Hilarious! Student loan forgiveness… NOT!

Exactly.

38 years old, teacher w/ master's degree, NO debt except my house and I payed for every dime of my education myself. Wife has a degree as well and her education has been paid off for over a decade. We paid for that one as well. Married 16 years, teaching high school for 14ish. Not getting rich here, but I own my own home (as much as anyone with a mortgage does), we have some savings, retirement is being funded, and again, NO debt.

Problem is people try to live above what they can afford. We did almost all of this on 1 teacher income, sometimes with a little bit of substitute teacher income. Go to a college you can afford, work hard all the way through to keep costs low and income higher than costs, live within your means.

It's not complicated. It just takes discipline... kinda like running.

in95 wrote:

Too many people trying to live outside of their means. Younger generation wants to live in the big city where cost of living is crazy high, but don't have the income to afford it and then want to begrudge anyone they perceive as successful.

It's really not that hard to figure this stuff out, its just too many folks in the younger generation want to have it all immediately because that's what the social media influencer portrays.

I love this -- as if there's no such thing as privilege or family wealth or anything that puts someone a step (or many) ahead. Kids have no clue what they're signing up for at 18. They're told go to college -- that's how you become successful. Instead of blaming them, & not understanding how forgiveness might work, why not go after schools for gouging kids? Why not go after loan companies for locking in higher than needed interest rates? There's so many issues at play on this one & some are just so content to republican it & blame you for being successful or not (whatever that means) & making good choices. Nobody is really that well off in America. The types of people saying this nonsense might think they're well off but they're closer to minimum wage workers than Bezos & if they had any ounce of class solidarity then maybe we could chip away at extreme inequality.

I love this -- as if I had any privilege or family wealth that put me ahead. It's always someone else's fault. I'm never to blame. Bezos is evil because he has more than me. Obviously it is impossible to be happy, content, or successful anymore unless you one of his irk.

I made it work. So can you. Or you can choose to blame others and wish you had what they have.

runnER/DR wrote:

Make the working class pay off the loans of the white collar wealthy coastal elites. Dems have morphed into the party of the elites.

The right thing would be to stop printing blank checks to schools that continue to jack up tuition costs for higher than inflation.

I paid 40K a year for med school tuition 15 years ago...and that was expensive back then. My school charges 75K a year now. Because they can.

1) The wealthy folks would be the ones paying for free college since the wealthy pay the lion share of taxes.

2) You're right, blank checks to schools does need to stop. When you have a free college system like other nations, you have to also control costs and such.

Here's the thing. Say every public university in America is tuition free for four years. What happens to the tuition of private universities? I would assume private schools would have pressure to drop the cost. Would I want to go to Notre Dame for engineering if I can go to Purdue for free? Maybe, maybe not.

penguinn wrote:

Wow this thread is angry, lol.

I don’t have much experience from both sides, but as a 30 year old who’s parents fully paid for my college, the current system worked for me. I was set up to work my way up to a decent salary and start saving for my kid’s college without having that debt.

Obviously tongue-in-cheek. We need to promote alternative options to college imo. Stupid that it is seen as the only path to be upper middle class.

I dont know about that............

You don't need a management job, so you don't need an MBA. I'm in my upper 20's making $95k with my electrical engineering degree. I know people who are accounting/finance around my age making $70k-$80k with 'just' a BA. These salaries I'm describing is more than enough to pay off $50k-$80k of loans by the time you're in your upper 20's. And if you pick an affordable school and work 40 hour weeks in the summers and a little bit during the school year like I did I had less loans and got it paid off when I was like 24 or 25.

Heck I know some people making $90k as software developers who just went to a 2-year community college program.

People need to make smart decisions on what schooling they choose to pay for.

Koko the Gorilla wrote:

Master of Lolly wrote:

Education should be free (paid by taxpayer) to begin with.

Yes, you, reading this, should be paying for people to study at university and also be happy about it too.

If you want to know why, I can gladly tell you.

No thanks. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say NO, I don't want know your libbed up reason for why I should pay for your indoctrination. I'd rather flush my money down the toilet.

Well that's just dumb. You could pay and profit but you would rather struggle in ignorance and have others struggle too.

Koko the Gorilla wrote:

Master of Lolly wrote:

Education should be free (paid by taxpayer) to begin with.

Yes, you, reading this, should be paying for people to study at university and also be happy about it too.

If you want to know why, I can gladly tell you.

No thanks. I think I speak for a lot of people when I say NO, I don't want know your libbed up reason for why I should pay for your indoctrination. I'd rather flush my money down the toilet.

