TL;DR – he got a six figure data science job. You too can pay off your loans early with this one simple trick!
I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
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Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#12Not the first, or second, or third person I've heard about being duped by a farming gig in Hawaii. People will buy fairly cheap, totally undeveloped forest tracts and lure unsuspecting people in who dream of "Hawaii". But, they usually don't dream of being deep in a forest, with no neighbors, an hour from the nearest part of the ocean, which you can't even swim in, nor even get to since you have no car and no access to public transit. All the while doing hard manual labor in a hot and humid environment for 16 hours/day while living in a tent or in literally just under a mosquito net hanging from a tree.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#13The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A bu…
College definitely has historically paid off, people have just been impatient with the return timeline. The fruits of a degree don't start to really manifest until your 30's, assuming you got a practical degree. They become undeniable by your 50's.
Going forward though, I think the combination of AI and extreme degree dilution (everybody has a degree) are going to absolutely railroad a bunch of gen-z kids down the line.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#14Paying off the debt is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath are the tools to wield your income in a focused way to accomplish really big things.
Congrats @EconoBen :)
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#15The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A bu…
College definitely has historically paid off, people have just been impatient with the return timeline. The fruits of a degree don't start to really manifest until your 30's, assuming you got a practical degree. They become undeniable by your 50's. Going forward though, I think the combination of AI and extreme degree dilution (everybody has a degree) are going to absolutely railroad a bunch of gen-z kids down the li…
It is not the timeline that is the problem, but the volatility. Getting a degree is no guarantee you will be able to obtain a job that will allow you to pay off the loan while maintaining a quality of life somewhere near "basic needs met." So you're throwing yourself at a credential that businesses use as an application checkbox and hoping for the best. That's a lot of debt to incur the name of hope.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#16What's truly disturbing is the student debt still held by people 50, 60, 70+ years old, as shown in the article's embedded chart: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Scr...
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#17The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A bu…
> It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans.
I think you're over-reacting to some anecdotes.
> The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway.
> Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A business as simple as landscaping or construction can be just as financially rewarding as being a corporate desk jockey ... and even more so in some cases.
To put it bluntly: that's dumb advice that also takes contrarianism to an unreasonable extreme.
IMHO, the more reasonable reaction the situation is to steer your kids towards an affordable college and a degree path that has a reasonable career at the other end. So towards a decent but unprestigious state school, away from no-name private liberal arts schools and famous schools (unless you they can score a fantastic scholarship); way from majoring in anthropology, literature, or music; etc.
Edit: Also it doesn't seem super wise, period, to advise your kid to go into some low skill/low capital business, then expect them to magically make a successful small business out of it. If people actually took your advice in large numbers, the competition is going to be cutthroat.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#18What's truly disturbing is the student debt still held by people 50, 60, 70+ years old, as shown in the article's embedded chart: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Scr...
My stepdad held a lot of student loan debt until he passed away and it was all forgiven. He even thought of getting a PHD with another loan. I think that's pretty much the mentality/strategy of a lot of senior people.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#19The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A bu…
I think higher education is still important.
What I have noticed is that "entrepreneur" in the age of social media has become almost synonymous with scams—doubly so among those without a college degree. I can't even avoid it. Every time I open Facebook or Instagram, every 3rd or 5th post is some kind of scam. The vast majority or reels are scams. People aren't aspiring to be landscapers or start real businesses and a lot of people don't even know the difference between a real business and some kind of scam that they saw on TikTok.
Higher education also doesn't have to be expensive. It can be as expensive as you want it to be, even today. You can get a great education from a state school. You can even offload the first two years to community college if you really want to save money.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#20A few years ago, I set myself the goal of paying off all my student loans before I'm 30. I turn 30 in two months. And as of this month, I paid them off. All $194k of them... Obviously, this was a significant milestone for me. So, I took this opportunity to reflect on my journey so far. How I even came to owe that much money, how I overcame this obstacle, and what it all means to me.
Sounds like you made all the right choices. You spent $200k on a degree which awarded you a job that allowed you (with some expected struggle) to pay it off. Congratulations.
Bingo. This is the counterpoint to the "college is dead" crowd. OP is now 30 and has a career that will let him save/invest $200k every 6 years (before any future raises).