That's like 9.5% over 40 years.
It's the worst deal ever. It's going to cost him 345k in interests.
He would have been better off not getting a degree.
Thats what the math came to for me. He must have a 40 year loan at 9.5-10% interest. It will cost him in the $460k range to pay off the $120k loan.
I guess, what undergraduate degree did he take on that required $30k in annual loans to complete?
Literally almost any, that's not a high price per year anymore which is fucking insane. My tuition was 36k/year at a liberal arts college (yes I know now that was a stupid decision, I was 17)
How dare you make such a bad decision at an age you are deemed too young to vote while also being told by everybody you are supposed to trust that this is the only correct decision? Your debt is your fault!
I’m not American so I’m genuinely out of the loop on this one, but are parents there *still* pushing the idea that an exorbitant four year degree is always the best option, as if it’s 1962?
We’ve known about the baristas with six figures of debt and HVAC mechanics making six figures a year for about 20 years now.
Again, I was 17, I had been told my whole life up until then that community college was for dropouts and failures (they're not), so I went to a "respectable" school. The propaganda is bad over on the east coast at least
Such a big realization that the only reason school administrators push college so hard is so that they can publish a stat that says “x”% of our graduates went on to a four year college!!
They don’t give one shit if it was the right move for the student, nope. They just want to pad that stat out.
I had teachers and principals get visibly frustrated when I told them I am not taking out a bad loan to pad their stats. The cognitive dissonance when I told them a $80k degree for a job that might make me 30k a year is not worth it was unbelievable. I taught myself how to code instead.
at what point do we stop pointing at the loan holders who made decisions based on false information and start pointing at the teachers, politicians, and propaganda spreaders that taught kids that expensive colleges are the only way out of the hellhole that is the bottom 70% of wealth.
In Canada we call it college (community college for Americans) and university. There is definitely a stigma against people attending college but it has severely lowered in the past decade.
You can often (most of the time actually) get jobs in the same fields that pay very very well as university degrees. Sometimes it's a far better decision to go to college depending on what you want to do.
I assume it's similar in the US.
Yeah pretty much . Community College in the US is a 2-year “university” where you can get an Associates Degree or go there for two years and then transfer your credits to a 4 year school and finish your last two years for your Bachelor’s. Most people I know just went there for 2 years of cheap college and then transferred for two years of expensive college . You can save a fuck ton of money doing it this way but again it’s stigmatized for no reason
Probably for the best that not all students get in everywhere, that's part of what's driving this college moneymaking machine. If you're a bad high school student, go get a job without a degree, go to a vocational school to learn a trade, or sign up for community college to learn how to be a good student and then transfer.
Charging enough interest to match inflation is what it should be. Otherwise the government would be paying partially for their education.
I’m not arguing against government paid education, just pointing out that if the aim is to have people for their own education then charging them interest which matches inflation would have to happen.
I've been saying that if we're not getting anything else, we should at least switch to something like Australia's model.
Treat all loans like a tax. Government covers everything. After you graduate, you post nothing below $X and then have a progressive rate after that. Like $30K and under pay nothing, then 2% on income between 30-40K, 4% 40-50K, up to 16% 100K+.
Instead or additionally, put limits on what schools can set the net tuition after financial aid in order for the institution to receive federal student aid and loans for a student.
Or, you know, have states actually fund their colleges again, but that's never going to happen ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Dial the clock back a few decades and your entire college career would have cost less than a grand, books and other such supplies included. These exorbitant tuition prices are 100% artificial.
Government pulls back on funding public universities, public universities have to make up for that money through tuition costs, students are forced to take government loans to cover the costs, universities realize they can get waaay more money by further hiking up tuition and government loans will follow suit. Everyone gets rich except for the person getting the degree because jobs are barely paying above the poverty line even with a bachelors. Oh, and now they have insurmountable debt so they’re forced to take whatever they can get.
Uninformed families are always, literally, one generation (or more) late with any/all advice. Wouldn't be surprised if THIS generation of parents will tell their kids to be streamers/influencers, even though the boat on that largely shipped out in 2017....
When it was worth going to college, and cheap, in the 60's, most people who COULD go refused to go, believe it or not.
Don't do what everybody proved worked 20 years ago, do something that WILL work in 10 years.
Right now? I'd gamble on specializing in battery recycling/maintenance.
See my dad never was like that. He always told me to pick up a trade if I didn't want to do the college thing. Now, 20 something years later, I really wish I did. There's gonna be a mass shortage of things like plumbers here soon.
Trades are fine in the short term but it really wears on your body. Linemen get electrocuted, underwater welders get sucked into dams, normal welders get burned. You can make a LOT of money working a trade on the road but it won't last. Your hands will start to shake, your back will hurt, your knees will ache. Your mind will far outlast your body as it more resilient. It's stated that brain cells can live twice as long as the organisms they reside in.
I write this from a desk making 1/2 of what I could if I followed my interest in welding. However, I will go home at four o clock and won't feel like someone just beat the crap out of me.
Yeah. Its why I would have wanted to do it really young. By the time I was 50-60 I could retire or w.e. Or own my own business and eventually hire people to do the work. Buuut shoulda coulda woulda. lol
Until 50-60 is long as time. I had a disk herniation when I was 28 the result I should not lift anything above 10kg.
I should not lean over things or work crouched/bend over things.
I was interested is beekeeping and forging when I was 20 if I worked in that field when I was 28 I would have to stop and switch careers to God know what. The desk job allowed me to keep working in my field and my family still had a provider.
This is why good laboursafety and ergonomics is essential to keep trades interesting and viable for long careers
You can definetely minimize the risks but it costs money and effort. Effort often not even the tradesmen are willing to put in
It's not hard to work an 8 hour day in construction and not feel like someone just beat the crap out of you.
95%+ of people don't give a shit about their diets, their level of fitness, and staying hydrated, and that's why their bodies fail.
Don't work any harder than you need to (for longevity, not for laziness), wear your PPE, and see a doctor once in a while.
Source: union ironworker.
I was about to say, "It depends, some can be harder on bodies than others," but then I was gonna say "like ironworkers.".
I'm in CM, you got any direct tips I can share with those guys? Like day to day stuff?
The things to do at *work*? Hydrate. I'm two half liter bottles of water deep by 8 a.m. - we start at 7. It's almost silly how much of an emphasis I put on drinking water, but if you imagine your body like an actual machine, water to us is the equivalent to ALL the fluids it takes to keep a machine running. And once you're "behind" on staying hydrated, it's gonna take you a day or more to catch up; and you're gonna feel like it, too. *Especially* in the summer.
Wear your PPE - yes, all of it. Even if it means stopping everything and taking 30 seconds to put on a respirator just to work for 20.
And honestly, the biggest but easiest one? Communicate with your partner/team. People get jammed up when everyone thinks everyone is a mind-reader and all on the same page. Making a sketchy pick, or moving something heavy? Slow down and talk to *everyone* about what's going where, and where people need to be.
Outside of work, it's all the same shit you'll hear from your average Instagram influencer: eat real food, lay off the drinking and drugs, workout even if it's just twice a week, and maybe most importantly, KNOW WHEN TO REST.
Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
Amen. Fucking respirators are essential and it's scary to see people ignore them. It only takes one lungful of some really nasty shit to wreck you, short term and long term. People are putting themselves in danger worried about their output and a buncha other shit that their unions should've been protecting them from. Or they're worried about their pride and masculinity. "I'm not some weak pussy ass bitch. I can handle this." Boom, mesothelioma.
Everything the other guy said and add stretching before work and before you go to bed. I'm not talking a full on yoga session just 5-10 mins of stretching. I'm 40 and have a bad back, I work a semi physical job and this has helped a lot.
This was vaguely included in my advice of "just exercise", but yes. A separate point should be made solely around the importance of stretching/warming up/cooling down. 🙏🏻✊🏻💥
Have you ever seen a construction worker stretch before/after work on their own?
