11 ms·

Here's my grim reality I'm just waking up to now as a millennial. Married with $100k in student loans between the two of us. Her first job out of college paid

Here's my grim reality I'm just waking up to now as a millennial. Married with $100k in student loans between the two of us. Her first job out of college paid $30k with no benefits. No matter, I had the money making tech degree, we'd be fine. My first job out of college was $100k, so I didn't see a problem there. Three year later I'm facing mounting healthcare costs incurred even with top notch gold plated tech insurance. Most of my salary the last 3 years went to my landlord and the government. The remainder went to student loans and medical costs, so I don't have much in the way of savings even after earning $300k. And somehow I still owe $100k in student loans. And my $100k tech job didn't come with retirement benefits so I don't have any retirement savings yet. It did however come with a generous stock grant. But then again, the company folded and now I don't have a job or insurance. And now I'm a full time caregiver for my wife, with no health insurance, trying to get a job, with $100k in non-dischargable debt, looking to get on welfare, but at the same time reading about how our government wants to take even that away. So that's what I'm doing this weekend.

matthewwiese 8y ago
Although I am not in your position yet (a few years laggard) I feel echoes of your sentiment in my life already. Alas, all I have to offer is a measly upvote, the currency of Millennials' bright shining future.
bmer 8y ago
I don't understand. Why can't you apply for another job? It seems like if you were able to get one, you could get another, right? (Full disclosure: I am an unemployed millennial as well, and too naive to understand what's keeping you from getting another job. Hence the question.)
- medntech 8y ago
  They are a full-time care giver to their wife.
  - harryh 8y ago
    He can hire someone to do that for far less than his 100k salary (even after taxes). There are possibly further issues that OP left out of his post but as written it is a bit confusing.
    - EADGBE 8y ago
      FWIW, they'll have to coordinate this after a new job since there isn't one at all providing for the household, which may or may not be easily attainable considering the FT care provider situation (and assuming the worst as far as how much attention/care is required throughout the day).
      - harryh 8y ago
        Ya, that's definitely true. And the issues there can vary A LOT depending on where OP lives. It can be a tremendous amount of work to manage these sorts of situations. (I spent two years working for a home care company.)
    - woolvalley 8y ago
      Not in an area that gives you a 100k salary. And any kind of 'household employee' you hire will be after tax income. There might be some tax deduction when it's medical reasons, but I'm not sure about that.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Married with $100k in student loans between the two of us You may want to look into deferring or forbearing your student loans [1], at least until you're back on your feet. > my $100k tech job didn't come with retirement benefits Next time around, consider a SEP-IRA [2]. In the meantime, contact a local NGO about subsidized healthcare, food, education and job-training and placement programs. Also, don't be embarrassed asking for charity. When I started my first company, I took a gamble and skipped out on health insurance. A few months of sleep deprivation later, I'm in the hospital with pneumonia. Huge bill. Wrote a letter to the hospital board asking for a deferral; they wrote down the bill to pennies on the dollar. [1] https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment-forbearance https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment-forbearan... [2] https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-sponsor/simplified-employee-pension-plan-sep https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-sponsor/simplified...
- jsoc815 8y ago
  >You may want to look into deferring or forbearing your student loans Politely, no, do not do that. Instead look at enrolling in an "income-driven repayment plan."[1] With this, even if your required payment is $0, you will receive credit toward the total # of payments required for your loan term. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/income-driven https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/in...
  - Arete31415 8y ago
    Seconded. Try to get on the "REPAYE" plan, I feel that's the best one. Only downside -- when they forgive your loans after 20 years, you pay taxes on that as if it's income.
    - jsoc815 8y ago
      Thanks. And yes, this whole thing requires a bit of finagling, which I think unfortunate. I advise couples w/ debt to rethink formal marriage because of how tax laws are structured. Same goes for those who are married; strategic divorce is a real and sometimes necessary option.
abetusk 8y ago
Do you mind me asking what the interest rate on your and your wife's student loan debt is?
- jakebol 8y ago
  Subsidized rates are ~5-7%. I know some of my sisters private loans are higher than 7% (I think somewhere around 10%). My parents gave her absolutely terrible advice about taking on the loans that she did, the millennial generation needs to be told the truth about the real life implications in servicing that much debt. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/interest-rates https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/interest-rates
  - mhneu 8y ago
