The Debt of Young Americans
This whole post is basically based around one very soboring article:
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0411/fkoerner.php
The article is an incredbile read, and every young person here should read it thoroughly. The fact is, it seems, that the young spend so much time merely trying to catch up and get their heads above water, that quality-of-life suffers immensely.
We leave the college gates with $25,000 in debt (more for those in private schools) and have no choice but to immediately join the ratrace (sorry for the cliche). Gaining experience through internships, experience rewarding life adventures? Not an option.
"The next generation is starting their economic race 50 yards behind the starting line," -Elizabeth Warren
The insanity continues: we seem to need to push for this immediate middle-class high-suburban status; we take on a 30 year mortgage for a house we can't afford, buy a new car with money we don't have, the list goes on.
Some call it the american way, but it is a new phenomenon to be buried in THIS much debt. I say it is ruining America, but then, i can be dramatic.
It just seems that this level of debt required just to live is forcing many of us into lives we don't want.
Hrmph. I finished college with $3,000 of credit card debt. Fortunately, I have paid it all off, but I will still be finishing grad student with $15,000 in student loans. I'll be driving an old car for a long time, and that's okay.
A few of use were probably lucky enough to score a bunch money from an inheritence. Otherwise, good luck.
http://www.villagevoice.com/issues/0411/fkoerner.php
The article is an incredbile read, and every young person here should read it thoroughly. The fact is, it seems, that the young spend so much time merely trying to catch up and get their heads above water, that quality-of-life suffers immensely.
We leave the college gates with $25,000 in debt (more for those in private schools) and have no choice but to immediately join the ratrace (sorry for the cliche). Gaining experience through internships, experience rewarding life adventures? Not an option.
"The next generation is starting their economic race 50 yards behind the starting line," -Elizabeth Warren
The insanity continues: we seem to need to push for this immediate middle-class high-suburban status; we take on a 30 year mortgage for a house we can't afford, buy a new car with money we don't have, the list goes on.
Some call it the american way, but it is a new phenomenon to be buried in THIS much debt. I say it is ruining America, but then, i can be dramatic.
It just seems that this level of debt required just to live is forcing many of us into lives we don't want.
Hrmph. I finished college with $3,000 of credit card debt. Fortunately, I have paid it all off, but I will still be finishing grad student with $15,000 in student loans. I'll be driving an old car for a long time, and that's okay.
A few of use were probably lucky enough to score a bunch money from an inheritence. Otherwise, good luck.
Comments
Disturbing fact #1:
"It's just staggering to me that this is not a part of our national debate right now."
It is disgusting to me, because those who set the agenda are the ones getting rich off of that debt. For Christ's sake, Bush is running the entire freaking country on an exploding deficit while cutting Pell grants (I was among the first victims, the ****er).
Disgusting fact #2:
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Colleges make millions off credit card hawkers, who pay for the privilege of setting up kiosks or affixing a school's logo to their plastic.
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Why not let people pay to come in and rape your students?
I will be walking out of college with about $500 of credit card debt (maybe pay it off next month, we'll see how the numbers crunch). At one point it was $2700. All off of credit cards I got from kiosks in the lobby of my dorm. My first goddam week in school there is a guy in a bright kiosk with "0.1%!" or whatever. Jesus.
Disgusting fact #3:
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Given the Kid's low pay and high debt service, there's a good chance he'd join the 17.9 million other 18-to-34ers who lack even the most basic health insurance. His demographic accounts for the single biggest bloc of uninsured Americans?41 percent of the country's total.
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That's me.
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The system punishes the young who dare strive for something better. For those on the young side of 35, debt and its ripple effects have made upward mobility a fiction more often than not.
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Truth.
This is depressing.
I have one point for now:
Forget about grad school, of course, as that would mean taking on a whole new set of loans. A Law & Order fan growing up, the Kid once imagined becoming a public defender. But then he read an American Bar Association report noting that a J.D. would, on average, raise his total debt burden to $80,000, and that the median salary for entry-level, public-service legal jobs is $36,000. So never mind that dream.