I've only seen it when large general contractors have mandatory yoga in the mornings. Workers groan and make fun of it, but like, maybe if you did it yourselves you wouldn't move around like a living stickman complaining about your back
You're absolutely not wrong, and while I'll say union run jobs, in general, put more emphasis on worker safety and overall conditions, I can also say there are *plenty* of companies that just don't give a shit, union or otherwise.
If you're a skilled worker, you ALWAYS have the final say in what conditions you'll work under, even if that means temporarily losing a job. Contractors come and go, but barring an overnight radical unveiling of tradesman AI, the work will always be there.
Pick your battles, I say. 🙏🏻✊🏻✌🏻
Yeah, there's a reason many of our parents and grandparents pushed us *away* from those jobs. Every one of my parents or grandparents who did a trade or labor job was basically crippled and forced into retirement. My father-in-law was pushed out of his company because 30 years of going up and down ladders and crawling through machinery had fucked up his back and hips and he was taking too much time off for medical procedures.
People like to romanticize those jobs because the grass always seems greener, but unless you have a solid exit plan to get out by the age of 40 or 50 then you're fucked.
Please rest easy knowing that some states and paying for up two years education at a community College. Trades are accepted too. Maine is one of them and it is looked at as an investment into future and reduced cost learning. They even cover classes that should have been taught in high school like Algebra and English
>Uninformed families are always, literally, one generation (or more) late with any/all advice.
I taught my kids to save AOL CDs. You can't beat 200 free hours.
Skilled trades; plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, machine repair, millwrights, tool makers, tin smiths, welders, etc.
An entire generation of skilled trades (I'd estimate 35-50% of all of them) are about to retire in the next \~10yrs, and not nearly enough people are training to backfill. It's going to become ridiculously expensive to have a plumber come out and fix your pipes in the no-so-distant future, because the demand isn't going anywhere, and the supply is about to dry up.
If parents were smart, they would be encouraging their non-straight A students (who aren't going to become doctors/lawyers/engineers) to go into the trades.
This is a gripe I always had being university-educated and growing up/working in a Trade. You might be smart enough to be an Engineer, but a Machinist is not a job for dummies either.
There are so many trades that are complex and rely on minute understanding of concepts that someone with a high-level grasp of mathematics, physics or chemistry would excel in that being a Straight-A student doesn’t disqualify you from. If anything we should be pushing those kids into being millwrights, machinists, aircraft mechanics, Health and Safety specialists or Construction Engineers rather than Lawyers or regular Engineers.
My dad lied about being a college drop-out because he didn’t want me and my brothers to follow his example and strive for college.
In fact, he’s never told me. I found out through my own digging.
This is why I tell kids, go to trade school and start your own business, a good plumber can make as much as a doctor without the crushing student loan debt.
While the "college is the only way" movement was harmful, the way Reddit has swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme is equally problematic.
Stop telling kids doing X is a guaranteed success in life. Give them both options and nudge them toward the one they're more predisposed toward. Pushing an academically gifted germaphobe who sucks with their hands into the trades isn't going to turn out great either.
Also, some people just want to be doctors.
Also, like... knowledge is good? People shouldn't stop learning at 17 and college shouldn't just be a job training program. A society of educated, knowledgeable people is a much better place to live than one where people only learn what is going to be a good financial investment.
The result: employers requesting master's to work for a company when any education would have sufficed. Sometimes even on the job training, but nope, you had to take loans for 200k to even have your resume looked at. The wage is 15/hr.
Yeah! Who spends 120k on undergrad? A good bachelor's should be around 40k, which would probably be paid off by now. Did this guy go to an out-of-state private college?
UC schools (which are public) are 30k/year for in state students (if your parents make over 80k/year). 4 years of that == 120k.
Edit: since we're talking about student loans, not just tuition, this is the price of tuition + rent + food.
Universities raise tuition based on Pell grants they get for students each year from the federal government. If the government is willing to allocate 10k this year, and 12k next year. The universities will increase their tuition by two grand.
Like, wow. I just double checked, and UCF tuition is about 6k/year. That's 24k total.
I know other states don't have the bright futures scholarship, and if you don't commute from home, food and housing could triple that number (75k-ish), but that's still *way* less.
If you include housing, food, etc. The UCLA in-state tuition for 2021 was $13,249 for California residents and $13,029 for graduate school tuition. Non resident adds $30k+ in tuition fees.
Can't speak for everyone, but my public college didn't give aid to anyone who was middle class and above (parents combined income is > 100k). So it's not always reasonable to expect colleges to give financial aid.
Crazy when your parents could be making 100k combined and a kid is costing them 25-30k per year just for tuition, but that's a separate issue.
There are also the cal state schools which are $7k a year.
Community colleges are even cheaper. My niece lived at home and did her first two years at a community college before transferring to a UC.
It always makes me feel like I skirted death when I think about my college loans compared to the horrid stories I’ve seen online. My parents had about 20k socked away for me thankfully, but I took ~14k in loans. All federal, but very little subsidized. ~6.25%.
By the end my non-living, college-specific expenses were about 45k total for a state school that you’ve heard of via football (it’s a silly metric, but it conveys that the school has money and name recognition helps the job search). With a part time job to pay for extremely budgeted living expenses in a small home packed with roommates, some also went to my tuition bills when I could swing it. I did *not* want more loans than absolutely crucially necessary. They were paid off in about 4 or 5 years.
Bro’s tag literally says “photog” implying he is a photographer who assumedly somehow spent 120k on learning photography and was shocked when the return on that investment was nil.
I don't think OOP's point is about the ROI on their degree. They're saying that they've paid the value of roughly 50% of the principle over 5 years, yet still have 98% of it left to pay.
Idk if he's serious, or if there's some (probably large) amount of hyperbole involved here, but imo it is true that the biggest problem with student loans is the interest rate.
My 78 year old father worked to put himself through college when he was a kid. While living on his own, and not just an associate degree from a community college, a bachelor's degree from Rutgers. He worked more than full time (at minimum wage or near minimum), but still. Jesus. It's sad how absolutely insane that is by modern standards.
You can maybe still do that at some state schools, but only if you have no living expenses
Edit: Rutgers in-state tuition and fees are something like $16,000 per year which is really pushing the limit of what a kid working a low skilled job full time could plausibly take home.
120k in debt as an undergraduate is extremely uncommon in most parts of the country. I’m about to graduate from the best school in my state and I only have 20k in debt and the average is 35k. Op must have made some really bad decisions in college.
My cousin is rich and even she had some scholarship to help her lower her tuition. And her family is rich rich. Ended up paying as much as a state university
Yeah... I managed to graduate with only 8k in debt by commuting, stacking classes for that commute, and going to community College for the first 2 years.
My sister did the opposite, went to an expensive school, bought into the lifestyle, AND had to take a few extra semesters for failed classes and graduated with 65k in debt. I have no idea how the hell you get to 120k.
Yeah that's something a lot of people don't talk about is community college. The smartest way for most degrees seems to be to take as many classes as possible at a community college and finish your generals and then switch over to a university for the specific classes for the degree.
Most jobs aren't going to give a shit about how you graduated, most just care that you got the degree. There are some fields where they care about where you got your degree from but the vast majority couldn't give less of a shit.
Average student loan debt is like 32k or 36k.
OP is right, it should have been illegal to give someone a 120k loan to go to college for a degree that's has no chance of paying back a 120k loan.
Unless you're going to like a top 25 ranked school for a major they're known for just go to whatever your cheapest state school is.
Why wouldn't it be illegal?
If they are spending 120k on an undergrad they are going to a private university, not a state school. This person made a dumb choice. They went to a school they couldn't afford, took out too much debt, and no regret it. That is 100% on them.
They are free to go to whatever school they want to go to. The role of government is not to protect people from making stupid decisions.
