Our daughter who graduated last year recently mentioned that she isn’t candid with her co-workers (other young nurses) when the subject of student loans arises. She doesn’t outright bald faced lie but she leaves the definite impression that she too has loans to pay back. She then told us that she did this in school too. She feels too uncomfortable with her good fortune. Anybody else experience this?
Why would whether or not she has loans be anyone else’s business? I wouldn’t comment either way.
It’s nobody’s business whether she has loans…or not"
My D definitely tries to fly under the radar about not having loans. All her friends do and she knows they struggle because they talk about it.
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“My D definitely tries to fly under the radar about not having loans. All her friends do and she knows they struggle because they talk about it”
Exactly, they do talk about it. It’s not like they are asking her if she has loans. It’s just they are talking about it. How will they manage if they take a break to have kids? Should they consider a job where their loans are forgiven etc… Its just a topic of conversation and hard to avoid.
It does come up as a topic of discussion in some circles. I agree it’s better not to announce that you are loan free when with folks who are talking about los burdens.
My guess is that most of us end up on both sides of these conversations. She’ll have friends with loans and she may have friends who can afford to live above their means due to family financial backing.
Same way with people in their 30s & 40s in the office (or friends) talking about mortgages. Everyone says, “have you refinanced yet? Rates may not get any lower than this.”
Trying to answer with, “I don’t have a mortgage” just leads to confusion on the part of the questioner.
My daughter ran into this a lot. She just kept quiet. My son got a merit scholarship, which is a form of aid, so he didn’t feel as weird.
Considering that full pay without loans these days suggests that the student/graduate came from a top ~4% money family (if college was private) or top ~20% money family (if college was in-state public), social interactions with the middle income middle class (not the forum “middle class”) and young adults from families in the middle income middle class could get awkward if one is known as coming from a family of money and therefore “inherited” financial advantages like being able to go to expensive college without loans.
In other words, it is just another reminder of the unlevel playing field that one “inherits” from parental money still affecting people who are now living and working on their own.
“Considering that full pay without loans these days suggests that the student/graduate came from a top ~4% money family (if college was private) or top ~20% money family (if college was in-state public), social interactions with the middle income middle class (not the forum “middle class”) and young adults from families in the middle income middle class could get awkward if one is known as coming from a family of money and therefore “inherited” financial advantages like being able to go to expensive college without loans.”
True. Or close to it. It’s a huge advantage in life. Though there are assumptions about you made about the way you live that May not be true. One friend of DD who she did tell that she had no loans and full pay visited us and after told my daughter ( they are very close and very open with each other…she wasn’t being rude ) that she was surprised our house was so small and our cars so old.
This DD is very careful about letting on. Other DD went to school and works with many people who are .01 percenters and has less awkwardness as she’s often the “ poor one” ( though obviously not in any real way)
We had “middle class” savings accounts for our kids so that the kids wouldn’t have to have large loans.
They either don’t say anything, or add to the conversations by saying that our family continues to live frugally.
(We saved money, being in a smaller house than our middle class friends, drive older cars, and made our kids work for their money/ loans over their summers.)
Our daughter had a decent merit scholarship, but she had no additional loans. She, too, never talked about her financial situation/lack of loans - even though it was a popular topic of conversation at her office (Big 4 accounting) in her early days. She wasn’t uncomfortable, but she saw no need to comment when the topic came up.
It DID make her even more grateful to us parents who paid for her education. Now that she and her H are expecting their first child, she often mentions starting a college fund ASAP.
It’s not just a challenge for the students, we as parents struggle with this too. We have neighbors that one would assume are in the relatively same socio-economic class as us given we live in the same neighborhood and sent our kids to the same types of OOS public universities. But their children have taken out loans (I don’t know if the parents did as well). And it’s clear from comments made that the children didn’t take out loans just to have skin in the game (meaning the parents could have footed the whole bit but chose not to). Our children both got merit scholarships but we would have paid the full bill if they didn’t with no loans for the kids. This is something we certainly don’t bring up in conversation with these neighbors.
@adlgel I have partners at work who make 2-3x what we make as a family ( I work part time and my husbands salary is comparable to mine though he is working full time). We had college fully covered in our 529’s and then got a windfall inheritance. We were meeting with one of them on the estate matter and as our younger kid still had 2 years of college left he said “ well now you can pay for the rest of college without loans” and he was shocked when we said “ No loans”. He was like “ but my kids have loans!” I didn’t say “ Well we lived below our means, not above them”.
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My D is very sensitive to this. She’s on a full ride, doesn’t work during the school year, gets a very generous allowance, and has obtained very lucrative internships. She realizes she is very fortunate, keeps quiet, especially about the allowance, when others are talking about loans and money struggles, and is a little too nice in my opinion in working with other students regarding dues for one club where she’s VP of finance.
It’s a little bit like acing your classes while friends are really struggling. You just stay quiet, nod, and be empathetic.
My kid just keeps it on the down low. I’ve even seen weird posts about this on parent boards for my kid’s college. Someone posted an article saying something like average student debt is around 30K, percentage that graduate debt free 50%. It was based on real data. Plenty of parents came out of the woodwork saying how that must be inaccurate. Their kid had much more debt, all their friends had debt, etc.
I think it’s human nature to assume everyone around you is in similar circumstances. My kid has learned a lot about his privilege through the process. But sees there are others with much more than him.
However, doing well in classes may be perceived differently, in that it is often seen as “earned”, rather than “unearned” or “inherited” like parental money that allows one to pay for college without loans.
Perhaps the closer analogy comes from college admissions (or getting merit scholarships), where hooked or otherwise highly advantaged admits are more likely to be resented, compared to those who get admitted despite being unhooked and without other “unearned” or “inherited” advantages. Among hooked students, it would not be surprising if LDC* students hid their LDC status for the same reason as the topic of this thread, while URM and athlete students bear the brunt of the resentment due to being more likely to be visible (and may be resented even if the college does not actually consider those as hooks, because people generally perceive them as hooks even when they are not).
*Legacy or Lineage, Dean’s list or Development, Child of faculty or staff
My kids aren’t in college yet but won’t have loans. I feel as though we have worked really hard and there were some very tough years. We have done a lot of things to ensure a good retirement and college money. My kids would likely say nothing. For us, I don’t have to feel guilty as I don’t buy into a lot of the earned/privilege type thinking that people should feel guilty if they are well off and can provide college for their kids. I grew up very poor and my spouse grew up middle class so having enough for us and enough for our kids was based on work effort. Still no reason to make others feel bad. I used to feel awful when I was in college on a scholarship and couldn’t afford basic toiletries.
I don’t tell people we have no mortgage, many people know we sold a business ( it was public news and public data available) and many know we likely have some dough. But we drive older cars, aren’t flashy and are typical Yankees. So no one could know for sure.
Our kids were raised to be compassionate. They also do not buy into guilt-laden thinking. We’ve even seen some of that happen in our family between those who paid fully for their kids and those who didn’t.
I actually don’t think having loans is a bad thing within reason.