Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

money.cnn.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 108 posts

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#71

Post by GFischer »

andmarios wrote: post #49

From a different point of view, the parents are age 57 and 59 and if everything went well, they would already have retired. In contrast, European Union asks Greece (and other PIIGS countries) to set the minimum retirement age at 67 if it wants to stay a member...

Indeed. My country follows EU very closely in this, and I don't expect I'd be able to retire before 65 if I stayed an employee, and it's very, very likely the law will be changed to a minimum retirement age of 70 during my working life (social security is very close to defaulting).

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#72

Post by theandrewbailey »

andmarios wrote: post #49

From a different point of view, the parents are age 57 and 59 and if everything went well, they would already have retired. In contrast, European Union asks Greece (and other PIIGS countries) to set the minimum retirement age at 67 if it wants to stay a member...

> From a different point of view, the parents are age 57 and 59 and if everything went well, they would already have retired.

Things would have to have gone really well to retire before 60 in USA. Most Americans don't even consider retiring until at least that, often 65.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#74

Post by dragonwriter »

JPKab wrote: post #44
n0us wrote: post #23

"Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." Smart move. Maybe he will pay it all down some day. In this thread there are a lot of people saying you shouldn't take out a lot of loans to get a degree like journalism, and you shou…

"Sean is now pursuing another bachelor's degree, this time in computer science, from the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg. He is paying for this degree as he goes, with help from an internship program with the U.S. Navy." So his mother and father, who both work for the Navy on the taxpayer's dime, got their son connected with an internship program for the Navy on the taxpayer's dime. I have no doubt th…

> The Navy has another paid-internship and training program for college graduates with no job: it's called ENLISTING.

The Navy (and other services are similar) actually has lots of non-uniformed internship programs for current students ; I suspect the biggest advantage of having family in the military is that they are likely to be aware of these things.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#75

Post by dragonwriter »

sp332 wrote: post #24
dasil003 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good luck in journalism though.

It says he was trying to get a Hollywood career.

Which makes spending that much money on a journalism degree from a private university that isn't particularly known for Hollywood connections (and certainly not in its journalism program) an extremely poor decision.

A Rutgers journalism degree might be a good choice (though still probably not going to pay off quickly, in net financial terms) if you want a career in journalism.

If you want a career in Hollywood, you probably want to get a film or related degree from a school where the department has Hollywood connections; I've heard (though I've never seriously researched it, since it was never my interest when going to school) that UCLA is fairly good in this regard. (And, you probably want to research what it takes to actually make a career in Hollywood, and be doing that while you're in school, rather than hoping that just getting a degree is going to magically open doors.)

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#76

Post by monroepe »

theseatoms wrote: post #42
intopieces wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>I think we need to do more to help educate parents and prospective students that in most cases a college degree is next to worthless. Do you have a source for this? The Bureau of Labor Statistics says the exact opposite. [0] >Most psych/business majors would be better served working their way up through the ranks. Source? Again and again, people only seem to look at the cost of education like education is a product…

Those who earn bachelor's degrees do indeed earn more than those with only a high school education. But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit. Not to mention that this is not a controlled experiment. Maybe those who earn degrees would have earned more anyway. (Though I do suspect that college is very beneficial, for the reasons you cite.)

>But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit.

Exactly. I don't have any issues with getting a degree. I think it is very beneficial both financially in the long term and emotionally. But you shouldn't overpay for it. There is nothing wrong with community college. There is nothing wrong with putting off college for a year or two to save money. Obviously every situation is different, but I think we should be educating high school students about their options and their prospects.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#77

Post by pigpaws »

gd78 wrote: post #54

Wow, living in Germany I graduated in CS with ~7k in loans. Just the idea that a government does not pay its childrens education is freakin me out and from my perspective seems to be a neo liberalism horror story.

college professors in the States need to be compensated at the same rate as company CEOs. EVERYONE 'deserves' a flat screen 4k TV, a brand new car every 3 years and 7%+ gains on any and all investments, otherwise, it isn't "fair".

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#78

Post by intopieces »

monroepe wrote: post #76
theseatoms wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those who earn bachelor's degrees do indeed earn more than those with only a high school education. But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit. Not to mention that this is not a controlled experiment. Maybe those who earn degrees would have earned more anyway. (Though I do suspect that college is very beneficial, for the reasons you cite.)

>But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit. Exactly. I don't have any issues with getting a degree. I think it is very beneficial both financially in the long term and emotionally. But you shouldn't overpay for it. There is nothing wrong with community college. There is nothing wrong with putting off college for a year or two to save money. Obviously every situation is different, but I think we should be…

>There is nothing wrong with putting off college for a year or two to save money

Positively agree. In fact, I think entering college directly after high school is absurd. We should encourage if not require everyone to take a year off to really decide what they want before entering college. Lots of people I know who ended up dropping out with debt and no degree reported to me that they were not ready for college and they only went because it was the "thing you're supposed to do."

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#79

Post by sjg007 »

gd78 wrote: post #54

Wow, living in Germany I graduated in CS with ~7k in loans. Just the idea that a government does not pay its childrens education is freakin me out and from my perspective seems to be a neo liberalism horror story.

Your kids (or any American who qualifies) can go to school in Germany for free.

Re: Our sons' student debt is delaying our retirement

#80

Post by monroepe »

intopieces wrote: post #78
monroepe wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But many people are vastly overpaying for this benefit. Exactly. I don't have any issues with getting a degree. I think it is very beneficial both financially in the long term and emotionally. But you shouldn't overpay for it. There is nothing wrong with community college. There is nothing wrong with putting off college for a year or two to save money. Obviously every situation is different, but I think we should be…

>There is nothing wrong with putting off college for a year or two to save money Positively agree. In fact, I think entering college directly after high school is absurd. We should encourage if not require everyone to take a year off to really decide what they want before entering college. Lots of people I know who ended up dropping out with debt and no degree reported to me that they were not ready for college and t…

I entered not knowing what I wanted to do at all and ended up with a history major, which hasn't really been all that useful to me. I discovered too late that I loved programming for me to switch majors to cs.

Now I am not saying that waiting a year or two would have helped me pick a better major, because I still might not have found my passion for programming. But I do know that I would have studied harder and learned more during those years. My grades were fine, but I really did just enough to get good grades. I didn't take advantage of the learning opportunity because I was immature. I would love to go back now and really learn.

Post reply on HN