10 ms·

I Paid Off $194k in Student Loans in Six Years. It Wasn’t Easy

48 points by EconoBen 3y ago

EconoBen 3y ago
A few years ago, I set myself the goal of paying off all my student loans before I'm 30. I turn 30 in two months. And as of this month, I paid them off. All $194k of them... Obviously, this was a significant milestone for me. So, I took this opportunity to reflect on my journey so far. How I even came to owe that much money, how I overcame this obstacle, and what it all means to me.
- mytailorisrich 3y ago
  Yes you owed a lot of money but it seems to have been worthwhile as you must have a well-paid job: indeed, 194k over 6 years means that on average you paid back about 32k every year, which happens to be the median income in the US.
  - deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
- zer8k 3y ago
  Sounds like you made all the right choices. You spent $200k on a degree which awarded you a job that allowed you (with some expected struggle) to pay it off. Congratulations.
  - runako 3y ago
    Bingo. This is the counterpoint to the "college is dead" crowd. OP is now 30 and has a career that will let him save/invest $200k every 6 years (before any future raises).
    - dijit 3y ago
      Ah c'mon, this must be some kind of fallacy of which I'm unaware of. I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree and I live in Europe which pays significantly under what the US does. People keep forgetting that we (and OP) got obscenely lucky in our industry. We are very well compensated compared to our contemporaries; but if anything it's proof that you don't need a degree, and that shouldn't be the litmus for getting a decently paid job. A degree in of itself should not be held to such vocational standards, it has significant merit but has very little bearing on job performance- We should be working to make college/university affordable because a better educated population helps society. However, it is far from a great indicator of earning potential. The largest factors in earning potential remain to be: historical wealth and IQ; degrees, when controlled for familial wealth have shockingly low correlation to lifetime earning potential.
      - runako 3y ago
        > I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree. Bully for you! You are an outlier. Your employer may also be an outlier. That's wonderful for you, but it is irresponsible to recommend to any young person that they bet their futures on being able to 1) find 2) when they are hiring 3) and click with the hiring manager an outlier firm like yours. > it's proof that you don't need a degree. To do the job, no. To get the job, frequently yes. Obviously a lot of us were shipping production code in high school. Doesn't matter to most employers. For better or worse, having a degree is a required/recommended credential at a lot of jobs. Recruiters will often use it as a filter if they get a ton of resumes. Worse -- not having a degree is also a prohibition to some promotions at some employers so there are potentially follow-on effects of not getting the diploma. Having been in the industry a while, I can say that the last 10 years or so are aberrant in that recruiters have been less selective than at other times. One definitely didn't want to be in tech in 2001 with no degree and a mortgage. And speaking of 2001, one of the other benefits of having a degree is you're not as locked into a given career. When the dot.com bust hit tech, I saw folks use the flexibility afforded by their degrees to go into other fields: teaching, law school, etc.
    - somenameforme 3y ago
      The "college is dead" crowd generally refer to people pursuing majors with no reasonable impact on their earnings, which is the overwhelming majority of people. Somebody who goes to school and decides to major in sociology because they find the classes fun, isn't going to be repaying their $200k of debt anytime soon.
      - runako 3y ago
        > pursuing majors with no reasonable impact on their earnings, which is the overwhelming majority of people The data don't bear this out. Over a career, people with college degrees earn more than those without. Until and unless this changes, people are making the right choice going to college. Caveats: it does need to be more widely communicated that getting into a college that costs $50k/year is a luxury good that not everyone will be able to afford. And the corollary: we need to resume amply funding our public institutions.
        somenameforme 3y ago
        The raw educational attainment/income numbers suffer from severe selection bias. As but one example somebody with impaired intelligence is both probably not going to attend college, nor do economically well. But the fact he doesn't have a degree is obviously not the issue there. The question we want to ask ourselves is how would a person of at least average intelligence, motivated to work/learn, and so on do with vs without college. So, for instance, how does a tradesman compare? The median income for somebody with a BS, employed full time, is $69k [1]. The median income for a plumber is $60k. [2] That's already pretty close, especially once you factor in 4 years of extra earnings vs 6 figures of debt. The BS may overcome the hole relatively late in their career, but again - it's close. However, there's a big catch: those numbers included STEM degrees. Remove STEM degrees and this isn't even close anymore. I'm not arguing everybody should be a plumber, or anything of the sort. I am saying that college is a decision that should not be taken lightly, especially if somebody is not going to pursue STEM. [1] - https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-educatio... [2] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-pipefitters-and-steamfitters.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers...
