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Late Gen X with a Gen Z kid here, not contributing nearly as much to my retirement as I should be because I'm supporting her through college (without loans). We inherited this shit and we're sacrificing ourselves for the sake of our kids. I don't know who's to blame, but we've been dealing with this shit our whole lives. Don't blame us; we're trying to help
Doing the same thing with my older son now. We are paying cash for his college so he doesn't start out under a mound of debt like we did. It took over 10 years for us to dig out from under that load and start building assets.
My wife is 45 and we didn't get her loans paid off until two years ago. And we only we were only able to do that because we sold our house at the absolute height of the COVID real estate market. She didn't even have post-grad; just a bachelor's
At least you can help your kids. My older daughter is going through college on loans which I don't advocate but it is her choice. I can't even keep my cars running.
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You may be underestimating how expensive college is. I earned a full ride and worked three part time jobs in college. I am still paying off loans. A full ride doesn't cover rent, food, transportation, lab fees, textbooks, school supplies, toiletries... Whatever expenses you have right now, those are the expenses kids in college have, they're just spending so much time on homework and in class, they can't earn enough to cover them at the time, and that gets you into trouble. If you aren't lucky enough to have a full ride, and your only options are predatory loans because you don't qualify for grants- that's what gets almost all into deep trouble.
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I think it's funny that you think less college debt boils down to finding a "cheap" place to live with the current astronomical prices, going out to eat too much, and that people don't have roommates. I'll give you that those 18 to, say, 24 probably don't have the best budgeting skills. But this comment comes across like those people telling to stop buying Starbucks and avocado toast.
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