Congrats!
It feels so good. I paid off about $60k of debt in 1.5 years after college while living at home. It was hard but worth it.
I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
21–30 of 104 posts
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#22What'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.
At this point, that's basically my mentality too. Not to get a PhD, but rather that if I die before paying all my loans back, then I finally have the last laugh on the "higher education" system.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#23The 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…
That doesn’t work for everyone though.
I work for an employer because I don’t want to spend time running a business. It’s just not worth it for a lot of us. I don’t even ever want to be a manager.
I’d rather just put in my 40 hours as an individual contributor and then have the remainder of my time to do whatever I need/want.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#24The 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…
This ignores that the reason that people started pushing their kids to college was that the odds are better with a degree than without, and that still broadly holds over a long career. There never have been any guarantees, but the odds in the USA do not favor folks with only a high school education.
For example, people talk about "landscaping or construction" and other trades but don't consider that working as e.g. an economist has a longer expected career longevity than working in construction.
Also remember that the point of college is to broadly educate the individual, not to be a jobs program. That said, there's no reason a college graduate can't start and grow a construction business. A person who makes $200k at a data science job is in some ways better positioned to start a construction business, because they have the ability to accumulate some capital.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#25Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Ah c'mon, this must be some kind of fallacy of which I'm unaware of.
I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree and I live in Europe which pays significantly under what the US does.
People keep forgetting that we (and OP) got obscenely lucky in our industry. We are very well compensated compared to our contemporaries; but if anything it's proof that you don't need a degree, and that shouldn't be the litmus for getting a decently paid job.
A degree in of itself should not be held to such vocational standards, it has significant merit but has very little bearing on job performance- We should be working to make college/university affordable because a better educated population helps society.
However, it is far from a great indicator of earning potential.
The largest factors in earning potential remain to be: historical wealth and IQ; degrees, when controlled for familial wealth have shockingly low correlation to lifetime earning potential.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#26The 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 landsc…
IMHO the more reasonable reaction is to take an objective look at what you want to do with your life and a hard look at what the requirements are for achieving that.
Some fields require a post-secondary education. You can't get around that. If you want to be an engineer or a doctor, you need to go that route. In that case, I agree with you. Look for more affordable options and figure out how to meet the requirements without bankrupting yourself. Understand what you are getting involved in before you make any commitments.
Barring the above, I do tend to side with the OP that it is time for a cultural shift away from college / university for the sake of college / university. I know of a lot of people who really valued "the experience", and felt like they found themselves and made valuable networking connections etc. and value those things above the diploma itself. None of that is a bad thing, but ask yourself what kind of dollar amount you are willing to pay for that. Don't assume that you will be resigned to living under the poverty line if you don't pursue that.
I am undoubtedly biased because I have enjoyed a 25 year career in software engineering and this is a niche field where we see tons of self-taught engineers who, in many cases, have a higher work ethic and measurable productive output than their college educated peers. I don't pretend for a second that that can transfer to every other field.
But does that mean the idea transfers to zero other fields?
You don't have to disvalue higher education to question whether or not traditional formal institutions are providing the value that they promise, or to seek alternative ways of achieving that higher education.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#27I paid off ~65K in student debt in one year (first year as a developer)... it's totally doable, especially in the USA.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#28The 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 landsc…
People’s perceptions of college costs have been skewed by 1) tuition sticker prices, which really don’t reflect what most students pay and, 2) the media reporting on student debt and inflated college costs.
I think #2 is made worse because it tends to be young journalists writing those stories from places like Brooklyn after having graduated from a journalism masters program at NYU or Columbia. Yeah, they’re going to have lots of student debt, high living costs, and low-ish income, and their reporting is going to reflect that.
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#29What'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...
"Dividend et Impera" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Pispers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chK2KHGx_yo
Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
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).
Ah c'mon, this must be some kind of fallacy of which I'm unaware of. I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree and I live in Europe which pays significantly under what the US does. People keep forgetting that we (and OP) got obscenely lucky in our industry. We are very well compensated compared to our contemporaries; but if any…
> I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree.
Bully for you! You are an outlier. Your employer may also be an outlier. That's wonderful for you, but it is irresponsible to recommend to any young person that they bet their futures on being able to 1) find 2) when they are hiring 3) and click with the hiring manager an outlier firm like yours.
> it's proof that you don't need a degree.
To do the job, no. To get the job, frequently yes. Obviously a lot of us were shipping production code in high school. Doesn't matter to most employers. For better or worse, having a degree is a required/recommended credential at a lot of jobs. Recruiters will often use it as a filter if they get a ton of resumes. Worse -- not having a degree is also a prohibition to some promotions at some employers so there are potentially follow-on effects of not getting the diploma.
Having been in the industry a while, I can say that the last 10 years or so are aberrant in that recruiters have been less selective than at other times. One definitely didn't want to be in tech in 2001 with no degree and a mortgage.
And speaking of 2001, one of the other benefits of having a degree is you're not as locked into a given career. When the dot.com bust hit tech, I saw folks use the flexibility afforded by their degrees to go into other fields: teaching, law school, etc.