  - lapcat 3y ago
    > Sounds like you made all the right choices. That's not what the blog post says at all. The author talked about a bunch of bad choices. > You spent $200k on a degree which awarded you a job that allowed you (with some expected struggle) to pay it off. That's not what happened. In short, here is the series of events, that happened over a number of years: 1. Graduated with a double major in economics and environmental studies, plus $150K debt 2. Got a job pulling weeds at the Chicago Botanic Gardens for $12/hour 3. Got a job as an economic researcher at Arity for $50K/year 4. Taught himself data science and machine learning 5. Got a job in data science for >$100K/year It was only 5 that allowed him to pay off his student loan debt. The undergrad degree did not directly lead to a well-paying job.
- fxtentacle 3y ago
  Congratulations! And let me just state the obvious: it appears that you are good with words. And the ability to clearly communicate complex topics in writing is a lot less common than you might think. My pet theory is that that's why working remotely didn't turn out well for so many people.
  - EconoBen 3y ago
    Hey thanks! I like writing. This one took me a few days to write, but formed inchoately in the back of my head for years. Sometimes it's nice to finally just let the words spill out on "paper".
- RickJWagner 3y ago
  Thanks for paying it back, and showing how it can be done. The system works.
mikece 3y ago
An econ major who can pull off paying back $194k in loans that fast should be deep-selected for great things.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  tell your friends, hah!
jqpabc123 3y ago
The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A business as simple as landscaping or construction can be just as financially rewarding as being a corporate desk jockey ... and even more so in some cases. The key element here is to learn the trade but then move up to hiring/managing others who do the actual work --- for a company owned by you.
- aehrhawrg 3y ago
  This position would have more merit if it held equally true across all degrees. Not counting the inevitable graduates in every field that don't pan out, is it actually equally true for every degree though? Usually when I see people unable to pay their student loans it's my friends who went for the humanities or the soft sciences. The people who chose their degree by treating it as an investment they wanted as high a return as possible from generally did well.
  - beej71 3y ago
    There are a lot of degrees that fail to pay enough to cover the loans required to get them, e.g. teacher, speech language pathologist, etc. And that's a bummer because we need people like that. So we apply bandaids like PSLF to make those degrees viable. It's a mess.
- js8 3y ago
  > The key element here is to learn the trade but then move up to hiring/managing others who do the actual work --- for a company owned by you. Sure, that's totally not gonna be another gold rush / pyramid scheme like the student loans were.
  - kevinmchugh 3y ago
    Learning a trade and then management is a very slow gold rush
paxys 3y ago
TL;DR – he got a six figure data science job. You too can pay off your loans early with this one simple trick!
oh_sigh 3y ago
Not the first, or second, or third person I've heard about being duped by a farming gig in Hawaii. People will buy fairly cheap, totally undeveloped forest tracts and lure unsuspecting people in who dream of "Hawaii". But, they usually don't dream of being deep in a forest, with no neighbors, an hour from the nearest part of the ocean, which you can't even swim in, nor even get to since you have no car and no access to public transit. All the while doing hard manual labor in a hot and humid environment for 16 hours/day while living in a tent or in literally just under a mosquito net hanging from a tree.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  Oh my gosh! I didn't know this was a trend. This is somehow very reassuring to hear, all these years later. Thanks for mentioning this.
jmathai 3y ago
Paying off the debt is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath are the tools to wield your income in a focused way to accomplish really big things. Congrats @EconoBen :)
lapcat 3y ago
What's truly disturbing is the student debt still held by people 50, 60, 70+ years old, as shown in the article's embedded chart: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-24-at-16.38.32.png https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Scr...
- ConfusedDog 3y ago
  My stepdad held a lot of student loan debt until he passed away and it was all forgiven. He even thought of getting a PHD with another loan. I think that's pretty much the mentality/strategy of a lot of senior people.
