FWIW neither H nor I had student loans and we waited 10 years after marriage (at 23) to start a family. It worked our just fine.
Everyone at the company I worked for needed a degree, even the receptionist. They had a habit of hiring receptionists telling them they would be expected to do work for other departments on their free time to hone their skills and move up, and then refuse to move them up because their receptionists with MASTERS DEGREES would, of course, move up very quickly and then they were perpetually without a receptionist. But they’d post that receptionist job and get 500 applications in a week from college grads, so why would they do any differently? They have it made.
Quite frankly, you didn’t need a college education to do any of the work there. My manager didn’t have one, she was hired before they made that rule. Her manager probably did and probably needed it, but he was a VP for goodness sake, not a receptionist.
In fact, I was just looking the other day for some sort of an easy, non career type job to consider to make some extra money. Maybe a receptionist type job or office assistant. I have a political science degree and experience in the insurance industry. I couldn’t find anything like that that I was qualified for. The receptionist at my doctors office has to have medical field related degree, to answer phones and schedule appointments. I think these jobs are being marketed to attract desperate unemployed college grads so they can pay them like they’re unskilled laborers, and in some cases promote them with a raise that is smaller than what they should have gotten had they been hired into a position at a salary commensurate with their education in the first place-- that’s what my company was doing. Get hired in as an entry level at another, better company-- start at 40-45k. Get hired in at sub-entry level here, get hired in at 30k or less, and get a 5k raise when you get “promoted” to entry level and still end up behind. You’re young and naive so it will probably take you a while, probably a year, to get the guts to leave. That’s the way it usually worked out.
Looking through job postings, I am seeing a lot of companies here that I think are doing the same thing. It hurts them some because then they have high turnover, but there are so many desperate unemployed college grads that they don’t care, they can fill the position again in no time. The people making the decisions arent the ones that have to train new people over and over again because people keep moving on.
These people getting hired into these jobs are not going to get on top of their loans enough to buy a house any time soon.
Who wants to be stuck with a mortgage?
http://www.technomadia.com/young-full-time-rving-nomads/
?
People who tire of the youthful “poor and nomadic adventurer” existence, who want a stable life and perhaps a family.
You can travel with kids.
My point was apparently not obvious enough, but I know many couples who don’t want to wait until they are retired 50 years from now, to travel and live their life.
For example one couple opted not to live in a city, with the corresponding high cost of living, and instead chose to live in an area similar to where they had grown up spending adventure vacations. The days of working for one company for 30 or 40 years and retiring with a pension is long gone. With a small dish, you can telecommute from the most out of the way places on earth!
What millennials want, is not necessarily what their boomer parents chose.
http://www.seattlepi.com/local/article/Couple-circles-the-globe-in-a-30-year-old-5873722.php#page-2
Well, it’s an opportunity to consider if that’s what you really want. To people who aren’t interested, I wouldn’t recommend it.
@Emaheevul07 -A large part of the reason companies are making college degrees a requirement for even the lowliest jobs is because they can-with the number of job-seekers on the market still high, though that figure’s lower than a few years ago, it’s workers who are competing for employers rather than the other way around.
In some fields, however, the situation is very different. Computer science majors and engineering majors are doing very well because demand still outstrips supply. Even for those who’ve taken only a brief course in the field, an entry-level position will pay very well. There was an article in the NY Times on this trend a week or two ago (link below).
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/29/technology/code-academy-as-career-game-changer.html?_r=0
Nurses and physical therapists, among others, are in similarly short supply.
The reason a lot of graduates face poor job prospects is because they choose a major where supply already outstrips demand, and only the best students (or, this being the real world, the best-connected) find well-paying jobs. If you major in Latin or Anthropology, you’d better be prepared to compete with graduates across the country for a very small number of openings.
Of course, not everyone wants to be a STEM major, but a STEM minor-or even, as per the article above, a brief course in a related field-is a good hedge against a weak job market, and a brief stint in coding can often be enough to pay off a large percentage of your student loans.
The topic of this thread is a bit of a no-brainer. If a recent grad has a job that, after paying rent (maybe with a roommate), utilities, a possible car payment and loan repayment, has little left for discretionary spending, its wise to not take on additional debt. Of bigger concern is the choice of age group brackets in that article. 18-29? Thats not only a large range, it includes the student still in college, who would not be likely to be looking at marriage, home ownership. Thats a probable red herring in this metric. And IMO, a student should be settled and established before marrying. I dont consider a 22 yr old recent grad who chooses to wait til they are 26 or so t marry “delaying”, but thats just me. I believe there is a high divorce rate amongst young marrieds.
D1 wants to make sure she could cook for herself before she brings a human being into this world. She has been practicing.
Fewer adults are marrying, and for those who do, the average age at time of first marriage has been steadily rising http://mic.com/articles/92361/the-median-age-of-marriage-in-every-state-in-the-u-s-in-two-maps
This article says that college educated women benefit financially from marrying later, whereas men of all educational levels from marrying earlier. http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/03/getting-married-later-is-great-for-college-educated-women/274040/
go to a state school and avoid basket weaving majors.
I do agree that student debt is a problem, but is is important to have some perspective. I still remember reading an article about housing prices my Senior year in college and thinking I would NEVER own a house. A few years later H and I were buying a house. At age 18 or 21, ten years out seems very far away. It seems so long to wait to have a family, buy a house or whatever, but it really isn’t.
I choose to commute from home to a local school that most people think of as the slacker school and rather attend some other school in the UC system.
It costs my family just under $7k a year compared to my friends at a UC spending $25k+ a year given that none of us get any financial aid. By the time I finish in a total of three years, I’ll have spent less than a year at a UC and graduate debtless.
–I wish more people looked into the lower tier schools instead of brushing them away and heading off to the schools they’ve worked so hard to get into but with no idea of what they want to major in / future career plans and realizing that their family can’t financially afford the UC school.
It’s very depressing that the much applauded solution posted in this thread is marry someone rich. We are obviously going back to the 1950s.
Well, from post #31, I would surmise that the best situation for all parties is for a younger man to marry an older woman. Guess I should start looking among the upperclassmen (or women, in my case)…
A new employee (female) in our company said that she has no interest in wasting her time on any younger man in the dating market. From her experience, a man below a certain age by and large has no intention to be in a committed relationship. Spending time on them is just wasting her time.
Interesting mcat. I became involved with my H, when he was 21, and I know several young women who met their sig others when they were in their early 20’s. But I suppose it depends on what she considers " younger". If she is say in her mid 30’s, I would agree that in general, a man in his mid 20’s is going to be at a different place in life.
No one is holding a gun to these kids’ heads and forcing them to go to schools they can’t afford. Between financial aid and scholarships there is a lot of money out there for the taking. I don’t feel too sorry.