Most law schools have loan-forgiveness programs for students entering the public sector. So the total debt burden would be, on average, lower than $80,000 for public sector lawyers.
Originally posted by groverat
Good article.
Disturbing fact #1:
"It's just staggering to me that this is not a part of our national debate right now."
It is disgusting to me, because those who set the agenda are the ones getting rich off of that debt. For Christ's sake, Bush is running the entire freaking country on an exploding deficit while cutting Pell grants (I was among the first victims, the ****er).
I think this says a lot about our entire culture of debt. If you give the national debt to the citizens, it's what, like $15,000 a head? Howard Dean mentioned the debt crisis, but other than that it hasn't been a political issue; sad. Do people not care?
From the article:
I wish I hadn't gone to grad school - I have a debt of over $21K from a city school. I have good health insurance but with rent, loan payments, and the other bills and costs of living, there is no room for error and I feel burned out.I'm only supporting myself and feel like I'm spinning my wheels and not getting anywhere. In the words of Marvin Gaye, "It makes me wanna holler...this ain't living".
Yup, this sounds like my situation exactly, except that I'm recently married. No kids or house yet, but we're quickly approaching the "now" point on both (the "or never" isn't an option for us).
We paid off what was left of my wife's student loans with our savings, which leaves just my grad loan, which is a killer. Whatever extra income I might have earned because of the grad degree is pretty much eaten by my loan payments. We're not falling deeper into debt. Not yet, anyway. But we're not able to save enough, either.
To think I typed all that when this article put it so plainly like this...
And once you've got accumulated debt, the debt takes on a life of its own. It demands to be fed, and it takes that first bite out of the paycheck. And it means the opportunity to accumulate a little, to get a little ahead, to maybe put together a down payment?it's just never there.
Nick
Cheers
Scott
Originally posted by trumptman
It is weird that this was posted literally during what I was typing to Grove in the car thread. This thread is right on that topic. Great minds right?
Nick
I was wondering if your post and this thread were intentionally related...eerie...ooga booga boo.
Employers are increasingly reluctant to defray the cost of health care, so tack on an extra several hundred bucks a year, even $2,000 or more for the technically self-employed?"permanent temps," as the saying goes. Though housing is supposedly cheaper than ever, due to record-low interest rates, the ambitious young aren't necessarily enjoying the trend. Rents in many metro areas, where a good portion of knowledge-based jobs are located, remain sky-high; cheaper digs exist in the suburbs, though that means enduring sarariman-like commutes.
Right idea, wrong target. Employers cannot continue to defray the costs when the costs are rising at about three times the rate of inflation. I'll share that as a teacher with an entire family on my health plan, I have to contribute $4000 a year to defray the costs my employer will not cover. The employer contributes another $4000 toward the health insurance. That amount has gone up about $500 toward their part of the contribution over 5 years, but my piece has skyrocketed. The real issue is the cost of the insurance. Why does it cost $8000 a year to insure 4 people?
The theme you will see, when you look at this article is that anyplace the government is involved, the costs rise at rates much higher than inflation. It isn't hidden greed, it is hidden taxes. Higher ed = grants and loans. Housing = interest rates and Fannie May and Freddie Mac. Health insurance = Medicare and state insurance.
Consider this, the cost of elective surgeries that people have to pay for out of their pockets has been FALLING for years. If you want to get some fat sucked out, get your eye lenses reshaped, or get your breasts enhanced the procedures have been getting better and CHEAPER every year. While those health insurance rates have been climbing, you can also find article after article about medicare reimbursements falling.
Look at edcuation...
It's also where he'll start digging his financial hole. The notion of skyrocketing tuition is such a clich?, it's easy to miss exactly how steep the increase has been. Over the past decade, according to the College Board, average tuition and fees in real dollars rose 47 percent at public four-year colleges, and 42 percent at private four-years. Just in the past year, tuition and fees nationwide rose an average of 14.1 percent; in New York, where Governor George Pataki cut $184 million from the State University of New York budget, a 35 percent tuition hike is on the table.