  - lapcat 3y ago
    At this point, that's basically my mentality too. Not to get a PhD, but rather that if I die before paying all my loans back, then I finally have the last laugh on the "higher education" system.
- 7373737373 3y ago
  "Dividend et Impera" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Pispers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Pispers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chK2KHGx_yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chK2KHGx_yo
- nonameiguess 3y ago
  They may not be students. I was quite disturbed when attending my niece's college graduation last month to hear her say she had $30k in loans and my sister had taken out $180k. My sister is 41 and hasn't worked in 15 years. Her husband is a decently well-paid glazier, but they're probably going to be in debt for the rest of their lives.
justsocrateasin 3y ago
Congrats! It feels so good. I paid off about $60k of debt in 1.5 years after college while living at home. It was hard but worth it.
anon7331 3y ago
I paid off ~65K in student debt in one year (first year as a developer)... it's totally doable, especially in the USA.
- yurishimo 3y ago
  I wouldn't say 65k per year is doable for _most people_. It's easy to forget how privileged we are with developer salaries. Most people end school with student loan amounts roughly to one year's salary. Assuming you pay 25% of your income towards the loans, that's still a 3-5 year payoff assuming raises and low inflation. Congratulations on your achievement though! Being debt free is not normal anymore and it comes with a surprising amount benefits in other areas of your life.
- dragonwriter 3y ago
  The average starting salary for a college graduate in the USA is less than that, and most graduates have non-negative other costs, so, no, your outlier description is not representative of what is doable generally in the USA.
throw9away6 3y ago
Learn to code, this is the way and only way to escape poverty it seems
- EconoBen 3y ago
  doesn't hurt, apparently.
emrah 3y ago
Wow which school is that? Is that typical for a 4-year degree nowadays?!
tayo42 3y ago
This is an abnormal amount of debt, I think this gets headlines and people riled up. 140k for 4 years of school is not normal. The average school debt is 40k. Maybe school is expensive, this is excessive and bad decision making. Maybe you could say that there is a subset that needs help avoiding this but most do. Public schools and community colleges are doable and affordable and with a little work you can get scholarships. I did 6 years of undergrad because I was a bad student and only ended up with around 40k in the end.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  yeah, absolutely abnormal.
- johnnyanmac 3y ago
  Apparently, the median tuition based on a 4 year public illinois University is $28,660. the author is way above the median, but it's not unthinkable. We're still talking about the average illinois student these days over $100k in debt
  - tayo42 3y ago
    I took a look and it says the average student receives alot in aid to lower costs. You can do your first two years at community college and save a ton. It's not like your Gen Ed classes matter... 5k to go to cc, and there is still financial assistance for that.
zeroCalories 3y ago
That's pretty good, congratulations. I don't mean to suggest you did the wrong thing, but I want to share a perspective from one of my friends. She has a similar amount of debt, and is simply choosing to make minimum payments for the rest of her life, maybe even default at some point. She says that spending her money on herself while she is young enough to enjoy it is more important than living frugally for decades to end up old without any money anyway. But she has also considered marrying, then being a stay at home mom or working under the table jobs so that she can default without getting her wages garnished. I'm not burdened by debt, but I would definitely be thinking of something similar in a case like that. Also reminds me of the credit-maxing meme. While I generally like market incentives, I think student loans are becoming extremely high risk investments. I'm lucky enough to have a well paying job, but I'm still worried about what paying for my child's education will be like. Should I make them take on hundreds of thousands in loans, or should I delay my retirement for a decade? The future seems bleak if we don't get the cost of education under control.
- willcipriano 3y ago
  Encourage them to get a trade.
  - zeroCalories 3y ago
    And if they want to go to college we're back to the original problem. Either help them, or leave them to fend for themselves.
    - willcipriano 3y ago
      They probably want to eat candy for dinner as well.
- testbjjl 3y ago
  > But she has also considered marrying, then being a stay at home mom or working under the table jobs so that she can default without getting her wages garnished. This is not what I would be looking for in a partner. If you brazenly break contracts you willingly entered one day what’s to make anyone believe their contract with you is nonnegotiable.
whywhywhywhy 3y ago
