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Extreme Saving: A Man, His Van and Five-Figure Debt
- WestCoastJustin 13y agoRead about this in 2009, [1, 2]. Anyways, looks like he has a new book out about his journey, called Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom [3]. If you search google for Ken Ilgunas looks like there is a full court press about it. [1] http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/ http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/ [2] http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/duke-grad-school-on-pennies-just-live-in-a-van http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/duke-grad-school-o... [3] http://www.amazon.ca/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X http://www.amazon.ca/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/0544...
- mindstab 13y agoMore anecdotal evidence that the value of America arts degrees is far less than their over inflated cost
- jnazario 13y agoi came here to say something like this, albeit a lot less tactfully. that said, i admit that i'm torn. on the one hand, we definitely need people to study history, language, writing, etc. the arts, and the liberal arts, are what help define a culture and help us develop that culture, those values, and pass them down and create a rich history. i wish our society valued that more, or rather appreciated what we have (and are at risk of losing). the other side of it is the practical side. when i read that he had difficulty finding an internship at newspapers, that he had to push carts at home depot i thought "shouldn't that have been a sign to him that he's going to have difficulties in finding a role in the job market?" but the risk is that we, as a society, push towards vocational schools and away from developing thinkers, and that we stagnate because of that. i'm glad he's writing about it and finding traction there, i assume he can use that to pay down his debt. that said not everyone - not by a long shot - can do that. the consumer marketplace just doesn't have that capacity. this leaves me to wonder, then, about what roles we as a society have for the bulk of the people out there, and how to best serve them for education, expectations, and our future survivability. i am not creative enough to have any good ideas to help solve that challenge.
- sliverstorm 13y agoIt seems to me the problem is not that we don't value history, language, etc- it's that it has become commoditized, as so many people get degrees in those fields. That probably drives down wages and drives up tuition.
- roc 13y agoTuition is rising, across the board, without much regard for marketability of degrees. It's more a function of the way society values school 'brands' and the way government guarantees abet this behavior by allowing essentially anyone to borrow as much as they want for whatever they want. (Want to get a run-of-the-mill BA from an outrageously-expensive private college? Just sign here.) I'm not sure I'd go so far as to say that the government should cap loans by degree-marketability or restrict school selection by a grading of school outcomes, but either a massive social re-valuation of tuition needs to happen, or things along those lines are going to need to be approached. Our economy can't really grow when every young person is buried under student loan debt for years and years. Particularly not as we've transitioned to defined-contribution retirement plans. A decade of paying off student loan debt would either then be followed by large 'catch-up' contributions to make up the difference -- further delaying/retarding productive economic engagement -- or be underfunded, leading to higher social safety net expenditures when those workers retire without sufficient savings.
- comrade_ogilvy 13y agoAt no time and no place did a history degree really pay off in terms of monetary compensation for knowledge of history. It was always commoditized, because precise knowledge of historical facts is not greatly compensated for, as the norm. It paid off in terms exercising a mind in the craft of delving into an ambiguous question, forming complex ideas out of evidence, and expressing those ideas in a more concise and accessible form. A history degree is about as a good a "pre-law" or "pre-sales and marketing" degree as any other. As a society, we benefit from people knowing a bit of history. But that is one reason we have public schools, theoretically.
- 13y ago
- benjamincburns 13y agoValue is only quantifiable in the context of a purpose. Is a liberal arts degree valuable as an instrument to garner income? Statistically, no. Is it valuable as a set of experiences which help to better understand the world we live in? Absolutely. But does that make it valuable enough to justify the cost? I dunno. Ask Ken Ilgunas.
- tnorthcutt 13y agoHow can you say for sure it has the second type of value?
- benjamincburns 13y ago> I dunno. Ask Ken Ilgunas. Or to be a bit less of a dick, I think this is a cross between the ancient philosophical question, "how does one know anything to be true?" and the cliché, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder." It only holds this kind of value to an individual if the individual thinks it does. [Edit: And just to avoid the bigger philosophical question let's just say that the individual is or isn't confident that it holds this value, not that they know that it does or doesn't. ;-)] Either way, there's always the risk that you aren't getting what you pay for.
- mahyarm 13y agoIs that secondary value best given by a college experience or finding it yourself then?