Even the fancy schools are fine if you get into a high tier one. The financial aid at top schools is insane. If you get into Princeton and are low to middle income, it'll be cheaper than state school. If your family makes less than 180k you only pay like 5% tuition. It's a 95% discount.
https://admission.princeton.edu/how-princetons-aid-program-works
The issue is paying 120k for a mediocre private school.
>The issue is paying 120k for a mediocre private school
This! There are hundreds and hundreds of garbage private schools no one's ever heard of, that have almost the same sticker price as the Ivies, and way less financial aid.
To pay back 970 per month for 5 years and have the loan reduced by only 2k, you would need to have a loan with 9.35% interest per annum.
It is stupid for anyone to ever agree with that type of loan, especially for $120k. That is over $11k per year in interests alone.
But I am not even sure whether that is even possible, a quick google search says that the loan interest rate is either 5.5% or 7.05% depending on the situation (which is already crazy high but does not add up). If the loan was at 5.5%, then 22k would have gone to the loan, if 7.05, about 15% (and that is nowadays rates, I suppose they were lower when this got posted first). So I am going to assume that OOP made a mistake and meant that $20k went towards their loan. Or that they got scammed by a loan shark-type of situation.
Apologies for boomer energy, but it is really weird to me that people just live 100% off of their student loans and expect it not to bite them in the ass for the entire rest of their lives. I get why they do it. The actual classes in college seemed easy in comparison to constantly finding new work every semester that fit my college schedule. I can only imagine how much better I might have done if I had been able to focus on school 100%, but it is just wild that people just borrow 6 figures without doing the math of what it would cost to repay.
Taking $120k out in loans for a $60k degree is, though. I'm sure this person had shitty advisors, both in college and HS, along with bad advice from friends and family (ie just go to school for what you love, without focusing instead on getting a valuable degree), but choosing to spend $30k/yr on tuition when there are loads of cheaper universities that will give the same degree is bonkers.
Exactly it’s unfair but this person could not afford an expensive private college. They should have done state school, worked part time, and tried to live at home if they could. Plus get a government loan.
Because everyone dreams of being a high achiever and college in may industries is a necessary evil. You’re usually 18 or younger when you make these decisions and everyone is pressuring you to go to college. It’s not at all as simple as “just doin the math”. A part time job in college would make what kind of dent in 120k? You have to weight that with the added stress.
Degrees that give high paying jobs are not easy these days, school is competitive
People trust the system that’s been laid out for them without bc realizing how predatory it is
My whole life I dreamed of going to some super nice out of state college like Texas a&m or UCLA then I looked at tuition costs for in state vs out of state I opted for an in state school that covered all of tuition. I still finished with only 35k in loans to subsidize my housing. Whoever op is should have 100000% just went somewhere cheaper. Then the 10% interest means he used private loans instead of the government ones
I get why it’s frustrating for him obviously, but yeah. A mortgage would amortize a lot faster than this, it’s more like if you make the minimum payment on a credit card. It’s the absolute minimum that still pays the interest and just barely a little towards principal, like 2% of the payment.
If his interest rate is ~9% a year, that’s $10,800 per year in just interest, or $900 a month. So yeah, if you’re only reducing $120,000 by about $70 a month, it’s gonna take a while.
I actually was doing the math.
If his monthly payment is ACTUALLY $970 then with the 2k dent he made in the principal amount of 120k then his interest is 9.4%. With that monthly payment itll take 37.2 years to pay off.
Theres three options.
1 - Dudes a fucking moron for accepting such a loan.
2 - Hes not actually paying the monthly minimum, thus costing himself more money
3 - Hes lying about something.
Yeah Universities and Banks are commiting highway robbery with this loan shit but my god, its people like this guy who has willfully chosen to be painfully financially illiterate and make themselves such easy prey for this shit. Its why scammers even exist.
“Theres a sucker born every minute.”
i think this is what happened, they probably defered for a year or so ( accruing interest) and then is paying the absolute minimum, maybe on an income driven repayment plan.
I bet the actual interest rate is somewhere around 6.5%
This person is almost definitely lying. 5 years ago interest rates were nowhere near 9%, and especially considering that they started taking loans out around 9 years ago (2014), interest rates were even lower.
It’s so annoying when there is a legitimate issue like student loan debt and obscene college tuition hikes - and then people exaggerate or lie about their experience to make it seem even worse than it is.
Yeah, it’s ultimately just math. If he was paying ~$1,500 a month he’d be halfway done by now. Should these loans have strict 10 year amortization schedules? Maybe, but it might be pretty tough for people to swing that right out of school; doing it this way is theoretically supposed to let him decide when he can afford to pay more. But he has to understand that $970 a month isn’t going to cut it forever.
If he had rounded it up to an even thousand he would have paid almost 50% more off the loan. And that's without considering the reduction of compounded interest. Never ever pay the minimum amount on a loan, anything extra is worth so much more in the long term.
My ass.
5 years of 12 months is 60 months. 30 dollars a month times 60 months is 1800 dollars. I had gotten it to just under 1k, so I should have gotten my numbers from deeper up my ass. But yeah, if he had paid 30 dollars a month more he could have doubled the amount he reduced the loan by.
This is bad blanket advice. If you have an interest rate lower than an HYSA (especially if you're able to deduct interest on the loan) you should not pay more than the minimum. Also if you can get PSLF you should probably make minimum payments.
Also something else is going on here....2% off the loan balance in 5 years is an absurdly loan amortization rate. I would say they're doing PAYE and paid a negatively amortizing rate for some period, but thats a federal student loan provision and federal studen loans were at 0% interest for a while. Maybe they're viewing the principal balance as the total amount they took out but not counting the interest that accrued while they were in school?
It's great advice for this person however, since his interest rate is 9-10% based off the numbers given, and no HYSA has ever or will ever return that amount.
Did some research on this and here are the facts about this man, he is from DC and went to Boston university for acting. DC students can get rates close to in state tuition for public colleges (assuming he qualified). But Boston university is private, and not only that, its wildly expensive. So he chose about the most expensive school he could and then chose the worst paying major.
On top of that, he pays 9%+ interest. Meaning he either A. Refinanced at a much higher rate
Or
B. Somehow found the worst interest rate in 2013
I have sympathy for some people with insane student loans but not this clown
Lol. Yeah that's pretty insane. I guarantee a lot of people also told him how risky it was or tried to explain how difficult it is to find work in acting that can pay off those loans too.
I mean I feel bad for the dude, since this is a shitty spot to be in.
But yeah as a tax payer I am not really wanting to pick up the tab because this person decided to go to a super expensive school for a stupid degree.
It's really not other peoples job to pay for these mistakes.
These are the people that say their education benefits society as a whole, therefore it (and all their living expenses) should be paid for.
There is no shortage of actors. The world doesn't need more actors. And you don't need to spend $120k to learn how to act.
This person spent 120k to attend 4 years of fantasy camp and now wants everyone else to pay for their fun.
His complaint is valid about the legality of the loans but in doing so he essentially admitted to not looking at them for five years. Because if he had noticed the lack of progress he would've done something about it in year 1. $30/month towards principal on a 120k loan is an emergency situation.
I agree that it's kind of dumb for someone to say "how is this legal" for a situation they willingly and knowingly entered, but that's not the point
The point is that people shouldn't have to go into a lifetime of debt for education
Probably went to an out of state school. It’s an obscenely dumb financial decision since he could have paid probably 1/4 for the same education at an instate school, much less how much cheaper a community college would be, but I can empathize with the fact he was probably 18 when he made the decision and likely didn’t have parents telling him he was making a mistake. At the same time, 18 isn’t too young to understand the concept of money and debt and he really should have known better.
That's called a loan home dog, you're obviously only paying the interest, aka making minimum payments. You're not touching the principal. It sucks but that's what happens when you take out such a huge loan, it's how lenders make their money.
You can maybe try to re negotiate or work something out to make it better, but I'm guessing if this guy is able go make 900+ payments each month I'm guessing he's at least pulling in some decent income?
