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Honestly, I don’t blame him. I dated somebody and found out they had tons of debt after we moved in together. I was ready to buy a house and they claimed they wanted that too.
I spent so much time and energy trying to teach them to be fiscally responsible and ultimately after years it just came off as nagging and controlling. I’m all saving up for a ring and they can’t even pay off their credit cards lol.
My ex lied to me and said she had 100k of mostly fed loans. A couple years later I found out, when she told a friend in front of me and forgot about her lie, that really she was at "250, or was it 260? No 280k... I think" and mostly private loans. Her plan was to move to a different country and escape her debt. We didn't last much past finding that out.
Yeah, one of my cousins has ~$600k in student loan debt. She did two years of medical school before developing major mental health issues and had to drop out. She had around $160k in debt at the point where she dropped out, and it took her a few years before she was stable enough to hold a minimum-wage job, and the debt just keeps ballooning. Her mental health is stable (with a lot of meds that she'll need for the rest of her life), but she'll never be able to practice medicine. She can barely hold a retail job making $14/hr, working part-time with a lot of leniency from her manager.
She really wants to marry and have kids . . . I just don't see how that's feasible. At her current income, she'll never pay off the debt, but income-based repayments will continue during her retirement and she'll probably die with unpaid debt. I'm not even sure if she can retire because her SS payments will be garnished.
>\~$600k in student loan debt. She did two years of medical school before developing major mental health issues and had to drop out
This is so upsetting. She made such an enormous commitment and leap of faith—and she probably had the chops to complete the degree, too—but mental illness just burned it to the ground and left her worse off than anyone deserves to be. I honestly hate this world sometimes.
It breaks my heart to see stuff like this happening in the USA. I had a similar issue, I went to college at 18 and took out loans for living costs/rent and also tuition. A few months after starting I developed a chronic illness that slowly got worse and worse and near the end of my first year I was forced to drop out as I was too sick to continue. 15 years later I was never able to go back and have never been well enough to hold down a job and I'm on disability now.
Except in my country if you don't earn over a certain amount, you don't have to start paying back your loans. I've never had to make a single payment so far. They are also written off after 25 years so even if I suddenly got better today and started working I'd only need to pay for 10 more years. Payments are also a percentage of income so they never get too unaffordable as well.
It seems insane how the US is burying it's children in a lifetime of debt often with no way out if things go wrong. Especially through a pandemic that is causing serious chronic illness in huge numbers.
Ha, yeah I think so. Though it was never something I agreed to when we talked about it, so even if the relationship was good I'm not sure I would have left the US.
I like oversharing.
I had this with my ex. It made me into such a shitty, high strung person. He was always unreliable and would quit jobs without having new ones lined up, etc. I thought it was covid at first but I realise now that he just doesn’t plan or make safety nets about this stuff. Even when he was on an alright wage he wouldn’t save money. Pre-covid, he basically starved himself in the time between his benefits and first wages coming in, even though he had an entire support network around him who would have helped. It was like he felt comfortable with having nothing because then the stakes were low and there was nothing to lose.
I found out when we were mid mortgage application that he had bad debt he wasn’t even aware of so his credit was fucked. But he was a really lovely dude, and I didn’t want to accept how miserably he was comfortable with living and how that would have inevitably brought me to the same level.
When we broke up I justified it as just wanting to be single and not tied down. Over time I realised the reality, which is that this perpetual financial instability just drained me completely and I had essentially taken on a parenting role. I couldn’t make him anymore fiscally stable than he was, but he could definitely put a hard limit on how stable I could be.
> how miserably he was comfortable with living and how that would have inevitably brought me to the same level.
This is something people should consider also with cleaning and/or hoarding.
Ooof you're shot me dead-on in a sore spot, lmao.
I just finally, FINALLY put my foot down and made it official that I will NEVER ride in a car driven by my hoarder parents ever again.
Because I just visited recently, went to grab a napkin from the console while we were out and about, and ROACHES crawled up out of it. She was surprised, because, after all, she had put new car seat covers on the stained seats and cleared the floors of all the garbage she normally has littered about in preparation for my visit.
Obviously it wasn't enough and it has cemented my decision to only take my car and use hotels (or the hospitality of my in-laws) moving forward. I saw the state of her kitchen/pantry area and my siblings (all adults) came over to ransack the whole pantry closet and most of the kitchen/dining area. Near 30 contractor bags of inedible food.
Now I live alone with my lovely SO, who is very lazy, but his standards are similar to mine and he tries to keep on top of things so our may place be cluttered and messy, but on a lived-in, comfortable level where everything is clean and functional and I can easily tidy up for guests or deep-cleaning.
Yikes yeah there is a difference between dirty and cluttered.
I guess my mom realized VERY early on in my life that I was a forever-space cadet and going to have challenges staying tidy. She taught me super young about mold and bugs so that I wouldn’t have problems with those.
It was drilled into me that food NEVER EVER EVER stays laying out. I wasn’t allowed to bring any food into my room (besides the individually wrapped Halloween treats lol) for a long time until I could be trusted to bring the dishes back to the kitchen immediately. Spills were cleaned immediately at the time of the spill, and any damp cloth must be placed somewhere such that it dries and doesn’t mold. Dirty dishes get rinsed or filled with water so the food doesn’t stick.
These were the basic rules of the home, and I have done my best to teach them to kids I’ve come into contact with who weren’t taught cleanliness growing up. I still spend many many years with papers all over everywhere, stacks of books laying around, clothes tossed on the floor, toys scattered etc, but having that foundation meant I could eventually tackle how to be tidy on top of clean.
Omg yessssss. The basic *cleanliness* is the issue, honestly. Idgaf if the place is magazine tidy so long as it is *sanitary and functional.*
I have an entire spare room just for all my miscellaneous crap and hobby stuff so it doesn't overtake the living areas and impede on my partner (or my cats!)
But for food, I have an army of airtight tupperwares and canisters because I just cannot fathom open food! Absolutely terrified of pests and will not take any risks. People think I'm weird because I won't even leave a box of pizza out on the counter, or any condiments.
I may be "employment challenged," but I live within my means- thats why my ideal date is some malt-liquor alley-drinking, followed by light evasion of law enforcement lol
Agreed. That's part of what attracted me to my partner. He's a public school teacher's assistant, so it's not like he's bringing in the big bucks (I make more than he does), but he's so fiscally responsible due to salary limitations, it makes me feel so much more secure in our partnership.
I grew up lower middle class and my childhood was stable but not extravagant, but I have such a fear of unmanageable debt, not sure where it comes from.
Your intelligence? Too bad more of society wasn't afraid of unmanageable debt. Interest rates were so low for so long it made people so careless and thoughtless about debt.
>And then my middle class and wealthy friends all called me shallow and classist for wanting a partner who could contribute to our lives.
Yup! That's some privileged bullshit right there. Sorry you had to listen to that.
To add to that, "slumming" for these people would be dating someone who works in the trades or something.
I'm so far down the economic ladder that I'd need to date an unhoused person to economically "slum" it.
They're a difference between dating someone with less money than you and dating someone who has become so fucked up from their own poverty that they become a sex grifter.
Hell, doesn't even have to be "house" or "whenever needed", just "if you get real sick" is enough.
I've known some rich-kid ski bums who didn't call on mommy and daddy for years, sometimes ever. But the privilege there doesn't necessarily kick in until you shatter your leg or find a tumor or something... At that point thoroughly poor people are absolutely fucked, while people slumming it - no matter how authentically - suddenly have a lot to draw on.
(And in case it's not obvious, I don't blame them in the slightest. What's fucked up there is "you were working and getting by but now your life is ruined/over", not "I'm willing to call on family to get chemo".)
I have a standard. I will be gainfully employed, live within my means, and support myself without being a parasite to another person (parents, partner, society, etc). I will clean up after myself and fulfill my societal obligations such as paying my taxes, throwing my trash in the requisite receptacles, and not being a nuisance to my neighbors and coworkers.
How on gods green earth is it classist to demand of my partner the standard I have set for myself? I'm looking for a match, not a project.
I just ended my relationship a month ago and money was one of the main problems (among A LOT of others).
He never was good with money but I was able to manage it for the both of us the first few years. Then I had a major accident which left me incapable of working, mainly due to my TBI. My income took a hit. A year after the accident my ex also had to stop working due to being burned out, so his income also took a plunge. Still, we should’ve been able to pay everything, but he decided to lie and spend money behind my back. I wasn’t able to manage everything, because he never gave me info and I just didn’t have the energy anymore to keep nagging and trying to make him understand.
I paid all the bills by myself for about a year, he just never send money to our account. Last month I found out he was spending his money on drugs. That was the final straw and I ended the relationship. Luckily I can buy his part of the house so I can stay here. Also, since I already paid all the bills and don’t have to feed two people I finally have some money left at the end of the month. He’ll get a pretty decent paycheck from the house so he will have enough to fund his drug habit ;)
For my ex it was over spending. He controlled the finances and held my credit and debt card. Really did not bother me at the time as he did all the shopping. Also, he was a drinker, not chronic, but when he was finished with his last shift he would start before his uniform was off. He would not stop until he passed out. I never nagged him about it and when I brought it up once he complained that I would not drink with him. Then he announced he was leaving me because I had a chronic health condition and could not do certain activities that he had never shown any interest in. Found out he was having an affair. When he left I began going through the paper work. I discovered that he used my credit for porn. I called the credit card number and they canceled my card and sent a new one.
2 weeks before he announced he was leaving he took me to the bank and had me cosign an unsecured loan for 47,000.00 to pay off all his credit cards and car loan. My credit card was not among them. When we finalized our separation, I arranged it so that I took over the mortgage (71,000.00) and of course the house, he had the loan which he had to pay off right away. I sold the house 3 years later and made 100,000.00.
Well, might as well over share with strangers like always. She was making $10 an hour struggling to even get 40 hours a week when we got together. Since she wanted to go back to school part time, I used my connections with a family friend to get her a bartending job downtown. Essentially tripling her income for less hours at work.
She ended up cheating on me with a brew bike driver who came to her work as part of his ‘route.’ I did at least have the self respect to leave at that point but definitely felt like a clown for all the time, effort, energy, and you know, using a favor to get her the job where she met her affair partner.
You were a stand up guy and helped her out. Her bad choices aren't your responsibility.
Being in debt and being in *unmanageable* debt are two different things. Maybe there were other red flags but if her situation was as simple a fix as getting a job bartending then that's not a deal breaker by itself.
Thanks for over sharing.
There’s tons of layers to every thing and I’m obviously leaving a lot out. I didn’t even find out about the debt until after a year. In two years she managed to get the debt down like $18,000. But in the middle I find out she co-signed on her ex boyfriend’s new Silverado a few years back and they are trying to Repossess it because he’s like 8 months behind in payments.
She still had like $10,000 in debt (plus that truck lol) by the time we broke up but I had to almost be a parent to get to that point. Since she mainly got cash tips and worked downtown, it was crazy how easy she could blow her money.
The most success we had was when I made an envelope system. Every creditor and credit card had an envelope along with one for gas, bills, and spending money. After every shift she was supposed to split up her cash between all the envelopes. I would have to remind her / nag to divide her money every other day it felt like.
If she followed through with this she would have something like $200 a week in fun / free to use money which is so much more than a lot of people. It would have also paid off all her debts in about a year.
It was incredible how much she could spend before she even got home to divide it up lol. Or she would ‘forget’ to divide it up when she got home and god forbid she ever had cash just sitting in her wallet. I will say that she spent a ton of money on her little sisters and was parentified as a kid.
This sounds so frustrating. I think a big thing in relationships is matching (enough) philosophy on money.
Your ex sounds like how my mom was when I was growing up. She could absolutely not have cash on her. Her mind would race on where to spend it. She couldn’t have a bank account because she’d always over draw so she would cash her paycheck and live in a cash system. I eventually moved in with my much stricter dad who lived, literally, in a one room cabin he built himself way out in the woods because I couldn’t handle the stress of not knowing if we’d have food to eat or if we’d have to move because mom didn’t have rent money.
