I like your strategy of keeping your costs down and the term I use is “living beneath my means”.
The reason why I am replying to you however is I wouldn’t assume higher education is recession proof. As we can see from California, states are beginning to feel the impact of the housing downturn and this will begin to effect more and more states. Colleges and Universities that receive Federal and state money are going to see a reduction. They will either have to reduce staff, reduce programs, or both.
Sallie is in serious trouble right now with her loan portfolio and this is only going to get worse. Loans for college students will get harder and harder to get and rates will go up. I don’t have the time to go too deep into this but I think you get the point.
Obviously this will be determined by the length and depth of this downturn. The longer and deeper it is the more impact something like higher education will feel the hit. Remember that most people have to borrow large amounts of money to pay for school. The ability to borrow money and take on debt is getting harder and harder and at this point, difficult to determine where it will ease.
