The real cost is probably higher than the $48 per year that you pay, because your employer subsidizes the cost (presumably because it wants you to be covered).
On the other hand, sometimes the economics of different levels of medical insurance can be different. For example, there may be a higher deductible option and a lower deductible option with a higher premium cost to the employee. In some cases, the employer encourages the higher deductible option by making it so that the premium cost to the employee for the higher deductible option is lower by enough that even a heavy user of insured medical procedures will do no worse than break even compared to the lower deductible option (while lower users come out ahead with the higher deductible option).
Jumping in with the admission that I haven’t read all 100 posts and I’m positive this has already been said before but adding in my two cents.
This is a stupid article meant to, once again, wag a finger at those darn millenials.
I have to echo what Dio said a few posts ago. If you ask me: whether I was “willing to slash their spending on clothes, shoes and accessories.” I’d say “no” because I don’t spend any money on those things unless they’re absolutely necessary (conference clothes, for example) and even then I shop very cheaply.
I just can’t believe this non-story has generated 7 pages worth of responses. :-??
Of course it is, but I’m talking about the personal cost to the individual, not the overall cost. The overall cost doesn’t really matter when an individual is weighing whether to carry it or not.
Dave, in some places there are few alternatives to maxx’ing out the student loans. Housing is extraordinarily expensive. Transportation. Medical. Work Study is not always available, and local employment is slim. You get $5,500 per semester in financial aid, Pell is $750 a semester, making it a total of $6,250. After you pay for tuition books and fees and housing, you have $2,250 left to live on for 5 months. $450 is not a lot, but with WS and employment not available, what else is there? For a kid that $450 would work. For an adult, that’s not enough.
Apparently their parents didn’t teach them how to live simply. I’d be pretty damn happy to live for 3 months on microwave mac and cheese…though whether my liver can handle it, that’s another question…
About a decade ago there was a campus protest demanding increased financial aid as some New England college, I forget which. It was held the week after spring break. Organizers asked several students to leave before the protest started because they were sporting tropical tans from their spring break trip.
That college did not have any students whose normal year-round coloration may resemble a “tropical tan” on other students? Or students who spend plenty of time outside normally and get darker for that reason?
There are lots and lots of individuals who have a “tropical tan” color year round on both my undergrad and grad campuses- both in Michigan. Either it is their natural color or they spend time in tanning booths.
Further, people who protest for X issue don’t need to be personally affected by that issue. Males protest for expanded women’s health, I protest for schools even though I don’t have kids, and so on. It would be stupid to ask protesters who probably come from well-off families to leave.
I tried to dig up this story because I was curious. No luck in the newspaper archives. shrug
Saw this story this morning about student loan debt being viewed as baggage (similar to divorce, existing kids, etc) in the dating world. Didn’t plan to hunt down this thread but now that its back on page one:
^^My daughter’s school definitely has two very different options for freshmen. 90% of the live in the ‘freshman village’ where it is all suite style: single room in a 4 person apartment, share two bathrooms, a kitchenette with fridge and microwave, and living room.
10% of students either live at home and commute or live in a traditional dorm, and even that has a range from the traditional double/hall bath, double with a private bath, or a single with a bath, etc. The traditional double/hall bath is about half the price of the freshman village, but few students choose that (they get put there when the village fills up).
All freshmen have the same meal plan, so you can’t even justify the more expensive room with kitchen to save on the meal plan. The upperclassmen also choose the fancier suite style dorms. All the traditional dorms are the older ones. I don’t think they’ve build a traditional dorm in 20 years, all fancy now.
Oh, I didn’t know millennials were the first generation in huge debt.
Oh wait, they’re not.
Mortgage crisis of 2008 = the older generation.
Let’s look up some statistics here. Fact is kind of a good thing, no?
Millennials and individuals over 74 years old held the least credit card debt.
These two groups are also among the least likely to have a credit card, which can serve as a potential explanation behind the trend we are seeing here.
Age Average Credit Card Debt
Less than 35 years $5,808
35 to 44 years $8,235
45 to 54 years $9,096
55 to 64 years $8,158
65 years and over $6,351
65 to 69 years $6,876
70 to 74 years $6,465
75 and over $5,638
The wise thing to do, IMHO, if one wants to build a credit history, is to use a credit card like an American Express card (aka “charge card”). Use it for routine purchases, accrue some bonus points or dollars, and pay the full balance at the end of each month.
I am honestly so sick and tired of people reading things like this and instantly grouping an ENTIRE GENERATION together as “self-entitled” and unwilling to give up “luxuries” to pay loans. You realize how many people you are assuming live like this, correct? You seriously think I’m not willing to give up “luxuries?” What “luxuries” would those be, exactly? Why do you label me as self-entitled because I prefer to not starve to death over trying to pay down some loans early on? Some of us come from poor families as it is, and living with our parents is not a luxury, it is a necessity for not only ourselves, but also because our parent(s) need help paying the mortgage. So don’t sit there and label me as lazy, self-entitled, or clueless because I am a millennial who isn’t paying off loans right away, because if you do then clearly you must be coming from a state of privilege I haven’t had the luxury of experiencing.
Oh, but that’s right. I was “denied little growing up”, so clearly that’s why I am so spoiled and unwilling to give up my current state of luxury, barely able to pay the bills and hoping that check I wrote doesn’t clear until after I get paid, in order to pay off loans sooner.
Seriously? How can you group an entire generation and label them like this, when you have no idea what kind of circumstances people of this generation are living in?
sms122397, I think that is an unfair judgement of your own. “I” have not judged the “Millennials” for how they handle their money. If anything that generation has far more access to far more information than my generation did. I know of a kid at the school I’m going to that sleeps outside most of the time. His apartment is a sleeping bag. If it rains or snows he’s under a tree on campus. Is he trying to save money? Does he not have money? Who knows, he’s very discreet about it.
Me, I’m 46, trying to go back and get an education that society denied me for decades. If anything the “Millennials” have been more accepting of me and my impairments than the earlier generations. The only thing the Millennials have a problem with is my age.
Oh, that and then there are the kids, like you and a few others in this thread, that can’t stop flapping their lips over something I really do not see happening here. Go throughout this thread and you will see little attack on your generation whereas your generation seems to have lost it’s braking system on their whine-a-matic machine.
Go ahead, read theis entire thread. And point out to me where I am wrong.