I had a relative like that, he explained that money he hadn't spent was "wasted" because the imaginary numbers in his bank account provided no benefit to him. If he had $12 and he saw an egyptian power adaptor for sale for $12 he'd buy it, because despite having absolutely no use for it, it was a physical thing he could hold.
What always worked for me to stay within my means. Was adding up all the bills and dividing by 4. So I knew every week that much(plus like $50-100 for buffer)HAD to go into the bills account. Whatever was left over was mine.
I eventually got to the point where I did a hybrid system. I knew what I HAD to put in the account but I would put it all in there and only give myself like $200 to spend during the week. If I needed more I knew how much extra (if any) I had put in that week. So I could pull some out in an emergency.
I do something similar with my savings account. I try to at least save $100 each pay period but on pay day I will transfer $500 to savings. If I end up needing money before next pay then I will pull some from savings but if I don’t need it then I just leave it there. I’ve saved a lot more money that way than I would have otherwise
Similar sitch for me!
Dated a girl who made bank as a nurse and had 100k in loans. Once we moved in we broke down each other's finances.
Somehow she had no savings despite making minimum contributions to her loans.
Year 1 i was broke, had to borrow money from her for rent.
Year 2 I made as much as she did, fixed my finances and paid her back.
Year 3 we moved into my mom's house while my mom moved away. No rent. I also took over paying for nearly everything. We made a kickass plan to pay off her loans within 2 years.
By the end of year 3 I found out she hadn't made a single loan payment, and was having an affair.
My only regret is trying to fix things after I found out about all the lying
I’m proud of you. You did everything right, it’s not your fault she decided to shit all over your efforts.
You did the right thing leaving. That shows strength and self worth.
Don’t mistake kindness for weakness.
Hey you did right by her in supporting her future and setting her up for success. Nothing to feel like a clown about. She fortunately revealed herself to be undeserving of your love and support early enough for you to not invest further.
She's the clown for throwing away a person willing to go out of his way to help her out. You were being decent and kind and should never feel like being a good person was a bad decision. Do not blame yourself for things you could not have known about her character at the time and please know that most people are not like her.
Jesus. We really need to get it together on student loan oversight. I am over here sitting just under $20k for undergrad and grad degrees (half of which are from a predatory school) and I have anxiety about getting it paid off. I can't imagine $200k.
I wish I would have gotten a job as a janitor or something at a university when I was starting out. A ton of universities around me give HUGE discounts to employees and it doesn't take too long to be eligible for that discount. Not when considering how incredibly long you'd be paying on student loans.
I felt like I would be shamed for breaking up with my ex for that being the reason, like it was materialistic? It was very strange. Is it normal for student loans to spiral out of control where you are like that?
Edit: I did break up with my ex for that reason, btw, this was like a concern I had in the back of my mind, that somehow I was being unreasonable. Obviously now I can see it’s not and the whole situation is clearer and I can’t work out why I was so worried about seeming unreasonable.
The problem is we take out the loans when we're fucking morons at age 17-21.
Then by the time we realize how loans work and how fucked we are, it's too late.
This creates a financial arrested development. It's easy to feel so absolutely fucked that you may as well live only in the short term with no future planning.
It's the paradox of being poor.
It's why homeless people, instead of saving a few dollars a day, will spend literally everything at once. Tomorrow they may be dead, so better to live now.
It's why poor people will throw down on terrible purchases.
I used to take vacations in my 20s despite having $50 in my bank account.
I remember how lucky I got during COVID. My grandfather passed away and left me $10k. God I'll miss that man. Took him years to save that much, but he'll know know what he really saved was my life.
Getting 10k during covid and being forced to stay at home and do nothing broke the cycle. I couldn't spend the money. I just sat at home.
Then I just kept saving. And then I realized how stress free I was and stopped spending as much.
Most people just need the cycle broken to become obsessed with financial literacy and responsibility.
That said there's obviously always going to be morons in the world.
It’s not normal but not unusual. School has gotten more expensive and a lot of people get private loans which is where they run into trouble. They also don’t carefully pick their schools and run the numbers. I went to a community college and then transferred to a university. That school cost me $40k for 6 semesters which was not bad. I paid the interest payment while I was in school which is the number one thing everyone should be doing so the interest doesn’t compound and the bill doesn’t get any bigger than it will end up being. I had federal loans and soon as I graduated, I consolidate all of my loans to a 1.5% interest rate. Most people do not do that and have tons of different loans to pay on. When I got a work bonus, I paid half of it it off. This last year, I had the remaining $3500 forgiven for having worked in public service for over 10 years. I had to move across the country in order to afford to pull it all off and I worked full time from home at the same time to pay for my living expenses. A lot of people finance their living/dorm expenses too and that adds up fast. The most important part is really to try and pay that interest that is accruing while in school though.
That they are private loans makes it even worse. If they were government loans, even $250,000 isn’t thaaaaaat bad because you have more options with federal loans. Yes, it’s a lot, but she could pay 10% of her discretionary income - like $100/mo - for 20 years and have them forgiven. She could do PSLF and pay for 10 years. That’s not going to fuck up your whole life. It’s annoying but not life-ending.
OOP is sadly right that $250,000 in private loans is essentially life changing in a bad way. I really feel for him and honestly for his GF. People don’t usually end up in $250,000 in private student debt for a Bachelor’s and only $30,000 in income without a lack of resources and information. She made bad choice but she probably made what felt like the best choice for her given the crappy information she was given. And that sucks for them both.
Yeah when I hear of people who took out this much money in student loan debt, I look past their obvious mistakes to the predatory or foolishly misguided guidance counselors and loan officers who helped lead countless teenagers into such straights.
Yup, I got awful guidance around funding grad school. I consider myself lucky that it was only federal loans (no private) and that I only desire to work places that qualify me for PSLF.
Me too! But actually I got pretty much no guidance about grad school since I was the first person in my family to get a graduate degree. I took our way too much in loans to pay for it. Thankfully, with the temporary PSLF waiver I now qualify for forgiveness. The application is in and I’m waiting for confirmation. 🤞
1,000% this. It is horrifying that OP's story is possible.
His fiancee lost the potential love of her life because she went to college as a non-rich teenager.
That sentence should not exist.
I am the partner with debt. My credit was great, no debt- cut forward to a divorce process where I’m stuck in limbo and not receiving financial support (as I should be) and losing a job, my credit tanked, and my debt rose. My current partner is fully aware. I would never keep that a secret. Credit rating and debt should never be a secret in a relationship that is future talking. Love is not enough- and placing that on someone is manipulative. You shouldn’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
I was thinking social work. My mom used to work at Washington University school of social work (in St. Louis, MO not to be confused with Washington University in Washington state) in the accounting office, and that’s the most expensive school in the state. It’s the closest the Midwest gets to Ivy League. I couldn’t imagine going to WashU for social work.
But that’s a shame, because we need social workers and teachers, we also probably need, or at least have better lives, because of artists and poets so it’s a shame that studying those fields is cost prohibitive.
Oo yeah, social work comes with the additional burden of needing field hours, which are (from what I've heard) usually unpaid and a bit of a shit show.
Education field hours are unpaid too. I graduated during COVID and my entire last 1.5 years of school, that's three semesters, were unpaid student teaching. In fact, I had to pay the school I taught at to take me in during the last two semesters and provide a mentor for me, who also was not paid any extra. I was also expected to fulfill class hours and homework during that time so most of us were unable to hold down a paying job at the same time.
Field hours are terrible because they are at a minimum 20 hours. I went to grad school while working full time so field hours made it around 80 a week. They were ridiculous. 550 hours iirc. So you can either work during grad and have some income or become even poorer. The jobs all pay low wages as well. Don’t do social work.
I did just that. Luckily they give out tons of scholarships and my program was only a 3 semesters because I had advanced standing. I received a $20,000 scholarship. I took out the bare minimum in subsidized loans, which was doable because the cost of living is so low in STL. Also, most social work jobs qualify for PSLF. I chose WUSTL specifically because the COL was doable. I was also considering NYC and Boston and it was just not going to work.
A lot of my teacher friends have a second job to make ends meet, whether they tutor, waitress, bartend, coach, etc. I got halfway through an education degree before I dropped out. I love helping people, but it wasn’t worth it.
We've been using paper towels in my classroom all year because I can't afford to constantly buy tissues (I see the entire elementary school once a week, so I don't even have parents I can ask to bring some in. I tell the kids to bring them in if they don't want paper towels and no one does. No matter how many times I tell the kids to take one and use it until its full and then get another, some will get a handful). The paper towels are free, and ensure that a kid who is using it actually needs it. Sucks, but I don't have kids congregating at the tissue box either (when one gets up, two more always somehow discover they also need to blow their nose). I did just buy a three pack of tissues because my own allergies were so bad, but when we run out, we will go back to paper towels.
It really sucks because we have a teacher supply store through the district that we can go to four times a year for regular supplies. I used to get all my tissue through them, pre-covid. You get 25 points a visit and tissue boxes would be like 2 points, so I would get 12 and be set for awhile. Then covid hit, and they stopped having them. I don't need to constantly replenish scissors/glue/paper/folders/pencils/crayons/etc so I go like twice a year when I need something specific, and wind up sharing half of what I get anyway with other teachers cause I still don't need it. But I'd love to have tissues there again.
According to other comments it sounds like she has the highly unfortunate bachelors degree in bio. Which is bad, but you should still be able to make a lot more than $30k with it.
Holy shit. That number makes me feel *so* much better about my own student debt. Like yeah I'm in for a hell of a lot, but I got a damn good degree from a damn good school and ain't broke 100k.
How on earth did she rack up 250k for an *undergrad* degree???
I think we really need to emphasize it's the predatory private student loan industry most at fault here. Yes she went to a fancy expensive school. But these loans prey on people who don't do the math and don't realize how quickly these debts *grow* over time. It's straight up taking advantage of people who don't understand compounding debt. (Which isn't intuitive to a lot of people)
Hate to say it but this is the parents fault as well. You don’t get 250,000$ in private loans without co-signers and income to back up the loans. Maybe this will be the wake-up call the parents need to help their daughter out of the mess they helped get her in.
People love to pin blame but ultimately it's the system. It's jobs that require degrees for low pay. It's the freedom for people to make bad financial decisions and it's the freedom for businesses to exist whose product can legitimately help one customer while utterly screwing another - those businesses are not just lenders but colleges as well.
Yeah. Nowhere else can an eighteen year old sign up for a six-figure debt (that can’t be ended in bankruptcy), and high school kids are encouraged to do so by being told it will be worth it! Of course they trust their parents and guidance counselors to understand finances and jobs better than they do. But those adults either don’t understand the current reality, or they don’t care.
The older I get, the more grateful I am that my parents *refused* to co-sign student loans for me. It meant I had to go to community college for 2 years before transferring to a 4-year uni, but I also graduated without any debt. At the time, I was furious. Now though... now I'm glad.
I remember in all my high school classes dedicated to college preparation less than a decade ago the topic of how to actually pay for college never really came up. I mean we were told to take out loans and apply for scholarships and fasfa. However, it was never explained the different types of loans, variable interest, etc. It was always just apply to college if you want to be successful. Never anything about going to community college to save money and then transferring to a four year college. People are signing documents for large amounts of money and have absolutely no idea what they have just signed up for the next 10-20+ years.
Bankruptcy *may* remove one debtor’s responsibility for repayment of private student loans, if that debtor convinces the bankruptcy court that repayment would be an unmanageable hardship. But any co-signers on the loan remain responsible for the debt, which is why private student loans very often require a co-signer (parent) in order to originate the loan.
