Posted on 03/02/2020 6:37:58 PM PST by Libloather
**SNIP**
It’s a dilemma more American retirees can relate to: While most borrowers are 18 to 39 years old, people over 60 are the fastest-growing segment of the population with student loan debt, according to a report by the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.
In all, more than 2.8 million Americans over 60 are contending with student debt, a number that has quadrupled from 700,000 in 2005, according to the bureau. The cost is swelling, too: Between 2012 and 2017, for those age 60 and older, the average amount of student loan debt almost doubled, ballooning to $23,500 from $12,100.
The Donohues’ situation is typical. According to that 2017 report, which uses the most recently available figures, 73 percent of borrowers over 60 are paying off student loans they either took out or co-signed to help children and grandchildren through college. Only 27 percent are chipping away at their own or their spouse’s education.
**SNIP**
The kind of issues Kimberly Weihl, 55, of Midland, Mich., is facing, for instance. When Ms. Weihl took out a loan for her daughter to attend Saginaw Valley State University in 2007, she was already paying down $60,000 of her own student debt. Now she owes $77,000. Her daughter, who dropped out after two years at Saginaw State and is living at home, is working as a waitress and not yet able to help with payments, which come to $500 a month.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
If your kids and grandkids put up 50% of college costs in a bank account you control, I can see helping. Just don’t sign any loans. If the kids don’t work and save, they might well take advantage of you...unless you get a kick out of being an enabler.
I worked my way through college and paid 100% of my own costs..never took a penny in loans, and parents weren’t in a position to be able to pay anything for me.
For the life of me, I can’t understand why today’s college students can’t do the same. In fact, I think they COULD do the same, if they CHOSE to do so. Instead, though, they don’t want to put in the hard work needed to pay their own way - and take the “easy” route (loans, lots of $$ from Mom and Dad).
Tough patookie. I have a hard time feeling sorry for any of them. Yet, here they expect The Commie to just “forgive” their loans. Gee..what’s next, forgiving people’s home mortgages, cuz it’s just so “unfair” that they have all that debt?
Excellent advice.
I stupidly took out a loan for my daughter 10 years ago.
This month was supposed to be my last payment. I saved some in interest by just having it automatically deducted each month.
After I saw the payment had been made, I logged in to my account expecting to see a $0 balance. Instead, they had charged me $.01 in interest!
yup- caught my attention as well...no one is entitled to college nor do they have to go to expensive colleges...
After we will all the libs iq going up by 10 pts
I don’t care about people’s debt and I have no sympathy for their poor financial decisions.
PHD= Piled Higher & Deeper.
I went to school on the GI Bill and commuted to a state college from home.
I didn’t go to Yale or Harvard, not that I could have anyway. But I focused on what I could afford and got a degree to go out into the workforce with.
I look at these people and I see the kind of people who buy a house they cannot afford instead of one they can...and they surrender their financial stewardship someone else.
"Experience is the best teacher. But, if you can accept it second hand, the 'Tuition' is less!"
Moishe Rosen
Yep. Best bang for the buck are state universities. I survived it without any loans.
It’s called planning and saving.
WTH??
“Weihl took out a loan for her daughter to attend Saginaw Valley State University in 2007, she was already paying down $60,000 of her own student debt. Now she owes $77,000. Her daughter, who dropped out after two years at Saginaw State and is living at home, is working as a waitress and not yet able to help with payments, which come to $500 a month.”
Send it to them in cash. They literally won’t have a mechanis to put it on the account.
It would be worth the cost of mailing it.
I was in your situation as well. Today’s kids cannot foot the entire bill on what would normally be a part time minimum wage gig.
Most COULD do the Two year CC on their own. My wife, several friends from high school, and my daughter did this.
They did two years in community college, finished at a four year school. Very little in loans.
But the worked my way through college thing isn’t as possible today. Not in four years.
Doubley stupid!
I believe it's a three-fold issue.
The fact is that the university degree market is completely unbalanced and out of whack. Young students may be making good decisions to pursue a degree, but many are too uninformed at that age to understand that the universities are glutting the market right now. The universities have built up a capital investment in professors and manufactured an inventory of graduates that can't be sold.
The university result will eventually be the same as a business selling unwanted products: their inventory of unsold graduates will lose their value (in terms of alumni donations, university brand reputation, etc.), and the university might eventually go out of business if they can't get new student enrollments because the word is out that their graduates are unemployable.
Is all of this the fault of the student loan scam? Is it the result of students making bad career decisions? Is it the fault of businesses that are looking for cheaper workers or exporting jobs? Is it the fault of universities hungry for students flush with loan cash that they keep taking them in regardless of the ability of the job market to absorb the graduates?
-PJ
“Good for you but that does not excuse the other ignorant people who think we should forgive their stupidity.”
This is the definition of stupid. Taking student loans for majors which will not pay anything in the real world. Liberal Arts majors should not be allowed to take loans where future salary doesn’t exceed the loan amount.
We refused to fill out the FASFA information for our children. Refused them access to our tax information. This exasperated them and their school “advisors”.
Our oldest is still a little miffed about it, but guess what? We are debt free and all of them got their associates debt free while living at home. Two of them are pursuing more education on their own, but have aged out of the parental income FAFSA bullshit which is just designed to gauge how much they can gouge you for.
Just say no.
Late to college or fearsome deadbeats?
They both knock down good money as of their 50’s. It’s taken far too long for their degrees to pay off.
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