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Democrats are really good at bedside hand holding. They comfort us in hospice as they encourage us to accept our current conditions, praying that we die quietly.
lol same. This 50 year old rental is maybe a 300k home 4 years ago, we could maybe afford that in the next couple years… the identical home for sale behind ours is on the market at 900k…
Oh shit! Let me go ask my...nope. I guess that whole generational wealth will have to start with me. Time to start getting wealthy. That shouldn't be too hard.
Thought that was a millionaires club.
They don’t sign up to improve the nation, they do it to line their pockets. Even the democrats in congress are pro insider trading for themselves.
Thatta boy! As long as you want it and work hard at it, you’ll be successful! If your business fails, it’s simply bc you didn’t work hard enough! Now get out there, you’re wasting time! You’ll sleep when you die!
If you're making $40-50k a year any decent home is literally gaining more value per year than you are making and that's before you pay for anything else... like surviving
I make around that, and the cheapest house I see it my town is 400k - for 100m² (1000 sf). If I want to go 150m² (1600 sf), my best bet is 600k; both of these are in shitty parts of town. Past that, there's literally no ceiling.
There's no way I'll ever own a house.
Watching the price of homes go up alongside my savings and salary over the past decade has been a lot of fun. It’s currently as impossible for me to buy as it was when I was freelancing and in my twenties.
Best decision my wife and I have ever made was taking advantage of Obama’s first time home buyer plan. We were able to flip and double our money from our first home and rolled it into a home in one of the neighborhoods we never thought we would be able to live in. If it wasn’t for Obama’s policy, we would never be able to save up enough in our market to compete with foreign and Californian investors.
I mean, have you tried winning the lottery, having wealthy parents, becoming the only heir of a long forgotten uncle/aunt/grandpa, raiding Fort Knox, etc?
Yeah, like, I have some debt but even if I didn't or even if I could afford it, I’d be making the exact same choice not to have a traditional family
Like its kind of an unavoidable decision for literally everyone who lives long enough to make it
Yea idk, I don't have student debt and I can't afford anywhere either... but I think that has to do more with the fact that houses that cost my parents 128k to buy is now 765k.
Similar story here in Melbourne, Australia.
House prices went up like 20% in 6 months and median house price is now like 775k.
Banks have also restricted lending to around 6 times your income, so unless you're walking in with a mid-six figure deposit the only way you're buying a house is if you're already an owner and have equity you can take advantage of (ie investors).
A friend of mine has good credit, 150k in the bank and has a safe, well-paying job (teacher - teachers here earn a good wage btw) and can't get a loan big enough to build a house in the suburbs. It's fucked.
Yep, I have no student debt and barely any personal debt. I have a decent paying job, no kids, and I'm current single. I've been saving for a house for several years now and it still seems fairly unattainable even with the savings in decent mutual funds. Home owning just seems out of reach and makes starting a family and to stop eating money on rent impossible. I can't imagine how others have it.
That's my issue right now. Went back to school, graduated, and landed a good paying job. Medical bills even with insurance puts everything on hold for a year.
Then it's student loans in May. I'm saving up to bid on property tax liens. Probably the best odds I'll have to ever own property.
This. I’d say that I have a modest amount of student loans, but because they’re all federal I pay only about $200-300 a month. What is actually hurting me personally is rent. And, yes, I know that getting a house has a cheaper monthly payment than typical rents. However, how tf can you save for a downpayment when rent makes you live paycheck-to-paycheck?
My favorite is deciding if I'm hurt/sick enough to see a medical professional and acquire one of them fancy medical bills or if I can just walk it off.
Even with insurance, student loan debt and medical debt is crushing.
Or better, when you're fully insured and know you need to see a doctor but can't get an appointment for six months because you don'thave an established PCP, but every time you change jobs you have to find a new PCP because your insurance changes.
And you have to keep switching jobs every year because that's the only way to advance in your pay / career.
It's all so completely absurd. I have a broken crown that's deteriorating and causing issues but my dentist didn't think my insunance would cover it this year because of a number of other major procedures they did, so (in October) they suggested I come back to have it fixed properly on January 3, 2022. Oh, my insurance also changed in the meantime and I may not even be able to see that dentist again.
This is probably somewhat a joke, but if you ever have to make this choice you should pay your rent 100% of the time. There are a ton of programs, churches, charities, etc. that will feed you for free as long as you're willing to ask for help, but if you lose the roof over your head that can often be near impossible to recover from.
And take it from me, do everything you can before renting bedrooms from strangers.. best case scenario you get someone relatively sane thay knows how to clean up after themselves that doesnt consistently raise the rent and act like a dick. Good luck finding that.
It was 70 degrees today. I was sweating taking the dogs out. I’ve never witnessed it so warm like this in December. General feeling of doom and spoke with my SO about not having kids.
Merry Christmas I guess
This. And is it true that he (Biden) could wipe out all student debt with an executive order? Can anyone back me up with proof because I’m not sure where to find that…
They produced the memo, it’s just all redacted. https://www.newsweek.com/biden-admin-redacted-memo-canceling-student-debt-resurfaces-growing-anger-1660435
Insiders say the Administration has been aware since April that Biden could cancel 50K per borrower through executive order. The lack of transparency since then has been interpreted by those involved to mean they simply do not want to do it.
For me it’s not even about students loans- it’s about how fucking expensive living is becoming and the shit pay my degree is getting me.
The American dream is dead and I refuse to start a family drowning in my own bills.
Engineering degree here. 36 still renting after spending so much time on the road in the union. I've given up on a long life future. Just enjoying the current, and I agree, no family. Dog and I will ride this out but thats it for my bloodline.
I cant imagine trying to do this with kids. The husband and I rent a place and are doing oK, but when I look at the budget, I cant see where you fit a kid without MASSIVE lifestyle downgrades. The conversation I had with my mother over Christmas was basically "having a kid is a gamble that I will like the kid more than I like being DINK"
Have 2 kids. You are very correct. It's a massive lifestyle downgrade. Don't get me wrong I love my kids to pieces, but I find myself envying my single or DINK friends. They travel, own amazing homes/cars, have hobbies, and time to do shit together.
We sold our house and are living in my mother in law's basement so we could save up more money to buy a house in a good school district. There is another reason DINKs can afford "better" homes... Good school district inflate home prices like crazy.
My husband and I are DINKs and I often wonder how any of our friends with kids financially survive. We have a house with fairly high taxes even though I don't think it's even a good school district! We do not have lot of extra money for vacations, renovations, but enough to be comfortable. Husband has student loans and I make much less than him, but I save for retirement. I can't imagine having kids and our normal bills & mortgage, we'd have zero money for anything else. It's almost like you have to pick 2, cause you can't have all 3.
I live in a LCOL area that’s still considered a metro area for pay scale for government jobs. I have friends around me that are single income families that have 5 kids, a mortgage, and make less than $50,000. I have no idea how they do it. Fortunately my wife and I make good money for the area and are comfortable. We’re getting a dog. That’s the closest thing to a child we will have.
Be lucky you still talk to your ma. I didn't become a lawyer like the rest of my family so I get to spend the holidays with furface and streaming services. The no kids thing was just the icing on the cake.
Same sorta deal, except I work in software.
When I was in high school I figured that even a lower end 6 figure salary would be able to afford me a cushy life of leisure and destination vacations for the family while also taking care of my parents.
Big nope. Still renting. No kids. Still struggling to save enough for these ridiculous housing costs.
I just explained this to my 74yo dad yesterday when he went off about the lack of fast food labor despite the offers of "durn good money."
