Jerry Eichenberger
Serious Thumper
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2006 S40. OEM windshield, saddle bags, Sportster
Posts: 2919
Columbus, Ohio
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There is an article on Yahoo this morning about some woman who is $100K in debt from student loans, no job, and she keeps enrolling in college courses to defer payments on her loan debt. She'll likely never dig herself out, and the recent reform of the bankruptcy laws made it nearly impossible to discharge student loans in bankruptcy.
This whole student loan thing is stupid. This gal wanted to get into "the best college possible" and did so, but at a ridiculous cost.
When I first went to college in 1965, I was a poor kid who was living at home with my widowed mother. I went to Ohio State, a public university with reasonable tuition costs. I had a full time job. Yes, it took me over 4 years to graduate, but only by a quarter. I earned enough from my job to not have to borrow a cent. During the last two years, my monthly ROTC check paid my tuition.
If any of you have kids on the way to college, please avoid student loans. Tell Johnny to live at home if need be, and get a job. Of course, if your kid really wants to get an education without having a job the answer is to work his butt off in high school and get an academic scholarship someplace. Or join the Guard.
One of my buddies has a son in his freshman year of college. The kid joined the Air Guard, got about $10K signing bonus, gets all tuition and books paid, and gets another $10K or thereabouts upon graduation. And, as long as he can still pass the physical at graduation, he has a guaranteed slot in pilot training. Meanwhile, he goes to drill one weekend a monthly, and summer camp. He gets paid several hundred dollars a month for doing this. Between the free schooling, the bonuses and his monthly salary as a Guardman, he's on easy street.
While my education may possibly have been a bit better at somewhere in the Ivy League, the extra cost and years, of not decades of student loan payments never make that route really worthwhile.
Just my 2 cents worth.
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