    And the debt is nondischargeable in bankruptcy. It's a societal failing that we're letting people take on this debt. Anyone who takes on debt like that is increasing the risk to their lives. Sure, if everything follows the mean - good job, good health, good relationships - people on average come out ahead after an expensive education. But the downside risk is amplified. Get sick, and there's nowhere to turn and you're stuck servicing that debt for the rest of your life. It's a problem that crosses party lines. Both finance firms and universities have played a role in setting this system up. But millenials have to vote in numbers and advocate for making student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy -- this is the whole social point of bankruptcy law dating back centuries, to reduce crazy downside risk to individuals.
    - deleted 8y ago
      [deleted]
    - anonymous5133 8y ago
      I think we can start by cutting federal loan programs. If the programs have less money then it means less loans will be made and less debt.
    - ac29 8y ago
      If student loans were dischargable in bankruptcy, why wouldn't everyone go through bankrupcy proceedings after graduation? If you finance education with debt, you're virtually guaranteed to graduate with a negative net worth, and no real tangible assets worth seizing. Income-based repayment plans already exist, limiting your payments to 10% of discretionary income, with full forgiveness after 20-25 years if any balance remains. "Servicing that debt for the rest of your life" is not a thing.
EADGBE 8y ago
It seems easy - and everyone balks about it - but hardly anyone considers what a major medical event can do to your health, your esteem, your loved ones, and your financial situation; all in one fell swoop.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  Very true.
mhneu 8y ago
I'm sorry about your personal struggles, and hope things look up for you and your wife soon. There is something that millennials together can do differently, though -- vote. Millenial turnout is terribly low in the US. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/05/16/pew2ft_16.05.13_millennialvoters_turnout_custom-87c6d172f313bd060db92427b4f47e0dd2987783-s700-c85.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/05/16/pew2ft_16.05.13_... (So, yes, one party has made it a mission to suppress turnout; yes, Election Day is a work day, which makes it harder for working people to vote; etc. -- we can change all that, but first we have to work in the system as it is today.) And that means that boomers and the wealthy have had a much larger influence over society than young people. (The Piketty theory is that the West went through a few decades of stability after the 1970s and that made many people complacent, especially the young, allowing the wealthy and corporations to acquire power. Given the last two years, the time for complacency is ending.) In particular, a better social safety net and a better education cost and education loan system would make for a fairer playing field for all. The only way you and I in America are going to get that is if we all vote - especially young people. And in your particular case, the biggest travesty is the non-dischargeability of educational debt. That's a hard problem - both universities and the loan companies are at fault for lobbying for and setting up this system. But we need to fix it. Again sorry for your current situation and I hope it looks up soon.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- nopriorarrests 8y ago
  Well, government came up already with solution to "better education". It now holds like 90% of all student debt and 100K USD useless degrees are common. Point here, before voting you need figure out actual solution. Not sure if anyone you can vote for now has actual solution.
  - dv_dt 8y ago
    Here's a solution. Discharge student loan debt and directly fund public university budgets to cover tuition.
yodsanklai 8y ago
> $100k in student loans I don't really know how student loans work in the US, but I've heard that federal loans payements were indexed on income. For that reason, they are more akin to taxation than to a regular debt. Is that correct?
- MiscIdeaMaker99 8y ago
  You have to pay back your loan in full, with interest.
  - TAForObvReasons 8y ago
    Under an income-based repayment plan, if you don't make enough money over 20-25 years to pay off the loan with interest, the remaining loan balance is forgiven.
    - jsoc815 8y ago
      10 years if working for in public service or an approved non-profit agency and the amount forgiven is not counted as taxable income. However, there is currently at least one lawsuit pending because the gov't is trying to talk its way out of providing the forgiveness. Essentially telling the group that they were mistakenly approved for the program. Also people should read the program's fine print (in the FAQs). There is no guarantee that the program will remain or that the commitment will be honored.
- anonymous5133 8y ago
  There are programs like that but they are only for certain people, usually only for certain professions. The government cant really afford to forgive everyones loans. The repaid interest goes to federal programs and the principal goes to giving new loans to the younger generation.
Crontab 8y ago
Given how much an educated workforce gives back to our country, I never understood why the government doesn't offer interest-free student loans - especially since the debt cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.
- zeveb 8y ago
  Because interest-free student loans don't necessarily increase an educated workforce; they might also just line the pockets of the academic-industrial complex.
  - wycs 8y ago
    The Case Against Education is a great book on this topic.
    - Crontab 8y ago
      Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at it.
  - stevenwoo 8y ago
    I do not know the solution but the current system already just lines the pockets of the academic-industrial complex, education costs keep rising at rates that are similar to healthcare in the USA.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  > Given how much an educated workforce gives back to our country Subsidized student loans produced many quality graduates. They also spun off reams of communication majors. I'd actually argue part of the problem is lenders are totally immunized from the risk of their loans; if loans were priced to each institution and each major and each individual's academic record, that might pull wage and labor demand information from the labor market to undergraduate campuses.