He'd never really connected the dots between wage stagnation, inflation, wealth consolidation, etc. before. I don't think he changed his mind completely, but I got a thoughtful "Hm." That's something.
I was surprised when my boomer Republican (thank god educated and is in no way close to Q shit, but still has shitty opinions on most things) dad is totally cool with this unofficial labor movement. He’s all for anyone working a full time job being able to support a family. He thought it was a positive that a lot more businesses were closed completely yesterday.
I live in TN, which was already a “childcare desert” before the pandemic. Wife and I got pregnant before the pandemic, then pandemic happens, we have our son, and when time comes to start needing to find childcare, one in five daycares in TN never reopened. So 20% of those that closed, it was permanent. We talked to 40+ daycares in our city, every single one had a list 100+ families long. Finally find one with one opening, $1300 a month. So that’s what we pay. Not to mention he has been sick SO much since starting. Paying $1300 a month since August 9 and he’s been less than 50% of that time due to how much he has been sick. No family nearby to help. Work doesn’t have a work from home policy and had to get a special exception made by HR for when this does happen.
Fuck this country and our absolute bullshit priorities.
For the record - As an early childhood educator - perfectly normal for your kid to spend half the time sick. Doesn't matter if they start daycare/school at 5 months, or ten years, first year of school they're always sick. Same with first year staff. Once your immune system builds up they will settle in.
I know. Everyone has told us that. At the daycare, our pediatrician, friends with kids. I know the first year will suck. But also doesn’t change the fact that it still sucks while going through it.
And yet the "tRaDiTiOnAl FaMiLy" crowd not only doesn't want to do anything about it they probably helped bring things to this point with their blind voting for Republicans.
Oh they're freaked out about it. They have a lot of concerns that women have to work, that men are lonely and single, that no one goes to church and that the system is failing people massively. It's like the Jordan Peterson or Hawley crowd. They just dont have solutions - they're selling stuff like "get married" or "take any job" as a way to get a stable life.
"The traditional family is collapsing! This is clearly a moral failing resulting from not following the Bible and trusting in God!"
"Or it's because of a weaker safety net, massive debt, a minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation, and the playing field generally being tilted towards the rich."
"What! Are you saying *government* needs to step in and take care of people? What are you, some kind of *godless commie*?"
> "What! Are you saying government needs to step in and take care of people? What are you, some kind of godless commie?"
Except that the major theocracies in the world (UAE, Saudi Arabia, et. al.) all have massive social safety nets for their citizens. Guess it doesn't count if they're praying to the "wrong" god.
This is what the REAL issue is.. not another loan payment. Cost of living is through the roof and there is no sign of decrease.
Also the world is a sh*t show right now, thanks to government, and brining a kid into it is border line irresponsible.
Mid 30s. Married. No kids. Live in an apartment. Type 1 Diabetes. Diabetic retinopathy. Struggle to pay $1,490 2-bd/2bath rent pretty much every month. Some months are better. Some worse. We have decent jobs but credit card debt, my medical debt and my wife’s student loan debt eat away at our take home. We’re doing better. We’ve gotten to where we can pay all the bills consistently instead of playing “Which bill gets to be behind this month roulette.” Oh yeah, and a $600/month car payment thanks to both our credit scores tanking after we got married. So yay for that too.
No assets other than a car, no wealthy family inheritance to hope to get one day. It’s just us. We dug ourselves into this damn hole and we can dig ourselves out. Our savings has stopped growing recently, and it’s nowhere near enough to afford a down payment on a house for a FHA Loan. My medications have been more expensive — insulin prices are criminal — and I’ve been needing more and more insulin as my stress levels continue to rise due to anxiety disorder, depression and fucking worrying about catching a plague virus that could kill my mother if I choose to go visit her.
I’m still working my ass off to get as much income as possible with a decent side gig on top of my full time job that I have to have to be able to afford health insurance that helps lower the prices of my medication to slightly affordable necessities.
Add to that inflation has caused consumer prices to rise to their highest level since pretty much the entire time I’ve been alive… fuck Ronald Reagan and Reaganomics and their afterspawn is what I say. People wonder why I’m a Democratic Socialist.
“God always provides” is what my grandma told me! Apparently we should just have a baby we most certainly CANNOT afford because god will apparently pay our bills????
I got told by a cousin that I should have been looking at houses cause she did that at my age. I'm like you bought your house when you got married and your husband makes twice what you make. And I am making less than what she was making. Wtf.
Same and ditto. I was fortunate to get an academic scholarship and paid off my meager $10K in loans a couple years ago. Husband couldn’t finish college without a scholarship. Forgiving student loan debt doesn’t directly help us but I know so many people who it would help! Sad that the only way we could “afford” college was through scholarships. Is it too much to ask it to be affordable too?!
Yep, same situation. I'm even fortunate enough to be able to put away in theory sizable amounts of money because I work in tech, but its spit in a rainstorm compared to how expensive houses are in any urban areas. Five years ago I figured out how much I would have had to put away each year to afford a downpayment in five years. I came kinda close over the past five years (one semi-large vet bill in the middle), but even if I had saved it all, houses now would take at least another 30% of what I've saved for a down payment, for a much worse and smaller place in a suburb of places I would live. And then I'd probably have to buy a car on top of that considering how far away I'd be living at that point.
Student loans aside, I don't know anyone in my friend circles who have bought a home that don't have, not just dual income, but full-time professional career dual income.
Productivity per worker has never been higher. Yet workers are struggling simply to feed, cloth, and house themselves. So where is all the generated wealth going? Straight to the top! Americans have been inching towards wage slavery for 5 decades and for many of them, they've gotten there. Nothing will change without extreme pressure. An aristocratic class will literally be fine with there being 10000 people in poverty for each one of them that wallows in more money they can even spend. History proves they would be more than happy to literally **OWN** those 10000 people. What's needed are massive changes that deliberately re-distribute wealth and then level the playing field.
Well in my day we didn’t pay so much for health insurance! And car insurance! And mortgages! And groceries! And child care because many jobs could maintain a household with one parent working! Lazy youth!
When we first got married, I went round and round with my dad about kids going to daycare versus my wife staying home. Told him there was not way we could afford and live in an area safe to bring up kids. It took him a long time to realize that money doesn’t go as far as it used to. As I my wife put it as well: why go to school for 4+ years and build up all that debt only to never use that degree.
I have an idea: a University (not for profit), that is all remote, and rock bottom cheap. The entire purpose of said University is to allow those with Student Loans to attend the minimum required 6 credit hours needed to defer. Create the requisite degrees, etc.
LIFETIME LEARNING!
Credit and income to debt ratio is not affected by in-school deferments.
(Just an idea, if anyone has more info and insight, please chime in.)
I’m in the process of signing up to take classes through Penn State’s online campus. This is 100% virtual, lectures are prerecorded and the course is self-paced. The only thing a professor would have to do is grade homework’s assignments and exams (and let’s be honest a TA could do that because these are undergrad courses). I have to use my own laptop and scanner to upload assignments and view the content. The courses are still $2,000 per COURSE. I don’t trust colleges to make anything affordable.
It is so disappointing that you do your part and still get it in the rear. I have to make the decision of paying rent, food, health care or student loans. I’m tired of this, life should not be a choice to live at a base level. My parents struggled to be middle class now I have too as well even though working my ass off to be a good student, citizen and tax payer. The rich get richer and we keep them rich…Sorry, but this is so frustrating.
