College and Money

ShaggyJebus · 2009-07-04T06:34:32+00:00

I watched this documentary show recently (called Current Vanguard, "Maxed Out," if anyone cares) about college students, debt, and people who went to college and are not struggling. It talked about several different people, but a lot of the show focused on a couple in their thirties who had both gone to law school. The couple were married and had three children and did not have very much money at all. They said that the husband got paid at the beginning of the month, his entire paycheck was used to pay the bills, and then whatever the wife could earn (she was self-employed, I believe) was what they had for the rest of the month, to spend on food and clothing and such. And the majority of the time, she earned very little. In addition to not having a lot of money, the couple also had enormous credit card debt, and since they couldn't pay it off, they had virtually no credit. At the end of the show, they had an update; the husband's student loans had come out of deferment (I think that's what it's called) and was costing them an additional $300 a month. As I said, both the husband and wife had gone to law school and were attorneys; they had racked up very large debts due to student loans, and they couldn't find decent work after they finished college. As I watched the show, I thought to myself, "What's the point of going to college?" It used to be that you were supposed to go to college to get a good job and a good paycheck, but it seems like that is no longer the case. Jobs are scarce, and a lot of college graduates are unemployed or have huge debts that they cannot pay off because they don't earn enough with their current jobs. College seems to do nothing but cost a lot of money. When I was in high school, everybody said that I could do great things or whatever, because I'm smart. Fuck that. Right now, it seems better to get a job at a store, an entry-level position stocking shelves or something, and maybe work my way up, or not, than to go to college. Because after I graduate, I may end up having to get that job at Wal-Mart as a stocker, and if I'm going to be there anyway, why not skip college and not get a mountain of debt? But isn't that fucked up? Not any single part of it; all of it. It's all fucked up. But what can we do about it? Is there anything we can do?

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ShaggyJebus

15 years ago

Coco-tan wrote...

If you're doing it right, and you RESEARCH your OPTIONS, you won't rack up as much debt.

And instead of questioning something, do it and take that risk. Why sit around wondering if you can do something when you can actually go and do it? Learning things in college is a whole 'nother world compared to elementary, middle and high school education. Sure, you can use your highschool math skills for your job but when you run into a problem that you can't recognize from early math, you could cost alot of damage for one slight mistake.

Let's say a person does their homework, exploits every possible thing, and gets $10,000 of debt for their bachelor's degree, when they could have gotten $20,000 of debt. They, in a way, saved $10,000, right? But they still owe an enormous amount of money.

As for just jumping in, that's crazy. You cannot take big risks without thinking about it, especially with the job market the way it currently is. If I was going bungee-jumping, and my friend said that my line was secure, I wouldn't take his word and jump; I'd check my line, to be certain that I wouldn't die.

Coco-tan

15 years ago

ShaggyJebus wrote...

Coco-tan wrote...

I meant not sitting on your ass bitching about not going to college, not being able to, wishing you had a better job, etc.

razama

15 years ago

It is worth going, because I rather be in debt doing a job I love then making a decent living doing something else. My two best friends are on different ends of the spectrum, one is in the oil industry, the other is into wind-turbine reseach. My buddy doing oil is away from home alot, always out on rigs in the gulf of mexico, but he makes a killing, and he has been doing it since he was out of high school. But he hates it cause he never sees his family, he always is moving, sometimes gets laid off when the market is bad, and breaks his back doing his job. Dude got a nice house with a lot of land though.

My other buddy chris just graduated college, he still is taking a few more classes but is done with his degree. He works in okalahoma, stays about three hours from the nieghborhood he grew up in. He doesn't make alot because wind power isn't very profitable right now. But the guy loves his job, and does it in the place he loves. Why does he love his job? Because he is building the energy source of the future, so he tells me how everyday he is exicted to wake up and go to work, and that sometimes he hates when he has to go home because he wants just a while longer to get a little extra work done. Him and his wife and kid live in a guest house at his girlfriends, but man I visited them, they were happy. His wife loved staying at home with the little girl, and he almost loved going to work as much as he loved being home.

My friend Matt in the Oil business doesn't have a bad life and he is good guy, but he hates his work. His home life is great, but unlike Chris, he wakes up everyday dreading that either he has to go to work, or that he is some thousand miles from home.

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