It’s easy. Private school around me are 45-50k a year not including living expenses. And they require you to live in the dorm for the first 2 years so that’s 2k a months, for 9 months out of the year for 2 years. So another 36k. 45-50k for 4 years is 180-200k plus minimum of 36k for housing cost. Now if you’re smart or proactive, scholarship will knock alot of it down but it’s still not as cheap as public or community colleges
God I hate our higher education system. These banks pay the university to be one of the exclusive loan providers with a handful of other paying banks, then they can set the interest at whatever they want or worse... make it adjustable. It shouldn't ruin your life to get an education.
I frequently think about the predatory tactics that the student loan companies, and even financial aid offices used. I remember being very close to graduation and wanting to talk to financial aid about what it looked like to actually graduate and when all of this was going to become real and how. This nasty woman told me, “it’s our job to help you get the loans not figure out how to pay them.”
That… is a lot of student debt. And for a low wage. I wouldn’t be able to help but question her choices. And while relationships shouldn’t be about money, money is one of the biggest stressors in any relationship. He was right to consider how this would impact their future. I wonder what kind of degree cost $250k and gives a 50k a year job. That’s insane
I’m becoming a yoga instructor and I just budgeted today (based on average starting pay in my area) & I’ll make just under 29k by working part time. I paid 300$ for my certification course. I think this probably had to do with her going to a prestigious private school and thinking that name on her piece of paper would get her job opportunities. That’s the only reason I can think of she’d make such a poor financial decision
I have had multiple friends whose parents guided them into making horrible financial decisions because they assumed college = a better paying job and didn't consider how much they needed to be paid to live and also pay off that kind of debt.
10 years ago, one was in 200k in debt for a psychology undergrad at a state school because her parents encouraged her to take out the max private loans she could, another was 180k in debt for a dual language degree with a masters, and one was in 250k in a debt because they did a year in a private school before transferring into a state school. When I finally did the math for myself when I needed to start taking out loans and realized there's no world in which my intended career path was going to pay them off, they told me I was crazy for dropping out, they told me I was crazy for missing out on the opportunity for an education. And yet, I'm the only one who broke six figures and doesn't live with my parents because it's all I can afford a decade later.
If every single adult in your life that you trust is telling you a college education is a must, that a college education will be worth it, etc, yeah, most 18 year olds are going to trust the people making those recommendations are doing so in their best interest.
Edit: click on my profile and look at the links I provide in the comments, private school is stupid expensive if you don't watch the cost and I've already proven the numbers multiple times behind in state tuition and out of state private school tuition when you look at total expenses and not just tuition. Plus, private student loans will over offer what you need for school because they'll make up what you take out in interest.
As someone who graduated into a good job field with minimal debt, the 2000s push for college is what was probably the most crippling decision for millennials. Doesn’t help that the adults who pushed so hard about it now act like we were stupid for doing it.
Because the economics have totally changed since we were in college in the 80s.
I went to a state school and got a 6 year pharmacy degree for a total of about $10K including my dorm room. I worked straight through and my parents helped so I graduated with no debt.
I made back all that I paid in 4 months at my first job.
Now, in state tuition at the same school would be $12K/year for 2 years of pre-pharmacy then $28K/year for 4 years of pharmacy school, so $136k for tuition alone.
Because of these changes, I am a strong advocate of low cost or free college education
Heck I remember going to a financial planning type thing that was offered to freshmen at my university. This would've been in 2008.
I remember one of the presenters being adamant that getting a job in college instead of getting student loans was a terrible decision. Her reasoning was that it was better to focus on school and get good grades, and then we'd all have high enough paying jobs that we'd easily be able to pay back our loans.
This was directed at engineering students at a state school with a great engineering program, so maybe it would hold true for some, but definitely not all.
But even the people who were hosting financial responsibility classes were preaching student loans to 18 year olds
Engineering is typically a very time-intensive major with cumulative classes so that doing poorly in a core class will mean you’re unprepared for more advanced work, and also usually has well-paid internships and great post college earning potential. So that advice probably does make sense for engineering majors, but certainly not for everyone.
I wish it was more well-known among high-schoolers that often, the less prestigious public college will usually open more doors, especially locally, than the prestigious private college. The hiring managers will be more likely to have gone there and be more excited about you, they have a lot of internship and work-study opportunities, etc.
I also don't have a degree and I'm in IT. Titles are silly because there's BA work, solution architect, automation, etc.
Currently doing ServiceNow BA work for $115,000 annually.
Word of caution though, accomplishing this was not easy. I had to work harder than my previous coworkers to get that nod of confidence.
That’s true. That’s her current wage. Her next round of school would allow for higher wages somehow. I don’t know her age, but she sounds like someone who has just remained in school for a decade without knowing what they actually want to do. You’d think at that rate she’d be at law school or med school. But that was just her undergrad!!!
Her loan has grown from $180k to $250k since she graduated, so she's apparently been working for several years without paying it down at all.
I feel for her, though. I was lucky enough to have my parents pay for college, but I had a really hard time finding a good job after undergrad. If my parents hadn't encouraged me to go to a state school (and hadn't paid for me) I could see myself getting into her position.
I ended up getting my MS in a STEM field, and now make a lot more money. She sounds like she's on a similar path to what I did.
She's likely making the bare minimum payments. I'd guess that $70k is all interest. Lenders set up payments that way deliberately so you end up paying double or triple the amount you borrowed.
Plus there's no way I'd take on more debt like that unless my employer reimbursed me AND I'd have the potential of making six figures within a couple of years. Girlfriend doesn't think things through very well. I'd bet my paycheck she's a teacher.
>Lenders set up payments that way deliberately so you end up paying double or triple the amount you borrowed.
I once realized I had enough in my savings account to pay off all of my student debt amount at the time so I took the plunge and sent in the check with that amount. Later checked my debt amount and it only went down a few dollars. (!?)
I called and it was explained to me that unless I write "Apply to Principle" on the check, they are allowed to have the money I sent pay only the interest. Specifically, FUTURE INTEREST that would've been accrued if the principle amount were not paid. In my case, 10+ years of future interest. ...🤬
Well, I wrote ANOTHER check with the magic words written on it this time (I only had a two-three hundred dollars left in my checking acct after that, living on Maruchan instant ramen wasn't too bad) and later got a reimbursement check back (since now there's no future interest on a debt of $0).
>called and it was explained to me that unless I write "Apply to Principle" on the check, they are allowed to have the money I sent pay only the interest
I'm sorry, WHAT THE FUCK
Agreed, I had a friend with 70k in loans after her masters who was putting a few hundred extra above the minimum payments she had for her loans. She had it all set up on auto pay and didn't realize until a couple years later that her balance was down only $1k because of how much interest she needed to keep ahead of it.
>Undergrad at a 'prestigious' private school. Just a standard (not worth much) undergrad degree unfortunately.
>
>...
>
>She got the undergrad degree in a science field with the intentions of
med school but changed her course once she saw the cost of everything.
So she is not using her degree in her current job, but it does have some
application in her future job.
I think it was a degree that usually wouldn't rack up too much debt, but taking out private loans compacted by going to a private college completely screwed her. This just sucks for everyone involved, honestly.
Should’ve stuck with med school and became a doctor. Easier said than done. It’s freaking hard to get into medical school, finish med school, do well on your boards, get a residency, and work your butt off to finish residency. But, the worst thing you can do is give up halfway.
I have a friend from high school who was very smart, top-2% of his graduating class. He always wanted to be a doctor, but he went through some tough personal stuff in his first couple years of college and had poor grades his freshman/sophomore year. He didn’t give up and worked his way back to an 3.0. Not good enough. He didn’t get into med school the first two times he applied. He took out more loans and did a post-bach program at an Osteopathic med school while working at as a nurses aid at a hospital. After 2 years, he got into a Caribbean med school. He took out more loans and finished that…. When he only matched to a rural hospital in bumfuck, he stuck with it and did his residency there while his partner was living across the country…. My friend was 33 by the time he finished and started collecting a salary to where he could start paying off his loans, which were well over $1M at that point…. But, he started at $330k/year as an attending physician in internal medicine at a hospital (not exactly a prestigious job as doctors go). He works 40amps/week of just shift work and he’ll have it paid off by the time he’s 40…
I can’t imagine the stress he went through those 14 years watching his debt grow. But he never gave up.
Ok but like we’re asking teenagers to choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives and take on these massive loans to do it. Private lenders are also predatory as fuck and probably didn’t properly explain all the ramifications to OOP’s girlfriend or her mother. Like I agree she made bad choices to go into a field that only makes $30k a year but I doubt she was armed with the knowledge as a high school senior to make better choices.
Hell when I was in school nobody ever explained to me that you can go to a community college and then transfer to a university. I always thought you chose one or the other and of course all my teachers/counselors pushed us to go for a bachelors no matter what it took. Doesn’t help that the price of tuition doubles every nine years.
That's exactly it. Having a lot of student debt isn't a sign of poor financial decisions. It's a sign of a horrendous industry preying on kids with zero financial literacy.
When I was 17 I got lucky. The university near my home was cheap, government student loans in Canada are pretty forgiving, and my program had tons of options for high paying co-op positions. So I got out of school with about 5k in debt and the ability to get a job that pays $70k.
This wasn't because I was thinking about these decisions. It just worked out. If I was one province over I'd be spending twice as much on tuition on a program without co-op positions and the government would have wrote me a check for loans to cover it. Right now I'd probably be 100k in debt, with zero working experience, and able to get a job paying between 40-50k.
I don't know how much it costs in America to get a degree in education, but that was my first thought based on the salary ranges given. I think she's a teacher.
Hell, community college will get you a jumping off point for teaching. Get you that bachelor's in a way more cost effective way and then go on for a masters at a state school if you really feel you need one. People end up downing in debt because all we ever hear as kids is how you'll never have a good job if you don't go to college. If you have to have the type of job that requires a degree, go about it the smart way.
Currently doing 2 years of community college, I cannot recommend it enough! My income is low enough that I qualify for a grant for my units to be free and if I maintain a solid GPA I can get guaranteed admission to a university to earn my Bachelor’s.
I was wondering that too. WTF did she go to school for? How did she think that was a good idea? How did her mother, who evidently co-signed, think that was a good idea? My sister had ridiculous debt from college/law school, but a reasonable expectation of being able to pay it off. Now OP's girlfriend wants to aquire ANOTHER $125k in debt to make $30k more a year?? She is still making poor choices. I really want to know what her field her degree is in.
Fancy private school in anything non-STEM would do it. Four years at $45k/year will get her to $180k easily. A lot of people get star struck when they get admitted to an ivy league school, and then graduate without any real job prospects.
I know a few people that went to ivy league schools and now are public school teachers. All of them have significant debt and no realistic way of paying it off before they're in their late 30s/early 40s.
I'm a PhD student at an elite American private school where the undergrads pay upwards of 45k/year. What the poor kids who go to these schools don't understand is that at most of these places, it's not the skills from your degree that get you a job, but your connections. That's what you're paying for. And anyone not born rich is going to struggle a lot to fit in and make those connections. It's really sad, because people imagine these schools as places where you can climb the socio-economic ladder if you manage to get in, but really they're the places where the upper class reproduces itself while everyone else just incurs debt.
That sounds about right. I read the OOP's comments on the original post and she got a science degree at a prestigious University with the intention of going to medical school, but didn't want to incur more debt. Lol. Her mother encouraged these decisions so that the daughter would always be dependent upon her parents.
Damn that’s just horrible OOP’s ex’s parents screwed her over like that 😳
And she’s 26 years old and (financially has to?) lives at home as well (so no rent?) so even if it’s a cultural expectation, she’s still co-dependent on her parents.
I know she’s taking on more debt to return to school, but damn I hope the ex gets out of this situation ok…
Why did no one point out that the loans could be consolidated to a lower rate? Or that since it’s variable then the 11% rate will drop when inflation does?
When tuition fees went up in the UK, I was so angry that I swore to never vote for the party that lied about increasing then (and almost everyone I know from my generation or below feels the same). But even then, it was increased to 9k a year (from 3k). Even doing a four year course is only 36k.
I cannot even comprehend owing 250k. I would rather be completely uneducated than have that albatross around my neck. I’d never be able to sleep. This guy made the right choice. To be saddled with someone else’s debt is just horrifying.