- benjamincburns 13y agoThat's an optimization problem. As such it doesn't really fit the context of what I was trying to say. To put my point differently, this is an example of a market which trades extrinsic value for intrinsic value. Sure, some mechanisms are certainly better than others for this purpose, but as is the nature of intrinsic value, "better" can only be defined on a very individual basis.
- lern_too_spel 13y ago
- tekacs 13y agoPoints at his own comment elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5795016 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5795016 Essentially: surely that depends on your notion of value?
- grecy 13y agoI spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. My entire expenses were $1200/mo, which is pretty much what I was spending before the trip just going to work every day. Not paying rent and cooking all your own meals is a great way to save money. [1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure Coldfoot is not the northernmost truck stop in the world. I drove another 250 miles North from there. http://theroadchoseme.com/the-dalton-highway-to-the-arctic-ocean http://theroadchoseme.com/the-dalton-highway-to-the-arctic-o...
- orangethirty 13y agoI would love to do that. Bookmarked the site for later reading.
- grannyg00se 13y ago"Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless." I can't imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars on something that is monetarily worthless just because it is of personal value to me. That seems incredibly self indulgent.
- szx 13y agoThis: "I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children."
- 300bps 13y agoIn many cultures children take care of the parents in their old age. Is that not practical value? In farming cultures, the more children you have the more workers you have. That seems practical as well. I think his analogy is flawed.
- mpyne 13y agoI agree the analogy is flawed, but that doesn't invalidate his argument. People have all kinds of hobbies that add no real practical value to their lives, other than that they enjoy doing it, and we don't typically make fun of people for those.
- lern_too_spel 13y agoWe make fun of anybody who goes into debt for those hobbies.
- Crake 13y ago"I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children." The fact that after spending so much money on his libarts degree, he'd use the skills from his "education" to make such a terribly stupid and obviously factually wrong analogy just proves his critics right, invalidating his argument. (Many people have kids because they want to be taken care of. Duh.) No matter how many of one's fellow liberal arts peers might preen about their fancy, overpriced sheepskins, the fact is that these would be emperors in reality have no clothes. (God forbid you point that out to them, though.) "We don’t mock people who play the guitar, or go on walks in the woods. Why should we mock people who want to learn about their world and learn about themselves?" Yes, perhaps, but if someone spent $200,000 on a beginner's guitar, or paid $30,000 for the a membership to a private property to go walk in your everyday typical (and accessible for free at a metro park) woods, we'd definitely be side eying them for it.
- quackerhacker 13y agoI ALWAYS find the survival stories of college WAY more interesting than what you did to get your masters or what you majored in.
- nchuhoai 13y agoI have always been a proponent of a more vocationally-oriented system like we have in Germany, it was outragous for me to see how much money people spend on "monterily worthless" degrees. Yet, I point out America's college system as the single best competitive advantage over the rest of the world. I so far couldn't find the words for it, but he put it soo greatly: "Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless." "I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children."
- fein 13y agoAh yes, but the end of that last quote leaves a bit more: "Why should we mock people who want to learn about their world and learn about themselves?" Because you don't need a damn Liberal Arts degree to do that. It didn't cost me 5 figures to learn about my ego and my id; It cost me 5 figures to get a CS degree while doing so. I also mock those with children, but only because I currently don't know a single person in my circles that should be having kids now, if ever. When I hear a friend is pregnant, I just get depressed about all the opportunities they'll never have.
- nchuhoai 13y agoI'm not disagreeing with you that at the margins, a liberal arts degree or the pursuit of knowledge at a college might not be "worth it". I just think, liberal arts people get a lot of shit for even wanting to do so. Ultimately, it's about the second part of your comments. You clearly think they are doing something wrong with their lives, or they are not choosing the optimal route for their life. While you are obviously entitled to your opinion, I do have some reservations about this kind of judgement. People have different views of what is a happy fulfilled life for them, so let it be. (I know how ironic my "stop judging people" judgement on your judgement must sounds like, it's a fallacy I haven't been able to solve yet)
- fein 13y ago> I know how ironic my "stop judging people" judgement on your judgement must sounds like, it's a fallacy I haven't been able to solve yet Sounds fine to me as long as we judge people based on their decisions and the impact those decisions have on a non consenting 3rd party. I'm concerned with people choosing their preferred route for their own life, as long as its the preferred route with the minimal amount of negative consequences to the rest of society. I think the concept of "stop judging people" is hugely misrepresented. It should be "stop judging people based on things that do not and will not affect others", because really, telling someone to not judge a rapist for being a rapist is pretty bad.