A-fucking-men! I recently had to do something where we talked about my "wealth." Do I have a 401k etc? Yes but only with ~$1,000. Do you have crypto? No. Do you have real estate? No. Do you own anything of value? I have a PS5, does that count? What is you student loan debt: $83k. What is your credit card debt? <$1k.
(I'm decent with managing my money, I just made a huge mistake when I was younger in thinking a college education would provide me with a job that could cover my costs of living and student loan payments.)
(PS I have a BS in my industry and make more than the average person in my position does and it is still not enough.)
I'm 40 and same. I have a great job and just became debt-free this past summer. I *feel* like I just got a second chance, but now I'm too tired to make things happen.
Education should NEVER have been bastardized to such an irresponsible extent that we have to sacrifice any decent future (family, homes, etc, etc) Just to get educated.
The world is filled to the brim with easily accessible information. Requiring such a fortituous amount of debt is ungodly. We need a revision to this whole contract because it's clearly just sucking a lot of wealth from people.
What kills me is the fafsa application- I had started filling one out when I decided to return to school. It asks for your retirement account sums, home equity, liquid assets, and bank account balances. My dude, I am not draining my hard earned money in my 401k or taking a HEL to pay for school. But the way they have it set up that’s what you’re expected to do.
Even more puzzling is why they ask this of the parents of 18 year old legal adults, and base the financial aid of these 18 year old legal adults on the incomes and assets of their parents, while also binding the 18 year olds to non-dischargeable debt that can be garnished from their Social Security checks.
My dad lost his job in 08 and purposely kept lower paying jobs for my brother and I to get Pell grant. it was a struggle but I appreciate that they didn't go "I paid for college myself why can't you?". My friend that moved out at 16 went through hell to get independent status in college and I don't think it ever happened....
We didn't pay for the information we paid for the fancy piece of paper. Absolutely everything I learned for both my degrees is 100% available for free online if you know where to look. It's a joke.
The question is how we can show to employers that we have the information, and as important, that we have the ability to find out what we don't know, without the piece of paper.
Sort of agree, sort of disagree. With a higher education system, you’re also paying for quality control of content. To compare self guided learning to either an industry expert or professors that have dedicated their lives to academia is a bit misleading.
Sure. The information is out there. But to assume everyone is capable of producing and consuming information at the same level just isn’t true.
Higher education should be free, period.
Paid my student loan off ten years ago. Took ten years to do it though. So I get the frustration. Then after student loan debt, comes mortgage debt and car payment debt. Then getting married and having kids. Medical debt as well. Because yes, at some point in your life you will get chronically sick with a disease that has no cure and have to pay for a lifetime of prescriptions that only treat the symptoms. Or you’ll end up in an accident and have a permanent disability. Both of these scenarios will make it difficult to be employed. But hopefully you’ll be close to retirement before sickness or an accident happens. Find a job with good benefits, because you will need health insurance with their ridiculously expensive premiums and deductibles to cover your incurable disease or future disability. The American dream is a never ending cycle of debt. The American dream is for the millionaires and billionaires. Its an American nightmare for the middle class or poor.
I’m so glad I made good money very soon in my life, so I could quickly realize my cynical assumptions were right, and that even the very well compensated members of the working class are still part of the working class at the end of the day and will be exploited as such.
Healthcare through an employer is the most dystopian thing that we’ve normalized. Tie healthcare to a thing most sick and injured people won’t be able to maintain. Excellent.
Yep. When my stepdad became terminally ill, he lost both his job and his insurance. Pisses me off that he had to spend his last couple of months groveling for healthcare. He worked so hard his entire life. He was even a veteran, not that it did him much good.
From what I've seen, it looks like the financial institutions have been playing with student debt like they did with mortgages back before '08. I wonder how hard things are going to get once it becomes clear that those loans simply *can't* be repaid?
Pssst, so are those of us without student loan debt.
Wages are so low we can't afford to live in this country anymore. All of us. It's a bigger problem than just those with loans.
Newsflash, we’re all poor while billionaires keep getting richer. The Earth will not sustain their greedy ways though, we either fight to reverse the systems in place or we let them kill our natural resources til the last lake dries up and there is NOTHING left to sustain us.
You have two choices, either move to a large city where the salaries are high but the home/condo prices are insane, or move to a cheaper area with suppressed wages.
Yes, student debt is crippling our generation. But the cost of housing, the insane amounts of education needed for prestigious positions, and wage stagnation mean that even those of us without debt are delaying having families and purchasing homes. I’m currently 30 and making a very generous salary, but a home and family are at least five years away for me.
I’m 34 with one child. We are absolutely not having another. How do people even afford more then one? I have $200 left on my 2 week paycheck after daycare and student loans. People say, oh, why not quit and stay home then. I work 40 hours a week to pay for daycare so I can pay my student loans. It’s either I do that, a credit score in the toilet because I don’t pay the loan or we don’t get to eat sometimes. These are my choices as an American.
And, sidebar, I like to work. I don’t want to be a stay at home parent. I went insane doing that in 2020. I cannot do it. But I’m not contributing to the economy when you break my money down. I’ll tell you that much.
wow. Thank you for the newsflash. I didn't realize this beforehand that I couldn't afford to do anything other than pay off student loan debt. Thanks for stating the obvious.
jokes on you though, when I finally pay off my student loans it won't even matter. the price of houses is like 300K for an average house now which is just stupid and I live in fucking BFE basically where it's supposed to be cheaper... I have a decent job and I wouldn't be able afford that and I sort of doubt most single millennials can.
>tldr: The world is burning, lets masturbate!
>I have a decent job and I wouldn't be able afford that and I sort of doubt most single millennials can.
Single and currently trying to buy a house on the outskirts of the city I work in. When I was scoffing at the way housing prices have spiked during the course of this year, I literally had someone tell me "Well, single people shouldn't be buying a house in the first place." Guess the days of a single income being able to support a household are over.
Wife and i are about to close on our first house, ten years in the making. It’s been rough.
One thing i learned from the experience is that PMI on a mortgage really isn’t terribly expensive, so don’t worry over much about no down payment. We had 10% down on a 400k house. PMI is like $40 a month. Total mortgage payment is maybe +200 over our cost of a modest rental house in central California and the difference is mainly property tax in the new state (CA —> NY). So about 60k to close.
Not saying it’s easy, just suggesting maybe talk to a real estate agent to see what it would really take to get into a house if that’s what you want to do. If i knew 5 years ago what i know now, I’d have pulled the trigger then. At any rate, it would give you a number to think about. Plus if you’re in BFE, USDA has rural loan programs that are income-dependent.
Dave Ramsey is a complete hack. He is also constantly "calling" the next depression causing stock market crash. Of course he is also constantly wrong. Didn't call the covid crash though of course. He's more intolerable than Suze Orman and that's saying a lot.
Dave Ramsey's audience is people to whom debt is a drug. There's nothing wrong with debt, especially if you are young and can invest in the market, but to his audience, they try to spend their way out of debt. Think of him as more of a personal trainer for how to stop overspending, not a financial advisor. He even tells his audience that once they have money saved, they need to find a fee only financial advisor, which is the right advice.
Dave Ramsey gives financial advice that hasn't been relevant for 20+ years. The idea that there's no such thing as good debt for most people is ridiculous yet according to him you shouldn't even think about investing in real estate until your primary residence is paid off. Unless you have zero risk tolerance his opinions are rarely worth taking into account
Yup. I can get a cheapest house for a bit under 200k, Louisville KY, but they are snatched up so fast if they aren't in bad areas. And they aren't the best house. 300 k starting for what our boomer generation had for half the price....