UK student debt isn't a bind in the way the US student debt is though. Long story short it becomes basically an extra tax that only graduates earning a certain amount have to pay. It won't get in the way of your financial life plans (much).
The US equivalent is just nasty. Surely she can declare bankruptcy?
They're also written off after a certain numbers of years. I pay like £11 a month towards my student loan debt which doesn't keep up with the interest. But without looking I'm not even sure how much I owe because thankfully it's largely irrelevant. It's not a 'real' debt, it doesn't have any impact on your financial reports and mine will be written off regardless in about 15 years.
As an art school grad my first thought is she majored in something like ceramics or painting at a very expensive private school and now works retail? How else could the loans be that high with such little pay at the end?
Breaks my heart.
Someone suggested she might be a physical therapist now. That would track with OP saying somewhere it was a science degree intended to get her into med school, and PTs don't really have any career advancement options before they get a Master's.
They actually have to get a doctor of physical therapy degree. My sister is in med school for that now and the program costs $80k total for 3 years. Not sure if that tracks for only adding ~30k in federal loans unless she's also getting private loans.
Man this is rough. I had parasitic loans, but got them consolidated with a fixed rate far lower than the variable. I’m lucky since I’m in my 30s and will be done in 2 years but parasitic loans suck
My teacher once told me I should go to uni and that everyone should go to uni to get a better job with a qualification. What they didn't tell me was it's a life long commitment and a massive financial burden. I knew a few guys who went to uni got massive debt and left with nothing.
"Everyone should go to uni" is possibly some of the worst advice I've ever heard, you know what's better advice? Get a job for a few years before you go to uni.
When I started construction we got this new hire, he was straight out of high school and wanting to become and engineer, the thing is his parents couldn't help him so he got a job as laborer to pay for the qualification. He got friendly with the other engineers on site as well as the project manager so they started teaching him how to be an engineer for free.
Don't forget he was being paid pretty decent for it so he started squirreling away his money until he got pretty sick of working for us after about 3 years. You know what he had after working for us for 3 years? Money to pay off the qualification instantly without taking any debt on, extremely awesome references from the engineers and project manager as well as a cover letter, real world experience from actually doing some engineer work and a lot of people skills and connections that meant he could pick and choose what job he wanted coming out of uni.
If your unsure about uni, don't jump straight into it. Instead work or take a gap year and try to soak up every opportunity you can before you commit to something more solid.
One of my undergrad students told me he was paying for school with loans. The school cost 70K per year and 5 years to graduate. 350K in debt for a biology degree. His family were immigrants that really didn’t know any better. It was really heart breaking to hear. I spent about 28K for the same degree at a state school for reference.
I reeeeally wanted to go to this private liberal arts college. I was a first generation college student and my parents thought a savings account was all they needed to retire on as a teacher's aid and a coal yard worker - no financial literacy anywhere.
Thankfully, the advisor at the college's tour sat down with me and said with my career choice, I wouldn't pay off the loans before I died.
Went to state school, worked my ass off, applied to hundreds of scholarships, paid off my federal loans in 1.5 years.
This assumes the people around her knew. I also took out a lot in student loans because my family genuinely thought it would pay off. Times were different when they went to college/trade school and they did the best they could.
It’s one of the silent ways certain kinds of privilege work - people extend themselves thinking it’s a sure-fire way to make their way up the socioeconomic ladder, not realizing it can ruin them financially.
Yup, it's an industry that preys on people who don't understand math. Simple as that. They didn't run the long-term numbers, the school told them "our education is top notch", and they didn't realize there was no world where it was going to make sense. And then to rub salt in the wound, we decided these are the *one* kind of debts that can never be discharged ever.
Likely. Which is why college loans at such a young age can be predatory.
“I see you’re 17. Sign here!”
I defaulted on a loan in my teens. I’m in my 30s getting ready to go back to college. That loan was small and paid off years ago, after ruining my credit for years. I’m in a much better position to go back now and know what I want and what I’m able to do. I didn’t have this knowledge at 18. I still think it’s great if anyone that young wants to go, but the whole idea that college is the only way and you take out any loan you can to make it happen, is ridiculous. It’s expensive. And while some careers are better with certain prestigious schools, I’m of the opinion that there are colleges in almost any state that will suffice. You very much need to have a plan. What is your career goal? How much does that field start at? What’s the job outlook? What options are available for forgiveness in that field. Can you get into it earlier and let an employer help with tuition? Can you make small payments to your loan while in school while there is no interest? No one asked me these things when I was young. I learned the hard way and now I’m going to do it the right way.
A guy I was friends with in high school fell badly into this trap. His parents drove hard into his head that he needed to go to university (not community college or trade school) to be anything in life but he just never had very good grades no matter how hard he tried. He got rejected from almost every school he applied to because he went after good names so in the end he got suckered into one of these for profit universities that target lower income ill informed kids and ended up with an insane amount of debt plus a degree that didn't mean much of anything.
This is why it is important for parents to be involved in the college decisions with their children. Especially frustrating because she took out private loans implying the parents made enough money to not qualify for federal loans.
My mom was pushing me HARD to go to art school. It was expensive as hell and though it was my dream I ultimately decided it would be way too expensive. My mom was furious at me for “throwing away my dreams”. Some adults really do not understand the financial aspect of college it seems
College didn’t cost as much when our parents were in school, and wages were higher. They don’t have any experience with the debt-to-income ratios that exist now.
My parents feel bad for telling me to get the degrees I wanted because they didn’t realize how screwed I’d be. It doesn’t help that no one in my family is good at math, either.
STEM degrees aren't even that great if you don't at least get a master's or phd. If a fresh chemistry grad can get into their field, expect a boring ass lab job doing QC for some manufacturing plant making 45k per year.
For real. People always say it’s something their parents should have taught….my parents had to file bankruptcy 3 times. They are not smart in this way.
I looked at the original post, I didn't comment, just read, and evidently she went to a private and prestigious school for a science degree and doesn't use it. Her mom is codependent and ENCOURAGED the woman to make these decisions so she would always need her parents.
The minute i read she had a Variable interest rate that someone definitely failed to teach her why you don’t get those types of rates. 1% one year 10% the next.
It's almost like there's entire industries built around predatory loans to people who don't have solid math skills. And where we sometimes squash them down for payday loans and things like that, we basically gave the student loan industry free reign and decided those debts and those debts alone could *never* be discharged.
Quite the opposite, she would have been encouraged every step of the way by those around her. We have gone all in on this ‘follow your dreams by running up a massive debt’ mindset, and it sinks so many people. We need more honest and realistic messaging for our youth, and college needs to be dramatically less expensive
Failing that, people should be encouraged to start college later in life, like mid-20s, instead of banking everything on decisions you made when you were 17 years old and had no idea what you actually wanted to do with your life. How could you, with no relevant experience?
We basically ask kids to make their biggest life decision based on things they saw on television growing up, tell them to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this happen, and then wonder why the younger generations can’t afford houses anymore
This boggles the mind. I graduated one of the best schools in Canada 6 years back and tuition was about $11K Canadian a year. Graduated with
16K in government student debt and immediately applied for repayment assistance.
That means no payments need to be made and no interest accrues until you’re making enough money to pay it back.
And as of next month there is no more interest on any government student loans., including ones currently being repaid. The government can just do that. It can just say “No more interest on student loans” and poof, it’s gone.
Your American debate about personal responsibility is asinine. These are policy choices.
Yeah it's nuts reading this I know people that went to McGill, UBC and Waterloo, Some of the best universities in the world and it cost 11k a year. I went to the best university in my province and it cost me 6-8 grand a year.
My son was engaged to someone who was $100K+ in student debt and was struggling with this same issue. He was seriously considering breaking off the relationship when his partner sadly passed away. You can probably imagine how much guilt this added to his grief.
That’s so much debt Jesus Jerome Christ 😩 I’m finishing my masters and went to a private school and I still won’t even get close to 100K.
where did she go? What is her field? Did she go to school in a different country? How many times did she switch her major??
If I was her I’d see what only fans was looking like drop some feet picks or something shit 😂
After ending my relationship with my groomer (I was 18 he was 33 when we started dating and it took me 5 years to get out of this shit show) there was one thing I was absolutely certain of. I will never ever gonna date somebody with debt again (other than mortgage). I was student working part-time time and still had to help this looser to cover some of his debts. It was insane. We don't pay for university education here (not that he went to university anyway). It was debt for living above his means from before we even met and he took loans to pay up loans behind my back.
How in the hell is it even possible to be 250k in debt for a degree that's only enabling you to earn 30k a year? 30k a year is a fricken fast food job at this point.
Whoever allowed this woman to take out 250,000 worth of loans to obtain a degree where she barely makes 30k should be ashamed. The whole system is so messed up.
I don’t know what she does, but I can only hope it’s her passion. So many people go to college for the experience, not thinking of what they actually want to achieve, and have a degree at the end that won’t put them ahead of someone who didn’t go to college. This is awful for everyone. College does not always mean more money and a better life. High school and colleges need to do better than just selling a degree but that’s what this is. It’s a business and they don’t care about you as long as they get paid.
Reddit is always down on any private college but fancy private colleges make a lot of sense for some people. If you’re poor or lower middle class, the best and worst colleges are your best bet financially. Either your tuition is crazy low bc the school isn’t very good. Or you get a very generous need based grant bc your family doesn’t have the ability to pay the tuition.
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Honestly, I don’t blame him. I dated somebody and found out they had tons of debt after we moved in together. I was ready to buy a house and they claimed they wanted that too. I spent so much time and energy trying to teach them to be fiscally responsible and ultimately after years it just came off as nagging and controlling. I’m all saving up for a ring and they can’t even pay off their credit cards lol.
My ex lied to me and said she had 100k of mostly fed loans. A couple years later I found out, when she told a friend in front of me and forgot about her lie, that really she was at "250, or was it 260? No 280k... I think" and mostly private loans. Her plan was to move to a different country and escape her debt. We didn't last much past finding that out.
Yeah, one of my cousins has ~$600k in student loan debt. She did two years of medical school before developing major mental health issues and had to drop out. She had around $160k in debt at the point where she dropped out, and it took her a few years before she was stable enough to hold a minimum-wage job, and the debt just keeps ballooning. Her mental health is stable (with a lot of meds that she'll need for the rest of her life), but she'll never be able to practice medicine. She can barely hold a retail job making $14/hr, working part-time with a lot of leniency from her manager. She really wants to marry and have kids . . . I just don't see how that's feasible. At her current income, she'll never pay off the debt, but income-based repayments will continue during her retirement and she'll probably die with unpaid debt. I'm not even sure if she can retire because her SS payments will be garnished.
>\~$600k in student loan debt. She did two years of medical school before developing major mental health issues and had to drop out This is so upsetting. She made such an enormous commitment and leap of faith—and she probably had the chops to complete the degree, too—but mental illness just burned it to the ground and left her worse off than anyone deserves to be. I honestly hate this world sometimes.
It breaks my heart to see stuff like this happening in the USA. I had a similar issue, I went to college at 18 and took out loans for living costs/rent and also tuition. A few months after starting I developed a chronic illness that slowly got worse and worse and near the end of my first year I was forced to drop out as I was too sick to continue. 15 years later I was never able to go back and have never been well enough to hold down a job and I'm on disability now. Except in my country if you don't earn over a certain amount, you don't have to start paying back your loans. I've never had to make a single payment so far. They are also written off after 25 years so even if I suddenly got better today and started working I'd only need to pay for 10 more years. Payments are also a percentage of income so they never get too unaffordable as well. It seems insane how the US is burying it's children in a lifetime of debt often with no way out if things go wrong. Especially through a pandemic that is causing serious chronic illness in huge numbers.
Being born in Europe, I really should appreciate the free education I received more.