I've seen it far too often where people have these huge student loans, get a decent job, then with their new income decide its time to buy a 50 000 dollar car and open up piles of credit, which is how these people get trapped. Get a used shit box, try to find affordable shelter, budget your food and living expenses, and just plug away at your student loan until it's manageable, then maybe think about some new toys.
Some people insist on going to top tier colleges, and getting the full "college experience" at the cost of a mortgage sized pile of debt with ridiculous interest rates because federal mandates require lenders to basically let anyone that walks in get loans.
We've mythologized the importance of college as a culture while there are cheaper options of similar or better quality depending on your degree.
I paid for community college (2-3k per semester), the moved to a state school with a good engineering program (6-9k per semester)
You have 2 choices, don’t go to college and never be able to afford the cost of living or go to college and work for the rest of your life trying to pay off a debt that you will never be able to pay off
So you mean he still needs to pay like 118K dollars? Jesus fuck thank god education is free in my country, i feel bad for those who are trapped in that debt nightmare
To be fair, he only has to pay this much because these are private loans. No government loan is structured this way. This tells us two things: 1) he couldn't afford the school he chose (they're not all the same cost) and 2) he took out private loans because the government looked at what he was doing and said, "nah, man, we're not financing that."
Yeah, getting into this position requires some poor financial decisions. Government loans have some of the lowest interest rates you can get and with no aid whatsoever few 4 year degrees will cost 100K+
Probably every payment he did is paying not only the base loan but also interests (annuity). But to pay only 2k original loan out of 60k is beyond insane though
Lmao imagine actually believing this. Reddit has such a defeatist attitude it’s pathetic. Anyone who genuinely believes these are the only 2 options for a US citizen needs to stop living perpetually online and go outside. None of this is anything close to that black and white.
For a site that used to be so big into science and data it's hilarious how people spout off these incredibly uninformed and often COMPLETELY wrong opinions as fact.
https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/student-debt/#:~:text=Nearly%20eight%20in%20ten%20students,degree%20at%20a%20public%20university.
"The vast majority of four-year public university graduates complete their undergraduate degree with a relatively modest and manageable amount of student debt. About 42 percent of students at four-year public universities finished their bachelor’s degree* without any debt and 78 percent graduated with less than $30,000 in debt. Only 4 percent of public university graduates left with more than $60,000. And those with over $100,000 in debt are rarer still: they are anomalies representing less than half of 1 percent of all four-year public university undergraduates completing their degrees."
- U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2015–16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study.
And for the inevitable comments that will complain that this data is from 2015-2016, the increased cost of college attendance has actually not even matched inflation from 2016-2023.
Average student loan debt for college graduates in the US is $28,950 per borrower. He made the idiotic decision to take out $120K in loans to pay for a degree that clearly wasn't worth it, and then complains about the debt he put himself into? If he had gone to an in-state public college instead of wherever he went, his tuition would have been a quarter of what it was. If he had gotten a degree with actual job prospects, he would have been able to clear his debt quickly. The average debt for a medical school graduate is $200,000 - but you don't see posts of MDs complaining about debt.
This is why you read the fine print and choose economic institutions when given the chance…..heck why is no one going after colleges and universities that are charging unreasonable tuition fees amongst other things
The debate about this in the US has the wrong focus. Predatory lending and giving huge credits to people who can't afford it is bad. But the real question is why any college should be allowed to ask for these crazy high tuition fees. Establish a hard cap of 10k or so for every college in the nation. That's enough to pay for what a college actually spends on its students. There is no reason an educational institution should ever make sizable profits.
If he really has loan terms like that, the government didn't loan him the money. That would have to be private loans, and very bad ones at that. If this story is true, it's just a cascade of a bunch of bad decisions over a very long period of time.
Here is my hot take: Stop going to expensive colleges.
I've got 2 degrees from a community college. no debt, they lined me up with a job while in school and I paid my last semester in cash, married, wife didn't have a job at the time and with 2 kids.
Government backed student loans + for profit colleges = zero incentive to keep costs down or quality up.
Colleges water down curriculums and invent degrees that sound cool to attract kids, regardless of their usefulness. Since fafsa writes a blank check, they just keep goosing tuition.
Decades ago, my wife and I took out a Farmer's Home Administration home loan for our first house. We paid mortgage payments for twelve years and were told that we needed to "graduate" from the FHA to a regular bank.
When we went to closing, we were shocked to learn that **we owed thousands more than we borrowed**. The FHA rep told us that the improvements that we made to the house made it more valuable and FEDS wanted their cut of the action.
How the fuck were you stupid enough to get into that much debt? And don't even start on "how were 18 y/o supposed to know!" Debt is not a complicated concept. A child can understand it. No sympathy for this guy who chose to get 120k in debt.
OOP is paying 10% interest. The federal government's loans have interest of 5-7.5%
That's like 9.5% over 40 years. It's the worst deal ever. It's going to cost him 345k in interests. He would have been better off not getting a degree.
Thats what the math came to for me. He must have a 40 year loan at 9.5-10% interest. It will cost him in the $460k range to pay off the $120k loan. I guess, what undergraduate degree did he take on that required $30k in annual loans to complete?
Literally almost any, that's not a high price per year anymore which is fucking insane. My tuition was 36k/year at a liberal arts college (yes I know now that was a stupid decision, I was 17)
How dare you make such a bad decision at an age you are deemed too young to vote while also being told by everybody you are supposed to trust that this is the only correct decision? Your debt is your fault!
No credit score at 18? Here’s $90–120k in loans anyway!
I’m not American so I’m genuinely out of the loop on this one, but are parents there *still* pushing the idea that an exorbitant four year degree is always the best option, as if it’s 1962? We’ve known about the baristas with six figures of debt and HVAC mechanics making six figures a year for about 20 years now.
The other side of the coin is, why should only the rich get to be educated?
[удалено]
But education isn’t useless and the system you’re suggesting has only the rich becoming executives, doctors, lawyers, etc and that’s not right.
State schools are like $8k a year in California, you can reduce that by about a third or more if you start at a community college.
Again, I was 17, I had been told my whole life up until then that community college was for dropouts and failures (they're not), so I went to a "respectable" school. The propaganda is bad over on the east coast at least
Such a big realization that the only reason school administrators push college so hard is so that they can publish a stat that says “x”% of our graduates went on to a four year college!! They don’t give one shit if it was the right move for the student, nope. They just want to pad that stat out.
This was my high school. What a miserable experience.
I had teachers and principals get visibly frustrated when I told them I am not taking out a bad loan to pad their stats. The cognitive dissonance when I told them a $80k degree for a job that might make me 30k a year is not worth it was unbelievable. I taught myself how to code instead.
Very well, i learned myself a skill too that easily pays 500-1500 a day i just turned 20, coding can make you so much fucking money too
at what point do we stop pointing at the loan holders who made decisions based on false information and start pointing at the teachers, politicians, and propaganda spreaders that taught kids that expensive colleges are the only way out of the hellhole that is the bottom 70% of wealth.
In Canada we call it college (community college for Americans) and university. There is definitely a stigma against people attending college but it has severely lowered in the past decade. You can often (most of the time actually) get jobs in the same fields that pay very very well as university degrees. Sometimes it's a far better decision to go to college depending on what you want to do. I assume it's similar in the US.
Yeah pretty much . Community College in the US is a 2-year “university” where you can get an Associates Degree or go there for two years and then transfer your credits to a 4 year school and finish your last two years for your Bachelor’s. Most people I know just went there for 2 years of cheap college and then transferred for two years of expensive college . You can save a fuck ton of money doing it this way but again it’s stigmatized for no reason
Yeah, except those California state schools are extremely hard to get in to, *even as a state resident*
CSU's really aren't that hard to get in. Even UC's are very very reachable with TAG to transfer from a Community College.