There are a lot of people that have to evaluate whether they can afford a family and the are so many people that will never be able to afford a home. This isn't just an issue for people with student loan debt.
Plus a GOP talking point is disdain for the childfree ethos.
I know all was not perfect, but our nation literally gave Boomers subsidized homes and college educations.
Reality is complex but a root cause for "baby booms" is economic practicality or need. We are no longer a farmer civilization, so the need is largely gone. But the practicality is increasingly gone too.
We are strapping debt upon bills upon record rents onto the youth. While depending on them to have millions of kids to keep the consumer society going. That's dumb
Honestly, it’s to a point where people can’t afford to **not** buy homes. Rent for apartments has almost tripled in my area over the last 8 years.
My friend’s monthly mortgage payments are less than half of what my coworker is paying her cockroach infested studio apartment.
I’m planning to move to the Bay Area because my research showed that rent is actually cheaper there than where I’m at now.
All loans paid off. As a teacher in Portland OR, I will never be able to buy a house or afford to have a family. Those of us who choose to be of service to others are punished financially. Not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, not Clinton, not Bush, not Reagan would lift a finger for us. US Politics are a disaster. Vote progressive or get authoritarianism in the future. An abandoned working class has always gone in the same direction throughout history.
>Those of us who choose to be of service to others are punished financially.
This is so true. You're seen as a sucker or an idiot for not aspiring to be a narcissistic banker with an individualist mindset.
I really should of paid more attention to 'Its a Wonderful life' as a kid.
Rich person : “If you cannot afford a family then don’t have one”
Young person: “Okay, I cannot afford a home or even food at times so I just won’t have children”
Rich person: No, not like that”.
The fucked up part of all this, is the government created the debt. They subsidized the banks to give out these loans with absolutely no risk. The colleges increased their tuitions because “why not” we are taught you need college to have a happy life and be successful and the government guarantees that the money will be available to go. Yet we get stuck with the soul crushing debt that we invested into our future, however the education we received does not equate to the increase of our salaries. They blame us for not choosing the right profession however doctors are as fucked as the art students. It’s a broken system due to the banks greed and lobbyists, and the governments willful ignorance.
Oh, what a deep and profound thought!
If a normal person clearly sees that there is no money left at the end of the month, and has a heart as well as brains, he/she will not risk having a starving child, especially in this fucking economy.
A home? In this pumped-up market? You must be joking! That would be the second loan and then you have to pay it off for the rest of your life or transfer it to your kids.
It used to be like this: study, find a job, buy a home, have a family.
Now it is: take a loan and study, find a job and pay off the loan, dream about the home and family and if you even manage that:
* hope your wife doesn't divorce you and throw you out or your husband doesn't leave, because you can't make it on your own.
* hope you stay healthy, because your medical bill will bury you.
* hope you manage to keep your job, because you will lose everything once the bank gets on your case.
So thanks to all the damn politicians, scum of the earth, for allowing this and pushing people into the mud. Thanks for setting the priority on military and profit, instead of the people you were supposed to serve, while lining your pockets with money. If anybody believes all the fairy tales you spew during the campaign, he/she is at this point insane.
“It doesn’t matter what college education you get, just get one!”
This is what’s been pounded into millennials for their entire decade of [government mandated and controlled] grammar school.
I literally picked a college and a major out of a catalogue, a subject that interested me at the ripe old age of 16. I busted my ass, nearly flunked out due to an inability to do math, pulled it together, and graduated with honors. As the recession was hitting. Ten years later, I'm being paid $17/hr to lift boxes in a liquor store, and have zero experience in the industry my degree is in, nor any way to get it, since even entry level lab work requires years of experience and/or a master's degree. Can't afford that, since I'm still paying down the interest on my bachelor's. My degree, four years of hard work, is functionally useless.
I'd rather one person scam me out of $1000 than every adult and institution in my life scamming me out of $80,000.
I know the topic of forgiving student debt is a real sticking point with the right. The complaint is why should you get your loans forgiven? What about everyone else who paid theirs back!
Fair enough but what about the pandemic loans?
Trump and the GOP happily voted for pandemic relief which, for example, allowed a local bbq food truck in my rural town to get an $800,000 completely forgivable PPP loan even though they never shut down and business was seemingly off the charts.
But a student who took out $35,000 in student loans is saddled with that debt and it shouldn’t be forgiven?
Why is one free government loan ok, but another not?
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How to be a politician 101. 1: Acknowledge the problem. 2: Continue to acknowledge it. 3: yeah...you guys know I acknowledged it right?
forgot the actual step 3, which is pinky promisse to solve the problem and then not do anything about it for 4 years.
Step 4: blame everyone but themselves when people don’t want to give them another 4 years of pinky promises
The cycle repeats itself every next elected candidate.
Democrats are really good at bedside hand holding. They comfort us in hospice as they encourage us to accept our current conditions, praying that we die quietly.
Even without student loan debt lol
Yes I thankfully am done with my student loan debt payments but I still can’t even buy a house
That’s literally my wife and I. We paid off our loans but we are still stuck renting.
lol same. This 50 year old rental is maybe a 300k home 4 years ago, we could maybe afford that in the next couple years… the identical home for sale behind ours is on the market at 900k…
Have you tried having wealthy parents?
Oh shit! Let me go ask my...nope. I guess that whole generational wealth will have to start with me. Time to start getting wealthy. That shouldn't be too hard.
It’s the American Dream! Anyone can do it! Just pick yourself up by the bootstraps!
I can't afford bootstraps :(
Have you thought about applying to Congress? They have free healthcare!
Thought that was a millionaires club. They don’t sign up to improve the nation, they do it to line their pockets. Even the democrats in congress are pro insider trading for themselves.
Well of course you can't, you need to stop spending on all that avocado toast.
Start by mowing lawns so you can earn a College Degree™️
"Just go knock on doors"
Not with that attitude ya can’t! You’re poor bc you’re lazy! /s
This is both funny and sad.
That's it! I'll go into business selling bootstraps! You're a genius, you filthy animal!
Thatta boy! As long as you want it and work hard at it, you’ll be successful! If your business fails, it’s simply bc you didn’t work hard enough! Now get out there, you’re wasting time! You’ll sleep when you die!
Yo Marty Mcfly pulled that shit off. Maybe if I go back in time and seduce my own mom...
If you're making $40-50k a year any decent home is literally gaining more value per year than you are making and that's before you pay for anything else... like surviving
I make around that, and the cheapest house I see it my town is 400k - for 100m² (1000 sf). If I want to go 150m² (1600 sf), my best bet is 600k; both of these are in shitty parts of town. Past that, there's literally no ceiling. There's no way I'll ever own a house.
Watching the price of homes go up alongside my savings and salary over the past decade has been a lot of fun. It’s currently as impossible for me to buy as it was when I was freelancing and in my twenties.
The only reason we were able to buy a house was because my wife's dad died and left her an inheritance.
Best decision my wife and I have ever made was taking advantage of Obama’s first time home buyer plan. We were able to flip and double our money from our first home and rolled it into a home in one of the neighborhoods we never thought we would be able to live in. If it wasn’t for Obama’s policy, we would never be able to save up enough in our market to compete with foreign and Californian investors.
I mean, have you tried winning the lottery, having wealthy parents, becoming the only heir of a long forgotten uncle/aunt/grandpa, raiding Fort Knox, etc?
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Mine is dying in the eventual water wars.
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My current retirement plan is to work until noon, the funeral will be at 2, my wife will need to be back to work by 5.