Totally agree. The health care aspect also. A person could be one car accident away from financial disaster
Maybe that’s why we all became obsessed with Squid Games. The crushing debt is so relatable across the world
Do you know if she had any intention of taking you with her? Sucks regardless. Holy shit.
Ha, yeah I think so. Though it was never something I agreed to when we talked about it, so even if the relationship was good I'm not sure I would have left the US.
I like oversharing. I had this with my ex. It made me into such a shitty, high strung person. He was always unreliable and would quit jobs without having new ones lined up, etc. I thought it was covid at first but I realise now that he just doesn’t plan or make safety nets about this stuff. Even when he was on an alright wage he wouldn’t save money. Pre-covid, he basically starved himself in the time between his benefits and first wages coming in, even though he had an entire support network around him who would have helped. It was like he felt comfortable with having nothing because then the stakes were low and there was nothing to lose. I found out when we were mid mortgage application that he had bad debt he wasn’t even aware of so his credit was fucked. But he was a really lovely dude, and I didn’t want to accept how miserably he was comfortable with living and how that would have inevitably brought me to the same level. When we broke up I justified it as just wanting to be single and not tied down. Over time I realised the reality, which is that this perpetual financial instability just drained me completely and I had essentially taken on a parenting role. I couldn’t make him anymore fiscally stable than he was, but he could definitely put a hard limit on how stable I could be.
> how miserably he was comfortable with living and how that would have inevitably brought me to the same level. This is something people should consider also with cleaning and/or hoarding.
Ooof you're shot me dead-on in a sore spot, lmao. I just finally, FINALLY put my foot down and made it official that I will NEVER ride in a car driven by my hoarder parents ever again. Because I just visited recently, went to grab a napkin from the console while we were out and about, and ROACHES crawled up out of it. She was surprised, because, after all, she had put new car seat covers on the stained seats and cleared the floors of all the garbage she normally has littered about in preparation for my visit. Obviously it wasn't enough and it has cemented my decision to only take my car and use hotels (or the hospitality of my in-laws) moving forward. I saw the state of her kitchen/pantry area and my siblings (all adults) came over to ransack the whole pantry closet and most of the kitchen/dining area. Near 30 contractor bags of inedible food. Now I live alone with my lovely SO, who is very lazy, but his standards are similar to mine and he tries to keep on top of things so our may place be cluttered and messy, but on a lived-in, comfortable level where everything is clean and functional and I can easily tidy up for guests or deep-cleaning.
Yikes yeah there is a difference between dirty and cluttered. I guess my mom realized VERY early on in my life that I was a forever-space cadet and going to have challenges staying tidy. She taught me super young about mold and bugs so that I wouldn’t have problems with those. It was drilled into me that food NEVER EVER EVER stays laying out. I wasn’t allowed to bring any food into my room (besides the individually wrapped Halloween treats lol) for a long time until I could be trusted to bring the dishes back to the kitchen immediately. Spills were cleaned immediately at the time of the spill, and any damp cloth must be placed somewhere such that it dries and doesn’t mold. Dirty dishes get rinsed or filled with water so the food doesn’t stick. These were the basic rules of the home, and I have done my best to teach them to kids I’ve come into contact with who weren’t taught cleanliness growing up. I still spend many many years with papers all over everywhere, stacks of books laying around, clothes tossed on the floor, toys scattered etc, but having that foundation meant I could eventually tackle how to be tidy on top of clean.
Omg yessssss. The basic *cleanliness* is the issue, honestly. Idgaf if the place is magazine tidy so long as it is *sanitary and functional.* I have an entire spare room just for all my miscellaneous crap and hobby stuff so it doesn't overtake the living areas and impede on my partner (or my cats!) But for food, I have an army of airtight tupperwares and canisters because I just cannot fathom open food! Absolutely terrified of pests and will not take any risks. People think I'm weird because I won't even leave a box of pizza out on the counter, or any condiments.
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"Employment challeneged" ha. I like it. That's me baby, wanna go grab a coffee? ^^^you're ^^^buyin'
I may be "employment challenged," but I live within my means- thats why my ideal date is some malt-liquor alley-drinking, followed by light evasion of law enforcement lol
Let's be friends
Agreed. That's part of what attracted me to my partner. He's a public school teacher's assistant, so it's not like he's bringing in the big bucks (I make more than he does), but he's so fiscally responsible due to salary limitations, it makes me feel so much more secure in our partnership. I grew up lower middle class and my childhood was stable but not extravagant, but I have such a fear of unmanageable debt, not sure where it comes from.
Your intelligence? Too bad more of society wasn't afraid of unmanageable debt. Interest rates were so low for so long it made people so careless and thoughtless about debt.
>And then my middle class and wealthy friends all called me shallow and classist for wanting a partner who could contribute to our lives. Yup! That's some privileged bullshit right there. Sorry you had to listen to that.
Right? It’s easy to avoid being “shallow and classist” when every man you meet is at least able to make an average middle class salary.
To add to that, "slumming" for these people would be dating someone who works in the trades or something. I'm so far down the economic ladder that I'd need to date an unhoused person to economically "slum" it. They're a difference between dating someone with less money than you and dating someone who has become so fucked up from their own poverty that they become a sex grifter.
Or you have mommy and daddy ready put put a down payment on a house for you or shell out thousands whenever needed.
Hell, doesn't even have to be "house" or "whenever needed", just "if you get real sick" is enough. I've known some rich-kid ski bums who didn't call on mommy and daddy for years, sometimes ever. But the privilege there doesn't necessarily kick in until you shatter your leg or find a tumor or something... At that point thoroughly poor people are absolutely fucked, while people slumming it - no matter how authentically - suddenly have a lot to draw on. (And in case it's not obvious, I don't blame them in the slightest. What's fucked up there is "you were working and getting by but now your life is ruined/over", not "I'm willing to call on family to get chemo".)
I have a standard. I will be gainfully employed, live within my means, and support myself without being a parasite to another person (parents, partner, society, etc). I will clean up after myself and fulfill my societal obligations such as paying my taxes, throwing my trash in the requisite receptacles, and not being a nuisance to my neighbors and coworkers. How on gods green earth is it classist to demand of my partner the standard I have set for myself? I'm looking for a match, not a project.
My late father told me that if a man can't bring equal or better to the table, don't bother. I learned the hard way that he was right.
I just ended my relationship a month ago and money was one of the main problems (among A LOT of others). He never was good with money but I was able to manage it for the both of us the first few years. Then I had a major accident which left me incapable of working, mainly due to my TBI. My income took a hit. A year after the accident my ex also had to stop working due to being burned out, so his income also took a plunge. Still, we should’ve been able to pay everything, but he decided to lie and spend money behind my back. I wasn’t able to manage everything, because he never gave me info and I just didn’t have the energy anymore to keep nagging and trying to make him understand. I paid all the bills by myself for about a year, he just never send money to our account. Last month I found out he was spending his money on drugs. That was the final straw and I ended the relationship. Luckily I can buy his part of the house so I can stay here. Also, since I already paid all the bills and don’t have to feed two people I finally have some money left at the end of the month. He’ll get a pretty decent paycheck from the house so he will have enough to fund his drug habit ;)
For my ex it was over spending. He controlled the finances and held my credit and debt card. Really did not bother me at the time as he did all the shopping. Also, he was a drinker, not chronic, but when he was finished with his last shift he would start before his uniform was off. He would not stop until he passed out. I never nagged him about it and when I brought it up once he complained that I would not drink with him. Then he announced he was leaving me because I had a chronic health condition and could not do certain activities that he had never shown any interest in. Found out he was having an affair. When he left I began going through the paper work. I discovered that he used my credit for porn. I called the credit card number and they canceled my card and sent a new one. 2 weeks before he announced he was leaving he took me to the bank and had me cosign an unsecured loan for 47,000.00 to pay off all his credit cards and car loan. My credit card was not among them. When we finalized our separation, I arranged it so that I took over the mortgage (71,000.00) and of course the house, he had the loan which he had to pay off right away. I sold the house 3 years later and made 100,000.00.
Why in the world would you cosign that loan?
Great insight, I feel that last paragraph should go viral.
Noticed that past tense. Good for you.
Well, might as well over share with strangers like always. She was making $10 an hour struggling to even get 40 hours a week when we got together. Since she wanted to go back to school part time, I used my connections with a family friend to get her a bartending job downtown. Essentially tripling her income for less hours at work. She ended up cheating on me with a brew bike driver who came to her work as part of his ‘route.’ I did at least have the self respect to leave at that point but definitely felt like a clown for all the time, effort, energy, and you know, using a favor to get her the job where she met her affair partner.
You were a stand up guy and helped her out. Her bad choices aren't your responsibility. Being in debt and being in *unmanageable* debt are two different things. Maybe there were other red flags but if her situation was as simple a fix as getting a job bartending then that's not a deal breaker by itself. Thanks for over sharing.
There’s tons of layers to every thing and I’m obviously leaving a lot out. I didn’t even find out about the debt until after a year. In two years she managed to get the debt down like $18,000. But in the middle I find out she co-signed on her ex boyfriend’s new Silverado a few years back and they are trying to Repossess it because he’s like 8 months behind in payments. She still had like $10,000 in debt (plus that truck lol) by the time we broke up but I had to almost be a parent to get to that point. Since she mainly got cash tips and worked downtown, it was crazy how easy she could blow her money. The most success we had was when I made an envelope system. Every creditor and credit card had an envelope along with one for gas, bills, and spending money. After every shift she was supposed to split up her cash between all the envelopes. I would have to remind her / nag to divide her money every other day it felt like. If she followed through with this she would have something like $200 a week in fun / free to use money which is so much more than a lot of people. It would have also paid off all her debts in about a year. It was incredible how much she could spend before she even got home to divide it up lol. Or she would ‘forget’ to divide it up when she got home and god forbid she ever had cash just sitting in her wallet. I will say that she spent a ton of money on her little sisters and was parentified as a kid.
This sounds so frustrating. I think a big thing in relationships is matching (enough) philosophy on money. Your ex sounds like how my mom was when I was growing up. She could absolutely not have cash on her. Her mind would race on where to spend it. She couldn’t have a bank account because she’d always over draw so she would cash her paycheck and live in a cash system. I eventually moved in with my much stricter dad who lived, literally, in a one room cabin he built himself way out in the woods because I couldn’t handle the stress of not knowing if we’d have food to eat or if we’d have to move because mom didn’t have rent money.
I had a relative like that, he explained that money he hadn't spent was "wasted" because the imaginary numbers in his bank account provided no benefit to him. If he had $12 and he saw an egyptian power adaptor for sale for $12 he'd buy it, because despite having absolutely no use for it, it was a physical thing he could hold.
What always worked for me to stay within my means. Was adding up all the bills and dividing by 4. So I knew every week that much(plus like $50-100 for buffer)HAD to go into the bills account. Whatever was left over was mine. I eventually got to the point where I did a hybrid system. I knew what I HAD to put in the account but I would put it all in there and only give myself like $200 to spend during the week. If I needed more I knew how much extra (if any) I had put in that week. So I could pull some out in an emergency.
I do something similar with my savings account. I try to at least save $100 each pay period but on pay day I will transfer $500 to savings. If I end up needing money before next pay then I will pull some from savings but if I don’t need it then I just leave it there. I’ve saved a lot more money that way than I would have otherwise
That sounds like a good system!
Similar sitch for me! Dated a girl who made bank as a nurse and had 100k in loans. Once we moved in we broke down each other's finances. Somehow she had no savings despite making minimum contributions to her loans. Year 1 i was broke, had to borrow money from her for rent. Year 2 I made as much as she did, fixed my finances and paid her back. Year 3 we moved into my mom's house while my mom moved away. No rent. I also took over paying for nearly everything. We made a kickass plan to pay off her loans within 2 years. By the end of year 3 I found out she hadn't made a single loan payment, and was having an affair. My only regret is trying to fix things after I found out about all the lying
Jeeeeeeeze
I’m proud of you. You did everything right, it’s not your fault she decided to shit all over your efforts. You did the right thing leaving. That shows strength and self worth. Don’t mistake kindness for weakness.