Should just be able to send the debt back to the institute if the product they sold you doesn't result in enough income to foot the bill within X years. The current system doesn't encourage the institutes to do anything other than spiral costs, burn money and zero responsibility to provide a product focused on making sure that loan is ever paid back. Say this as someone who managed to pay theirs off, just think "forgiveness" and other ideas are temporary solutions we'll end up having to repeat over and over. Let's just have a permanent solution with accountability for what they are providing for the cost.
- dabluecaboose 3y ago
  There's an answer beyond nebulous desires for "accountability": Stop federal guarantees of loans, and allow loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. Make loans a risk and they won't give $200k to a sociology major with no prospects because they know they won't see a return.
- runako 3y ago
  > the product they sold you doesn't result in enough income to foot the bill within X years. Honestly this is the issue. Colleges sell education. People think they are buying a future income stream. I don't blame people, because employers have by and large conflated the two. But this misalignment is at the heart of a lot of the cost discourse.
jve 3y ago
The chart is weird/misleading: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/garden_pay-1024x768.png https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/gar... Drawing $17xx bar and slapping $1494,97 onto it... whereas other bars match the label with the height. I just couldn't parse how $1,4xx - $1,4yy would end up $408,56. And then in the text there is a number not charted: $1902 to just add to confusion, but OK, that's not what you get on hand. And then "$1106.42 per month, my public loans $387.02. Altogether, I would owe $1493.22" - the sum is actually .44 Author should fix something.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  fixed.
yubiox 3y ago
Is this fiction? There are no snakes in Hawaii, and I don't remember mosquitoes being much of an issue there either.
armoredkitten 3y ago
That's an impressive accomplishment, although the comments here are rightly mostly about the absurdity of student debt. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to graduate debt-free, through a combination of a) attending school in Canada, where tuition costs are less absurd than the US; b) some money my parents saved for their children's education; and c) participation in a co-op education model. Basically, alternating between one semester in school, one semester at a co-op job, and no summers off (though really, how many college students go home for the summer and take a job at Starbucks anyway?). I graduated having financed my education by myself after the first year, and with ~2 years of (relevant) work experience already under my belt. The connections from one of those jobs also ended up helping me get the job I have now. Like I said, I feel very fortunate, and this approach won't necessarily fit all use cases. But I heartily recommend a co-op education model any chance I get. Even if it could help you avoid taking on $10k in student debt, that feels like a win.
EconoBen 3y ago
really appreciate all the thoughtful comments! Better than I could have imagined. Thanks all.
travisgriggs 3y ago
I enjoyed reading this. The long form was engaging. I appreciate the author being up front about not trying to be prescriptive with his journey, more just descriptive. Honestly, the sense of despair people have in getting jobs is so sad to me. I've interacted with other young adults who are in the same situation. This sense of "I played the game the way I thought I was supposed to and now this??". I do all I can to help them connect them with others, but it's still really disappointing. I was glad he "made it" in the end, but I'm not convinced that "near mental breakdowns" are healthy and worth it. And then... survivorship bias. For every talented person like this that excels academically and has a flair for long for story telling, there's another 9 or 99, that don't, and are still stuck in the trenches, and they don't even have the time/resources to write their equally emotive but even more shitty story.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  I wish I could emphasize this comment more. Thank you for posting this. This reflects my thoughts exactly and the purpose of the post. There are so many more people whose stories you don't hear, who go through much harder times than I did, and who do not "make it" like I have. If anything, I think that should be the story. You make choices to try to dig yourself out, and you end up digging yourself further down the hole.
cvhashim04 3y ago
I really enjoy your writing. You seem to have a talent for it.
shalmanese 3y ago
It strikes me reading this piece, how insanely high ROI it would have been for this guy to have hired a really good life coach. He learned so many lessons the hard way way after he was ready to learn them and someone who was capable of transporting those lessons back in time to the point where he was ready to hear them would have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess value. Unfortunately, there are so many "life coaches" that they drown out the people who could have actually been a good coach to this person.