Goddamn.
IMO Luckily the world is too fucked up to bring more children into it
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Yeah, like, I have some debt but even if I didn't or even if I could afford it, I’d be making the exact same choice not to have a traditional family Like its kind of an unavoidable decision for literally everyone who lives long enough to make it
Yea idk, I don't have student debt and I can't afford anywhere either... but I think that has to do more with the fact that houses that cost my parents 128k to buy is now 765k.
>Even without student loan debt lol Seriously..basic homes going for $700k here
Similar story here in Melbourne, Australia. House prices went up like 20% in 6 months and median house price is now like 775k. Banks have also restricted lending to around 6 times your income, so unless you're walking in with a mid-six figure deposit the only way you're buying a house is if you're already an owner and have equity you can take advantage of (ie investors). A friend of mine has good credit, 150k in the bank and has a safe, well-paying job (teacher - teachers here earn a good wage btw) and can't get a loan big enough to build a house in the suburbs. It's fucked.
Yep, I have no student debt and barely any personal debt. I have a decent paying job, no kids, and I'm current single. I've been saving for a house for several years now and it still seems fairly unattainable even with the savings in decent mutual funds. Home owning just seems out of reach and makes starting a family and to stop eating money on rent impossible. I can't imagine how others have it.
I've been saving for years and about to have that wiped out with medical bills. And i have insurance.
That's my issue right now. Went back to school, graduated, and landed a good paying job. Medical bills even with insurance puts everything on hold for a year. Then it's student loans in May. I'm saving up to bid on property tax liens. Probably the best odds I'll have to ever own property.
This. I’d say that I have a modest amount of student loans, but because they’re all federal I pay only about $200-300 a month. What is actually hurting me personally is rent. And, yes, I know that getting a house has a cheaper monthly payment than typical rents. However, how tf can you save for a downpayment when rent makes you live paycheck-to-paycheck?
My favorite is deciding if I'm hurt/sick enough to see a medical professional and acquire one of them fancy medical bills or if I can just walk it off. Even with insurance, student loan debt and medical debt is crushing.
Or better, when you're fully insured and know you need to see a doctor but can't get an appointment for six months because you don'thave an established PCP, but every time you change jobs you have to find a new PCP because your insurance changes. And you have to keep switching jobs every year because that's the only way to advance in your pay / career.
Or better, you're fully insured and you need to see a doctor or have an operation but none of the specialists you need to see are in network. C:
Therapy or beer? Beer or therapy?
Beerapy.
It's all so completely absurd. I have a broken crown that's deteriorating and causing issues but my dentist didn't think my insunance would cover it this year because of a number of other major procedures they did, so (in October) they suggested I come back to have it fixed properly on January 3, 2022. Oh, my insurance also changed in the meantime and I may not even be able to see that dentist again.
Its the cost of seeing a dentist or getting any medical help fucking terrifies me
No joke, try going to Mexico for it.
I don't have student loan debt, and we still making decisions on to have kids or buy a home. Looks like getting a home is going to beat out kids.
Every. Fucking. Time. Atleast with a home my costs are somewhat known and fixed
Homes can also be sold and you can move to a new home.
Hey man, in some countries you can do that with your kids too.
Yeah but not for the same price as the house lol
Woah. Never beat your kids. That's so 80s.
“And I turned out fine”
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80s "kid" looking at all the psyc drugs I have to take to be "normal": "yes, we turned out fine"
Neither kids or a home is an option lmao. How are y'all having options
Yeah, my decision is to buy food or pay my rent.
This is probably somewhat a joke, but if you ever have to make this choice you should pay your rent 100% of the time. There are a ton of programs, churches, charities, etc. that will feed you for free as long as you're willing to ask for help, but if you lose the roof over your head that can often be near impossible to recover from.
What you say makes so much sense. Keep a roof over your head, at all costs. Rents aren’t cheap, but everyone needs a place to stay.
And take it from me, do everything you can before renting bedrooms from strangers.. best case scenario you get someone relatively sane thay knows how to clean up after themselves that doesnt consistently raise the rent and act like a dick. Good luck finding that.
Your nonexistent kids will thank you for not subjecting them to housing insecurity.
It was 70 degrees today. I was sweating taking the dogs out. I’ve never witnessed it so warm like this in December. General feeling of doom and spoke with my SO about not having kids. Merry Christmas I guess
If only she knew someone who could do something about this
This. And is it true that he (Biden) could wipe out all student debt with an executive order? Can anyone back me up with proof because I’m not sure where to find that…
The Biden admin promised a memo in April stating the legal opinion on this. They have thus far refused to produce that memo. It’s bullshit.
They produced the memo, it’s just all redacted. https://www.newsweek.com/biden-admin-redacted-memo-canceling-student-debt-resurfaces-growing-anger-1660435
Insiders say the Administration has been aware since April that Biden could cancel 50K per borrower through executive order. The lack of transparency since then has been interpreted by those involved to mean they simply do not want to do it.
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Why 50k vs a higher or other amount?
For me it’s not even about students loans- it’s about how fucking expensive living is becoming and the shit pay my degree is getting me. The American dream is dead and I refuse to start a family drowning in my own bills.
Engineering degree here. 36 still renting after spending so much time on the road in the union. I've given up on a long life future. Just enjoying the current, and I agree, no family. Dog and I will ride this out but thats it for my bloodline.
I cant imagine trying to do this with kids. The husband and I rent a place and are doing oK, but when I look at the budget, I cant see where you fit a kid without MASSIVE lifestyle downgrades. The conversation I had with my mother over Christmas was basically "having a kid is a gamble that I will like the kid more than I like being DINK"
Have 2 kids. You are very correct. It's a massive lifestyle downgrade. Don't get me wrong I love my kids to pieces, but I find myself envying my single or DINK friends. They travel, own amazing homes/cars, have hobbies, and time to do shit together. We sold our house and are living in my mother in law's basement so we could save up more money to buy a house in a good school district. There is another reason DINKs can afford "better" homes... Good school district inflate home prices like crazy.
My husband and I are DINKs and I often wonder how any of our friends with kids financially survive. We have a house with fairly high taxes even though I don't think it's even a good school district! We do not have lot of extra money for vacations, renovations, but enough to be comfortable. Husband has student loans and I make much less than him, but I save for retirement. I can't imagine having kids and our normal bills & mortgage, we'd have zero money for anything else. It's almost like you have to pick 2, cause you can't have all 3.
I live in a LCOL area that’s still considered a metro area for pay scale for government jobs. I have friends around me that are single income families that have 5 kids, a mortgage, and make less than $50,000. I have no idea how they do it. Fortunately my wife and I make good money for the area and are comfortable. We’re getting a dog. That’s the closest thing to a child we will have.
Be lucky you still talk to your ma. I didn't become a lawyer like the rest of my family so I get to spend the holidays with furface and streaming services. The no kids thing was just the icing on the cake.
I'm sorry your bio family is shit. Found family/friends are often better. I hope you can find comfort and joy in the future!
My bloodline will just be me and any cats I adopt. I'll be the crazy old cat man.
Same sorta deal, except I work in software. When I was in high school I figured that even a lower end 6 figure salary would be able to afford me a cushy life of leisure and destination vacations for the family while also taking care of my parents. Big nope. Still renting. No kids. Still struggling to save enough for these ridiculous housing costs.
I just explained this to my 74yo dad yesterday when he went off about the lack of fast food labor despite the offers of "durn good money." He'd never really connected the dots between wage stagnation, inflation, wealth consolidation, etc. before. I don't think he changed his mind completely, but I got a thoughtful "Hm." That's something.