Any job worth having requires technical or subject matter expertise. I would argue any accredited training program should also be free, whether that's a liberal arts school, technical school, etc. If we invest in education and job training we'll see a strong return on investment and it will make us a stronger country.

I went to a JUCO, followed by a state university. I worked my tail off in high school and JUCO to get a scholarship covering tuition, and worked multiple jobs on top of that to avoid taking out too many loans. The loans I did take out were paid off my first year after graduation at a low-paying job ($30,000 my first year). I lived frugally in college; I felt guilty buying food off the dollar menu at McDonalds. I wasn't out partying, taking trips, going to concerts. I would prefer to not pay for others' loans now.

Forgiving the loans is the payback to all those colleges for the indoctrination they have been practicing. have you looked at salaries/bloat at universities lately? That indoctrination costs money! Schools will just raise prices more knowing its really a kickback from the left.

jamb innnnn wrote:

Keep paying your debt, peasants.

Covid parties over.

Are you aware that over 80% of the PPP loans have been forgiven already. 80% of the loans taken out two years ago. Many of these, and most in the first wave were granted to large and very wealthy companies. However, 6/10th of 1 percent of student loans have been forgiven since 1958, a mere 63 years ago.

We seem to live in an increasing "have" and "have not" country.

kma wrote:

Spoken like someone who had no idea what public university costs, and also no idea what most proposed student loan forgiveness plans look like.

When I started at Cal Poly SLO it was $3000 a year for tuition. If you were frugal you could get by for around $15K a year. You could graduate from a very very good engineering school, that also had some other top majors ready for the workforce for about $60K-$70K in 4 years. If you worked during the year and over summer you could escape with very minimal student debt and an undergrad that would set you up in a high-paying job right away. There are also scholarship opportunities available.

The point is this was extremely doable if you are smart about this and make smart choices. Granted the cost has gone up now. Costs at SLO dramatically rose when Obama expanded the federal student loan program. I had a family member trail me by 5 years and paid 2.5X in tuition, and I've heard its more than 3X now. State funding also contributed to this but the upward trajectory definitely tracked federally guaranteed student loans just like at every university nationwide. Government intervention in the form of Democrat party policy dramatically drove up the price of college and created this student loan crisis. Now the people who created the problem are promising they have the keys to solving it. That will definitely go well.

At the end of the day this comes down to decision making and responsibility largely needs to fall on the kid and their parent to ensure they are realistic about added earning power of the degree and what it will cost them. But a dose of common sense is needed from the public to recognize that this is largely a government-caused problem and looking to them for the solution probably is not going to make the problem better.

Interest rates should be capped, and only fixed. So much of the problem is that - even people trying to pay back - see very limited progress due to unnecessarily high interest rates. I don't think any student loans should be granted for for-profit or unaccredited colleges–though really all colleges are for profit.

Parents, communities, high schools, and colleges need to stop messaging "college or else." I think that's changing, but likely was at its peak in the late '90s and early '00s.

Online colleges / learning and "bootcamps" are truly democratizing continued education. I'm certain we'll see more kids choosing this route over traditional four year universities.

Something I wish more students would take advantage of is ROTC. Everyone I know who went that route is thankful for the experiences, "job" after graduation, and lasting career opportunities after their service period. I think a ton of students will find they can both go to their dream school and not have to worry about the loans.

All this to say, I think the millenials / gen-X with high student loan burden, will continue to struggle. Even if the government intervenes, it would probably only apply to government loans, and it's really the private loans that have the super high interest rates, unfair forbearance terms. I'm hopeful for Gen-z and beyond though.

The government holds all the loans and offers very low rates averaging from 3-4%...

Try to get a loan for anything else cheaper as an 18 year old with no job, no credit. and no collateral.

The Democrats decided it was unfair that 100% of the population couldn't go to college so they inserted the federal government to "fix" the problem and whaddya know education is now exponentially WORSE... just like every other thing the Democrats tried to "fix" for votes.

Bullsh*t. I entered college in 2005 when online resources are nothing compared to 2021. At that age I knew that majority in family studies or basket weaving would be a disaster.

Majored in engineering and haven't looked back since.

Just wanna say your username isn’t right, as you’re not older than a millennial. 40 year olds are millennials, you’re 38 buddy.

I don’t know anyone who pays full sticker price for college. If he didn’t get a grant like my kids did that maybe he should’ve gone somewhere else.

BSEE (or maybe it's only an ASEE?) only making $95K after working for 7 or 8 years? You need to look around, man.

you could have done so much better wrote:

I don’t know anyone who pays full sticker price for college. If he didn’t get a grant like my kids did that maybe he should’ve gone somewhere else.

Full sticker price at private colleges is paid by wealthy parents of C students and foreigner.