i am not alone
If you would kindly take a peek at my NetworthIQ page, you’ll see that my debt is comprised mostly of student loans, followed by a car loan, and the rest comes from credit card debt. Yesterday, I found a few articles that tell my story by analogy quite nicely.
By the time I finished undergrad, I had three credit cards and was in over $5,000 of debt. Most of the balances were due to textbooks, groceries, work clothes, and an expensive prep course for an admission test to grad school. Less than a year out of undergrad I was smacked with a tax bill because somehow my withholding wasn’t right, and another $900-something got tacked onto the mix. Then I went to grad school and didn’t pay a cent up front - I didn’t have the money. The rationale was, pay for it after graduation - it’s okay, you don’t have any loans from undergrad so it shouldn’t be too hard.
So I can see elements of my story here:
College students majoring in credit-card debt
and here:
Pricey student loans sow seeds of trouble
Reading the articles, I realize I could be much worse off. When I filled out credit applications for a t-shirt and a candy bar, I wasn’t given over tens of thousands of dollars worth of rope with which to hang myself, first of all. I only got about $1,500 on each of my two cards, at first. (Of course, after using those cards without problems, my new bank gave me a $5,000 card when all I had was a few campus jobs, but that was later.) I also didn’t buy stuff like TVs or a cell phone with the credit, so that helped. Also, when I feared having to pay higher minimums, I stopped using the cards - I knew I’d gone too far. So I never had to go home to fix my credit, or drop out of school or anything drastic like that. I just kept paying minimums, and kept my record spotless (and the debt hanging over my head) until about last year, when better income, job stability, and an honest look at my whopping $87K worth of debt spurred me into more aggressive action. I’m happy to know my college credit card debt is finally less than it was when I graduated, and that it should be all paid off by my next birthday - maybe even by next year.
And what can I say about my grad school debt except that I’m trying to make the money that justifies having incurred the debt? It’s taking time, and it hasn’t been easy. But short of working for several years and hoping to have the resolve to return to school one day (which I wasn’t sure I’d have when I decided to go straight from undergrad to grad school), I didn’t know what else to do besides take out loans to further my education. You can’t expect a 21 year old with no full time job to pay for grad school out of pocket. And at that time, I didn’t want to enter the workforce with a non-tech, non-engineering, non-business/finance bachelor’s degree, risking the future earnings that a graduate degree could help me get.
What’s really scary is that I did use financial restraint throughout college and grad school, and I don’t even have undergraduate loans. My debt is about half, or even a third, of my grad school classmates’ debt. Considering the circumstances, I was financially near the head of my graduating class. Once my earnings perk up, I’ll be in much better shape than others my age with the same educational credentials. But when that one article said, "Indentured servitude," I nodded. Believe me, I am the government’s wench every month, and I will be for at least the next five or six more years at this rate.