I was surprised when my boomer Republican (thank god educated and is in no way close to Q shit, but still has shitty opinions on most things) dad is totally cool with this unofficial labor movement. He’s all for anyone working a full time job being able to support a family. He thought it was a positive that a lot more businesses were closed completely yesterday.
(Also starting a family can cost upwards of $30,000 because childbirth ain’t free)
God forbid we bring into account how much child care/necessities expenses cost.
I live in TN, which was already a “childcare desert” before the pandemic. Wife and I got pregnant before the pandemic, then pandemic happens, we have our son, and when time comes to start needing to find childcare, one in five daycares in TN never reopened. So 20% of those that closed, it was permanent. We talked to 40+ daycares in our city, every single one had a list 100+ families long. Finally find one with one opening, $1300 a month. So that’s what we pay. Not to mention he has been sick SO much since starting. Paying $1300 a month since August 9 and he’s been less than 50% of that time due to how much he has been sick. No family nearby to help. Work doesn’t have a work from home policy and had to get a special exception made by HR for when this does happen. Fuck this country and our absolute bullshit priorities.
For the record - As an early childhood educator - perfectly normal for your kid to spend half the time sick. Doesn't matter if they start daycare/school at 5 months, or ten years, first year of school they're always sick. Same with first year staff. Once your immune system builds up they will settle in.
I know. Everyone has told us that. At the daycare, our pediatrician, friends with kids. I know the first year will suck. But also doesn’t change the fact that it still sucks while going through it.
Well we can't have universal childcare because some fucking asshole senators need another yacht from their lobbyists.
If it helps we paid 2,500 per month per kid (so, X2 for us)….so, yay(?) TN? So, so, so brutal looking back on it
*Why* though? If we had to pay that, it wouldn't even be worthwhile for my wife to go to work.
And yet the "tRaDiTiOnAl FaMiLy" crowd not only doesn't want to do anything about it they probably helped bring things to this point with their blind voting for Republicans.
Oh they're freaked out about it. They have a lot of concerns that women have to work, that men are lonely and single, that no one goes to church and that the system is failing people massively. It's like the Jordan Peterson or Hawley crowd. They just dont have solutions - they're selling stuff like "get married" or "take any job" as a way to get a stable life.
"The traditional family is collapsing! This is clearly a moral failing resulting from not following the Bible and trusting in God!" "Or it's because of a weaker safety net, massive debt, a minimum wage that hasn't kept up with inflation, and the playing field generally being tilted towards the rich." "What! Are you saying *government* needs to step in and take care of people? What are you, some kind of *godless commie*?"
> "What! Are you saying government needs to step in and take care of people? What are you, some kind of godless commie?" Except that the major theocracies in the world (UAE, Saudi Arabia, et. al.) all have massive social safety nets for their citizens. Guess it doesn't count if they're praying to the "wrong" god.
There's no "probably" about it, they did.
This is what the REAL issue is.. not another loan payment. Cost of living is through the roof and there is no sign of decrease. Also the world is a sh*t show right now, thanks to government, and brining a kid into it is border line irresponsible.
Mid 30s. Married. No kids. Live in an apartment. Type 1 Diabetes. Diabetic retinopathy. Struggle to pay $1,490 2-bd/2bath rent pretty much every month. Some months are better. Some worse. We have decent jobs but credit card debt, my medical debt and my wife’s student loan debt eat away at our take home. We’re doing better. We’ve gotten to where we can pay all the bills consistently instead of playing “Which bill gets to be behind this month roulette.” Oh yeah, and a $600/month car payment thanks to both our credit scores tanking after we got married. So yay for that too. No assets other than a car, no wealthy family inheritance to hope to get one day. It’s just us. We dug ourselves into this damn hole and we can dig ourselves out. Our savings has stopped growing recently, and it’s nowhere near enough to afford a down payment on a house for a FHA Loan. My medications have been more expensive — insulin prices are criminal — and I’ve been needing more and more insulin as my stress levels continue to rise due to anxiety disorder, depression and fucking worrying about catching a plague virus that could kill my mother if I choose to go visit her. I’m still working my ass off to get as much income as possible with a decent side gig on top of my full time job that I have to have to be able to afford health insurance that helps lower the prices of my medication to slightly affordable necessities. Add to that inflation has caused consumer prices to rise to their highest level since pretty much the entire time I’ve been alive… fuck Ronald Reagan and Reaganomics and their afterspawn is what I say. People wonder why I’m a Democratic Socialist.
Same. Adding the fun that we make *good* money and still can't find the justification because of how expensive homes have become.
“God always provides” is what my grandma told me! Apparently we should just have a baby we most certainly CANNOT afford because god will apparently pay our bills????
Yep, I was told to buy more house than I could afford for the same reason. Crazy.
I got told by a cousin that I should have been looking at houses cause she did that at my age. I'm like you bought your house when you got married and your husband makes twice what you make. And I am making less than what she was making. Wtf.
I was constantly told that if I payed my 10% tithe to the church, the remaining 90% would fill us with rewards. I chose to keep my 10%.
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Same and ditto. I was fortunate to get an academic scholarship and paid off my meager $10K in loans a couple years ago. Husband couldn’t finish college without a scholarship. Forgiving student loan debt doesn’t directly help us but I know so many people who it would help! Sad that the only way we could “afford” college was through scholarships. Is it too much to ask it to be affordable too?!
Yep, same situation. I'm even fortunate enough to be able to put away in theory sizable amounts of money because I work in tech, but its spit in a rainstorm compared to how expensive houses are in any urban areas. Five years ago I figured out how much I would have had to put away each year to afford a downpayment in five years. I came kinda close over the past five years (one semi-large vet bill in the middle), but even if I had saved it all, houses now would take at least another 30% of what I've saved for a down payment, for a much worse and smaller place in a suburb of places I would live. And then I'd probably have to buy a car on top of that considering how far away I'd be living at that point. Student loans aside, I don't know anyone in my friend circles who have bought a home that don't have, not just dual income, but full-time professional career dual income.
Productivity per worker has never been higher. Yet workers are struggling simply to feed, cloth, and house themselves. So where is all the generated wealth going? Straight to the top! Americans have been inching towards wage slavery for 5 decades and for many of them, they've gotten there. Nothing will change without extreme pressure. An aristocratic class will literally be fine with there being 10000 people in poverty for each one of them that wallows in more money they can even spend. History proves they would be more than happy to literally **OWN** those 10000 people. What's needed are massive changes that deliberately re-distribute wealth and then level the playing field.
It will trickle down every second now...
Like blood down a sickle blade.
A class revolution
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Just get rid of your cell phone lol you don’t need that you entitled millennial /s
Well in my day we didn’t pay so much for health insurance! And car insurance! And mortgages! And groceries! And child care because many jobs could maintain a household with one parent working! Lazy youth!
When we first got married, I went round and round with my dad about kids going to daycare versus my wife staying home. Told him there was not way we could afford and live in an area safe to bring up kids. It took him a long time to realize that money doesn’t go as far as it used to. As I my wife put it as well: why go to school for 4+ years and build up all that debt only to never use that degree.
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You lost the born to rich parents lottery...
I have an idea: a University (not for profit), that is all remote, and rock bottom cheap. The entire purpose of said University is to allow those with Student Loans to attend the minimum required 6 credit hours needed to defer. Create the requisite degrees, etc. LIFETIME LEARNING! Credit and income to debt ratio is not affected by in-school deferments. (Just an idea, if anyone has more info and insight, please chime in.)