- Nelson69 8y ago
  Isn't it simply guaranteed by the government? Private banks put up the money and the government only steps in to pay if there is a default. Isn't it a profitable business for the banks?
lr4444lr 8y ago
Look into medicaid. Your income on paper may qualify you both.
test6554 8y ago
I'd like to contrast that with my own personal story. After college, I got a job that paid $60K in tech. Wife got one that paid $50K. So similar total income. However, We moved to a city with a lower cost of living and no state income taxes. We lived with family for the first year and saved up enough to put a down payment on a house. We got the house for $160,000 (cheap cost of living for the win). Our mortgage was only $800 a month, but we poured over $4K a month into it and paid it off in 4 years. We did not have student loans, but the extra we paid into the mortgage could have gone toward that. Once the house was paid down, we only paid $5K per year in property taxes for the house. We were living on less than 40% of our income. We both had good health insurance, but there are also high medical expenses. For us the cost of living of a city and state were game-changers.
- JumpCrisscross 8y ago
  A once-in-a-lifetime domestic relocation credit (which pays for moving costs and your first N months of living expenses in your new place, as well as a return ticket in case things go south) would be a great idea for labor mobility.
- sanderjd 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing your anecdote! A couple questions: how did you pay for college without incurring debt, and what jobs did you get for those salaries in a low cost-of-living (presumably small-town?) area?
  - test6554 8y ago
    My parents paid for the first year and a half, and then I got a job and paid for the rest. Tuition was like 10K per year at a public state school. I also tested out of a couple classes due to advanced placement in HS. One of us was doing software/web development and another was financial accounting (CPA). This was not a small town, it was a suburb of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The farther out you move from the city, the lower the cost of living, but we had a 30-40 minute commute. Neither of us wanted to pay for cable so we saved like $8K over a number of years skipping out on that.
davidp 8y ago
These struggles sound much harder than what I've had to deal with; please accept my sympathy. About the student debt: That's a lot of debt. I suspect you and many other millenials were lied to when you were told that getting that much student debt is normal and necessary, when it is in fact neither. For example it takes longer to graduate when the student alternates semesters of school and work, but it does get them through (especially if the school has a strong co-op program), without nearly as severe a crushing debt load. Second, the overall benefit of an education goes way beyond the differences between schools, i.e. for many careers an inexpensive school is just as good as an expensive one. (Counterpoint: if you want to be on the Supreme Court someday, you apparently have to go to Harvard Law School...) I confess that I'm puzzled when I hear about such high debt numbers from new grads, and the main explanation I can think of for what's different now from when I came up is that people are systematically being told that any college debt is a good investment (and loans are freely granted on that basis), when it plainly is not (and they should not be).
- sanderjd 8y ago
  There is a lot true in this - though I personally think it has more to do with parents being put in a bind, than with adolescents being lied to - but there is one obvious thing you're missing: tuition and fees are much much higher now, across the board.
jakelarkin 8y ago
look into discharging wife's student debt due to permanent disability. pursue divorce as legal strategy if it helps obtaining relief
- jonhendry18 8y ago
  Just going to note that, presumably, the idea is to divorce but stay together, not divorce then dump her.
Nelson69 8y ago
What city is this in? There are other tech jobs, right? You had no 401k or anything? I hope things turn up for you soon.
jsoc815 8y ago
1) Sorry to read about your situation. 2) Please see my comment below about getting yourself on an "income-based repayment plan," if you aren't already on one. 3) Believe it or not, student loan debt is dischargable, though not easily so. See [1] & [2] for a 'success'(?) story not involving a fraudulent institution. IMO this decision was the impetus for Sallie Mae (SM) restructuring itself into SM and Navient. [1] https://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/in-showing-undue-hardship-court-is-not-allowed-to-come-into-your-house-and-repurpose-your-wife/ https://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/in-showing-undue-hardship-co... [2] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/05/22/12-35258%20web%20-%20corrected.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/05/22/1...
0x4f3759df 8y ago
"Usury is the operating system of the [American] empire" - heard this on a talk recently and it seemed to have some truth to it. Sorry about your situation.
- miketery 8y ago
  Debt is a very useful tool for transferring money in time at a cost. Like all tools they can be useful, but they can also be taken advantage of and used for harm (or in this case asymmetrically). Yes there are predators that take advantage of others using said tool. Its been known to cause "indentured servitude". But lets not criticize the tool here. This is an issue of governance, and societal scale.