48 points by EconoBen 3y ago

A few years ago, I set myself the goal of paying off all my student loans before I'm 30. I turn 30 in two months. And as of this month, I paid them off. All $194k of them... Obviously, this was a significant milestone for me. So, I took this opportunity to reflect on my journey so far. How I even came to owe that much money, how I overcame this obstacle, and what it all means to me.

mytailorisrich 3y ago
Yes you owed a lot of money but it seems to have been worthwhile as you must have a well-paid job: indeed, 194k over 6 years means that on average you paid back about 32k every year, which happens to be the median income in the US.
- deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
zer8k 3y ago
Sounds like you made all the right choices. You spent $200k on a degree which awarded you a job that allowed you (with some expected struggle) to pay it off. Congratulations.
- runako 3y ago
  Bingo. This is the counterpoint to the "college is dead" crowd. OP is now 30 and has a career that will let him save/invest $200k every 6 years (before any future raises).
  - dijit 3y ago
    Ah c'mon, this must be some kind of fallacy of which I'm unaware of. I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree and I live in Europe which pays significantly under what the US does. People keep forgetting that we (and OP) got obscenely lucky in our industry. We are very well compensated compared to our contemporaries; but if anything it's proof that you don't need a degree, and that shouldn't be the litmus for getting a decently paid job. A degree in of itself should not be held to such vocational standards, it has significant merit but has very little bearing on job performance- We should be working to make college/university affordable because a better educated population helps society. However, it is far from a great indicator of earning potential. The largest factors in earning potential remain to be: historical wealth and IQ; degrees, when controlled for familial wealth have shockingly low correlation to lifetime earning potential.
    - runako 3y ago
      > I am in position where I would be able to pay that amount down (averaged over 10y) with the same QoL; however I do not have a degree. Bully for you! You are an outlier. Your employer may also be an outlier. That's wonderful for you, but it is irresponsible to recommend to any young person that they bet their futures on being able to 1) find 2) when they are hiring 3) and click with the hiring manager an outlier firm like yours. > it's proof that you don't need a degree. To do the job, no. To get the job, frequently yes. Obviously a lot of us were shipping production code in high school. Doesn't matter to most employers. For better or worse, having a degree is a required/recommended credential at a lot of jobs. Recruiters will often use it as a filter if they get a ton of resumes. Worse -- not having a degree is also a prohibition to some promotions at some employers so there are potentially follow-on effects of not getting the diploma. Having been in the industry a while, I can say that the last 10 years or so are aberrant in that recruiters have been less selective than at other times. One definitely didn't want to be in tech in 2001 with no degree and a mortgage. And speaking of 2001, one of the other benefits of having a degree is you're not as locked into a given career. When the dot.com bust hit tech, I saw folks use the flexibility afforded by their degrees to go into other fields: teaching, law school, etc.
  - somenameforme 3y ago
    The "college is dead" crowd generally refer to people pursuing majors with no reasonable impact on their earnings, which is the overwhelming majority of people. Somebody who goes to school and decides to major in sociology because they find the classes fun, isn't going to be repaying their $200k of debt anytime soon.
    - runako 3y ago
      > pursuing majors with no reasonable impact on their earnings, which is the overwhelming majority of people The data don't bear this out. Over a career, people with college degrees earn more than those without. Until and unless this changes, people are making the right choice going to college. Caveats: it does need to be more widely communicated that getting into a college that costs $50k/year is a luxury good that not everyone will be able to afford. And the corollary: we need to resume amply funding our public institutions.
      - somenameforme 3y ago
        The raw educational attainment/income numbers suffer from severe selection bias. As but one example somebody with impaired intelligence is both probably not going to attend college, nor do economically well. But the fact he doesn't have a degree is obviously not the issue there. The question we want to ask ourselves is how would a person of at least average intelligence, motivated to work/learn, and so on do with vs without college. So, for instance, how does a tradesman compare? The median income for somebody with a BS, employed full time, is $69k [1]. The median income for a plumber is $60k. [2] That's already pretty close, especially once you factor in 4 years of extra earnings vs 6 figures of debt. The BS may overcome the hole relatively late in their career, but again - it's close. However, there's a big catch: those numbers included STEM degrees. Remove STEM degrees and this isn't even close anymore. I'm not arguing everybody should be a plumber, or anything of the sort. I am saying that college is a decision that should not be taken lightly, especially if somebody is not going to pursue STEM. [1] - https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-education.htm https://www.bls.gov/emp/chart-unemployment-earnings-educatio... [2] - https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers-pipefitters-and-steamfitters.htm https://www.bls.gov/ooh/construction-and-extraction/plumbers...
- lapcat 3y ago
  > Sounds like you made all the right choices. That's not what the blog post says at all. The author talked about a bunch of bad choices. > You spent $200k on a degree which awarded you a job that allowed you (with some expected struggle) to pay it off. That's not what happened. In short, here is the series of events, that happened over a number of years: 1. Graduated with a double major in economics and environmental studies, plus $150K debt 2. Got a job pulling weeds at the Chicago Botanic Gardens for $12/hour 3. Got a job as an economic researcher at Arity for $50K/year 4. Taught himself data science and machine learning 5. Got a job in data science for >$100K/year It was only 5 that allowed him to pay off his student loan debt. The undergrad degree did not directly lead to a well-paying job.
fxtentacle 3y ago
Congratulations! And let me just state the obvious: it appears that you are good with words. And the ability to clearly communicate complex topics in writing is a lot less common than you might think. My pet theory is that that's why working remotely didn't turn out well for so many people.
- EconoBen 3y ago
  Hey thanks! I like writing. This one took me a few days to write, but formed inchoately in the back of my head for years. Sometimes it's nice to finally just let the words spill out on "paper".
RickJWagner 3y ago
Thanks for paying it back, and showing how it can be done. The system works.