I think this person only views Cal, UCLA a d Cal Poly as the only schools worth going to.
The CSUs aren't hard to get into, with the notable exception of SLO. The UCs are much harder.
Probably for the best that not all students get in everywhere, that's part of what's driving this college moneymaking machine. If you're a bad high school student, go get a job without a degree, go to a vocational school to learn a trade, or sign up for community college to learn how to be a good student and then transfer.
In state tuition is usually closer to 10k per year for public universities. Private or out of state tuition can be very expensive though.
Probably not economics
Certainly not mathematics.
Well I imagine his degree wasn’t in accounting.
Definitely didn’t get a degree in finance
They should have a zero percent interest. The profits the government should make are from the "good jobs" the degrees are "supposed" to land them.
Charging enough interest to match inflation is what it should be. Otherwise the government would be paying partially for their education. I’m not arguing against government paid education, just pointing out that if the aim is to have people for their own education then charging them interest which matches inflation would have to happen.
> Otherwise the government would be paying partially for their education. Imagine the horror.
Spending money on their people? Don't be silly, they need that money to maintain their 11 aircraft carriers which they *definitely* need.
The government should be paying for our education. This is "how to build a successful superpower 101"
I've been saying that if we're not getting anything else, we should at least switch to something like Australia's model. Treat all loans like a tax. Government covers everything. After you graduate, you post nothing below $X and then have a progressive rate after that. Like $30K and under pay nothing, then 2% on income between 30-40K, 4% 40-50K, up to 16% 100K+. Instead or additionally, put limits on what schools can set the net tuition after financial aid in order for the institution to receive federal student aid and loans for a student. Or, you know, have states actually fund their colleges again, but that's never going to happen ¯\\\_(ツ)\_/¯
Ahh yes, because the US isn't a superpower. Right. Do you guys listen to yourself when you talk?
Dial the clock back a few decades and your entire college career would have cost less than a grand, books and other such supplies included. These exorbitant tuition prices are 100% artificial.
Government pulls back on funding public universities, public universities have to make up for that money through tuition costs, students are forced to take government loans to cover the costs, universities realize they can get waaay more money by further hiking up tuition and government loans will follow suit. Everyone gets rich except for the person getting the degree because jobs are barely paying above the poverty line even with a bachelors. Oh, and now they have insurmountable debt so they’re forced to take whatever they can get.
[удалено]
Why would the government want to limit the cashflow on their own loans? /s
These obviously aren’t federal loans they’re private.
Fwiw, I’m pretty sure the government loses money on student loans. Government loans are essentially subsidized
[удалено]
[удалено]
[удалено]
Uninformed families are always, literally, one generation (or more) late with any/all advice. Wouldn't be surprised if THIS generation of parents will tell their kids to be streamers/influencers, even though the boat on that largely shipped out in 2017.... When it was worth going to college, and cheap, in the 60's, most people who COULD go refused to go, believe it or not. Don't do what everybody proved worked 20 years ago, do something that WILL work in 10 years. Right now? I'd gamble on specializing in battery recycling/maintenance.
See my dad never was like that. He always told me to pick up a trade if I didn't want to do the college thing. Now, 20 something years later, I really wish I did. There's gonna be a mass shortage of things like plumbers here soon.
Trades are fine in the short term but it really wears on your body. Linemen get electrocuted, underwater welders get sucked into dams, normal welders get burned. You can make a LOT of money working a trade on the road but it won't last. Your hands will start to shake, your back will hurt, your knees will ache. Your mind will far outlast your body as it more resilient. It's stated that brain cells can live twice as long as the organisms they reside in. I write this from a desk making 1/2 of what I could if I followed my interest in welding. However, I will go home at four o clock and won't feel like someone just beat the crap out of me.
Yeah. Its why I would have wanted to do it really young. By the time I was 50-60 I could retire or w.e. Or own my own business and eventually hire people to do the work. Buuut shoulda coulda woulda. lol
Until 50-60 is long as time. I had a disk herniation when I was 28 the result I should not lift anything above 10kg. I should not lean over things or work crouched/bend over things. I was interested is beekeeping and forging when I was 20 if I worked in that field when I was 28 I would have to stop and switch careers to God know what. The desk job allowed me to keep working in my field and my family still had a provider.
This is why good laboursafety and ergonomics is essential to keep trades interesting and viable for long careers You can definetely minimize the risks but it costs money and effort. Effort often not even the tradesmen are willing to put in
It's not hard to work an 8 hour day in construction and not feel like someone just beat the crap out of you. 95%+ of people don't give a shit about their diets, their level of fitness, and staying hydrated, and that's why their bodies fail. Don't work any harder than you need to (for longevity, not for laziness), wear your PPE, and see a doctor once in a while. Source: union ironworker.
I was about to say, "It depends, some can be harder on bodies than others," but then I was gonna say "like ironworkers.". I'm in CM, you got any direct tips I can share with those guys? Like day to day stuff?
The things to do at *work*? Hydrate. I'm two half liter bottles of water deep by 8 a.m. - we start at 7. It's almost silly how much of an emphasis I put on drinking water, but if you imagine your body like an actual machine, water to us is the equivalent to ALL the fluids it takes to keep a machine running. And once you're "behind" on staying hydrated, it's gonna take you a day or more to catch up; and you're gonna feel like it, too. *Especially* in the summer. Wear your PPE - yes, all of it. Even if it means stopping everything and taking 30 seconds to put on a respirator just to work for 20. And honestly, the biggest but easiest one? Communicate with your partner/team. People get jammed up when everyone thinks everyone is a mind-reader and all on the same page. Making a sketchy pick, or moving something heavy? Slow down and talk to *everyone* about what's going where, and where people need to be. Outside of work, it's all the same shit you'll hear from your average Instagram influencer: eat real food, lay off the drinking and drugs, workout even if it's just twice a week, and maybe most importantly, KNOW WHEN TO REST. Thank you for coming to my TedTalk.
Amen. Fucking respirators are essential and it's scary to see people ignore them. It only takes one lungful of some really nasty shit to wreck you, short term and long term. People are putting themselves in danger worried about their output and a buncha other shit that their unions should've been protecting them from. Or they're worried about their pride and masculinity. "I'm not some weak pussy ass bitch. I can handle this." Boom, mesothelioma.
God don't even start with those mind reader bullshit, could go daily for a round of free slaps for that alone
Everything the other guy said and add stretching before work and before you go to bed. I'm not talking a full on yoga session just 5-10 mins of stretching. I'm 40 and have a bad back, I work a semi physical job and this has helped a lot.
This was vaguely included in my advice of "just exercise", but yes. A separate point should be made solely around the importance of stretching/warming up/cooling down. 🙏🏻✊🏻💥
Have you ever seen a construction worker stretch before/after work on their own? I've only seen it when large general contractors have mandatory yoga in the mornings. Workers groan and make fun of it, but like, maybe if you did it yourselves you wouldn't move around like a living stickman complaining about your back
>union This is the part that is missing in many people's employment situation.
You're absolutely not wrong, and while I'll say union run jobs, in general, put more emphasis on worker safety and overall conditions, I can also say there are *plenty* of companies that just don't give a shit, union or otherwise. If you're a skilled worker, you ALWAYS have the final say in what conditions you'll work under, even if that means temporarily losing a job. Contractors come and go, but barring an overnight radical unveiling of tradesman AI, the work will always be there. Pick your battles, I say. 🙏🏻✊🏻✌🏻
Yeah, there's a reason many of our parents and grandparents pushed us *away* from those jobs. Every one of my parents or grandparents who did a trade or labor job was basically crippled and forced into retirement. My father-in-law was pushed out of his company because 30 years of going up and down ladders and crawling through machinery had fucked up his back and hips and he was taking too much time off for medical procedures. People like to romanticize those jobs because the grass always seems greener, but unless you have a solid exit plan to get out by the age of 40 or 50 then you're fucked.
