“A new survey reveals that many grads don’t know their total student loan balance and more than a third don’t know what they pay in interest.” …
http://www.moneytalksnews.com/most-college-grads-unwilling-forfeit-luxuries-reduce-student-loans/
Yikes. 
And when it comes time to buying a house and starting a family this will come back to bite them.
They should try and pay down debt more quickly to reduce interest and to be debt free when they are still on their own, without a family to depend on them.
Not surprised. A generation that was denied little growing up doesn’t want to deny itself much as grown-ups.
That article says the average student loan debt for millenials is $41,286. With the direct loan limit sitting at $27,000, I’m wondering if a lot of students took private loans or if they’re including PLUS loans that students are paying off. I guess graduate/professional school debt, which can be huge, would be in the average, too, but the number still seems high.
I remember some years ago reading an article about 2 UVA law grads and their huge student loan debts and their issues with repaying them. I believe they both have jobs in SoCal law firms making $125K each and it seemed to me their problem was they weren’t willing to live the spartan lifestyle for 3-4 years and pay off their debts.
I read articles like this while I’m dealing with flack for not sending my kid to a $38K per year OOS public university.
We could afford to do it, too, but what does that teach our son?
We parents have to walk the talk, imho.
If a school wants to give scholarships to a student I have no problem with that. But the middle and upper middle class cannot afford to buy into the “at any cost” mentality for certain schools.
Yeah, that pretty much confirmed my impression of millennials.
If I were Secretary of Education, I would push for two years’ worth of Personal Finance courses as mandatory for all high school students. How many kids can pass AP Calculus, yet haven’t the faintest clue about interest rates, saving, and other personal finance topics?
^Or make it an introductory course at college - could count as a Gen ed. Just make it a required one.
Milenneals are hardly the first generation ever to have people who make bad financial decisions.
This is a conversation I have daily (or so it seems) with my peers when they tell me their kids can’t afford to live on their own. Yes they can. My first apartment was shared with my boyfriend and another couple, so four of us. We got a pretty decent place split 4 ways. We all drove junkers, had parties at the apartment instead of going out, and spent little on unnecessary clothing/household/electronic items. And we paid our debts.
No, you most likely can’t pay off your student loans if you want to live in a very nice apartment, drive a new SUV or better, carry Coach pocketbooks, shop at Banana Republic, and hit the sushi restaurant a couple nights a week. All luxuries. Self-entitled.
And what a shame that college graduates do not know how much they owe or what their interest rate is. Shame on them and shame on their parents.
My S - out of college 10 months now doesn’t even have any loans and makes a very nice salary (in the $50k range) would rather put the max allowable into his companies 401k plan, has an emergency fund already and was able to save an additional 5k to put down on a very nice but pre-owned Audi a4. He lives in a fairly expensive city (Boston) but shares an apartment. A lot of his friends from college also got jobs and moved to Boston and when I ask him what he did over the weekend I hear a lot of, “bunch of us went to X and Y’s apt for pot luck.” He even has a specialty dish he makes now, He and roommate just signed up for CSA box - $400 total for the next 6 months. He said that will cover about 70% of their total food bill. He has even calculated that to take the Mass Pike to work and back every day ( works in suburb) would cost him $1300 a year in tolls - so he takes Rt 9 instead. Wasn’t a math or finance major and obviously never took a Personal Finance class. He also worked summers and had a job on campus to pay for his books and spending money. We gave him .
at most $100 a year towards that.
I can’t speak for his friends but S tells me he comes home from work so beat he hardly ever goes out during the week and not even every Friday night. I went out way more then he does when I had my first job out of college in NYC!
He just made his first donation to his college, too.
I bristle when I hear blanket statements about this generation and/or how it’s because of how they were raised.
Do this and I bet within a year College Board comes out with an AP to add to that money-making enterprise!
If families want to live together, more power to them, even if it’s done so kids can enjoy luxuries while they pay off the loans. The issue seems to be when those luxuries prevent a student from paying off loans, when the apartment with the stainless steel appliances increases the rent to the point where the new grad can’t pay his or her debt.
It is very easy to get the the ‘standard’ loans above $27k. Add Perkins loans, go to school more than 4 years, not qualify for subsidized loans so more interest has accrued from the earlier years, have student plus loans (parents didn’t qualify for Plus, so student took out $4000 extra some years).
The $27k is just the amount borrowed if one takes the full loans for 4 years.
That quote should appear in bold print at the top of the CC homepage.
I’m not nearly as debt averse as some of you. I still have student loan debt, but its by choice. The interest rate is so low and the monthly payment is small so it makes no financial sense for me to pay it off. My money is much better invested than doing an early pay off. They will get the last payment from me on the last due date. Now high interest credit card debt, that I don’t do and pay my credit card bills off in full every month.
On the other hand, there was a recent thread where the choice was between two schools. One was a fairly well known (on these forums) private that would have required parent loans (over $50,000 total debt). The other was a regional public that would not have. Both had the usual courses in the student’s intended major, although the more expensive one had more electives.
Seemed odd to me that most posters, including the parent and otherwise older ones, favored the higher debt school.
Seems like the only thing you neglected to teach him was that Audi’s are really, really expensive to repair 
S1 graduated in 2011 with about $27k in loans. He made a decent starting salary (~$50), my daughter-in-law barely made minimum wage (married right after graduation). They gave themselves $10 each for weekly spending money and $20 per week to spend as a couple. They put a donation in the church basket every week, donated to their colleges annually, and paid off his college loan and two vehicles in 2 years.
Not all college debt is bad, as long as there is determination to pay it off.
Another bonus of this is that S1’s younger siblings saw their brother’s determination and the successful conclusion to paying off the debt and want to do the same.
@southfloridamom9 I relate to this on so many levels. My friends’ parents are all paying for them and their siblings to go to lofty private schools on the east coast and some of them look down upon me because my family is sensible and I’m staying in state, where I can go to public university for almost no money. I guess I’m gonna be the one rubbing it in their faces a few years down the road when they’re 100k in debt…