mikece 3y ago

An econ major who can pull off paying back $194k in loans that fast should be deep-selected for great things.

EconoBen 3y ago
tell your friends, hah!

jqpabc123 3y ago

The cost of higher education has been increasing at 3-4x inflation for decades. It has finally nullified any socio-economic advantage it once held as evidenced by the large number of graduates unable to repay their student loans. The solution --- stop steering your kids toward college. AI is working toward eliminating many of these "careers" in the near future anyway. Instead, orient them toward entrepreneurism. A business as simple as landscaping or construction can be just as financially rewarding as being a corporate desk jockey ... and even more so in some cases. The key element here is to learn the trade but then move up to hiring/managing others who do the actual work --- for a company owned by you.

aehrhawrg 3y ago
This position would have more merit if it held equally true across all degrees. Not counting the inevitable graduates in every field that don't pan out, is it actually equally true for every degree though? Usually when I see people unable to pay their student loans it's my friends who went for the humanities or the soft sciences. The people who chose their degree by treating it as an investment they wanted as high a return as possible from generally did well.
- beej71 3y ago
  There are a lot of degrees that fail to pay enough to cover the loans required to get them, e.g. teacher, speech language pathologist, etc. And that's a bummer because we need people like that. So we apply bandaids like PSLF to make those degrees viable. It's a mess.
js8 3y ago
> The key element here is to learn the trade but then move up to hiring/managing others who do the actual work --- for a company owned by you. Sure, that's totally not gonna be another gold rush / pyramid scheme like the student loans were.
- kevinmchugh 3y ago
  Learning a trade and then management is a very slow gold rush

paxys 3y ago

TL;DR – he got a six figure data science job. You too can pay off your loans early with this one simple trick!

oh_sigh 3y ago

Not the first, or second, or third person I've heard about being duped by a farming gig in Hawaii. People will buy fairly cheap, totally undeveloped forest tracts and lure unsuspecting people in who dream of "Hawaii". But, they usually don't dream of being deep in a forest, with no neighbors, an hour from the nearest part of the ocean, which you can't even swim in, nor even get to since you have no car and no access to public transit. All the while doing hard manual labor in a hot and humid environment for 16 hours/day while living in a tent or in literally just under a mosquito net hanging from a tree.

EconoBen 3y ago
Oh my gosh! I didn't know this was a trend. This is somehow very reassuring to hear, all these years later. Thanks for mentioning this.

jmathai 3y ago

Paying off the debt is the tip of the iceberg. What lies beneath are the tools to wield your income in a focused way to accomplish really big things. Congrats @EconoBen :)

lapcat 3y ago

What's truly disturbing is the student debt still held by people 50, 60, 70+ years old, as shown in the article's embedded chart: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Screenshot-2023-07-24-at-16.38.32.png https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/Scr...

