On post-college Adulthood

[emptyeye]

Recently I made a payment on my school loans, bringing the amount I owe down to roughly $11,500 USD which, with the state of the dollar today, is roughly 3 units of any other currency. The recent woeful performance of the US dollar in the world market is not my primary concern, however

Comments

[sgreenwell]

My point boils down to this: How can anyone possibly live up to the expectations of US-ian society while living anything other than paycheck-to-paycheck, paying off insane amounts of money to various lending agencies for the rest of their lives?What are the alternatives? There aren't many non-college professions that don't rely on incredibly specialized skills (professional athlete, actor) or back-breaking labor (construction) that pay more than minimum wage. College is the best way to maximize your future earnings potential while giving you the opportunity to (ideally) prepare you for work you would find rewarding. It is also a bit of a "vetting out" thing for potential employers; the main reason why I think so many of them prefer it is because it proves you can work hard, or at least stay focused, for four years

[shinnokxz]

I just went ahead and bought the fancy car anyways. 2002 Toyota Tacama. To hell with 'em anyways.

[anonymous]

That's the "American Dream" for ya. I haven't read much recently, but I remember a bunch of articles in 2003 or so that talked about this gap between income and debt as a much more recent innovation. For example, in the 70's and early 80's, owning a house would be something that might take up 15% of your yearly income, where as now it often takes up to 50% of TWO incomes!

And as you know, the old 1% of the people have 99% of the wealth is still true--for the people who have no problem paying for college or buying whatever they like, why should it change? And unfortunately, they would probably have to be the ones to initiate major changes in our economy. Education remains low on the national priority bill despite the fact something like 1/5 of the money we've spent on the Iraq war would be enough to send every person under 25 to the best 4 year college for free.

Believe me, realizing the haves want to keep the have nots from joining their elite club is an age old trend that isn't going to change in our lifetimes.

You go boy!!!

[silverluna518]

Not everyone gets a job doing what they want to do. If people can't accept that you'd rather put other stuff ahead of paying off debt (cause that's what student loans are, after all), then they're the bigger losers.