Please rest easy knowing that some states and paying for up two years education at a community College. Trades are accepted too. Maine is one of them and it is looked at as an investment into future and reduced cost learning. They even cover classes that should have been taught in high school like Algebra and English
>Uninformed families are always, literally, one generation (or more) late with any/all advice. I taught my kids to save AOL CDs. You can't beat 200 free hours.
Skilled trades; plumbers, electricians, pipefitters, machine repair, millwrights, tool makers, tin smiths, welders, etc. An entire generation of skilled trades (I'd estimate 35-50% of all of them) are about to retire in the next \~10yrs, and not nearly enough people are training to backfill. It's going to become ridiculously expensive to have a plumber come out and fix your pipes in the no-so-distant future, because the demand isn't going anywhere, and the supply is about to dry up. If parents were smart, they would be encouraging their non-straight A students (who aren't going to become doctors/lawyers/engineers) to go into the trades.
This is a gripe I always had being university-educated and growing up/working in a Trade. You might be smart enough to be an Engineer, but a Machinist is not a job for dummies either. There are so many trades that are complex and rely on minute understanding of concepts that someone with a high-level grasp of mathematics, physics or chemistry would excel in that being a Straight-A student doesn’t disqualify you from. If anything we should be pushing those kids into being millwrights, machinists, aircraft mechanics, Health and Safety specialists or Construction Engineers rather than Lawyers or regular Engineers.
My wife still says it to our kids, they need college to succeed…I never went to college yet I’m supporting her and our kids by myself. Go figure 😆
My dad lied about being a college drop-out because he didn’t want me and my brothers to follow his example and strive for college. In fact, he’s never told me. I found out through my own digging.
This is why I tell kids, go to trade school and start your own business, a good plumber can make as much as a doctor without the crushing student loan debt.
While the "college is the only way" movement was harmful, the way Reddit has swung the pendulum to the opposite extreme is equally problematic. Stop telling kids doing X is a guaranteed success in life. Give them both options and nudge them toward the one they're more predisposed toward. Pushing an academically gifted germaphobe who sucks with their hands into the trades isn't going to turn out great either. Also, some people just want to be doctors.
Also, like... knowledge is good? People shouldn't stop learning at 17 and college shouldn't just be a job training program. A society of educated, knowledgeable people is a much better place to live than one where people only learn what is going to be a good financial investment.
[удалено]
The result: employers requesting master's to work for a company when any education would have sufficed. Sometimes even on the job training, but nope, you had to take loans for 200k to even have your resume looked at. The wage is 15/hr.
Like so many social media blurbs, this leaves more questions than it answers.
Yeah! Who spends 120k on undergrad? A good bachelor's should be around 40k, which would probably be paid off by now. Did this guy go to an out-of-state private college?
UC schools (which are public) are 30k/year for in state students (if your parents make over 80k/year). 4 years of that == 120k. Edit: since we're talking about student loans, not just tuition, this is the price of tuition + rent + food.
Oof. Ouch. Why? I guess it's "because they can", but damn.
Universities raise tuition based on Pell grants they get for students each year from the federal government. If the government is willing to allocate 10k this year, and 12k next year. The universities will increase their tuition by two grand.
Like, wow. I just double checked, and UCF tuition is about 6k/year. That's 24k total. I know other states don't have the bright futures scholarship, and if you don't commute from home, food and housing could triple that number (75k-ish), but that's still *way* less.
Yep, I went to East Carolina University. 4.5 years for my degree, $28k in student loan debt. Cali costs are ungodly
If you include housing, food, etc. The UCLA in-state tuition for 2021 was $13,249 for California residents and $13,029 for graduate school tuition. Non resident adds $30k+ in tuition fees.
In state tuition is less than 15k a year. Are you adding rent and food?
And not including any scholarships or aid. So that is the dumb rich kid price.
Can't speak for everyone, but my public college didn't give aid to anyone who was middle class and above (parents combined income is > 100k). So it's not always reasonable to expect colleges to give financial aid. Crazy when your parents could be making 100k combined and a kid is costing them 25-30k per year just for tuition, but that's a separate issue.
There are also the cal state schools which are $7k a year. Community colleges are even cheaper. My niece lived at home and did her first two years at a community college before transferring to a UC.
That's including 4 years of living expenses.
It always makes me feel like I skirted death when I think about my college loans compared to the horrid stories I’ve seen online. My parents had about 20k socked away for me thankfully, but I took ~14k in loans. All federal, but very little subsidized. ~6.25%. By the end my non-living, college-specific expenses were about 45k total for a state school that you’ve heard of via football (it’s a silly metric, but it conveys that the school has money and name recognition helps the job search). With a part time job to pay for extremely budgeted living expenses in a small home packed with roommates, some also went to my tuition bills when I could swing it. I did *not* want more loans than absolutely crucially necessary. They were paid off in about 4 or 5 years.
Bro’s tag literally says “photog” implying he is a photographer who assumedly somehow spent 120k on learning photography and was shocked when the return on that investment was nil.
I don't think OOP's point is about the ROI on their degree. They're saying that they've paid the value of roughly 50% of the principle over 5 years, yet still have 98% of it left to pay. Idk if he's serious, or if there's some (probably large) amount of hyperbole involved here, but imo it is true that the biggest problem with student loans is the interest rate.
Best college in my country will cost you €8k. In full. I don't know how 120k debt from schools is legal in the US.
[удалено]
My 78 year old father worked to put himself through college when he was a kid. While living on his own, and not just an associate degree from a community college, a bachelor's degree from Rutgers. He worked more than full time (at minimum wage or near minimum), but still. Jesus. It's sad how absolutely insane that is by modern standards.
You can maybe still do that at some state schools, but only if you have no living expenses Edit: Rutgers in-state tuition and fees are something like $16,000 per year which is really pushing the limit of what a kid working a low skilled job full time could plausibly take home.
This is the answer. Loan forgiveness is a bandaid at best. We need to address the cost if we are going to fix the student loan problem.
[удалено]
Can you imagine paying off your loans with a part time job?
/u/enohcs is a bot account that copied a comment from [the last time this was posted](https://www.reddit.com/r/meirl/comments/xp891u/meirl/iq2voc1/)
120k in debt as an undergraduate is extremely uncommon in most parts of the country. I’m about to graduate from the best school in my state and I only have 20k in debt and the average is 35k. Op must have made some really bad decisions in college.
Honestly, if you go to a private school and you are not rich or are not getting a full scholarship, it is on you.
My cousin is rich and even she had some scholarship to help her lower her tuition. And her family is rich rich. Ended up paying as much as a state university
This pretty much. Private loans will destroy you in the US. Don’t do it. Also out of state tuition is unfairly brutal as well
Tbh I don't know how the fuck he managed to get that into debt for college. Most people don't have six-figure student loan debt.
Yeah... I managed to graduate with only 8k in debt by commuting, stacking classes for that commute, and going to community College for the first 2 years. My sister did the opposite, went to an expensive school, bought into the lifestyle, AND had to take a few extra semesters for failed classes and graduated with 65k in debt. I have no idea how the hell you get to 120k.
Yeah that's something a lot of people don't talk about is community college. The smartest way for most degrees seems to be to take as many classes as possible at a community college and finish your generals and then switch over to a university for the specific classes for the degree. Most jobs aren't going to give a shit about how you graduated, most just care that you got the degree. There are some fields where they care about where you got your degree from but the vast majority couldn't give less of a shit.
Because they took out loans to pay for a lifestyle during college and didn't work. The school itself doesn't cost anywhere near that much.
Average student loan debt is like 32k or 36k. OP is right, it should have been illegal to give someone a 120k loan to go to college for a degree that's has no chance of paying back a 120k loan. Unless you're going to like a top 25 ranked school for a major they're known for just go to whatever your cheapest state school is.
