our family was uneducated about financing higher education.
My parents — a nurse and a police officer — were the first in their families to attend college, though Dad dropped out and joined the Marine Corps during Vietnam. Both baby boomers who attended state universities, they were ill-prepared for their two public-school-educated daughters to attend private universities that left us drowning in debt.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
“How about getting a single degree, then a J-O-B? That is the way it used to be.”
Absolutely. I agree. You’re missing the point however. Thanks to Bush the idiot, even with a job or multiple jobs, her take home pay will be used to pay down loans. Big picture, that’s a poor use of money for our economy which, in case you haven’t noticed, could use a boost. Re-allow the use of bankruptcy.
Perhaps because my parents had been through the depression, I had a deep and abiding fear of debt. My children are a few years out of college, and I made sure that they graduated without any debt. But for the past thirty years or more, the idea of borrowing for college and worrying about it later has been sold to people. People are going to expensive private colleges when much cheaper public colleges would do. The idea seemed to be that a college degree is you ticket to high earnings and that any debt would be easy to repay. For some, the amount of debt is so large that it hinders them financially, and for others, they earn so little that the interest on their loan causes it to increase faster than their ability to pay it down.
This is a problem and will be a much bigger problem in the future. I don’t know what the solution is. But I am tired of acting responsibly, doing without, and then being asked to pay for the mistakes of people who lived and live in a alternate reality.
That’s right. You pay off college loans just like you eat an elephant . . . one bite at a time. For some, the elephant grows real BIG.
True, a lot of these kids listened to sharpster lenders instead of their parents, and went head over heels in debt - a lot of them thinking they’d just declare bankruptcy and default. Only, that’s what they got for wishful thinking, and then it came time to pay the piper.
When parents have helped all they can, they’ve helped all they can. - The story about the kid killing himself over a $9,000 college loan debt was so tragic, though. Any parent would quickly be able to explain to a kid that $9,000 over a lifetime is virtually NOTHING; and any parent who loves their kid would offer to help (provided the kid had talked with the parents about it and they knew about it.)
Stupid. Of the 100 grand owed, probably 10 of it was for travel between Boston and Texas, and Boston is not cheap either.
I paid as I went. Took me longer, but so what? Our careers are much longer nowadays, so I had my children and went to school while they were little. Worked out really well.
The depression-era generation valued education as a means to a better existence. In modern America we have almost come to worship college education and degrees as idols of status symbols. Expensive but empty ones at that....Anything that godless liberalism contols eventually comes to devalued ruin. Really no surprise here.
“One of the important factors in the collapse of the mortgage industry in recent years is that a mortgage became one of the easiest forms of debt for someone to walk away from.”
Define easy. And you wouldn’t chalk the industry’s collapse up to (1) oversupply of homes & (2) market value collapse??
I sure hope her college medical paid for her contraception!
I am looking at going back to tech college part time as I need to do something else. I'm looking at a couple of quick certificate programs for the short term. One is electronics maintenance/servicing and the other involves industrial robotics with maybe trying to tackle both.
In my part of the world, IT tech jobs aren't that plentiful and break/fix/mass deployment gigs are near dry. There certainly aren't any in my old line of work in TV.
Years ago some of my TV co-irkers gave me grief about going to school to learn to fix computers and other technology, getting certs, etc. In the long run I made the right decision. Nikki Haley, economics, and technology will most likely do away with my former ETV employer. From what I hear of life inside there, it is downright miserable because it was an actual OK place for many years. It really isn't all that necessary any more.
Theoretically lottery assisted tuition assistance is available to SC residents regardless of income but my situation is rather weird and don't expect any help but it would be nice.
I figured, at 8 percent interest, and paying $1500 a month into it, she could have it done in about 7.5 years, at a total cost of $130,000.
If she focused on the principal, borrowing a couple of hundred occasionally from family members, she’d have it paid off faster.
This is why we need “comprehensive” tuition “reform”. The skyrocketing costs of tuition being charged by the Marxists running our colleges and universities are absurd.
What will a bankrupt America look like?
I don’t know what she is complaining about How much does she make as an attorney vs what she would make as a high school graduate?
She took the risk and now must pay back her loans in inflated cheaper dollars thanks to Bernanke and his son’s $400,000 student loan debt.
its the american way borrow borrow borrow default...yeah thats the ticket everybody default Jubilee!!!
On my phone so this will be short. I have absolutely no sympathy for this whining spoiled brat. I went though undergrad on the GI Bill and had.enough at.the end to take me halfway through.Law School. I worked at least.one job the entire time I was in school. My wife worked retail as well.
She is nothing more than a poster-child for the Entitlement Generation.
Like you, hubby and I put two kids through state schools
(UCIrvine and CSUFullerton), at the same time with cash.
We are the white, middle class who must pay for everything.
We pay our bills and sacrifice a little:
No hair salon,
No nail salon,
No spa,
No vacations,
No new cars,
No labels on our clothes,
No Coach handbags (hate those handbags - big waste of money).
No eating out.
Good news is our children are educated and have jobs
that pay well. They are not in debt and neither are we.
PRAISING GOD! It was all worth it.
Government handouts are a shackle.
I think the major problem with student loans is the misconception regarding the interest rates.
Students are given “low interest” loans but the way the interest is compounded, the reality is that if one pays off the loan according to the ten year plan, one actually pays back more than fifty percent to the lender.
I learned this the hard way when I agreed to take out a parent loan for my daughter to attend an out of state university. The loan was for $13,000 at 7.25% which seemed okay, but when I got the payment plan the amount I will pay back, if I maintain the standard payment for ten years is more than $19,000!
Last year, of the $1650.00 I paid toward the loan, nearly $900.00 of it was in interest.
That is the information that students and parents need before they take out such large loans. Informed consent is what is needed, not forgiveness or the ability to default on what is a personal choice. No one forced me to take that loan, just as no one forced this young woman and her parents.
We must stop allowing people to borrow all kinds of money with the thought that they can just walk away from it later. Making it harder to default will hopefully make them more cautious about taking on debt.
On the plus side, this young lady at least got a valuable degree (apparently law) so she should be able to pay off her loans. When you have a degree in sociology or gender studies you're pretty well screwed.
Her parents a nurse and a police officer? Sounds to me like they did not do without much on that income. Plus benefits and healthy sized retirements.
She had to go to a private school so she has to pay the price. Then she had out of state tuition costs. All her choices.
Thank the Lord my children didn’t want to stray very far for college.
Right, life isn’t easy. This seems to be something that conservatives understand but liberals don’t.
Obama’s plan is to forgive student loans after 10 years if they go into public service. No religious public service however.
(In other words don’t go into private business like Michelle and I told you not to do.)
This plan goes further and forgives everyone debts after 10 years if they make payments. That may be the clincher here.
http://money.cnn.com/2011/10/25/news/economy/Obama_student_loan/index.htm
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