ConfusedDog 3y ago
My stepdad held a lot of student loan debt until he passed away and it was all forgiven. He even thought of getting a PHD with another loan. I think that's pretty much the mentality/strategy of a lot of senior people.
- lapcat 3y ago
  At this point, that's basically my mentality too. Not to get a PhD, but rather that if I die before paying all my loans back, then I finally have the last laugh on the "higher education" system.
7373737373 3y ago
"Dividend et Impera" - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Pispers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Volker_Pispers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chK2KHGx_yo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chK2KHGx_yo
nonameiguess 3y ago
They may not be students. I was quite disturbed when attending my niece's college graduation last month to hear her say she had $30k in loans and my sister had taken out $180k. My sister is 41 and hasn't worked in 15 years. Her husband is a decently well-paid glazier, but they're probably going to be in debt for the rest of their lives.

justsocrateasin 3y ago

Congrats! It feels so good. I paid off about $60k of debt in 1.5 years after college while living at home. It was hard but worth it.

anon7331 3y ago

I paid off ~65K in student debt in one year (first year as a developer)... it's totally doable, especially in the USA.

yurishimo 3y ago
I wouldn't say 65k per year is doable for _most people_. It's easy to forget how privileged we are with developer salaries. Most people end school with student loan amounts roughly to one year's salary. Assuming you pay 25% of your income towards the loans, that's still a 3-5 year payoff assuming raises and low inflation. Congratulations on your achievement though! Being debt free is not normal anymore and it comes with a surprising amount benefits in other areas of your life.
dragonwriter 3y ago
The average starting salary for a college graduate in the USA is less than that, and most graduates have non-negative other costs, so, no, your outlier description is not representative of what is doable generally in the USA.

throw9away6 3y ago

Learn to code, this is the way and only way to escape poverty it seems

EconoBen 3y ago
doesn't hurt, apparently.

emrah 3y ago

Wow which school is that? Is that typical for a 4-year degree nowadays?!

tayo42 3y ago

This is an abnormal amount of debt, I think this gets headlines and people riled up. 140k for 4 years of school is not normal. The average school debt is 40k. Maybe school is expensive, this is excessive and bad decision making. Maybe you could say that there is a subset that needs help avoiding this but most do. Public schools and community colleges are doable and affordable and with a little work you can get scholarships. I did 6 years of undergrad because I was a bad student and only ended up with around 40k in the end.

EconoBen 3y ago
yeah, absolutely abnormal.
johnnyanmac 3y ago
Apparently, the median tuition based on a 4 year public illinois University is $28,660. the author is way above the median, but it's not unthinkable. We're still talking about the average illinois student these days over $100k in debt
- tayo42 3y ago
  I took a look and it says the average student receives alot in aid to lower costs. You can do your first two years at community college and save a ton. It's not like your Gen Ed classes matter... 5k to go to cc, and there is still financial assistance for that.

zeroCalories 3y ago

That's pretty good, congratulations. I don't mean to suggest you did the wrong thing, but I want to share a perspective from one of my friends. She has a similar amount of debt, and is simply choosing to make minimum payments for the rest of her life, maybe even default at some point. She says that spending her money on herself while she is young enough to enjoy it is more important than living frugally for decades to end up old without any money anyway. But she has also considered marrying, then being a stay at home mom or working under the table jobs so that she can default without getting her wages garnished. I'm not burdened by debt, but I would definitely be thinking of something similar in a case like that. Also reminds me of the credit-maxing meme. While I generally like market incentives, I think student loans are becoming extremely high risk investments. I'm lucky enough to have a well paying job, but I'm still worried about what paying for my child's education will be like. Should I make them take on hundreds of thousands in loans, or should I delay my retirement for a decade? The future seems bleak if we don't get the cost of education under control.

willcipriano 3y ago
Encourage them to get a trade.
- zeroCalories 3y ago
  And if they want to go to college we're back to the original problem. Either help them, or leave them to fend for themselves.
  - willcipriano 3y ago
    They probably want to eat candy for dinner as well.
testbjjl 3y ago
> But she has also considered marrying, then being a stay at home mom or working under the table jobs so that she can default without getting her wages garnished. This is not what I would be looking for in a partner. If you brazenly break contracts you willingly entered one day what’s to make anyone believe their contract with you is nonnegotiable.