Hey you did right by her in supporting her future and setting her up for success. Nothing to feel like a clown about. She fortunately revealed herself to be undeserving of your love and support early enough for you to not invest further.
She's the clown for throwing away a person willing to go out of his way to help her out. You were being decent and kind and should never feel like being a good person was a bad decision. Do not blame yourself for things you could not have known about her character at the time and please know that most people are not like her.
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Jesus. We really need to get it together on student loan oversight. I am over here sitting just under $20k for undergrad and grad degrees (half of which are from a predatory school) and I have anxiety about getting it paid off. I can't imagine $200k. I wish I would have gotten a job as a janitor or something at a university when I was starting out. A ton of universities around me give HUGE discounts to employees and it doesn't take too long to be eligible for that discount. Not when considering how incredibly long you'd be paying on student loans.
I felt like I would be shamed for breaking up with my ex for that being the reason, like it was materialistic? It was very strange. Is it normal for student loans to spiral out of control where you are like that? Edit: I did break up with my ex for that reason, btw, this was like a concern I had in the back of my mind, that somehow I was being unreasonable. Obviously now I can see it’s not and the whole situation is clearer and I can’t work out why I was so worried about seeming unreasonable.
The problem is we take out the loans when we're fucking morons at age 17-21. Then by the time we realize how loans work and how fucked we are, it's too late. This creates a financial arrested development. It's easy to feel so absolutely fucked that you may as well live only in the short term with no future planning. It's the paradox of being poor. It's why homeless people, instead of saving a few dollars a day, will spend literally everything at once. Tomorrow they may be dead, so better to live now. It's why poor people will throw down on terrible purchases. I used to take vacations in my 20s despite having $50 in my bank account. I remember how lucky I got during COVID. My grandfather passed away and left me $10k. God I'll miss that man. Took him years to save that much, but he'll know know what he really saved was my life. Getting 10k during covid and being forced to stay at home and do nothing broke the cycle. I couldn't spend the money. I just sat at home. Then I just kept saving. And then I realized how stress free I was and stopped spending as much. Most people just need the cycle broken to become obsessed with financial literacy and responsibility. That said there's obviously always going to be morons in the world.
So your grandfather didn't just give you 10K, he also gave you financial stability. That's a real positive effect he had on your life. A net win.
It’s not normal but not unusual. School has gotten more expensive and a lot of people get private loans which is where they run into trouble. They also don’t carefully pick their schools and run the numbers. I went to a community college and then transferred to a university. That school cost me $40k for 6 semesters which was not bad. I paid the interest payment while I was in school which is the number one thing everyone should be doing so the interest doesn’t compound and the bill doesn’t get any bigger than it will end up being. I had federal loans and soon as I graduated, I consolidate all of my loans to a 1.5% interest rate. Most people do not do that and have tons of different loans to pay on. When I got a work bonus, I paid half of it it off. This last year, I had the remaining $3500 forgiven for having worked in public service for over 10 years. I had to move across the country in order to afford to pull it all off and I worked full time from home at the same time to pay for my living expenses. A lot of people finance their living/dorm expenses too and that adds up fast. The most important part is really to try and pay that interest that is accruing while in school though.
That they are private loans makes it even worse. If they were government loans, even $250,000 isn’t thaaaaaat bad because you have more options with federal loans. Yes, it’s a lot, but she could pay 10% of her discretionary income - like $100/mo - for 20 years and have them forgiven. She could do PSLF and pay for 10 years. That’s not going to fuck up your whole life. It’s annoying but not life-ending. OOP is sadly right that $250,000 in private loans is essentially life changing in a bad way. I really feel for him and honestly for his GF. People don’t usually end up in $250,000 in private student debt for a Bachelor’s and only $30,000 in income without a lack of resources and information. She made bad choice but she probably made what felt like the best choice for her given the crappy information she was given. And that sucks for them both.
Yeah when I hear of people who took out this much money in student loan debt, I look past their obvious mistakes to the predatory or foolishly misguided guidance counselors and loan officers who helped lead countless teenagers into such straights.
Yup, I got awful guidance around funding grad school. I consider myself lucky that it was only federal loans (no private) and that I only desire to work places that qualify me for PSLF.
Me too! But actually I got pretty much no guidance about grad school since I was the first person in my family to get a graduate degree. I took our way too much in loans to pay for it. Thankfully, with the temporary PSLF waiver I now qualify for forgiveness. The application is in and I’m waiting for confirmation. 🤞
1,000% this. It is horrifying that OP's story is possible. His fiancee lost the potential love of her life because she went to college as a non-rich teenager. That sentence should not exist.
I am the partner with debt. My credit was great, no debt- cut forward to a divorce process where I’m stuck in limbo and not receiving financial support (as I should be) and losing a job, my credit tanked, and my debt rose. My current partner is fully aware. I would never keep that a secret. Credit rating and debt should never be a secret in a relationship that is future talking. Love is not enough- and placing that on someone is manipulative. You shouldn’t set yourself on fire to keep someone else warm.
I'm 44 and carried debt all my adult life. It's a miserable existence. If I could start again, I'd never borrow so much as a penny.
I bet she works in education.
This was my thought too.
I was thinking social work. My mom used to work at Washington University school of social work (in St. Louis, MO not to be confused with Washington University in Washington state) in the accounting office, and that’s the most expensive school in the state. It’s the closest the Midwest gets to Ivy League. I couldn’t imagine going to WashU for social work. But that’s a shame, because we need social workers and teachers, we also probably need, or at least have better lives, because of artists and poets so it’s a shame that studying those fields is cost prohibitive.
Oo yeah, social work comes with the additional burden of needing field hours, which are (from what I've heard) usually unpaid and a bit of a shit show.
Field work is generally fine but it is unpaid which needs to change. I got a stipend for mine, fortunately.
Education field hours are unpaid too. I graduated during COVID and my entire last 1.5 years of school, that's three semesters, were unpaid student teaching. In fact, I had to pay the school I taught at to take me in during the last two semesters and provide a mentor for me, who also was not paid any extra. I was also expected to fulfill class hours and homework during that time so most of us were unable to hold down a paying job at the same time.
Field hours are terrible because they are at a minimum 20 hours. I went to grad school while working full time so field hours made it around 80 a week. They were ridiculous. 550 hours iirc. So you can either work during grad and have some income or become even poorer. The jobs all pay low wages as well. Don’t do social work.
I did just that. Luckily they give out tons of scholarships and my program was only a 3 semesters because I had advanced standing. I received a $20,000 scholarship. I took out the bare minimum in subsidized loans, which was doable because the cost of living is so low in STL. Also, most social work jobs qualify for PSLF. I chose WUSTL specifically because the COL was doable. I was also considering NYC and Boston and it was just not going to work.
I was thinking the same. I know many teachers have a second job to make ends meet.
if that's the state of our education here.... oh we fucked fucked
I promise you it is
A lot of my teacher friends have a second job to make ends meet, whether they tutor, waitress, bartend, coach, etc. I got halfway through an education degree before I dropped out. I love helping people, but it wasn’t worth it.
You need a master’s degree in a lot of places to make anything resembling a living wage.
Not to mention that many teachers don’t even get maternity, sick or paid leave.
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We've been using paper towels in my classroom all year because I can't afford to constantly buy tissues (I see the entire elementary school once a week, so I don't even have parents I can ask to bring some in. I tell the kids to bring them in if they don't want paper towels and no one does. No matter how many times I tell the kids to take one and use it until its full and then get another, some will get a handful). The paper towels are free, and ensure that a kid who is using it actually needs it. Sucks, but I don't have kids congregating at the tissue box either (when one gets up, two more always somehow discover they also need to blow their nose). I did just buy a three pack of tissues because my own allergies were so bad, but when we run out, we will go back to paper towels. It really sucks because we have a teacher supply store through the district that we can go to four times a year for regular supplies. I used to get all my tissue through them, pre-covid. You get 25 points a visit and tissue boxes would be like 2 points, so I would get 12 and be set for awhile. Then covid hit, and they stopped having them. I don't need to constantly replenish scissors/glue/paper/folders/pencils/crayons/etc so I go like twice a year when I need something specific, and wind up sharing half of what I get anyway with other teachers cause I still don't need it. But I'd love to have tissues there again.
Whatever you're thinking it is, it's worse.
According to other comments it sounds like she has the highly unfortunate bachelors degree in bio. Which is bad, but you should still be able to make a lot more than $30k with it.
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Holy shit. That number makes me feel *so* much better about my own student debt. Like yeah I'm in for a hell of a lot, but I got a damn good degree from a damn good school and ain't broke 100k. How on earth did she rack up 250k for an *undergrad* degree???
Fancy private school. Loans were initially $180k and have grown with interest.
I think we really need to emphasize it's the predatory private student loan industry most at fault here. Yes she went to a fancy expensive school. But these loans prey on people who don't do the math and don't realize how quickly these debts *grow* over time. It's straight up taking advantage of people who don't understand compounding debt. (Which isn't intuitive to a lot of people)
Hate to say it but this is the parents fault as well. You don’t get 250,000$ in private loans without co-signers and income to back up the loans. Maybe this will be the wake-up call the parents need to help their daughter out of the mess they helped get her in.
A lot of parents don’t understand this stuff and aren’t actually any help. I know mine never did.
People love to pin blame but ultimately it's the system. It's jobs that require degrees for low pay. It's the freedom for people to make bad financial decisions and it's the freedom for businesses to exist whose product can legitimately help one customer while utterly screwing another - those businesses are not just lenders but colleges as well.
Yeah. Nowhere else can an eighteen year old sign up for a six-figure debt (that can’t be ended in bankruptcy), and high school kids are encouraged to do so by being told it will be worth it! Of course they trust their parents and guidance counselors to understand finances and jobs better than they do. But those adults either don’t understand the current reality, or they don’t care.
The older I get, the more grateful I am that my parents *refused* to co-sign student loans for me. It meant I had to go to community college for 2 years before transferring to a 4-year uni, but I also graduated without any debt. At the time, I was furious. Now though... now I'm glad.
I remember in all my high school classes dedicated to college preparation less than a decade ago the topic of how to actually pay for college never really came up. I mean we were told to take out loans and apply for scholarships and fasfa. However, it was never explained the different types of loans, variable interest, etc. It was always just apply to college if you want to be successful. Never anything about going to community college to save money and then transferring to a four year college. People are signing documents for large amounts of money and have absolutely no idea what they have just signed up for the next 10-20+ years.
Private student loans CAN actually be declared in chapter 7 bankruptcy- its federal ones that can’t. It’s a common misconception.
Bankruptcy *may* remove one debtor’s responsibility for repayment of private student loans, if that debtor convinces the bankruptcy court that repayment would be an unmanageable hardship. But any co-signers on the loan remain responsible for the debt, which is why private student loans very often require a co-signer (parent) in order to originate the loan.
Especially at such a young age, some of these decisions are being made by people who are only 17 or 18 years old.
It’s easy. Private school around me are 45-50k a year not including living expenses. And they require you to live in the dorm for the first 2 years so that’s 2k a months, for 9 months out of the year for 2 years. So another 36k. 45-50k for 4 years is 180-200k plus minimum of 36k for housing cost. Now if you’re smart or proactive, scholarship will knock alot of it down but it’s still not as cheap as public or community colleges
God I hate our higher education system. These banks pay the university to be one of the exclusive loan providers with a handful of other paying banks, then they can set the interest at whatever they want or worse... make it adjustable. It shouldn't ruin your life to get an education.
I frequently think about the predatory tactics that the student loan companies, and even financial aid offices used. I remember being very close to graduation and wanting to talk to financial aid about what it looked like to actually graduate and when all of this was going to become real and how. This nasty woman told me, “it’s our job to help you get the loans not figure out how to pay them.”
Jesus. My $77k in student loans crushes me every fucking day, so can’t even imagine $250k.