matthewwiese 8y ago

Although I am not in your position yet (a few years laggard) I feel echoes of your sentiment in my life already. Alas, all I have to offer is a measly upvote, the currency of Millennials' bright shining future.

bmer 8y ago

I don't understand. Why can't you apply for another job? It seems like if you were able to get one, you could get another, right? (Full disclosure: I am an unemployed millennial as well, and too naive to understand what's keeping you from getting another job. Hence the question.)

medntech 8y ago
They are a full-time care giver to their wife.
- harryh 8y ago
  He can hire someone to do that for far less than his 100k salary (even after taxes). There are possibly further issues that OP left out of his post but as written it is a bit confusing.
  - EADGBE 8y ago
    FWIW, they'll have to coordinate this after a new job since there isn't one at all providing for the household, which may or may not be easily attainable considering the FT care provider situation (and assuming the worst as far as how much attention/care is required throughout the day).
    - harryh 8y ago
      Ya, that's definitely true. And the issues there can vary A LOT depending on where OP lives. It can be a tremendous amount of work to manage these sorts of situations. (I spent two years working for a home care company.)
  - woolvalley 8y ago
    Not in an area that gives you a 100k salary. And any kind of 'household employee' you hire will be after tax income. There might be some tax deduction when it's medical reasons, but I'm not sure about that.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

JumpCrisscross 8y ago

> Married with $100k in student loans between the two of us You may want to look into deferring or forbearing your student loans [1], at least until you're back on your feet. > my $100k tech job didn't come with retirement benefits Next time around, consider a SEP-IRA [2]. In the meantime, contact a local NGO about subsidized healthcare, food, education and job-training and placement programs. Also, don't be embarrassed asking for charity. When I started my first company, I took a gamble and skipped out on health insurance. A few months of sleep deprivation later, I'm in the hospital with pneumonia. Huge bill. Wrote a letter to the hospital board asking for a deferral; they wrote down the bill to pennies on the dollar. [1] https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment-forbearance https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/deferment-forbearan... [2] https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-sponsor/simplified-employee-pension-plan-sep https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-sponsor/simplified...

jsoc815 8y ago
>You may want to look into deferring or forbearing your student loans Politely, no, do not do that. Instead look at enrolling in an "income-driven repayment plan."[1] With this, even if your required payment is $0, you will receive credit toward the total # of payments required for your loan term. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/income-driven https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/repay-loans/understand/plans/in...
- Arete31415 8y ago
  Seconded. Try to get on the "REPAYE" plan, I feel that's the best one. Only downside -- when they forgive your loans after 20 years, you pay taxes on that as if it's income.
  - jsoc815 8y ago
    Thanks. And yes, this whole thing requires a bit of finagling, which I think unfortunate. I advise couples w/ debt to rethink formal marriage because of how tax laws are structured. Same goes for those who are married; strategic divorce is a real and sometimes necessary option.

abetusk 8y ago

Do you mind me asking what the interest rate on your and your wife's student loan debt is?

jakebol 8y ago
Subsidized rates are ~5-7%. I know some of my sisters private loans are higher than 7% (I think somewhere around 10%). My parents gave her absolutely terrible advice about taking on the loans that she did, the millennial generation needs to be told the truth about the real life implications in servicing that much debt. https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/interest-rates https://studentaid.ed.gov/sa/types/loans/interest-rates
- mhneu 8y ago
  And the debt is nondischargeable in bankruptcy. It's a societal failing that we're letting people take on this debt. Anyone who takes on debt like that is increasing the risk to their lives. Sure, if everything follows the mean - good job, good health, good relationships - people on average come out ahead after an expensive education. But the downside risk is amplified. Get sick, and there's nowhere to turn and you're stuck servicing that debt for the rest of your life. It's a problem that crosses party lines. Both finance firms and universities have played a role in setting this system up. But millenials have to vote in numbers and advocate for making student debt dischargeable in bankruptcy -- this is the whole social point of bankruptcy law dating back centuries, to reduce crazy downside risk to individuals.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - anonymous5133 8y ago
    I think we can start by cutting federal loan programs. If the programs have less money then it means less loans will be made and less debt.
  - ac29 8y ago
    If student loans were dischargable in bankruptcy, why wouldn't everyone go through bankrupcy proceedings after graduation? If you finance education with debt, you're virtually guaranteed to graduate with a negative net worth, and no real tangible assets worth seizing. Income-based repayment plans already exist, limiting your payments to 10% of discretionary income, with full forgiveness after 20-25 years if any balance remains. "Servicing that debt for the rest of your life" is not a thing.

