7 ms·

How Debt Can Destroy a Budding Relationship

64 points by georgecmu 16y ago

patio11 16y ago
$170k for a bachelor's in photography?!?
- georgecmu 16y ago
  The magic of compound interest... Seriously, though, in most schools tuition is the same regardless of the major. I hear it's $40K+/year for tuition alone at many private schools.
  - kd0amg 16y ago
    Seriously, though, in most schools tuition is the same regardless of the major. I don't think GP's surprise was based on the idea that a bachelor's degree in such a major would typically be cheaper than others. I think GP was surprised that someone would be willing to take on so much debt for a degree in that major.
    - georgecmu 16y ago
      Here's a table of tuition fees for her school http://www.universities.com/edu/Brooks_Institute_of_Photography.html http://www.universities.com/edu/Brooks_Institute_of_Photogra... It's 25K-26K per year, so even if she paid nothing out of pocket and had no financial aid, she'd owe slightly over $100K when she was done. And the rest of it has compounded. But yeah, most people don't do the math and don't have a realistic view of their career path when they enroll in their programs. I think depression would be a lot more common, if they did...
      - nkassis 16y ago
        Wow, this is highway robbery. People need to realize that they don't need to pay crazy money for a degree. Unless you go to one of the top 20 school in the US. You are getting nothing better than a state school degree. And some state schools are quite good (many programs are rated higher than all these private schools charging 20+K) The best advice is to pay the minimum you can unless you get a shot at going to harvard. And if you do, some of these school now are offering free tuition for people making less than X amount of money. I might be biased because I have a degree from a state university but that never prevented me from getting work.
- DannoHung 16y ago
  This is why I argue against liberal arts degrees. There are so, SO few people who will ever be able to bring the sort of value required by a degree in the liberal arts based on the skills such a degree would provide that it is completely economically irresponsible, especially now that just having a Bachelor's degree says about as much as having a High School diploma did about 30 years ago.
  - rbritton 16y ago
    $170k for a photography degree is asinine. I am a photographer, and the field is more like 90% business and 10% photography. If nothing else, the years of running the business have taught me that people don't necessarily want the ultra-artsy approach tendered by those liberal arts schools -- they will, most of the time, pick the standard, face-forward, simplistic pose. I went to college and it sure wasn't for photography. Photography just happened. I have a BS in Computer Science, and I also have no debt resulting from it. Rather than pursuing a software developer job, which I expected I would be doing, I opened a photography business and have been quite comfortable. Software is now just my hobby, but it's a very useful one. Knowledge of business and accounting will get you far further in almost any industry than a specialty degree will.
    - georgecmu 16y ago
      What do you think of her portfolio? http://www.allisonbrookephotography.com/#/client/content_page/4809.xml http://www.allisonbrookephotography.com/#/client/content_pag...
      - prs 16y ago
        I like what I see.
      - rbritton 16y ago
        Decent, though I'm personally not a fan of the faux coloring or the frequent tilting that seems to be the trend lately. But, she's in the Bay area. That's one of the most saturated markets in the US, and some of the best photographers I know are there. The competition would be very, very tough.
- prs 16y ago
  That is a lot of lenses. I read the article one or two hours ago and the NYT has switched both the main article picture (it used to be the small one that can be seen once scrolling down) as well as the caption below the image. I wonder why/how often they do that.
  - petercooper 16y ago
    The new main picture is more relevant to the story since it has the boyfriend in. The other picture looks like any of a million stock photos. I suspect the cleavage got it relegated too (though if it were the Daily Mail or New York Post, that'd get it promoted ;-)).
- sbaqai 16y ago
  should it really cost $170k for a bachelor's degree in anything?
  - hnal943 16y ago
    No. Part of the reason for that is America's culture of debt; it's obviously not real money to the woman in the story. I wonder what her credit card statements look like.
chime 16y ago
I don't think debt by itself can destroy a relationship. Lack of proper communication can. I had under $50k debt from my undergrad (international student, double the cost of tuition) and my wife had none. My masters was being paid by my employer while she would be taking about $80k in loans to pay for her medical masters. We were upfront to each other about our obligations and plans of repayment. I've paid off almost all of my debt and she will take care of hers once she graduates. Even if we both had 100k+ in debt, it wouldn't make a huge difference to our standard of living. We'd simply be paying off debt instead of adding to our savings.
- danilocampos 16y ago
