Timeline for How can I prepare for my US student debt?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
26 events
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| Feb 12, 2019 at 21:09 | comment | added | shoover | For the next edit: the puppet's name is spelled Pinocchio. | |
| Feb 12, 2019 at 21:08 | history | edited | Harper - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 12, 2019 at 20:59 | history | edited | Harper - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 12, 2019 at 13:50 | comment | added | Karan Harsh Wardhan | i'd advise against advising college kids to eat ramen, tends to bloat you up and make you feel lethargic - an as cheap option is beans and rice. you can throw in vegetable/meat products as needed. | |
| Feb 11, 2019 at 13:55 | comment | added | UKMonkey | @CretaZigman "The cost of a car was worth it, because I needed it" no, you didn't need a car. Maybe you needed a form of transportation, but you didn't need a car. There are cheaper forms of transport that will cost you less to buy, insure and run. You chose a car because you didn't want for whatever reason to pick a cheaper form - and that's ok, but as you're learning now, every choice has a cost. | |
| Feb 11, 2019 at 0:50 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | @stannius: In context of this answer's "Money spent on something else is not spent on tuition", yes. Note that this comment confirms it. | |
| Feb 11, 2019 at 0:46 | comment | added | stannius | @BenVoigt does food countas a "lifestyle expense"? | |
| Feb 10, 2019 at 14:13 | comment | added | Wayne Werner | @MasonWheeler not to mention your night job doesn't actually have to be a physically-present night job, if you can swing it! Design/build websites, write programs for other people, etc. - might be more difficult to find, but... that kind of thing is a possibility! | |
| Feb 9, 2019 at 20:57 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @BenVoigt perhaps, but Drexel's website advises to expect $35,000/yr net tuition after financial aid. So I believe it. | |
| Feb 9, 2019 at 20:16 | comment | added | Ben Voigt | On top of the point about fungibility (which is a right word, even if not the absolute best), the current loan balance can't be explained by tuition alone. In the second term of the fourth year, that's the 11th term (3+3+3+2). 11 times just under $8k tuition per term is only $87k. Loans total over $94k. Somethings missing there, either loans were taken explicitly for lifestyle expenses (as opposed to simply displacing tuition costs), or interest is accruing prior to graduation, or loans are being taken during summer quarters (but that makes no sense on a 5 year curriculum) | |
| Feb 8, 2019 at 19:28 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @stannius no, that means interchangable, it's not the right word or I'd have used it. I mean more beyond distributable because that implies a choice, there's no choice. I am trying to debunk the idea of hard separation, that student loans are for tuition and earned income is for living expenses. Earned income can be used for tuition, so every dollar of income not used for tuition causes another dollar of student loan to be borrowed. So that unnecessary living expense is being financed by the student loan, it's adding to the end of the student loan and will be paid last. | |
| Feb 8, 2019 at 18:54 | comment | added | stannius | I have never heard the word "distributive" applied to money before, and in reading its definitions, I cannot see how it applies. Did you mean "fungible"? | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 20:14 | comment | added | BlackThorn | @CretaZigman You may not have been able to find a job near campus when you searched earlier, but campus jobs have high turnover, so if you keep searching you will find something. You can often find very flexible jobs on campus for 10-15 hrs a week - janitorial, library, teacher's aid, etc. Some of those jobs may only pay minimum wage, but I found that doing manual labor as a shelver in the library was a good break from my engineering studies, and it paid. The best part of a campus job is that you don't waste any time getting there and you don't need a car. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 17:28 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @MasonWheeler who makes the pizza, then? Of course there were jobs, they were just competitive. Drexel is in quasi-downtown Philadelphia, easy walk from the Amtrak station where 12 routes of commuter train also call. And a subway that connects to 5 other suburban lines and 2 other subways, one to New Jersey. And you can study on the train. That said, Philly did suffer "white flight" like Detroit, where people and businesses moved to suburbs because they are not transit accessible. So his issue with "only decent employer in carland" is typical. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 17:14 | comment | added | Mason Wheeler | "Work a night job. Work two." This varies heavily by school. I went to school in one of the college-town-iest college towns ever. The student body was literally at least 50% of the population. Simply put, there were no jobs to be found for the vast majority of us. There just didn't exist enough employment, by a few orders of magnitude. (No idea if this is the case at Drexel or not, but it's certainly not always a feasible option.) | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 13:16 | history | edited | Ganesh Sittampalam♦ | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 6, 2019 at 4:43 | comment | added | chepner | Once you finish your last co-op assignment in March, you are on campus for 5 straight terms of classes (been there, done that). Reconsider whether you need to keep the car over that time. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 4:10 | comment | added | WGroleau | It may be a little bit cynical, but it’s a lot correct. I spent years living your way. Much happier now that I have stopped believing the lies that made me borrow money. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 1:01 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | Not at all, actually I was writing the word "defense" because you have argued a very good defense there. By that reasoning, then, the student loans are earnestly worth it because the other options are not as good, and you should carry on and give them not another thought. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 1:00 | comment | added | CretaZigman | Sorry if I'm getting defensive about all this, it is my life choices after all! I am considering more lifestyle changes, taking all of everyone's advice into account. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:59 | comment | added | CretaZigman | Everything I do now is the investment I make into my future. Saving $100/mo is nothing if I end up being able to make an extra $1,500 post graduation by getting a better job, because I had better experience. The jobs in the philadelphia area are for engineering firms (electricians, power grid, etc) while the suburbs have jobs which are not only better paying, but are actually in my field of interest, and will far improve my chances of good employment later on. The difference between firm engineers and design engineers is like the difference between an architect and a watch-maker. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:51 | comment | added | Harper - Reinstate Monica | @SamGallagher the job is in car-land? That's a shame because the job is a boon, it's just a really expensive boon, and you need to run the calculus on whether it's really worth owning a car 12 months a year to work that job 6 months a year, versus a less specialist job that pays less but is transit accessible without such a mad infrastructure investment. I do get rarity of jobs, a friend was a cell phone tower designer whose family had to moveto Indy, now he packs boxes for Amazon. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:50 | comment | added | CretaZigman | The cost of a car was worth it, because I needed it. The alternative was taking a train at 5:50am for 1.5 hrs, then walking more than a mile, every day in the winter. The train isn't even competitively priced, there's no reason to think that it's a better choice. This is my life, the best years, yadda yadda, and eating healthy and living right will have far larger impacts on my life than eating ramen and saving $100/mo on food, and not sleeping to work two jobs between my hour commutes to/from work. If I'm on Pleasure Mountain, nobody told me. I still get barely get by. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:41 | comment | added | CretaZigman | This is a little bit cynical. I think you're getting excited at tearing down the naivete of our youth, or something. However, some points of note: 1. I do pay $500/mo in rent, by sharing a 1 bedroom apt with a roommate. 2. I have done three rounds of extensive job searches in my area, and have had dozens of interviews, and none of them were in the Philadelphia area. In the city, there aren't many (if any) companies doing electronics design work, RF, microwave, etc. If there are, they pay well below competitive rates. It's suburbs, either drive or train, and in my case I have to drive. | |
| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:38 | history | edited | Harper - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
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| Feb 6, 2019 at 0:21 | history | answered | Harper - Reinstate Monica | CC BY-SA 4.0 |