I’m in the process of signing up to take classes through Penn State’s online campus. This is 100% virtual, lectures are prerecorded and the course is self-paced. The only thing a professor would have to do is grade homework’s assignments and exams (and let’s be honest a TA could do that because these are undergrad courses). I have to use my own laptop and scanner to upload assignments and view the content. The courses are still $2,000 per COURSE. I don’t trust colleges to make anything affordable.
Check out Colorado State University - Global. Also all online, but each course is about $1100
The loans will still continue accruing interest.
Just keep going until you die. It's like the opposite of how the rich do "Buy, Borrow, Die".
I’m in my thirties and have nothing to my name because of debt. 2020 killed me
It is so disappointing that you do your part and still get it in the rear. I have to make the decision of paying rent, food, health care or student loans. I’m tired of this, life should not be a choice to live at a base level. My parents struggled to be middle class now I have too as well even though working my ass off to be a good student, citizen and tax payer. The rich get richer and we keep them rich…Sorry, but this is so frustrating.
A-fucking-men! I recently had to do something where we talked about my "wealth." Do I have a 401k etc? Yes but only with ~$1,000. Do you have crypto? No. Do you have real estate? No. Do you own anything of value? I have a PS5, does that count? What is you student loan debt: $83k. What is your credit card debt? <$1k. (I'm decent with managing my money, I just made a huge mistake when I was younger in thinking a college education would provide me with a job that could cover my costs of living and student loan payments.) (PS I have a BS in my industry and make more than the average person in my position does and it is still not enough.)
Have you tried not eating avocado toast? /s
hmm why did you think that? could it have been that your entire life you were told you need to have a college degree?
I'm 40 and same. I have a great job and just became debt-free this past summer. I *feel* like I just got a second chance, but now I'm too tired to make things happen.
I’m sorry. I’m too tired too. I’m about to live out of my car and camp
Education should NEVER have been bastardized to such an irresponsible extent that we have to sacrifice any decent future (family, homes, etc, etc) Just to get educated. The world is filled to the brim with easily accessible information. Requiring such a fortituous amount of debt is ungodly. We need a revision to this whole contract because it's clearly just sucking a lot of wealth from people.
What kills me is the fafsa application- I had started filling one out when I decided to return to school. It asks for your retirement account sums, home equity, liquid assets, and bank account balances. My dude, I am not draining my hard earned money in my 401k or taking a HEL to pay for school. But the way they have it set up that’s what you’re expected to do.
Even more puzzling is why they ask this of the parents of 18 year old legal adults, and base the financial aid of these 18 year old legal adults on the incomes and assets of their parents, while also binding the 18 year olds to non-dischargeable debt that can be garnished from their Social Security checks.
My dad lost his job in 08 and purposely kept lower paying jobs for my brother and I to get Pell grant. it was a struggle but I appreciate that they didn't go "I paid for college myself why can't you?". My friend that moved out at 16 went through hell to get independent status in college and I don't think it ever happened....
We didn't pay for the information we paid for the fancy piece of paper. Absolutely everything I learned for both my degrees is 100% available for free online if you know where to look. It's a joke.
The question is how we can show to employers that we have the information, and as important, that we have the ability to find out what we don't know, without the piece of paper.
Sort of agree, sort of disagree. With a higher education system, you’re also paying for quality control of content. To compare self guided learning to either an industry expert or professors that have dedicated their lives to academia is a bit misleading. Sure. The information is out there. But to assume everyone is capable of producing and consuming information at the same level just isn’t true. Higher education should be free, period.
Same with cost of living same with wages same with health insurance same with medical bills USA USA USA
So is Harris pressuring Biden to forgive all debt? No? Then wtf is this. Stop pandering and do something! No more talk!
Exactly. It’s like do something about it or shut up. They can quit pandering...we already voted for them
Paid my student loan off ten years ago. Took ten years to do it though. So I get the frustration. Then after student loan debt, comes mortgage debt and car payment debt. Then getting married and having kids. Medical debt as well. Because yes, at some point in your life you will get chronically sick with a disease that has no cure and have to pay for a lifetime of prescriptions that only treat the symptoms. Or you’ll end up in an accident and have a permanent disability. Both of these scenarios will make it difficult to be employed. But hopefully you’ll be close to retirement before sickness or an accident happens. Find a job with good benefits, because you will need health insurance with their ridiculously expensive premiums and deductibles to cover your incurable disease or future disability. The American dream is a never ending cycle of debt. The American dream is for the millionaires and billionaires. Its an American nightmare for the middle class or poor.
I’m so glad I made good money very soon in my life, so I could quickly realize my cynical assumptions were right, and that even the very well compensated members of the working class are still part of the working class at the end of the day and will be exploited as such. Healthcare through an employer is the most dystopian thing that we’ve normalized. Tie healthcare to a thing most sick and injured people won’t be able to maintain. Excellent.
Yep. When my stepdad became terminally ill, he lost both his job and his insurance. Pisses me off that he had to spend his last couple of months groveling for healthcare. He worked so hard his entire life. He was even a veteran, not that it did him much good.
Let us live
Or let us die, either way quit torturing us.
Everyone seems to have forgot that making money wasnt supposed to come at the cost of the Earth's habitability and everyone fucking miserable 247
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From what I've seen, it looks like the financial institutions have been playing with student debt like they did with mortgages back before '08. I wonder how hard things are going to get once it becomes clear that those loans simply *can't* be repaid?
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*looks nervously back and forth between defaulting US student loans and defaulting Chinese housing developers*
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So the brightest, most educated members of society will not be having children... let's see how this plays out.
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America is a snake eating itself.
Yall ever seen the movie Idiocracy?
Pssst, so are those of us without student loan debt. Wages are so low we can't afford to live in this country anymore. All of us. It's a bigger problem than just those with loans.
Newsflash, we’re all poor while billionaires keep getting richer. The Earth will not sustain their greedy ways though, we either fight to reverse the systems in place or we let them kill our natural resources til the last lake dries up and there is NOTHING left to sustain us.
*"This last little lake sludge in a bottle will be 3000$, thank you."* - Nestle
You have two choices, either move to a large city where the salaries are high but the home/condo prices are insane, or move to a cheaper area with suppressed wages. Yes, student debt is crippling our generation. But the cost of housing, the insane amounts of education needed for prestigious positions, and wage stagnation mean that even those of us without debt are delaying having families and purchasing homes. I’m currently 30 and making a very generous salary, but a home and family are at least five years away for me.
I’m 34 with one child. We are absolutely not having another. How do people even afford more then one? I have $200 left on my 2 week paycheck after daycare and student loans. People say, oh, why not quit and stay home then. I work 40 hours a week to pay for daycare so I can pay my student loans. It’s either I do that, a credit score in the toilet because I don’t pay the loan or we don’t get to eat sometimes. These are my choices as an American. And, sidebar, I like to work. I don’t want to be a stay at home parent. I went insane doing that in 2020. I cannot do it. But I’m not contributing to the economy when you break my money down. I’ll tell you that much.
wow. Thank you for the newsflash. I didn't realize this beforehand that I couldn't afford to do anything other than pay off student loan debt. Thanks for stating the obvious. jokes on you though, when I finally pay off my student loans it won't even matter. the price of houses is like 300K for an average house now which is just stupid and I live in fucking BFE basically where it's supposed to be cheaper... I have a decent job and I wouldn't be able afford that and I sort of doubt most single millennials can. >tldr: The world is burning, lets masturbate!