  Really important observation. Glad you deflated the sensational headline. Debt is a big deal. But we're all carrying around big deals, one way or another. The important part is being open and honest with yourself, so you can be open with the person you want to share your life with. Eastman was avoiding the truth of her situation, which screwed both herself and her fiance. You could just as easily say "How having prior children can ruin budding relationships." And sure, they can discourage them. But a relationship where the kid situation is known up front is very different from a relationship where the kid is disclosed a few weeks before the wedding.
  - houseabsolute 16y ago
    Then again, no amount of communication is going to completely negate the blow of someone with $200k or more debt who does not plan to earn enough to pay it off. There's a lesson in that . . . something like, "Don't buy expensive things unless you're sure you want them and can pay for them."
    - danilocampos 16y ago
      I mean, yeah. There's debt and then there's debt. But if you've got any chance at all of succeeding, you need to talk about this sooner rather than later.
    - Mz 16y ago
TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago
To me, this is foreign. If you love somebody, and I mean _truly love_, it doesnt matter how much money you owe, or what judgments are against you. Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it). If their marriage was a convenient way to get tax benefits and other marriage related tax burden reductions, so be it. Enter as a business arrangement, which is what he seemed to have done without understanding liabilities.
- rikthevik 16y ago
  Love is a very important part of a relationship, but it's not the whole story. Many times we end up relationships with people who make our hearts flutter, but who ultimately are bad for us. Marrying someone who is so deep in the red is a really big deal. Some people are comfortable assuming a great deal of debt - I'm not, and I could never be with someone who had that much hanging over their head.
- sliverstorm 16y ago
  I'm sure everyone has a point where they say 'enough!'. And besides that, there is a point where you have to say, "I love you and I want to say that doesn't matter, but it does, even though I don't feel like it does". Occasionally, you have to protect yourself from yourself. It also might wind up providing new insight on their character.
- Charuru 16y ago
  Think about it another way. If I _truly love_ someone it wouldn't matter to me what the financials are like. But the person that I would truly love would not be the a person that would take on a crippling amount of debt.
- lionhearted 16y ago
  > Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it). Something to think about, this might be controversial but I'm going to try to put it as well as I can because I think you'll be better off if you think about it - you said you'd have moved the world for a woman you were with, but it didn't even seem like she cared if you were there. Those two things might be related. These days, much of the media and movies show women falling in love with men who are attentive, kind, loving, and affectionate with no strings attached, and even if she isn't good to him in the beginning he eventually wins her over. Purely dutiful and attendant sorts of men. However, this is a fairly new set of affairs - not long ago, women's expectations and judgments on a man were based on a mix of pragmatic considerations (politics, division of labor), shared values like religion and community, and the man accomplishing tangible things. It's possible that if you expressed more external drive to change things in the outside world, and less pure devotion at all costs even when it's unreciprocated - that a woman in your life would love you more, serve you more, and actually feel happier being with you. Also, in such a state of affairs, you might be happier too. Maybe I'm wrong! I don't know, it's just worth thinking about. I see a lot of people talking about preferences for certain things while actually choosing and being satisfied with something a little different.
nhashem 16y ago
I wonder if engineers are more susceptible to this situation, often because our occupation doesn't require us to frontload with student debt and it's easy for your salary to escalate within a couple years. In other words, it's very easy to be a programmer in your mid-20s with absolutely no debt. Dating someone whose debt situation is very different than yours seems likely.
- jarek 16y ago
  Are you talking about programmers, or engineers?
- hnal943 16y ago
  Unless you're dating a doctor or a lawyer, I can't think of another profession that requires you to borrow anymore than for an engineering degree (i.e. a four year college education).
dman 16y ago
Before opening the article I was expecting an article about US-China relations.
cperciva 16y ago
The article asks the question of when individuals entering a relationship should bring up debts. Being a bit more optimistic, and hopefully more relevant to the world of startups, I'd like to ask the opposite question: If you're entering a relationship, when is the right time to mention that you're rich?
- Mz 16y ago
  Before there is a "relationship"? Not being a smart aleck: if someone knows you socially before you begin dating, they should have some general idea of where you stand in that regard. For some of the "big" issues in my own life, I generally find it doesn't work well to get hooked up with people who don't already know some things about me. But I am not a fan of online dating, so if that is the route you are going, I really can't help you.