EADGBE 8y ago

It seems easy - and everyone balks about it - but hardly anyone considers what a major medical event can do to your health, your esteem, your loved ones, and your financial situation; all in one fell swoop.

anonymous5133 8y ago
Very true.

mhneu 8y ago

I'm sorry about your personal struggles, and hope things look up for you and your wife soon. There is something that millennials together can do differently, though -- vote. Millenial turnout is terribly low in the US. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/05/16/pew2ft_16.05.13_millennialvoters_turnout_custom-87c6d172f313bd060db92427b4f47e0dd2987783-s700-c85.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2016/05/16/pew2ft_16.05.13_... (So, yes, one party has made it a mission to suppress turnout; yes, Election Day is a work day, which makes it harder for working people to vote; etc. -- we can change all that, but first we have to work in the system as it is today.) And that means that boomers and the wealthy have had a much larger influence over society than young people. (The Piketty theory is that the West went through a few decades of stability after the 1970s and that made many people complacent, especially the young, allowing the wealthy and corporations to acquire power. Given the last two years, the time for complacency is ending.) In particular, a better social safety net and a better education cost and education loan system would make for a fairer playing field for all. The only way you and I in America are going to get that is if we all vote - especially young people. And in your particular case, the biggest travesty is the non-dischargeability of educational debt. That's a hard problem - both universities and the loan companies are at fault for lobbying for and setting up this system. But we need to fix it. Again sorry for your current situation and I hope it looks up soon.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
nopriorarrests 8y ago
Well, government came up already with solution to "better education". It now holds like 90% of all student debt and 100K USD useless degrees are common. Point here, before voting you need figure out actual solution. Not sure if anyone you can vote for now has actual solution.
- dv_dt 8y ago
  Here's a solution. Discharge student loan debt and directly fund public university budgets to cover tuition.

yodsanklai 8y ago

> $100k in student loans I don't really know how student loans work in the US, but I've heard that federal loans payements were indexed on income. For that reason, they are more akin to taxation than to a regular debt. Is that correct?

MiscIdeaMaker99 8y ago
You have to pay back your loan in full, with interest.
- TAForObvReasons 8y ago
  Under an income-based repayment plan, if you don't make enough money over 20-25 years to pay off the loan with interest, the remaining loan balance is forgiven.
  - jsoc815 8y ago
    10 years if working for in public service or an approved non-profit agency and the amount forgiven is not counted as taxable income. However, there is currently at least one lawsuit pending because the gov't is trying to talk its way out of providing the forgiveness. Essentially telling the group that they were mistakenly approved for the program. Also people should read the program's fine print (in the FAQs). There is no guarantee that the program will remain or that the commitment will be honored.
anonymous5133 8y ago
There are programs like that but they are only for certain people, usually only for certain professions. The government cant really afford to forgive everyones loans. The repaid interest goes to federal programs and the principal goes to giving new loans to the younger generation.

Crontab 8y ago

Given how much an educated workforce gives back to our country, I never understood why the government doesn't offer interest-free student loans - especially since the debt cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.

zeveb 8y ago
Because interest-free student loans don't necessarily increase an educated workforce; they might also just line the pockets of the academic-industrial complex.
- wycs 8y ago
  The Case Against Education is a great book on this topic.
  - Crontab 8y ago
    Thanks for the suggestion. I'll take a look at it.
- stevenwoo 8y ago
  I do not know the solution but the current system already just lines the pockets of the academic-industrial complex, education costs keep rising at rates that are similar to healthcare in the USA.
JumpCrisscross 8y ago
> Given how much an educated workforce gives back to our country Subsidized student loans produced many quality graduates. They also spun off reams of communication majors. I'd actually argue part of the problem is lenders are totally immunized from the risk of their loans; if loans were priced to each institution and each major and each individual's academic record, that might pull wage and labor demand information from the labor market to undergraduate campuses.
Nelson69 8y ago
Isn't it simply guaranteed by the government? Private banks put up the money and the government only steps in to pay if there is a default. Isn't it a profitable business for the banks?

