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25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

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Re: 25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

#3
Would be interesting to see a study focused on student debt and decision making around founding a startup or diving into entrepreneurship. On the one hand, those who graduate without a lot of loans would be financially enabled to dive into e'ship. On the other hand, loans might actually influence and be a driving factor for recent graduates who couldn't land jobs to create their own businesses.

Re: 25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

#6
post #3

Would be interesting to see a study focused on student debt and decision making around founding a startup or diving into entrepreneurship. On the one hand, those who graduate without a lot of loans would be financially enabled to dive into e'ship. On the other hand, loans might actually influence and be a driving factor for recent graduates who couldn't land jobs to create their own businesses.

but that is micro-business formation where there debt load is not a penalty due to the low costs of setting up a micro-business, vastly different from a start-up where debt load is a penalty factor

Re: 25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

#8
post #4

I honestly thought about this, back then when stock market had 'predictable returns.' Imagine $100K ($25k X4) in a retirement account for 40 years.

At 6% APR after 40 years it would be over $1 MM.

Discount that $1M with 40 years of inflation to give some idea of what the purchasing power might be and it doesn't look quite so impressive.

Re: 25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

#9
post #4

I honestly thought about this, back then when stock market had 'predictable returns.' Imagine $100K ($25k X4) in a retirement account for 40 years.

You might be dead before you get to spend it.

It has a lot to do with the peace of mind as well: "OK, I have to work till 60, but then I'm going to be pretty comfortable"

Inflation obviously takes a bite but it takes the same bite even if you put $5k a year when you're 40.

Re: 25% of Students Say College Loans Have Impacted Their Career Choices

#10
post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At 6% APR after 40 years it would be over $1 MM.

Discount that $1M with 40 years of inflation to give some idea of what the purchasing power might be and it doesn't look quite so impressive.

Let's use historical data instead of back of the envelope guesswork.

Over the last 40 years (1970-2010) the average S&P 500 return has been 11.61%, while inflation has been 4.4%. Past performance not necessarily but usually predicting future performance, but, with those rates...

Over the next 40 years $100k would grow to $8.1 MM in future bucks, or $1.45 MM in 2011 dollars.

http://www.moneychimp.com/features/market_cagr.htm for returns, http://www.moneychimp.com/articles/econ/inflation_calculator... for inflation, and http://apps.finra.org/Calcs/1/Savings for savings calculations.

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