- philwelch 16y ago
  After you're sure she likes you for reasons other than you're rich?
  - cperciva 16y ago
    That makes sense to me, but many people advertise their income on online dating profiles, so it doesn't seem to be a universal opinion.
philwelch 16y ago
If you carry $170,000 of debt without even realizing how much the total amount is, that says something about you, something that may in fact make some people less willing to marry you. Having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is fine. It's a curse of the middle class, at one point or another--a mortgage if not student loans. You're supposed to realize what you're doing when you borrow that kind of money, though. Running up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without fully recognizing what you're doing seems irresponsible. You're mentally evading your responsibilities to others. I can't even comprehend the mindset involved in that. How can you spend years paying for anything (even a car!) without even once trying to keep track of where you stand in terms of paying it off?
- mortenjorck 16y ago
  I wonder if it's due in part to an acclimation to residential rent and car leases. I consider myself very financially disciplined, and would never lose sight of the outstanding principal and interest rate of a loan, but I have no idea how much I've paid the landlords of my current rental apartment over the past few years. Like the woman in the article, I don't really fancy thinking about it.
  - philwelch 16y ago
    That's past expenditure, though. It's not helpful to think about past expenditures too much, because as sunk costs they fundamentally don't matter anymore. It's not useful to cry over spilt milk. OTOH, it's positively uplifting to contemplate the state of having saved thousands of dollars, or having paid down your debts by thousands.
waldorfsalad 16y ago
Okay, simple: how the f*ck do you run up $150k+ in debt and NOT KNOW THE BALANCE? Continually amazed with people. Makes a good point about the potential pointlessness (and lack of financial feasibility) of higher education. Makes me question getting an MBA.
- sr3d 16y ago
  Answer? simple. $150K/4 = $37.5K/year, an average tuition of a liberal arts collect. I went to Lake Forest College, 1hr north of Chicago, and this was their tuition 5 years ago. Did I pay the full-price? No. I got a half-off scholarship for getting a SAT score above 1,200. Simple. I only paid ~ 16K/year (room & board included) for 4 years. But there were people paying the full price. I hope they make good money to pay all that debts. 4 years went by really fast, and before you know it, you're in great debt. I don't think that people are totally irresponsible. Here in the US you were taught to at a very young age to "follow your dream" and the rest would come. For a 18 year old girl or guy, being so young and naive but having no clues about finance and the real cost of money (your life!), of course she/he would make a decision of following their dream. However, undergrad debts are understandable. If you make a wrong decision and can't get a job with a high enough salary to pay back the debt, at least it's early in your life so you can recover. But if you're 25 and want to further defer the real hard life by getting a master degree of something you want (but probably don't need to), and along the way get in tons of debt, then you're financially irresponsible. Higher education should not be this big of a financial burden for students, but it's pretty profitable and the US education system is still the best in the world, so there's a huge premium to go study here. From my own experience, foreign students make really good and conscious choice about where to go and how to get a scholarship. A lot of my international student friends got full scholarship to top schools, but this may not be the case for every one. But they and their parents really come prepared to pay every dime for a good education that can help hem make the most out of their professional life after graduation. I was too an international student. My point of view in life is: time is money, debt is negative money, thus you're subtracting time from you life to pay for debts. And that's the real cost of debt.
TGJ 16y ago
It doesn't matter what's going on outside the relationship, if you're not communicating, it's not working. It really is as simple as that.
mkramlich 16y ago
On a related note, one of my projects is an effort to help ensure that more people can acquire the benefits of a college degree but without having to incur a large amount of cash debt or time debt. I'm sure I'll have more details to announce here if/when it's further along.
- 9oliYQjP 16y ago
  Why did you get downvoted to 0 with this comment? This place is getting ridiculous with the down voting now.
known 16y ago
Is it applicable at national level? America's debt is 53% of its GDP.
ww520 16y ago
Most marriages are economically based, explicitly or implicitly. It's in the evolution instinct of married people to have the best environment to bring up kids, which means financial stability. Having huge debt would make you less attractive since you will make the union's financial situation worse. The other side being significantly well-off often mitigates the problem, so just look for rich people to marry if one is deep in the hole.
kingkawn 16y ago
US medical schools are now going around $70k/year including the costs of living. sigh/lol.