lr4444lr 8y ago

Look into medicaid. Your income on paper may qualify you both.

test6554 8y ago

I'd like to contrast that with my own personal story. After college, I got a job that paid $60K in tech. Wife got one that paid $50K. So similar total income. However, We moved to a city with a lower cost of living and no state income taxes. We lived with family for the first year and saved up enough to put a down payment on a house. We got the house for $160,000 (cheap cost of living for the win). Our mortgage was only $800 a month, but we poured over $4K a month into it and paid it off in 4 years. We did not have student loans, but the extra we paid into the mortgage could have gone toward that. Once the house was paid down, we only paid $5K per year in property taxes for the house. We were living on less than 40% of our income. We both had good health insurance, but there are also high medical expenses. For us the cost of living of a city and state were game-changers.

JumpCrisscross 8y ago
A once-in-a-lifetime domestic relocation credit (which pays for moving costs and your first N months of living expenses in your new place, as well as a return ticket in case things go south) would be a great idea for labor mobility.
sanderjd 8y ago
Thanks for sharing your anecdote! A couple questions: how did you pay for college without incurring debt, and what jobs did you get for those salaries in a low cost-of-living (presumably small-town?) area?
- test6554 8y ago
  My parents paid for the first year and a half, and then I got a job and paid for the rest. Tuition was like 10K per year at a public state school. I also tested out of a couple classes due to advanced placement in HS. One of us was doing software/web development and another was financial accounting (CPA). This was not a small town, it was a suburb of the Dallas/Fort Worth metroplex. The farther out you move from the city, the lower the cost of living, but we had a 30-40 minute commute. Neither of us wanted to pay for cable so we saved like $8K over a number of years skipping out on that.

davidp 8y ago

These struggles sound much harder than what I've had to deal with; please accept my sympathy. About the student debt: That's a lot of debt. I suspect you and many other millenials were lied to when you were told that getting that much student debt is normal and necessary, when it is in fact neither. For example it takes longer to graduate when the student alternates semesters of school and work, but it does get them through (especially if the school has a strong co-op program), without nearly as severe a crushing debt load. Second, the overall benefit of an education goes way beyond the differences between schools, i.e. for many careers an inexpensive school is just as good as an expensive one. (Counterpoint: if you want to be on the Supreme Court someday, you apparently have to go to Harvard Law School...) I confess that I'm puzzled when I hear about such high debt numbers from new grads, and the main explanation I can think of for what's different now from when I came up is that people are systematically being told that any college debt is a good investment (and loans are freely granted on that basis), when it plainly is not (and they should not be).

sanderjd 8y ago
There is a lot true in this - though I personally think it has more to do with parents being put in a bind, than with adolescents being lied to - but there is one obvious thing you're missing: tuition and fees are much much higher now, across the board.

jakelarkin 8y ago

look into discharging wife's student debt due to permanent disability. pursue divorce as legal strategy if it helps obtaining relief

jonhendry18 8y ago
Just going to note that, presumably, the idea is to divorce but stay together, not divorce then dump her.

Nelson69 8y ago

What city is this in? There are other tech jobs, right? You had no 401k or anything? I hope things turn up for you soon.

jsoc815 8y ago

1) Sorry to read about your situation. 2) Please see my comment below about getting yourself on an "income-based repayment plan," if you aren't already on one. 3) Believe it or not, student loan debt is dischargable, though not easily so. See [1] & [2] for a 'success'(?) story not involving a fraudulent institution. IMO this decision was the impetus for Sallie Mae (SM) restructuring itself into SM and Navient. [1] https://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/in-showing-undue-hardship-court-is-not-allowed-to-come-into-your-house-and-repurpose-your-wife/ https://abovethelaw.com/2013/05/in-showing-undue-hardship-co... [2] https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/05/22/12-35258%20web%20-%20corrected.pdf https://cdn.ca9.uscourts.gov/datastore/opinions/2013/05/22/1...

0x4f3759df 8y ago

"Usury is the operating system of the [American] empire" - heard this on a talk recently and it seemed to have some truth to it. Sorry about your situation.

miketery 8y ago
Debt is a very useful tool for transferring money in time at a cost. Like all tools they can be useful, but they can also be taken advantage of and used for harm (or in this case asymmetrically). Yes there are predators that take advantage of others using said tool. Its been known to cause "indentured servitude". But lets not criticize the tool here. This is an issue of governance, and societal scale.