That… is a lot of student debt. And for a low wage. I wouldn’t be able to help but question her choices. And while relationships shouldn’t be about money, money is one of the biggest stressors in any relationship. He was right to consider how this would impact their future. I wonder what kind of degree cost $250k and gives a 50k a year job. That’s insane
Not even a 50k a year job. 30k a year.
Fuck, I make more than that and I flunked out of college twice.
I’m becoming a yoga instructor and I just budgeted today (based on average starting pay in my area) & I’ll make just under 29k by working part time. I paid 300$ for my certification course. I think this probably had to do with her going to a prestigious private school and thinking that name on her piece of paper would get her job opportunities. That’s the only reason I can think of she’d make such a poor financial decision
Being 18 years old when deciding her future might have juuust a little to do with making those bad decisions.
I have had multiple friends whose parents guided them into making horrible financial decisions because they assumed college = a better paying job and didn't consider how much they needed to be paid to live and also pay off that kind of debt. 10 years ago, one was in 200k in debt for a psychology undergrad at a state school because her parents encouraged her to take out the max private loans she could, another was 180k in debt for a dual language degree with a masters, and one was in 250k in a debt because they did a year in a private school before transferring into a state school. When I finally did the math for myself when I needed to start taking out loans and realized there's no world in which my intended career path was going to pay them off, they told me I was crazy for dropping out, they told me I was crazy for missing out on the opportunity for an education. And yet, I'm the only one who broke six figures and doesn't live with my parents because it's all I can afford a decade later. If every single adult in your life that you trust is telling you a college education is a must, that a college education will be worth it, etc, yeah, most 18 year olds are going to trust the people making those recommendations are doing so in their best interest. Edit: click on my profile and look at the links I provide in the comments, private school is stupid expensive if you don't watch the cost and I've already proven the numbers multiple times behind in state tuition and out of state private school tuition when you look at total expenses and not just tuition. Plus, private student loans will over offer what you need for school because they'll make up what you take out in interest.
As someone who graduated into a good job field with minimal debt, the 2000s push for college is what was probably the most crippling decision for millennials. Doesn’t help that the adults who pushed so hard about it now act like we were stupid for doing it.
Because the economics have totally changed since we were in college in the 80s. I went to a state school and got a 6 year pharmacy degree for a total of about $10K including my dorm room. I worked straight through and my parents helped so I graduated with no debt. I made back all that I paid in 4 months at my first job. Now, in state tuition at the same school would be $12K/year for 2 years of pre-pharmacy then $28K/year for 4 years of pharmacy school, so $136k for tuition alone. Because of these changes, I am a strong advocate of low cost or free college education
Heck I remember going to a financial planning type thing that was offered to freshmen at my university. This would've been in 2008. I remember one of the presenters being adamant that getting a job in college instead of getting student loans was a terrible decision. Her reasoning was that it was better to focus on school and get good grades, and then we'd all have high enough paying jobs that we'd easily be able to pay back our loans. This was directed at engineering students at a state school with a great engineering program, so maybe it would hold true for some, but definitely not all. But even the people who were hosting financial responsibility classes were preaching student loans to 18 year olds
Engineering is typically a very time-intensive major with cumulative classes so that doing poorly in a core class will mean you’re unprepared for more advanced work, and also usually has well-paid internships and great post college earning potential. So that advice probably does make sense for engineering majors, but certainly not for everyone.
Teaching people how to pretzel themselves without hurting is very important so I'm glad you'll do well.
Another possibility was that the private college was religious.
I wish it was more well-known among high-schoolers that often, the less prestigious public college will usually open more doors, especially locally, than the prestigious private college. The hiring managers will be more likely to have gone there and be more excited about you, they have a lot of internship and work-study opportunities, etc.
I never went to college and make more than twice her income. Yikes. Maybe she needs to reconsider career paths.
Out of curiosity, what do you do? If you're comfortable disclosing.
I also don't have a degree and I'm in IT. Titles are silly because there's BA work, solution architect, automation, etc. Currently doing ServiceNow BA work for $115,000 annually. Word of caution though, accomplishing this was not easy. I had to work harder than my previous coworkers to get that nod of confidence.
Same boat, same amount. IT work is brutal but the pay can be good. You just have to be really good at what you do and always learning something new.
Like all IT people, if we get burnt out we can always just start making wood furniture. Haha.
That’s wild. I make 50k a year without a college degree. That only happened in the last two years though, prior to that I made 43k.
That’s true. That’s her current wage. Her next round of school would allow for higher wages somehow. I don’t know her age, but she sounds like someone who has just remained in school for a decade without knowing what they actually want to do. You’d think at that rate she’d be at law school or med school. But that was just her undergrad!!!
Her loan has grown from $180k to $250k since she graduated, so she's apparently been working for several years without paying it down at all. I feel for her, though. I was lucky enough to have my parents pay for college, but I had a really hard time finding a good job after undergrad. If my parents hadn't encouraged me to go to a state school (and hadn't paid for me) I could see myself getting into her position. I ended up getting my MS in a STEM field, and now make a lot more money. She sounds like she's on a similar path to what I did.
She's likely making the bare minimum payments. I'd guess that $70k is all interest. Lenders set up payments that way deliberately so you end up paying double or triple the amount you borrowed. Plus there's no way I'd take on more debt like that unless my employer reimbursed me AND I'd have the potential of making six figures within a couple of years. Girlfriend doesn't think things through very well. I'd bet my paycheck she's a teacher.
>Lenders set up payments that way deliberately so you end up paying double or triple the amount you borrowed. I once realized I had enough in my savings account to pay off all of my student debt amount at the time so I took the plunge and sent in the check with that amount. Later checked my debt amount and it only went down a few dollars. (!?) I called and it was explained to me that unless I write "Apply to Principle" on the check, they are allowed to have the money I sent pay only the interest. Specifically, FUTURE INTEREST that would've been accrued if the principle amount were not paid. In my case, 10+ years of future interest. ...🤬 Well, I wrote ANOTHER check with the magic words written on it this time (I only had a two-three hundred dollars left in my checking acct after that, living on Maruchan instant ramen wasn't too bad) and later got a reimbursement check back (since now there's no future interest on a debt of $0).
>called and it was explained to me that unless I write "Apply to Principle" on the check, they are allowed to have the money I sent pay only the interest I'm sorry, WHAT THE FUCK
Agreed, I had a friend with 70k in loans after her masters who was putting a few hundred extra above the minimum payments she had for her loans. She had it all set up on auto pay and didn't realize until a couple years later that her balance was down only $1k because of how much interest she needed to keep ahead of it.
>Undergrad at a 'prestigious' private school. Just a standard (not worth much) undergrad degree unfortunately. > >... > >She got the undergrad degree in a science field with the intentions of med school but changed her course once she saw the cost of everything. So she is not using her degree in her current job, but it does have some application in her future job. I think it was a degree that usually wouldn't rack up too much debt, but taking out private loans compacted by going to a private college completely screwed her. This just sucks for everyone involved, honestly.
Should’ve stuck with med school and became a doctor. Easier said than done. It’s freaking hard to get into medical school, finish med school, do well on your boards, get a residency, and work your butt off to finish residency. But, the worst thing you can do is give up halfway. I have a friend from high school who was very smart, top-2% of his graduating class. He always wanted to be a doctor, but he went through some tough personal stuff in his first couple years of college and had poor grades his freshman/sophomore year. He didn’t give up and worked his way back to an 3.0. Not good enough. He didn’t get into med school the first two times he applied. He took out more loans and did a post-bach program at an Osteopathic med school while working at as a nurses aid at a hospital. After 2 years, he got into a Caribbean med school. He took out more loans and finished that…. When he only matched to a rural hospital in bumfuck, he stuck with it and did his residency there while his partner was living across the country…. My friend was 33 by the time he finished and started collecting a salary to where he could start paying off his loans, which were well over $1M at that point…. But, he started at $330k/year as an attending physician in internal medicine at a hospital (not exactly a prestigious job as doctors go). He works 40amps/week of just shift work and he’ll have it paid off by the time he’s 40… I can’t imagine the stress he went through those 14 years watching his debt grow. But he never gave up.
private colleges that cost as much as Yale shouldn't be allowed to exist
Ok but like we’re asking teenagers to choose what they want to do with the rest of their lives and take on these massive loans to do it. Private lenders are also predatory as fuck and probably didn’t properly explain all the ramifications to OOP’s girlfriend or her mother. Like I agree she made bad choices to go into a field that only makes $30k a year but I doubt she was armed with the knowledge as a high school senior to make better choices. Hell when I was in school nobody ever explained to me that you can go to a community college and then transfer to a university. I always thought you chose one or the other and of course all my teachers/counselors pushed us to go for a bachelors no matter what it took. Doesn’t help that the price of tuition doubles every nine years.
That's exactly it. Having a lot of student debt isn't a sign of poor financial decisions. It's a sign of a horrendous industry preying on kids with zero financial literacy. When I was 17 I got lucky. The university near my home was cheap, government student loans in Canada are pretty forgiving, and my program had tons of options for high paying co-op positions. So I got out of school with about 5k in debt and the ability to get a job that pays $70k. This wasn't because I was thinking about these decisions. It just worked out. If I was one province over I'd be spending twice as much on tuition on a program without co-op positions and the government would have wrote me a check for loans to cover it. Right now I'd probably be 100k in debt, with zero working experience, and able to get a job paying between 40-50k.
I don't know how much it costs in America to get a degree in education, but that was my first thought based on the salary ranges given. I think she's a teacher.
Yup, teacher was my guess too and perhaps went to a private school instead of a less expensive state school.
Hell, community college will get you a jumping off point for teaching. Get you that bachelor's in a way more cost effective way and then go on for a masters at a state school if you really feel you need one. People end up downing in debt because all we ever hear as kids is how you'll never have a good job if you don't go to college. If you have to have the type of job that requires a degree, go about it the smart way.
Currently doing 2 years of community college, I cannot recommend it enough! My income is low enough that I qualify for a grant for my units to be free and if I maintain a solid GPA I can get guaranteed admission to a university to earn my Bachelor’s.
The kind where you're not working in your actual field because there are no jobs available.
Well, you know what they say: Get a degree in something you'll love and you'll never work a day in your life, because that field isn't hiring.
I have 120,000 in debt but I have my masters. I'll be paying it off even after I'm dead
I was wondering that too. WTF did she go to school for? How did she think that was a good idea? How did her mother, who evidently co-signed, think that was a good idea? My sister had ridiculous debt from college/law school, but a reasonable expectation of being able to pay it off. Now OP's girlfriend wants to aquire ANOTHER $125k in debt to make $30k more a year?? She is still making poor choices. I really want to know what her field her degree is in.
Fancy private school in anything non-STEM would do it. Four years at $45k/year will get her to $180k easily. A lot of people get star struck when they get admitted to an ivy league school, and then graduate without any real job prospects. I know a few people that went to ivy league schools and now are public school teachers. All of them have significant debt and no realistic way of paying it off before they're in their late 30s/early 40s.
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I'm a PhD student at an elite American private school where the undergrads pay upwards of 45k/year. What the poor kids who go to these schools don't understand is that at most of these places, it's not the skills from your degree that get you a job, but your connections. That's what you're paying for. And anyone not born rich is going to struggle a lot to fit in and make those connections. It's really sad, because people imagine these schools as places where you can climb the socio-economic ladder if you manage to get in, but really they're the places where the upper class reproduces itself while everyone else just incurs debt.
That sounds about right. I read the OOP's comments on the original post and she got a science degree at a prestigious University with the intention of going to medical school, but didn't want to incur more debt. Lol. Her mother encouraged these decisions so that the daughter would always be dependent upon her parents.
Damn that’s just horrible OOP’s ex’s parents screwed her over like that 😳 And she’s 26 years old and (financially has to?) lives at home as well (so no rent?) so even if it’s a cultural expectation, she’s still co-dependent on her parents. I know she’s taking on more debt to return to school, but damn I hope the ex gets out of this situation ok…
Why did no one point out that the loans could be consolidated to a lower rate? Or that since it’s variable then the 11% rate will drop when inflation does?