- rayiner 13y ago> "I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children." Uh, once Social Security goes bankrupt the practical value of having children will be the same as it always has been: someone to help take care of you when you're old and feeble. And on a macro scale, there is tremendous practical value in ensuring there are 18-25 year old consumers in a couple of decades. Facebook stock would tank if it ever became the case that it's primary demographic was a monotonically shrinking set. Also, why are college kids today so bad at job hunting? "I applied to 25 paid newspaper internships and got rejected from every single one... So, I got a job at a work camp in Arctic Alaska..." The only way to job search as a fresh graduate is to treat it like it's a job itself. When I was job hunting during law school, I'd bang out that many applications in a day. I know a lot of people who didn't operate that way: they'd apply to a job a week or so as they found something they thought was perfect (and take forever crafting the perfect application). Those people struggled. Hint: if you're a fresh graduate, and your job search strategy doesn't involve a spreadsheet to keep track of the huge volume of applications you're submitting, you're doing it wrong. Yes, there aren't enough jobs for fresh graduates out there (outside software engineering anyway). So obviously if everybody treated job searching seriously it wouldn't help anyone. But as long as most grads are like this guy, you have a leg up by not being like this guy.
- MaggieL 13y agoJust imagine paying $32,000 for a "liberal-arts education" that leaves you in a state where you make statements like that one. I guess that makes me one of the critics he's impatient with.
- figbucket 13y agoIf you work out savings of not having children and put the money in a decent savings plan you'll probably have enough to pay for better qualified care multiple times over what any children may provide (or not they're not obliged to help).
- rayiner 13y ago
- wikwocket 13y agoI admire the determination to pay off one's debt no matter the personal cost, but I do not understand the life choices. There has to be more effective ways to pay debt than to move to the wilderness where you literally cannot spend 95% of your income. Personally I favor the idea that it is better to focus your energy on earning/producing more, than it is to try to penny-pinch and cut costs. In today's world it seems there are innumerable opportunities to find money/success. But I acknowledge I'm saying that from a position of privilege, sitting here checking HN in my spare time. Perhaps there was no other easy way for this English major to make more than $8 an hour, or perhaps he wanted the experience of going to Alaska (and also paying off his loan). But I would not suggest this as a first-choice plan to repay student loans!
- pud 13y agoHe wanted to pay off his school loans so he could "feel like a free person." Now his entire life revolves around being a slave to his debt (living in a van in remote Alaksa, etc). To each their own. But to me, this doesn't seem more free.
- dreamdu5t 13y agoConsider the fact that his degrees are in fields that can be learned for free on the Internet and at the library. $100k in debt for History and English? Ridiculous!
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- leoh 13y agoYou are missing the point. Face to face relationships are invaluable and are the most important part of a good education. In liberal arts, there aren't dozens of high-quality, responsible IRC chatrooms, say, devoted to the intricacies of Nietzsche like there are rooms devoted to a single programming framework.
- dreamdu5t 13y agoNo, I'm not. Face to face relationships don't cost $30k+ a year. You don't have to go to school to meet people. If you're going into debt just to meet people then something is deeply flawed.
- wonderzombie 13y agoYou're still missing the point. :) Repeated face-to-face conversations with experts and other students (i.e. a classroom learning environment) is not the same as sitting alone, in the middle of nowhere, in front of a computer.
- kees 13y ago
- ahallock 13y agoWhile his story is interesting, I don't think it should be a model for anyone else or an example of how to be prudent with your education or debt situation. It's almost as if he went to such lonely extremes so he could write about this later. And blindly paying down debts is irrational; you need to look at the broader picture, not be intimidated by what you owe. Maybe that money would be better spent on other things in the short term. I have a low interest rate on my student loan and just pay the minimum.
- jaynos 13y agoThis reminds me of the time I lived in a van and took odd jobs to pay off credit card debt. Oh wait, that never happened...but it will if I find a publisher to give me a large advance for the book I write about.