[quote=bearishgurl]
If you don’t mind my asking, meadandale, how much was your student loan debt upon graduation? And how much was your rent (or your portion of rent) upon graduating?
[/quote]
I didn’t take out a lot of loans because I didn’t want to be saddled with debt. I worked near full time all through college to pay for living expenses and tuition…often two jobs. Interest rates for student loans were very high in the 80’s (even federally backed loans). You didn’t get one unless you absolutely had to.
I probably had about $10-15k of student loan debt when I graduated in 1990. I was making about $22k/yr with a B.A. in Chemistry and paying about $500/month in rent to rent a room in an apartment/house/condo (I lived in several places and the price was similar for all of them). I hardly ever went out to bars or restaurants, didn’t have a car and bicycled to work. I bought a lot of top ramen and frozen vegetables.
I think that the reason that so many college students have so much debt these days is partly because many of them don’t work and the rely solely on loans to pay for college and their living expenses. You know what they say about other peoples money: you aren’t really frugal when you are getting a student aid check and aren’t working your ass off to earn that money.
Granted, tuitions have risen MUCH faster than salaries..this is partly because of the student loan industry. If the loans weren’t available the schools wouldn’t be able to raise tuition because noone could afford to go there…and I’m talking about state schools like UCSD and SDSU not ivy league colleges.
However, it’s a large part cultural. My niece makes $45k/year working for a judge at the courthouse in SB county…yet she says she “can’t afford” an apartment and so still lives at home at 27 yo. Of course not when she spends 90% of her paycheck every month at the mall on clothes and other crap and eats 3 times a day at starbucks…and even manages to pile more on her credit card.