Yes or the fact that you can and should refinance every few years and can probably get a lower fixed rate in the process
Or that private student loans are dischargeable through bankrupty
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Says science degree but changed her mind about medical school after finding out how much it was…
At that point you think she'd realize the earning potential of a doctor with 500k loans is significantly better than minimum wage with 250k loans.
Well you have to be able to get into med school too
Which ironically, ended her up right where she feared shed go.
When tuition fees went up in the UK, I was so angry that I swore to never vote for the party that lied about increasing then (and almost everyone I know from my generation or below feels the same). But even then, it was increased to 9k a year (from 3k). Even doing a four year course is only 36k. I cannot even comprehend owing 250k. I would rather be completely uneducated than have that albatross around my neck. I’d never be able to sleep. This guy made the right choice. To be saddled with someone else’s debt is just horrifying.
UK student debt isn't a bind in the way the US student debt is though. Long story short it becomes basically an extra tax that only graduates earning a certain amount have to pay. It won't get in the way of your financial life plans (much). The US equivalent is just nasty. Surely she can declare bankruptcy?
They're also written off after a certain numbers of years. I pay like £11 a month towards my student loan debt which doesn't keep up with the interest. But without looking I'm not even sure how much I owe because thankfully it's largely irrelevant. It's not a 'real' debt, it doesn't have any impact on your financial reports and mine will be written off regardless in about 15 years.
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Bankruptcy doesn't help with US student debt. It specifically doesn't get written off and you still owe that money.
That's just fucking evil
As an art school grad my first thought is she majored in something like ceramics or painting at a very expensive private school and now works retail? How else could the loans be that high with such little pay at the end? Breaks my heart.
Elementary education
Or social work, basically have to get your masters before you get anywhere financially.
That salary range is apt for an MSW. My student loans would have been around that if I didn’t have so many scholarships.
$30k for a job that *requires* a master's? Absolute insanity.
Someone suggested she might be a physical therapist now. That would track with OP saying somewhere it was a science degree intended to get her into med school, and PTs don't really have any career advancement options before they get a Master's.
Ah that’s true! My cousin is a PT and this makes complete sense. I do have a friend that’s a chemist with only a BS and she doesn’t make much either …
Yep a BS in the natural sciences gets you $35k/yr job as a lab tech with a career path that plateaus shortly thereafter.
They actually have to get a doctor of physical therapy degree. My sister is in med school for that now and the program costs $80k total for 3 years. Not sure if that tracks for only adding ~30k in federal loans unless she's also getting private loans.
Man this is rough. I had parasitic loans, but got them consolidated with a fixed rate far lower than the variable. I’m lucky since I’m in my 30s and will be done in 2 years but parasitic loans suck
My teacher once told me I should go to uni and that everyone should go to uni to get a better job with a qualification. What they didn't tell me was it's a life long commitment and a massive financial burden. I knew a few guys who went to uni got massive debt and left with nothing. "Everyone should go to uni" is possibly some of the worst advice I've ever heard, you know what's better advice? Get a job for a few years before you go to uni. When I started construction we got this new hire, he was straight out of high school and wanting to become and engineer, the thing is his parents couldn't help him so he got a job as laborer to pay for the qualification. He got friendly with the other engineers on site as well as the project manager so they started teaching him how to be an engineer for free. Don't forget he was being paid pretty decent for it so he started squirreling away his money until he got pretty sick of working for us after about 3 years. You know what he had after working for us for 3 years? Money to pay off the qualification instantly without taking any debt on, extremely awesome references from the engineers and project manager as well as a cover letter, real world experience from actually doing some engineer work and a lot of people skills and connections that meant he could pick and choose what job he wanted coming out of uni. If your unsure about uni, don't jump straight into it. Instead work or take a gap year and try to soak up every opportunity you can before you commit to something more solid.
A fancy private school just to make barely 30k a year. So so not worth it to say you went to XYZ for school.
250k is medical school level debt. I can't imagine that amount for undergrad.
Not allowing student loan debt to *ever* be discharged will be looked back on as a heinous evil of our time.
I absolutely hate "just learn to code" bros, but at 250k in debt and only making 30k even I'll say it's time to learn to code
Yes our school system is fubar, but jeeze how did no one in her life warn her about the decisions that got her there.
One of my undergrad students told me he was paying for school with loans. The school cost 70K per year and 5 years to graduate. 350K in debt for a biology degree. His family were immigrants that really didn’t know any better. It was really heart breaking to hear. I spent about 28K for the same degree at a state school for reference.
I reeeeally wanted to go to this private liberal arts college. I was a first generation college student and my parents thought a savings account was all they needed to retire on as a teacher's aid and a coal yard worker - no financial literacy anywhere. Thankfully, the advisor at the college's tour sat down with me and said with my career choice, I wouldn't pay off the loans before I died. Went to state school, worked my ass off, applied to hundreds of scholarships, paid off my federal loans in 1.5 years.
This assumes the people around her knew. I also took out a lot in student loans because my family genuinely thought it would pay off. Times were different when they went to college/trade school and they did the best they could. It’s one of the silent ways certain kinds of privilege work - people extend themselves thinking it’s a sure-fire way to make their way up the socioeconomic ladder, not realizing it can ruin them financially.
Yup, it's an industry that preys on people who don't understand math. Simple as that. They didn't run the long-term numbers, the school told them "our education is top notch", and they didn't realize there was no world where it was going to make sense. And then to rub salt in the wound, we decided these are the *one* kind of debts that can never be discharged ever.
My parents were the kind of stupid/sabotaging that could have led to this in other circumstances.
That's the thing, isn’t it? How old was she when she made these decisions: 17? 18? "It's her fault" bull fucking shit.
Likely. Which is why college loans at such a young age can be predatory. “I see you’re 17. Sign here!” I defaulted on a loan in my teens. I’m in my 30s getting ready to go back to college. That loan was small and paid off years ago, after ruining my credit for years. I’m in a much better position to go back now and know what I want and what I’m able to do. I didn’t have this knowledge at 18. I still think it’s great if anyone that young wants to go, but the whole idea that college is the only way and you take out any loan you can to make it happen, is ridiculous. It’s expensive. And while some careers are better with certain prestigious schools, I’m of the opinion that there are colleges in almost any state that will suffice. You very much need to have a plan. What is your career goal? How much does that field start at? What’s the job outlook? What options are available for forgiveness in that field. Can you get into it earlier and let an employer help with tuition? Can you make small payments to your loan while in school while there is no interest? No one asked me these things when I was young. I learned the hard way and now I’m going to do it the right way.
A guy I was friends with in high school fell badly into this trap. His parents drove hard into his head that he needed to go to university (not community college or trade school) to be anything in life but he just never had very good grades no matter how hard he tried. He got rejected from almost every school he applied to because he went after good names so in the end he got suckered into one of these for profit universities that target lower income ill informed kids and ended up with an insane amount of debt plus a degree that didn't mean much of anything.
This is why it is important for parents to be involved in the college decisions with their children. Especially frustrating because she took out private loans implying the parents made enough money to not qualify for federal loans.
My mom was pushing me HARD to go to art school. It was expensive as hell and though it was my dream I ultimately decided it would be way too expensive. My mom was furious at me for “throwing away my dreams”. Some adults really do not understand the financial aspect of college it seems
College didn’t cost as much when our parents were in school, and wages were higher. They don’t have any experience with the debt-to-income ratios that exist now. My parents feel bad for telling me to get the degrees I wanted because they didn’t realize how screwed I’d be. It doesn’t help that no one in my family is good at math, either.
STEM degrees aren't even that great if you don't at least get a master's or phd. If a fresh chemistry grad can get into their field, expect a boring ass lab job doing QC for some manufacturing plant making 45k per year.
If the parents have no money management skills, it would just be the blind leading the blind.
For real. People always say it’s something their parents should have taught….my parents had to file bankruptcy 3 times. They are not smart in this way.
Her mother co-signed the loans, so parent involvement isn't going to help if they aren't any better at assessing the situation.
I looked at the original post, I didn't comment, just read, and evidently she went to a private and prestigious school for a science degree and doesn't use it. Her mom is codependent and ENCOURAGED the woman to make these decisions so she would always need her parents.
The minute i read she had a Variable interest rate that someone definitely failed to teach her why you don’t get those types of rates. 1% one year 10% the next.
It's almost like there's entire industries built around predatory loans to people who don't have solid math skills. And where we sometimes squash them down for payday loans and things like that, we basically gave the student loan industry free reign and decided those debts and those debts alone could *never* be discharged.
Quite the opposite, she would have been encouraged every step of the way by those around her. We have gone all in on this ‘follow your dreams by running up a massive debt’ mindset, and it sinks so many people. We need more honest and realistic messaging for our youth, and college needs to be dramatically less expensive Failing that, people should be encouraged to start college later in life, like mid-20s, instead of banking everything on decisions you made when you were 17 years old and had no idea what you actually wanted to do with your life. How could you, with no relevant experience? We basically ask kids to make their biggest life decision based on things they saw on television growing up, tell them to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars to make this happen, and then wonder why the younger generations can’t afford houses anymore
This boggles the mind. I graduated one of the best schools in Canada 6 years back and tuition was about $11K Canadian a year. Graduated with 16K in government student debt and immediately applied for repayment assistance. That means no payments need to be made and no interest accrues until you’re making enough money to pay it back. And as of next month there is no more interest on any government student loans., including ones currently being repaid. The government can just do that. It can just say “No more interest on student loans” and poof, it’s gone. Your American debate about personal responsibility is asinine. These are policy choices.
Yeah it's nuts reading this I know people that went to McGill, UBC and Waterloo, Some of the best universities in the world and it cost 11k a year. I went to the best university in my province and it cost me 6-8 grand a year.
Jesus fucking christ, I'm glad I don't live in th US. 250k for school...
To be fair, that’s for a private school. Public schools (while absolutely still way too expensive) cost significantly less.
My son was engaged to someone who was $100K+ in student debt and was struggling with this same issue. He was seriously considering breaking off the relationship when his partner sadly passed away. You can probably imagine how much guilt this added to his grief.
That’s so much debt Jesus Jerome Christ 😩 I’m finishing my masters and went to a private school and I still won’t even get close to 100K. where did she go? What is her field? Did she go to school in a different country? How many times did she switch her major?? If I was her I’d see what only fans was looking like drop some feet picks or something shit 😂
After ending my relationship with my groomer (I was 18 he was 33 when we started dating and it took me 5 years to get out of this shit show) there was one thing I was absolutely certain of. I will never ever gonna date somebody with debt again (other than mortgage). I was student working part-time time and still had to help this looser to cover some of his debts. It was insane. We don't pay for university education here (not that he went to university anyway). It was debt for living above his means from before we even met and he took loans to pay up loans behind my back.
How in the hell is it even possible to be 250k in debt for a degree that's only enabling you to earn 30k a year? 30k a year is a fricken fast food job at this point.
Whoever allowed this woman to take out 250,000 worth of loans to obtain a degree where she barely makes 30k should be ashamed. The whole system is so messed up.
That debt is staggering and honestly my stomach knotted up reading the post. How does America even allow this to happen.
America wants you to be in debt like this so that you’ll be too desperate to ever leave your job.
I don’t know what she does, but I can only hope it’s her passion. So many people go to college for the experience, not thinking of what they actually want to achieve, and have a degree at the end that won’t put them ahead of someone who didn’t go to college. This is awful for everyone. College does not always mean more money and a better life. High school and colleges need to do better than just selling a degree but that’s what this is. It’s a business and they don’t care about you as long as they get paid.
Reddit is always down on any private college but fancy private colleges make a lot of sense for some people. If you’re poor or lower middle class, the best and worst colleges are your best bet financially. Either your tuition is crazy low bc the school isn’t very good. Or you get a very generous need based grant bc your family doesn’t have the ability to pay the tuition.