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UPDATE: 01/11/2012 - We are all still screwed. Other priorities created by the powerful elite have distracted our great nation from dealing with student loan debt in a responsible manner. Be sure to vote in 2012 - put progressives back in charge of the Congress and then scream like hell at them to get done what you want!


Saturday, February 6, 2010

The Unforeseen Consequences of Student Debt

When you set out to achieve your dreams to get the college education that your parents didn't get or couldn't have the benefit of remember this - the fairytale of the magical college diploma leaves out a few things.

When I decided to seek a graduate degree I thought it was the right thing to do for my future. I had a dream of helping people and to get there I was going to need an advanced degree and the help provided by student loans. I know now that I was so very naive - that nothing comes without a price in this world. All too late I am learning that my dream was a mirage and that student loans can be the worst thing to ever happen to you.

My wife and I are at a turning point in our lives. We are both getting older and time is running out for us to have children of our own. Complicating this picture is the fact that she is stuck in a dead end job that offers no retirement and no possibility for advancement or significant pay increases. Her current job pays modestly and provides little in the way of personal reward or intellectual stimulation either. It is deadening to the soul for her to stay there but - like so many Americans - it has kept food on the table and kept her out of debt.

So before us is the fact that I have approximately $120,000 in student loans that are choking my income - our income - and there is no real relief in sight. With the 'repayment' plan I am on, the payments will only rise over time making our financial situation only more difficult. (The new IBR plan Obama proposes offers us no hope because her income is still part of the formula). My own job will see some modest pay increases over the next few years but not in the way to make any significant disposable income available.

Before us then is a choice to have children or not OR for her to back to school or not OR for us to play it safe and not do either because of the depressed state of the economy and my student loans.

It seems that we are damned no matter what we decide. We could send her back to school but the program that she has been accepted to will cost $30,000 over the next two years. Because of the intense nature of the program she would have to quit her job. All for the 'POSSIBILITY' that she would have a better job in two years and POSSIBLY a better rate of pay and maybe a pension and maybe some personal reward to it.

And as I have urged others to be specific - her plan is to get a specific degree targeted for a specific salary at the end of a specific time period. But all of it is predicated on a bunch of 'ifs' and 'assumptions' and should anything go wrong - we would be totally, and irrevocably screwed financially. For us to lose her salary would put an immense pressure on our already strained income and modest savings. All for a dream and a bunch of assumptions.

I don't want to focus too much on the job issue because this would cause us to ignore our desire to have a family. There is little money for this however or time even left to make the decision before it is made for us.

So our lives are at a crossroads - what do we do? Do we risk a soul killing job in the hand for a dream in the bush? Do we have children right now and throw caution to the wind and assume somehow everything will be all right? Maybe the government would help us - yeah right!

How, in one of the wealthiest countries to ever exist, did we get here?

The greatest pain for me is that my student loans are at the center of all this. Without these loans she could go back to school. We could have had a child already. Money would not be at the center of every ache in our hearts if it wasn't for these loans - and for the stupid, childish decisions I made earlier in my life.

I don't mean to sound completely sour on higher education mind you. While I have benefited on an intellectual and personal level from my education however, it hasn't been worth it financially, socially or familial-y. If I had it to do over again with what I know now - I would have foregone college from the start and waited until I had the money in hand before ever thinking of a higher education.

The government's help with plentiful student loans and no protections in the event that life's inevitable missteps would occur have shackled my future to the point of choking the life out of it. It is very likely that my wife and I will not be able to afford to have children or be able to send her to college. All because I signed on the dotted the line years ago and didn't really know the true cost of those loans. But as former President Bush was quoted to have said when asked about his drug use in his youth - "When I was young and stupid I was young and stupid."

That being said - my gift to anyone starting out is a word of advice. Given the state of the economy as it currently is - unless you have an inside line on a job when you graduate or parents to pay for college and save you the debt - WAIT to go to college. Wait until you have the money because there are very real, unforeseen consequences of student debt just as there will be unforeseen happenstances in life.

The unforgiving and enslaving system of financing higher education that we currently have in place is not to be trusted. Understand this - because your entire life and your hope of finding immortality through your own children just might depend on it.

J. Densmore

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