Both of those have kicked the hell out of inflation rates. But again what is the real culprit? Envy and greed. As mentioned state education is a bargain compared to private education. There are plenty of rich folks who send their children to public schools to simply save on the tuition. They don't get any financial aid but it is still a bargain for them. So what these colleges have been doing is RAISING their tuition so that the rich have to pay more. They declare that it is alright to do this because the rich will pay and they will give more in financial aid for the poorest students. Of course the financial aid ends up being loans and guess what, hidden tax increase.
The Kid only needs to put 3 percent down on a house, rather than the 18 percent that was typical during the 1970s. But the lower down payment is a curse in disguise, as it means the Kid will be saddled with much higher mortgage payments. Both he and his spouse will have to work full-time to stave off a foreclosure. "When we look at the median cost of housing, it used to be 30 years ago that a teacher could purchase a home on their own salary," says Tamara Draut, director of the Economic Opportunity Program at Demos. "Nowadays, it's hard for two teachers to purchase a home on their combined salar
Pretty simple. Industry is willing to make those loans because those loans are then sold to Freddie Mac and Fannie May which are government backed mortgage holders. If Freddie and Fannie wouldn't back them, then people couldn't bid up housing to where they can only afford to put 3% down.
Just a different take on this. If you choose a different path than "The Kid." You can end up with a very different result.
Nick
Sucks to be a student who gets no financial support from his/her family.
Originally posted by groverat
Sucks to be a student who gets no financial support from his/her family.
i know the feeling. i don't think my dad even knows what my major was.
A 20 minute long, 12 mile ambulance ride where the medical services provided consisted solely of taking my blood pressure cost $500. An eight hour stay in a admitting room without ever seeing a doctor cost me $800. The actually diagnosis and surgery to remove my appendix was something over $10,000. The cost of the approximately 12 hour stay in the hospital for recovery afterwards, rounded up to a full day of course but pushed out the door as quickly as possible, was around $3000.
Fortunately I was able to cut some deals and cover the costs with money borrowed from my parents. But the whole experience was just mind boggling. The bills were getting up near $20,000 for what they wanted to charge for what was about a 36 medical event involving simple surgery. The medical industry absolutely assrapes people who are uninsured, frequently charging 3 or more times as much for the same services as they charge HMOs or the govt or corporations. They try to make up all of the money lost on patients who are uninsured and can't pay or those who get out of it with bankruptcy by overcharging that and more for everyone else.
I feel bad for anyone who has such a similar thing happen to them because it could easily kill your finances if you were not prepared, and if you are uninsured you are probably not financially prepared for large medical bills in many cases. You're either going to take it up the ass from the medical bills or your going to be forced into bankruptcy which has all sorts of other problems which will not go away for a long time.
The debt load of private individuals is no-ones fault but their own. The soution is simple... If you can't afford it, DON'T BUY IT !!! (yes ... this applies to education as well.)
And if you believe debt is a bad thing (it is) ... then make sure you teach that to your children (when/if you have any).
Work ... then get paid for that work ... THEN buy something. Too many people do that backwards and they never get caught up.
someone who's not completely plastered should look up the tution price increases over the last 20 years.
Paramedic school is a little bit more pricey, but I'm still working now so I should be able to pull that off too. I'm planning on getting a credit card soon, but it will only be there to build credit, I'm gonna do my best to never use it. I like being debt free.
Originally posted by alcimedes
bah, easy access to student loans is what's ****ing people over.
someone who's not completely plastered should look up the tution price increases over the last 20 years.
Hey drunk boy, I already quoted it FROM THE ARTICLE.
The notion of skyrocketing tuition is such a clich?, it's easy to miss exactly how steep the increase has been. Over the past decade, according to the College Board, average tuition and fees in real dollars rose 47 percent at public four-year colleges, and 42 percent at private four-years. Just in the past year, tuition and fees nationwide rose an average of 14.1 percent; in New York, where Governor George Pataki cut $184 million from the State University of New York budget, a 35 percent tuition hike is on the table.
Nick