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I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

benjaminlabaschin.com

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Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#31

Post by nonameiguess »

lapcat wrote: post #16

What'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...

They may not be students. I was quite disturbed when attending my niece's college graduation last month to hear her say she had $30k in loans and my sister had taken out $180k. My sister is 41 and hasn't worked in 15 years. Her husband is a decently well-paid glazier, but they're probably going to be in debt for the rest of their lives.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#32

Post by selykg »

tivert wrote: post #17
jqpabc123 wrote: post #6

The 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…

I'm going to second the affordable college option. I had a lot of help in the beginning so I didn't do this, but still wish I had done it. Community college to knock out the general education requirements and experience a wide variety of different subject areas. My local community college, back when I was going to college in the mid-2000s, was easily half the cost of the larger universities nearby. I have no idea how little, or much, this has changed, but I can't imagine it's more cost effective to goto a university.

We need to stop making it seem like the "college experience" is worth gobs of student loan debt.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#33

Post by kevinmchugh »

js8 wrote: post #9
jqpabc123 wrote: post #6

The 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…

> The key element here is to learn the trade but then move up to hiring/managing others who do the actual work --- for a company owned by you. Sure, that's totally not gonna be another gold rush / pyramid scheme like the student loans were.

Learning a trade and then management is a very slow gold rush

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#36

Post by dragonwriter »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #6

The 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

No, it hasn’t, as evidenced by the research on pay differentials.

> 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.

Entrepreneurship requires capital, and also has a high failure rate; a business of those types can also lead to failure, a worse than starting position, and being back to being a worker in those industries.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#37

Post by tayo42 »

This is an abnormal amount of debt, I think this gets headlines and people riled up. 140k for 4 years of school is not normal. The average school debt is 40k. Maybe school is expensive, this is excessive and bad decision making. Maybe you could say that there is a subset that needs help avoiding this but most do. Public schools and community colleges are doable and affordable and with a little work you can get scholarships. I did 6 years of undergrad because I was a bad student and only ended up with around 40k in the end.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#38

Post by zeroCalories »

That's pretty good, congratulations.

I don't mean to suggest you did the wrong thing, but I want to share a perspective from one of my friends. She has a similar amount of debt, and is simply choosing to make minimum payments for the rest of her life, maybe even default at some point. She says that spending her money on herself while she is young enough to enjoy it is more important than living frugally for decades to end up old without any money anyway. But she has also considered marrying, then being a stay at home mom or working under the table jobs so that she can default without getting her wages garnished. I'm not burdened by debt, but I would definitely be thinking of something similar in a case like that. Also reminds me of the credit-maxing meme. While I generally like market incentives, I think student loans are becoming extremely high risk investments. I'm lucky enough to have a well paying job, but I'm still worried about what paying for my child's education will be like. Should I make them take on hundreds of thousands in loans, or should I delay my retirement for a decade? The future seems bleak if we don't get the cost of education under control.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#39

Post by whywhywhywhy »

Should just be able to send the debt back to the institute if the product they sold you doesn't result in enough income to foot the bill within X years.

The current system doesn't encourage the institutes to do anything other than spiral costs, burn money and zero responsibility to provide a product focused on making sure that loan is ever paid back.

Say this as someone who managed to pay theirs off, just think "forgiveness" and other ideas are temporary solutions we'll end up having to repeat over and over. Let's just have a permanent solution with accountability for what they are providing for the cost.

Re: I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

#40

Post by nineplay »

jqpabc123 wrote: post #6

The 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…

> Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36934135

Yesterday this was posted with a lot of commenters agreeing that management wasn't for them. With that in mind, I think presenting "entrepreneurism" as a lucrative and rewarding career is misleading. Many people wouldn't enjoy it, many people wouldn't be good at it, many people will not be successful at it - particularly long term. Entrepreneurs will not have easy access to 401ks and ( in the US ) health insurance.

> landscaping or construction

It is interesting to me how many promoters of blues collar careers overlook these industries historic hostility to female collogues. Women have been doing better in college lately than men, so maybe the assumption is that men will forgo college in droves for these sort of trade careers leaving all the white collar jobs to women. It's a plausible outcome.

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