64 points by georgecmu 16y ago

patio11 16y ago

$170k for a bachelor's in photography?!?

georgecmu 16y ago
The magic of compound interest... Seriously, though, in most schools tuition is the same regardless of the major. I hear it's $40K+/year for tuition alone at many private schools.
- kd0amg 16y ago
  Seriously, though, in most schools tuition is the same regardless of the major. I don't think GP's surprise was based on the idea that a bachelor's degree in such a major would typically be cheaper than others. I think GP was surprised that someone would be willing to take on so much debt for a degree in that major.
  - georgecmu 16y ago
    Here's a table of tuition fees for her school http://www.universities.com/edu/Brooks_Institute_of_Photography.html http://www.universities.com/edu/Brooks_Institute_of_Photogra... It's 25K-26K per year, so even if she paid nothing out of pocket and had no financial aid, she'd owe slightly over $100K when she was done. And the rest of it has compounded. But yeah, most people don't do the math and don't have a realistic view of their career path when they enroll in their programs. I think depression would be a lot more common, if they did...
    - nkassis 16y ago
      Wow, this is highway robbery. People need to realize that they don't need to pay crazy money for a degree. Unless you go to one of the top 20 school in the US. You are getting nothing better than a state school degree. And some state schools are quite good (many programs are rated higher than all these private schools charging 20+K) The best advice is to pay the minimum you can unless you get a shot at going to harvard. And if you do, some of these school now are offering free tuition for people making less than X amount of money. I might be biased because I have a degree from a state university but that never prevented me from getting work.
DannoHung 16y ago
This is why I argue against liberal arts degrees. There are so, SO few people who will ever be able to bring the sort of value required by a degree in the liberal arts based on the skills such a degree would provide that it is completely economically irresponsible, especially now that just having a Bachelor's degree says about as much as having a High School diploma did about 30 years ago.
- rbritton 16y ago
  $170k for a photography degree is asinine. I am a photographer, and the field is more like 90% business and 10% photography. If nothing else, the years of running the business have taught me that people don't necessarily want the ultra-artsy approach tendered by those liberal arts schools -- they will, most of the time, pick the standard, face-forward, simplistic pose. I went to college and it sure wasn't for photography. Photography just happened. I have a BS in Computer Science, and I also have no debt resulting from it. Rather than pursuing a software developer job, which I expected I would be doing, I opened a photography business and have been quite comfortable. Software is now just my hobby, but it's a very useful one. Knowledge of business and accounting will get you far further in almost any industry than a specialty degree will.
  - georgecmu 16y ago
    What do you think of her portfolio? http://www.allisonbrookephotography.com/#/client/content_page/4809.xml http://www.allisonbrookephotography.com/#/client/content_pag...
    - prs 16y ago
      I like what I see.
    - rbritton 16y ago
      Decent, though I'm personally not a fan of the faux coloring or the frequent tilting that seems to be the trend lately. But, she's in the Bay area. That's one of the most saturated markets in the US, and some of the best photographers I know are there. The competition would be very, very tough.
prs 16y ago
That is a lot of lenses. I read the article one or two hours ago and the NYT has switched both the main article picture (it used to be the small one that can be seen once scrolling down) as well as the caption below the image. I wonder why/how often they do that.
- petercooper 16y ago
  The new main picture is more relevant to the story since it has the boyfriend in. The other picture looks like any of a million stock photos. I suspect the cleavage got it relegated too (though if it were the Daily Mail or New York Post, that'd get it promoted ;-)).
sbaqai 16y ago
should it really cost $170k for a bachelor's degree in anything?
- hnal943 16y ago
  No. Part of the reason for that is America's culture of debt; it's obviously not real money to the woman in the story. I wonder what her credit card statements look like.

chime 16y ago

I don't think debt by itself can destroy a relationship. Lack of proper communication can. I had under $50k debt from my undergrad (international student, double the cost of tuition) and my wife had none. My masters was being paid by my employer while she would be taking about $80k in loans to pay for her medical masters. We were upfront to each other about our obligations and plans of repayment. I've paid off almost all of my debt and she will take care of hers once she graduates. Even if we both had 100k+ in debt, it wouldn't make a huge difference to our standard of living. We'd simply be paying off debt instead of adding to our savings.