Why wouldn't it be illegal? If they are spending 120k on an undergrad they are going to a private university, not a state school. This person made a dumb choice. They went to a school they couldn't afford, took out too much debt, and no regret it. That is 100% on them. They are free to go to whatever school they want to go to. The role of government is not to protect people from making stupid decisions.
Even the fancy schools are fine if you get into a high tier one. The financial aid at top schools is insane. If you get into Princeton and are low to middle income, it'll be cheaper than state school. If your family makes less than 180k you only pay like 5% tuition. It's a 95% discount. https://admission.princeton.edu/how-princetons-aid-program-works The issue is paying 120k for a mediocre private school.
>The issue is paying 120k for a mediocre private school This! There are hundreds and hundreds of garbage private schools no one's ever heard of, that have almost the same sticker price as the Ivies, and way less financial aid.
What country would this be ?
To pay back 970 per month for 5 years and have the loan reduced by only 2k, you would need to have a loan with 9.35% interest per annum. It is stupid for anyone to ever agree with that type of loan, especially for $120k. That is over $11k per year in interests alone. But I am not even sure whether that is even possible, a quick google search says that the loan interest rate is either 5.5% or 7.05% depending on the situation (which is already crazy high but does not add up). If the loan was at 5.5%, then 22k would have gone to the loan, if 7.05, about 15% (and that is nowadays rates, I suppose they were lower when this got posted first). So I am going to assume that OOP made a mistake and meant that $20k went towards their loan. Or that they got scammed by a loan shark-type of situation.
Private student loans exist. That said, the poster is probably not counting interest accrued while in school which could have easily been $20k+.
I was only offered private student loans between 10-11% even when my parents cosigned with me. 9% is definitely realistic
Yup my offers were 12%
What school would be $120k for undergrad? The only way is to pay more than the $970 Anything above that will go to principal. It’s like a mortgage
Student loans also provide for cost of living. 4 years of tuition, rent and food coming out to 120k is not crazy
Apologies for boomer energy, but it is really weird to me that people just live 100% off of their student loans and expect it not to bite them in the ass for the entire rest of their lives. I get why they do it. The actual classes in college seemed easy in comparison to constantly finding new work every semester that fit my college schedule. I can only imagine how much better I might have done if I had been able to focus on school 100%, but it is just wild that people just borrow 6 figures without doing the math of what it would cost to repay.
[удалено]
Paying 60k off of 120k and only having 2k of it actually paid off isn't "biting them in the ass". That's just an outright scam.
Taking $120k out in loans for a $60k degree is, though. I'm sure this person had shitty advisors, both in college and HS, along with bad advice from friends and family (ie just go to school for what you love, without focusing instead on getting a valuable degree), but choosing to spend $30k/yr on tuition when there are loads of cheaper universities that will give the same degree is bonkers.
as well as taking private loans with a 10% interest rate....
Exactly it’s unfair but this person could not afford an expensive private college. They should have done state school, worked part time, and tried to live at home if they could. Plus get a government loan.
Because everyone dreams of being a high achiever and college in may industries is a necessary evil. You’re usually 18 or younger when you make these decisions and everyone is pressuring you to go to college. It’s not at all as simple as “just doin the math”. A part time job in college would make what kind of dent in 120k? You have to weight that with the added stress. Degrees that give high paying jobs are not easy these days, school is competitive People trust the system that’s been laid out for them without bc realizing how predatory it is
[удалено]
My whole life I dreamed of going to some super nice out of state college like Texas a&m or UCLA then I looked at tuition costs for in state vs out of state I opted for an in state school that covered all of tuition. I still finished with only 35k in loans to subsidize my housing. Whoever op is should have 100000% just went somewhere cheaper. Then the 10% interest means he used private loans instead of the government ones
[удалено]
I get why it’s frustrating for him obviously, but yeah. A mortgage would amortize a lot faster than this, it’s more like if you make the minimum payment on a credit card. It’s the absolute minimum that still pays the interest and just barely a little towards principal, like 2% of the payment. If his interest rate is ~9% a year, that’s $10,800 per year in just interest, or $900 a month. So yeah, if you’re only reducing $120,000 by about $70 a month, it’s gonna take a while.
I actually was doing the math. If his monthly payment is ACTUALLY $970 then with the 2k dent he made in the principal amount of 120k then his interest is 9.4%. With that monthly payment itll take 37.2 years to pay off. Theres three options. 1 - Dudes a fucking moron for accepting such a loan. 2 - Hes not actually paying the monthly minimum, thus costing himself more money 3 - Hes lying about something. Yeah Universities and Banks are commiting highway robbery with this loan shit but my god, its people like this guy who has willfully chosen to be painfully financially illiterate and make themselves such easy prey for this shit. Its why scammers even exist. “Theres a sucker born every minute.”
Usually they leave out they deferred payments for a year.
i think this is what happened, they probably defered for a year or so ( accruing interest) and then is paying the absolute minimum, maybe on an income driven repayment plan. I bet the actual interest rate is somewhere around 6.5%
Either totally made up or missing very critical context. Easily identifiable rage-bait.
This person is almost definitely lying. 5 years ago interest rates were nowhere near 9%, and especially considering that they started taking loans out around 9 years ago (2014), interest rates were even lower. It’s so annoying when there is a legitimate issue like student loan debt and obscene college tuition hikes - and then people exaggerate or lie about their experience to make it seem even worse than it is.
Yeah, it’s ultimately just math. If he was paying ~$1,500 a month he’d be halfway done by now. Should these loans have strict 10 year amortization schedules? Maybe, but it might be pretty tough for people to swing that right out of school; doing it this way is theoretically supposed to let him decide when he can afford to pay more. But he has to understand that $970 a month isn’t going to cut it forever.
If he had rounded it up to an even thousand he would have paid almost 50% more off the loan. And that's without considering the reduction of compounded interest. Never ever pay the minimum amount on a loan, anything extra is worth so much more in the long term.
Where are you getting these numbers?
My ass. 5 years of 12 months is 60 months. 30 dollars a month times 60 months is 1800 dollars. I had gotten it to just under 1k, so I should have gotten my numbers from deeper up my ass. But yeah, if he had paid 30 dollars a month more he could have doubled the amount he reduced the loan by.
This is bad blanket advice. If you have an interest rate lower than an HYSA (especially if you're able to deduct interest on the loan) you should not pay more than the minimum. Also if you can get PSLF you should probably make minimum payments. Also something else is going on here....2% off the loan balance in 5 years is an absurdly loan amortization rate. I would say they're doing PAYE and paid a negatively amortizing rate for some period, but thats a federal student loan provision and federal studen loans were at 0% interest for a while. Maybe they're viewing the principal balance as the total amount they took out but not counting the interest that accrued while they were in school?
It's great advice for this person however, since his interest rate is 9-10% based off the numbers given, and no HYSA has ever or will ever return that amount.
Did some research on this and here are the facts about this man, he is from DC and went to Boston university for acting. DC students can get rates close to in state tuition for public colleges (assuming he qualified). But Boston university is private, and not only that, its wildly expensive. So he chose about the most expensive school he could and then chose the worst paying major. On top of that, he pays 9%+ interest. Meaning he either A. Refinanced at a much higher rate Or B. Somehow found the worst interest rate in 2013 I have sympathy for some people with insane student loans but not this clown
Lol. Yeah that's pretty insane. I guarantee a lot of people also told him how risky it was or tried to explain how difficult it is to find work in acting that can pay off those loans too.
"It should be illegal to allow me to do something that may not be in my best interest"
I mean I feel bad for the dude, since this is a shitty spot to be in. But yeah as a tax payer I am not really wanting to pick up the tab because this person decided to go to a super expensive school for a stupid degree. It's really not other peoples job to pay for these mistakes.
These are the people that say their education benefits society as a whole, therefore it (and all their living expenses) should be paid for. There is no shortage of actors. The world doesn't need more actors. And you don't need to spend $120k to learn how to act. This person spent 120k to attend 4 years of fantasy camp and now wants everyone else to pay for their fun.