whywhywhywhy 3y ago

Should just be able to send the debt back to the institute if the product they sold you doesn't result in enough income to foot the bill within X years. The current system doesn't encourage the institutes to do anything other than spiral costs, burn money and zero responsibility to provide a product focused on making sure that loan is ever paid back. Say this as someone who managed to pay theirs off, just think "forgiveness" and other ideas are temporary solutions we'll end up having to repeat over and over. Let's just have a permanent solution with accountability for what they are providing for the cost.

dabluecaboose 3y ago
There's an answer beyond nebulous desires for "accountability": Stop federal guarantees of loans, and allow loans to be discharged in bankruptcy. Make loans a risk and they won't give $200k to a sociology major with no prospects because they know they won't see a return.
runako 3y ago
> the product they sold you doesn't result in enough income to foot the bill within X years. Honestly this is the issue. Colleges sell education. People think they are buying a future income stream. I don't blame people, because employers have by and large conflated the two. But this misalignment is at the heart of a lot of the cost discourse.

jve 3y ago

The chart is weird/misleading: https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/garden_pay-1024x768.png https://benjaminlabaschin.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/gar... Drawing $17xx bar and slapping $1494,97 onto it... whereas other bars match the label with the height. I just couldn't parse how $1,4xx - $1,4yy would end up $408,56. And then in the text there is a number not charted: $1902 to just add to confusion, but OK, that's not what you get on hand. And then "$1106.42 per month, my public loans $387.02. Altogether, I would owe $1493.22" - the sum is actually .44 Author should fix something.

EconoBen 3y ago
fixed.

yubiox 3y ago

Is this fiction? There are no snakes in Hawaii, and I don't remember mosquitoes being much of an issue there either.

armoredkitten 3y ago

That's an impressive accomplishment, although the comments here are rightly mostly about the absurdity of student debt. I feel incredibly fortunate to have been able to graduate debt-free, through a combination of a) attending school in Canada, where tuition costs are less absurd than the US; b) some money my parents saved for their children's education; and c) participation in a co-op education model. Basically, alternating between one semester in school, one semester at a co-op job, and no summers off (though really, how many college students go home for the summer and take a job at Starbucks anyway?). I graduated having financed my education by myself after the first year, and with ~2 years of (relevant) work experience already under my belt. The connections from one of those jobs also ended up helping me get the job I have now. Like I said, I feel very fortunate, and this approach won't necessarily fit all use cases. But I heartily recommend a co-op education model any chance I get. Even if it could help you avoid taking on $10k in student debt, that feels like a win.

EconoBen 3y ago

really appreciate all the thoughtful comments! Better than I could have imagined. Thanks all.

travisgriggs 3y ago

I enjoyed reading this. The long form was engaging. I appreciate the author being up front about not trying to be prescriptive with his journey, more just descriptive. Honestly, the sense of despair people have in getting jobs is so sad to me. I've interacted with other young adults who are in the same situation. This sense of "I played the game the way I thought I was supposed to and now this??". I do all I can to help them connect them with others, but it's still really disappointing. I was glad he "made it" in the end, but I'm not convinced that "near mental breakdowns" are healthy and worth it. And then... survivorship bias. For every talented person like this that excels academically and has a flair for long for story telling, there's another 9 or 99, that don't, and are still stuck in the trenches, and they don't even have the time/resources to write their equally emotive but even more shitty story.

EconoBen 3y ago
I wish I could emphasize this comment more. Thank you for posting this. This reflects my thoughts exactly and the purpose of the post. There are so many more people whose stories you don't hear, who go through much harder times than I did, and who do not "make it" like I have. If anything, I think that should be the story. You make choices to try to dig yourself out, and you end up digging yourself further down the hole.

cvhashim04 3y ago

I really enjoy your writing. You seem to have a talent for it.

shalmanese 3y ago

It strikes me reading this piece, how insanely high ROI it would have been for this guy to have hired a really good life coach. He learned so many lessons the hard way way after he was ready to learn them and someone who was capable of transporting those lessons back in time to the point where he was ready to hear them would have generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in excess value. Unfortunately, there are so many "life coaches" that they drown out the people who could have actually been a good coach to this person.