danilocampos 16y ago
Really important observation. Glad you deflated the sensational headline. Debt is a big deal. But we're all carrying around big deals, one way or another. The important part is being open and honest with yourself, so you can be open with the person you want to share your life with. Eastman was avoiding the truth of her situation, which screwed both herself and her fiance. You could just as easily say "How having prior children can ruin budding relationships." And sure, they can discourage them. But a relationship where the kid situation is known up front is very different from a relationship where the kid is disclosed a few weeks before the wedding.
- houseabsolute 16y ago
  Then again, no amount of communication is going to completely negate the blow of someone with $200k or more debt who does not plan to earn enough to pay it off. There's a lesson in that . . . something like, "Don't buy expensive things unless you're sure you want them and can pay for them."
  - danilocampos 16y ago
    I mean, yeah. There's debt and then there's debt. But if you've got any chance at all of succeeding, you need to talk about this sooner rather than later.
  - Mz 16y ago

TheAmazingIdiot 16y ago

To me, this is foreign. If you love somebody, and I mean _truly love_, it doesnt matter how much money you owe, or what judgments are against you. Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it). If their marriage was a convenient way to get tax benefits and other marriage related tax burden reductions, so be it. Enter as a business arrangement, which is what he seemed to have done without understanding liabilities.

rikthevik 16y ago
Love is a very important part of a relationship, but it's not the whole story. Many times we end up relationships with people who make our hearts flutter, but who ultimately are bad for us. Marrying someone who is so deep in the red is a really big deal. Some people are comfortable assuming a great deal of debt - I'm not, and I could never be with someone who had that much hanging over their head.
sliverstorm 16y ago
I'm sure everyone has a point where they say 'enough!'. And besides that, there is a point where you have to say, "I love you and I want to say that doesn't matter, but it does, even though I don't feel like it does". Occasionally, you have to protect yourself from yourself. It also might wind up providing new insight on their character.
Charuru 16y ago
Think about it another way. If I _truly love_ someone it wouldn't matter to me what the financials are like. But the person that I would truly love would not be the a person that would take on a crippling amount of debt.
lionhearted 16y ago
> Those who I have been with (counting 2 now) I would have moved the world for. I only left the first one because I didn't think she even cared I was there (and her actions didnt show it). Something to think about, this might be controversial but I'm going to try to put it as well as I can because I think you'll be better off if you think about it - you said you'd have moved the world for a woman you were with, but it didn't even seem like she cared if you were there. Those two things might be related. These days, much of the media and movies show women falling in love with men who are attentive, kind, loving, and affectionate with no strings attached, and even if she isn't good to him in the beginning he eventually wins her over. Purely dutiful and attendant sorts of men. However, this is a fairly new set of affairs - not long ago, women's expectations and judgments on a man were based on a mix of pragmatic considerations (politics, division of labor), shared values like religion and community, and the man accomplishing tangible things. It's possible that if you expressed more external drive to change things in the outside world, and less pure devotion at all costs even when it's unreciprocated - that a woman in your life would love you more, serve you more, and actually feel happier being with you. Also, in such a state of affairs, you might be happier too. Maybe I'm wrong! I don't know, it's just worth thinking about. I see a lot of people talking about preferences for certain things while actually choosing and being satisfied with something a little different.

nhashem 16y ago

I wonder if engineers are more susceptible to this situation, often because our occupation doesn't require us to frontload with student debt and it's easy for your salary to escalate within a couple years. In other words, it's very easy to be a programmer in your mid-20s with absolutely no debt. Dating someone whose debt situation is very different than yours seems likely.

jarek 16y ago
Are you talking about programmers, or engineers?
hnal943 16y ago
Unless you're dating a doctor or a lawyer, I can't think of another profession that requires you to borrow anymore than for an engineering degree (i.e. a four year college education).

dman 16y ago

Before opening the article I was expecting an article about US-China relations.

cperciva 16y ago

The article asks the question of when individuals entering a relationship should bring up debts. Being a bit more optimistic, and hopefully more relevant to the world of startups, I'd like to ask the opposite question: If you're entering a relationship, when is the right time to mention that you're rich?

