r/personalfinance May 08 '20

Student Loans: a cautionary tale in today's environment Debt

I got into my dream school with a decent scholarship a couple weeks after the stock market crashed in 2008. My parents had saved diligently for myself and my twin sister in a 529 account, but we saw that get cut in half overnight. Despite all that, my mom told me to pick the school that would work best for me and to not worry about the cost because "we'd figure out a way to make it work". I applied for hundreds of external scholarships, but didn't get any. So, I chose my expensive private dream school, signed my life away to Sallie Mae (the solution to pay for it after my savings was exhausted, which I didn't know in advance), and started college in fall of 2009.

I was lucky to graduate with a good job thanks to the school's incredible co-op program, but also saddled with $120k worth of loans ($30k federal, the rest private). I met my amazing husband while there, and he was in the same boat. Together, we make a pretty decent living, but we currently owe more on our student loans than we do on our house. Even paying an extra $1k/month (our breakeven with our budget), it'll still take us many years to pay them off. It's so incredibly frustrating watching our friends from school (most of whom don't have loans) be able to live their lives the way they want while we continue to be slaves to our loans for the foreseeable future. No switching jobs because we want a new career, that doesn't pay enough. No moving to a different city, can't afford the hit to the salary in cheaper areas, or the huge cost of living increase in more expensive ones.

I'm happy with my life and that I was able to have the experiences I did (I absolutely loved my school), but not a day goes by that I don't wonder how my life would have been different if I'd made better financial decisions. Parents, don't tell your kids to follow their hearts if the only way there is through massive student loans, particularly if their career will not let them have any hope of paying them off. Students, have those conversations with your parents. If they say don't worry about it, question what that means and what the plan is. Now is the time to be having those discussions, before you've already registered for classes and are looking to pay that first bill. Don't make the same mistakes we did.

Edit:added paragraph breaks

Edit 2: Wow, I did not expect this to blow up so much! Thank you for the awards! It's reassuring (and a bit sad) to hear so many of your stories that are so similar to mine. For all the parents and high school students reading this, please take some time to go through the comments and see how many people this truly affects. Take time to weigh your college financial decisions carefully, whether that be for a 4 year school, community college, or trade school, and ask questions when you don't know or understand something. I hope with this post that everyone is more empowered to make the best decision for them :)

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u/rubixd May 08 '20 edited May 08 '20

Another thing I might add is that college/university is not for everyone... and that is not to say you're "less than". It means that who you are, your personality, and what you like to do is something that must be considered.

I know a really smart guy, who likes to work with his hands. He's in a union job, making $80k with amazing benefits and he's under a year in.

EDIT: I also want to add that college/university might also not be for you right after high school. For social growth and general how-to-live development it helped me... but I didn't know what I wanted to do when I was 18, I still didn't when I graduated with my degree. If I went to school now, I'd have gone for something else.

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u/rejuicekeve May 08 '20

Even in tech many of us are doing fine without college. College does a really terrible job of preparing people in the tech industry, aside from maybe specifically programming.

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u/king_27 May 08 '20

Having worked alongside uni students and people who taught themselves programming, I take the self taught guy any day of the week.

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u/[deleted] May 08 '20

[deleted]

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u/Maroon5five May 08 '20

If you can learn it in a classroom then you can probably learn it outside of a classroom too if you're passionate about it. I've worked with several programmers that I would never have known or even suspected they didn't have a degree if I hadn't seen their resume.

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u/king_27 May 08 '20

Easier to learn on the job from the seniors than it is to learn how to program in the same amount of time. It's not the 90s anymore, knowing how to use the newest react framework or Java features is typically more important than knowing how to implement a neural net or calculating the computational complexity of your solution. Sure, some more research or legacy focussed positions may disagree, but someone who taught themselves Angular and a C# backend is going to have a better time picking up new frameworks than a CS freshie that thinks he knows best

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u/SDbadger May 09 '20

One exception to this is any software job which interfaces with HW. Computer architecture, computer organization, compilers, embedded systems etc would be pretty difficult to learn on your own. I would definitely have no shot 1) getting into this part of the industry and 2) succeeding had i not had a formal education in CS/Comp Engineering. Funny enough, it seems web type jobs which are more suited to self-taught folks often pay more. Go figure. I suppose its because these days SW services are the cash cows.

Also, in my experience I have found relying too heavily on a senior is not a great strategy. Might just be my company culture, but if you too heavily rely on people senior to you you may come off as needing too much hand holding.

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u/[deleted] May 09 '20

Fellow embedded guy who agree 100%. This stuff is definitely niche and most people don't realize this stuff even exists.

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u/king_27 May 09 '20

Oh yeah definitely not the rule, there are some niche exceptions. Everyone and their grandmother needs software nowadays, so the high demand makes sense.

I of course don't mean sitting on them for every little issue, but everyone at my company is friendly and loves having a chance to talk about how best they think to solve a solution, so usually worth asking if you've got a wall and don't want to waste 10 hours trying to solve it yourself.

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u/uberhaxed May 09 '20

It's not the 90s anymore, knowing how to use the newest react framework or Java features is typically more important than knowing how to implement a neural net or calculating the computational complexity of your solution.

These are two different fields though... That's like equating a cruise ship captain to an officer in the Navy. One is computer science and the other is software.

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u/king_27 May 09 '20

Perhaps I should have stated I was talking about software then, my mistake. As mentioned in my comment, obviously if the position is more theory based then it becomes more important to have someone that studied CS theory.

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u/uberhaxed May 09 '20

It's not about positions, they are entirely different careers in different fields. You wouldn't have a physicist build a bridge, even though they should have the same fundamentals as a civil engineer. Computer Science is a field of study for data scientists. Software Engineering is a field of study for software engineers. If you think a CS degree is training for a software engineering job, the problem is you don't understand what CS is.

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u/rejuicekeve May 08 '20

plenty of that can be picked up on the job or in spare time doing an online class, it doesnt need to be a 4 year thing.