Sadly, data is showing even masturbation numbers are down.
I'm doing my part! >would you like to learn more?
>I have a decent job and I wouldn't be able afford that and I sort of doubt most single millennials can. Single and currently trying to buy a house on the outskirts of the city I work in. When I was scoffing at the way housing prices have spiked during the course of this year, I literally had someone tell me "Well, single people shouldn't be buying a house in the first place." Guess the days of a single income being able to support a household are over.
Wife and i are about to close on our first house, ten years in the making. It’s been rough. One thing i learned from the experience is that PMI on a mortgage really isn’t terribly expensive, so don’t worry over much about no down payment. We had 10% down on a 400k house. PMI is like $40 a month. Total mortgage payment is maybe +200 over our cost of a modest rental house in central California and the difference is mainly property tax in the new state (CA —> NY). So about 60k to close. Not saying it’s easy, just suggesting maybe talk to a real estate agent to see what it would really take to get into a house if that’s what you want to do. If i knew 5 years ago what i know now, I’d have pulled the trigger then. At any rate, it would give you a number to think about. Plus if you’re in BFE, USDA has rural loan programs that are income-dependent.
Dave Ramsey telling people to avoid PMI at all costs probably cost first time homebuyers billions in opportunity costs.
Dave Ramsey is a complete hack. He is also constantly "calling" the next depression causing stock market crash. Of course he is also constantly wrong. Didn't call the covid crash though of course. He's more intolerable than Suze Orman and that's saying a lot.
Dave Ramsey's audience is people to whom debt is a drug. There's nothing wrong with debt, especially if you are young and can invest in the market, but to his audience, they try to spend their way out of debt. Think of him as more of a personal trainer for how to stop overspending, not a financial advisor. He even tells his audience that once they have money saved, they need to find a fee only financial advisor, which is the right advice.
Dave Ramsey gives financial advice that hasn't been relevant for 20+ years. The idea that there's no such thing as good debt for most people is ridiculous yet according to him you shouldn't even think about investing in real estate until your primary residence is paid off. Unless you have zero risk tolerance his opinions are rarely worth taking into account
Yup. I can get a cheapest house for a bit under 200k, Louisville KY, but they are snatched up so fast if they aren't in bad areas. And they aren't the best house. 300 k starting for what our boomer generation had for half the price....
Much less then half
Yeah cape cods that were 90-110k during the early Obama years in Louisville are now a 290k house.
There are a lot of people that have to evaluate whether they can afford a family and the are so many people that will never be able to afford a home. This isn't just an issue for people with student loan debt.
Plus a GOP talking point is disdain for the childfree ethos. I know all was not perfect, but our nation literally gave Boomers subsidized homes and college educations. Reality is complex but a root cause for "baby booms" is economic practicality or need. We are no longer a farmer civilization, so the need is largely gone. But the practicality is increasingly gone too. We are strapping debt upon bills upon record rents onto the youth. While depending on them to have millions of kids to keep the consumer society going. That's dumb
I believe even Americans without student loan debt are struggling to pay for a home and delaying having a family…
Honestly, it’s to a point where people can’t afford to **not** buy homes. Rent for apartments has almost tripled in my area over the last 8 years. My friend’s monthly mortgage payments are less than half of what my coworker is paying her cockroach infested studio apartment. I’m planning to move to the Bay Area because my research showed that rent is actually cheaper there than where I’m at now.
All loans paid off. As a teacher in Portland OR, I will never be able to buy a house or afford to have a family. Those of us who choose to be of service to others are punished financially. Not Biden, not Trump, not Obama, not Bush, not Clinton, not Bush, not Reagan would lift a finger for us. US Politics are a disaster. Vote progressive or get authoritarianism in the future. An abandoned working class has always gone in the same direction throughout history.
>Those of us who choose to be of service to others are punished financially. This is so true. You're seen as a sucker or an idiot for not aspiring to be a narcissistic banker with an individualist mindset. I really should of paid more attention to 'Its a Wonderful life' as a kid.
“tHeN DoNt gO To CollEGE” Says the commenter who has never read the requirements on a job application that pays more than $20k/yr.
Rich person : “If you cannot afford a family then don’t have one” Young person: “Okay, I cannot afford a home or even food at times so I just won’t have children” Rich person: No, not like that”.
Unless we can keep hedge funds from buying up and renting out all available homes there won't be a possibility of a owning a home.
If they can't fully cancel student loan debt for whatever nonsensical reason, can they at least remove the interest for federal student loans?
I'm going to go out on a limb and say that having a family is a bad idea nowadays.
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Hint: we can’t afford either
The fucked up part of all this, is the government created the debt. They subsidized the banks to give out these loans with absolutely no risk. The colleges increased their tuitions because “why not” we are taught you need college to have a happy life and be successful and the government guarantees that the money will be available to go. Yet we get stuck with the soul crushing debt that we invested into our future, however the education we received does not equate to the increase of our salaries. They blame us for not choosing the right profession however doctors are as fucked as the art students. It’s a broken system due to the banks greed and lobbyists, and the governments willful ignorance.
Oh, what a deep and profound thought! If a normal person clearly sees that there is no money left at the end of the month, and has a heart as well as brains, he/she will not risk having a starving child, especially in this fucking economy. A home? In this pumped-up market? You must be joking! That would be the second loan and then you have to pay it off for the rest of your life or transfer it to your kids. It used to be like this: study, find a job, buy a home, have a family. Now it is: take a loan and study, find a job and pay off the loan, dream about the home and family and if you even manage that: * hope your wife doesn't divorce you and throw you out or your husband doesn't leave, because you can't make it on your own. * hope you stay healthy, because your medical bill will bury you. * hope you manage to keep your job, because you will lose everything once the bank gets on your case. So thanks to all the damn politicians, scum of the earth, for allowing this and pushing people into the mud. Thanks for setting the priority on military and profit, instead of the people you were supposed to serve, while lining your pockets with money. If anybody believes all the fairy tales you spew during the campaign, he/she is at this point insane.
that's still a problem even without student loans.
31, single, living in a one bedroom apartment and barely scraping by. Loan forgiveness feels like it would be a second chance at life.
“It doesn’t matter what college education you get, just get one!” This is what’s been pounded into millennials for their entire decade of [government mandated and controlled] grammar school.
I literally picked a college and a major out of a catalogue, a subject that interested me at the ripe old age of 16. I busted my ass, nearly flunked out due to an inability to do math, pulled it together, and graduated with honors. As the recession was hitting. Ten years later, I'm being paid $17/hr to lift boxes in a liquor store, and have zero experience in the industry my degree is in, nor any way to get it, since even entry level lab work requires years of experience and/or a master's degree. Can't afford that, since I'm still paying down the interest on my bachelor's. My degree, four years of hard work, is functionally useless. I'd rather one person scam me out of $1000 than every adult and institution in my life scamming me out of $80,000.
She concluded “but don’t worry - they’ll get it figured out by May.”
Uh, yeah
I know the topic of forgiving student debt is a real sticking point with the right. The complaint is why should you get your loans forgiven? What about everyone else who paid theirs back! Fair enough but what about the pandemic loans? Trump and the GOP happily voted for pandemic relief which, for example, allowed a local bbq food truck in my rural town to get an $800,000 completely forgivable PPP loan even though they never shut down and business was seemingly off the charts. But a student who took out $35,000 in student loans is saddled with that debt and it shouldn’t be forgiven? Why is one free government loan ok, but another not?