Mz 16y ago
Before there is a "relationship"? Not being a smart aleck: if someone knows you socially before you begin dating, they should have some general idea of where you stand in that regard. For some of the "big" issues in my own life, I generally find it doesn't work well to get hooked up with people who don't already know some things about me. But I am not a fan of online dating, so if that is the route you are going, I really can't help you.
philwelch 16y ago
After you're sure she likes you for reasons other than you're rich?
- cperciva 16y ago
  That makes sense to me, but many people advertise their income on online dating profiles, so it doesn't seem to be a universal opinion.

philwelch 16y ago

If you carry $170,000 of debt without even realizing how much the total amount is, that says something about you, something that may in fact make some people less willing to marry you. Having hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt is fine. It's a curse of the middle class, at one point or another--a mortgage if not student loans. You're supposed to realize what you're doing when you borrow that kind of money, though. Running up hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt without fully recognizing what you're doing seems irresponsible. You're mentally evading your responsibilities to others. I can't even comprehend the mindset involved in that. How can you spend years paying for anything (even a car!) without even once trying to keep track of where you stand in terms of paying it off?

mortenjorck 16y ago
I wonder if it's due in part to an acclimation to residential rent and car leases. I consider myself very financially disciplined, and would never lose sight of the outstanding principal and interest rate of a loan, but I have no idea how much I've paid the landlords of my current rental apartment over the past few years. Like the woman in the article, I don't really fancy thinking about it.
- philwelch 16y ago
  That's past expenditure, though. It's not helpful to think about past expenditures too much, because as sunk costs they fundamentally don't matter anymore. It's not useful to cry over spilt milk. OTOH, it's positively uplifting to contemplate the state of having saved thousands of dollars, or having paid down your debts by thousands.

waldorfsalad 16y ago

Okay, simple: how the f*ck do you run up $150k+ in debt and NOT KNOW THE BALANCE? Continually amazed with people. Makes a good point about the potential pointlessness (and lack of financial feasibility) of higher education. Makes me question getting an MBA.

sr3d 16y ago
Answer? simple. $150K/4 = $37.5K/year, an average tuition of a liberal arts collect. I went to Lake Forest College, 1hr north of Chicago, and this was their tuition 5 years ago. Did I pay the full-price? No. I got a half-off scholarship for getting a SAT score above 1,200. Simple. I only paid ~ 16K/year (room & board included) for 4 years. But there were people paying the full price. I hope they make good money to pay all that debts. 4 years went by really fast, and before you know it, you're in great debt. I don't think that people are totally irresponsible. Here in the US you were taught to at a very young age to "follow your dream" and the rest would come. For a 18 year old girl or guy, being so young and naive but having no clues about finance and the real cost of money (your life!), of course she/he would make a decision of following their dream. However, undergrad debts are understandable. If you make a wrong decision and can't get a job with a high enough salary to pay back the debt, at least it's early in your life so you can recover. But if you're 25 and want to further defer the real hard life by getting a master degree of something you want (but probably don't need to), and along the way get in tons of debt, then you're financially irresponsible. Higher education should not be this big of a financial burden for students, but it's pretty profitable and the US education system is still the best in the world, so there's a huge premium to go study here. From my own experience, foreign students make really good and conscious choice about where to go and how to get a scholarship. A lot of my international student friends got full scholarship to top schools, but this may not be the case for every one. But they and their parents really come prepared to pay every dime for a good education that can help hem make the most out of their professional life after graduation. I was too an international student. My point of view in life is: time is money, debt is negative money, thus you're subtracting time from you life to pay for debts. And that's the real cost of debt.

TGJ 16y ago

It doesn't matter what's going on outside the relationship, if you're not communicating, it's not working. It really is as simple as that.

mkramlich 16y ago

On a related note, one of my projects is an effort to help ensure that more people can acquire the benefits of a college degree but without having to incur a large amount of cash debt or time debt. I'm sure I'll have more details to announce here if/when it's further along.

9oliYQjP 16y ago
Why did you get downvoted to 0 with this comment? This place is getting ridiculous with the down voting now.

known 16y ago

Is it applicable at national level? America's debt is 53% of its GDP.

ww520 16y ago

Most marriages are economically based, explicitly or implicitly. It's in the evolution instinct of married people to have the best environment to bring up kids, which means financial stability. Having huge debt would make you less attractive since you will make the union's financial situation worse. The other side being significantly well-off often mitigates the problem, so just look for rich people to marry if one is deep in the hole.

kingkawn 16y ago

US medical schools are now going around $70k/year including the costs of living. sigh/lol.