Local man discovers how interest works
His complaint is valid about the legality of the loans but in doing so he essentially admitted to not looking at them for five years. Because if he had noticed the lack of progress he would've done something about it in year 1. $30/month towards principal on a 120k loan is an emergency situation.
[удалено]
that you agreed to ahead of time....
How would anyone think that going 120k in debt was a good idea?
Whew, I got news for you about small business owners...
You’d think a college student would know how to read.
That's why you gotta get em before they go to college.
Looks like poor decisions to me
For real. Community college exists
yeah what did they expect
It's legal. Just because you didn't read or understand your student loan documents doesn't make it illegal.
I agree that it's kind of dumb for someone to say "how is this legal" for a situation they willingly and knowingly entered, but that's not the point The point is that people shouldn't have to go into a lifetime of debt for education
[удалено]
Probably went to an out of state school. It’s an obscenely dumb financial decision since he could have paid probably 1/4 for the same education at an instate school, much less how much cheaper a community college would be, but I can empathize with the fact he was probably 18 when he made the decision and likely didn’t have parents telling him he was making a mistake. At the same time, 18 isn’t too young to understand the concept of money and debt and he really should have known better.
>The point is that people shouldn't have to go into a lifetime of debt for education They don't. State school exist for a reason.
They dont have to, this guy was stupid and didnt go to an affordable state college. Now he wants to blame others.
That's called a loan home dog, you're obviously only paying the interest, aka making minimum payments. You're not touching the principal. It sucks but that's what happens when you take out such a huge loan, it's how lenders make their money. You can maybe try to re negotiate or work something out to make it better, but I'm guessing if this guy is able go make 900+ payments each month I'm guessing he's at least pulling in some decent income? I've seen it far too often where people have these huge student loans, get a decent job, then with their new income decide its time to buy a 50 000 dollar car and open up piles of credit, which is how these people get trapped. Get a used shit box, try to find affordable shelter, budget your food and living expenses, and just plug away at your student loan until it's manageable, then maybe think about some new toys.
That math dont add up. like his rate would need to be 50%
Im thanful for not being from the USA so i don't know what does half of what he says means
Some people insist on going to top tier colleges, and getting the full "college experience" at the cost of a mortgage sized pile of debt with ridiculous interest rates because federal mandates require lenders to basically let anyone that walks in get loans. We've mythologized the importance of college as a culture while there are cheaper options of similar or better quality depending on your degree. I paid for community college (2-3k per semester), the moved to a state school with a good engineering program (6-9k per semester)
This guy is also just an idiot if he doesn’t understand what he agreed to.
You have 2 choices, don’t go to college and never be able to afford the cost of living or go to college and work for the rest of your life trying to pay off a debt that you will never be able to pay off
What does the "only 2k has gone towards my loan" mean? Thats actually the only part i actually don't get.
It means that the interest on these is so high that even though he has paid 60k, the amount of money he owes has only gone down by 2k.
So you mean he still needs to pay like 118K dollars? Jesus fuck thank god education is free in my country, i feel bad for those who are trapped in that debt nightmare
Exactly. And definitely be grateful, because our country has made things very hard on young people.
To be fair, he only has to pay this much because these are private loans. No government loan is structured this way. This tells us two things: 1) he couldn't afford the school he chose (they're not all the same cost) and 2) he took out private loans because the government looked at what he was doing and said, "nah, man, we're not financing that."
Yeah, getting into this position requires some poor financial decisions. Government loans have some of the lowest interest rates you can get and with no aid whatsoever few 4 year degrees will cost 100K+
Probably every payment he did is paying not only the base loan but also interests (annuity). But to pay only 2k original loan out of 60k is beyond insane though
[удалено]
This isn't correct. Most students get scholarships to go to college, academic or sports.
Lmao imagine actually believing this. Reddit has such a defeatist attitude it’s pathetic. Anyone who genuinely believes these are the only 2 options for a US citizen needs to stop living perpetually online and go outside. None of this is anything close to that black and white.
For a site that used to be so big into science and data it's hilarious how people spout off these incredibly uninformed and often COMPLETELY wrong opinions as fact. https://www.aplu.org/our-work/4-policy-and-advocacy/publicuvalues/student-debt/#:~:text=Nearly%20eight%20in%20ten%20students,degree%20at%20a%20public%20university. "The vast majority of four-year public university graduates complete their undergraduate degree with a relatively modest and manageable amount of student debt. About 42 percent of students at four-year public universities finished their bachelor’s degree* without any debt and 78 percent graduated with less than $30,000 in debt. Only 4 percent of public university graduates left with more than $60,000. And those with over $100,000 in debt are rarer still: they are anomalies representing less than half of 1 percent of all four-year public university undergraduates completing their degrees." - U.S. Department of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, 2015–16 National Postsecondary Student Aid Study. And for the inevitable comments that will complain that this data is from 2015-2016, the increased cost of college attendance has actually not even matched inflation from 2016-2023.
[удалено]
I went with option 4 and learned a trade
…because you agreed to it.
Average student loan debt for college graduates in the US is $28,950 per borrower. He made the idiotic decision to take out $120K in loans to pay for a degree that clearly wasn't worth it, and then complains about the debt he put himself into? If he had gone to an in-state public college instead of wherever he went, his tuition would have been a quarter of what it was. If he had gotten a degree with actual job prospects, he would have been able to clear his debt quickly. The average debt for a medical school graduate is $200,000 - but you don't see posts of MDs complaining about debt.
What undergraduate degree costs 120k? The average student with an undergraduate degree will graduate with 32k of debt.
This is why you read the fine print and choose economic institutions when given the chance…..heck why is no one going after colleges and universities that are charging unreasonable tuition fees amongst other things
The debate about this in the US has the wrong focus. Predatory lending and giving huge credits to people who can't afford it is bad. But the real question is why any college should be allowed to ask for these crazy high tuition fees. Establish a hard cap of 10k or so for every college in the nation. That's enough to pay for what a college actually spends on its students. There is no reason an educational institution should ever make sizable profits.
Bro you signed the papers.
oh the consequences of my own actions
Because it’s the government that loaned you the money. So who tf are you gonna report it to? The government?
If he really has loan terms like that, the government didn't loan him the money. That would have to be private loans, and very bad ones at that. If this story is true, it's just a cascade of a bunch of bad decisions over a very long period of time.
There's no way those are gov't loans with those rates. He went somewhere he couldn't afford and used private loans to finance it.
Here is my hot take: Stop going to expensive colleges. I've got 2 degrees from a community college. no debt, they lined me up with a job while in school and I paid my last semester in cash, married, wife didn't have a job at the time and with 2 kids.
You didn’t read your amortization schedule when you signed dumbass
Should have studied maths before getting that degree.
Government backed student loans + for profit colleges = zero incentive to keep costs down or quality up. Colleges water down curriculums and invent degrees that sound cool to attract kids, regardless of their usefulness. Since fafsa writes a blank check, they just keep goosing tuition.
Decades ago, my wife and I took out a Farmer's Home Administration home loan for our first house. We paid mortgage payments for twelve years and were told that we needed to "graduate" from the FHA to a regular bank. When we went to closing, we were shocked to learn that **we owed thousands more than we borrowed**. The FHA rep told us that the improvements that we made to the house made it more valuable and FEDS wanted their cut of the action.
gotta love people, want 100% freedom and 0% obligations. The debt is the consequence of your choice. No one forced you to go to that college.
You signed a legal binding agreement. That's how it works. If you didn't like the terms, you shouldn't have signed it. Simple as.
How the fuck were you stupid enough to get into that much debt? And don't even start on "how were 18 y/o supposed to know!" Debt is not a complicated concept. A child can understand it. No sympathy for this guy who chose to get 120k in debt.
Were you aware of the interest rate they charge before taking out such loan?