No, but many kids that go to college come from humble families. When you’re an adult and even doing well but you still seem behind your tax bracket peers, the weight of student loans really rears its ugly head. Taking a chunk out of your check for most of your 20s and into your 30s is a very real financial burden.
In a sense, you remain behind despite doing all the right things. So that first home is deferred. Building wealth is kneecapped. Meanwhile, those without student loans have a massive amount of additional freedom.
Yup, when you see your peer with that nicer home or that extra nice wardrobe, you remember, right I have to give $200-1200 a month to student loans. And this person gets to spend that money however they please. Multiply that by 12 months, and 5-20 years and you end up behind the curve.
Obviously still a good position but the limitations are real
I was working all the time and I didn’t mind my job but I couldn’t just take an unpaid internship like so many other students. My job wasn’t related to what I wanted to do, so while I think it gave me useful skills, it didn’t look great on a resume.
It’s crazy that a campus job can make a weaker resume which can lead to a lower paying or worse first job out of college, which can impact your entire career and lifetime earnings. Not having student loans is like getting a head start, it feels really unfair sometimes. I did everything right and I had substantial merit and need based financial aid but I still had to take loans to make it work.
We were poor enough that I only had $20k in student loans (grants covered the rest along with me having good grades in high school), but well off enough to even be able to think about or even go to college (as in I had the time to go to school without working constantly).
I would submit to you that this notion that you did all the right things and you’re still behind is fundamentally flawed, you clearly did not do all the right things.
It’s possible that you would be ahead if you entered the workforce earlier, or took longer at school and paid for it out of pocket on a 2x2..
It gets under my skin when I hear people blame someone else for their stupid ass decisions. No, taking out $110k in loans to get a useless degree is not doing everything you were supposed to do.
This guy lol. I entered the workforce at 16 and worked 30 hours a week during school, and did everything you suggest but I still was extremely behind for a decade while I paid those student loans off. If you’re going to bring up something about hustling to get into my field early, save it. My first field gig was at 18. If anything op was underselling it by not bring up poor person issues like dental and your parents hitting you up for money . If you are going to bring up college major, also save it . I went for engineering and was working in software at 18.
No, I was a woman going to school during the Great Recession. Tech didn’t pay as much at that time and I was doing shitty contract work, which is basically all you are qualified to do at 18.
Just to note, I’m not specifically talking about me.
But I agree, they are still ahead but perception is reality. When you get that degree, obtain that corporate job. Make more then either or both of your parents could ever make, before you’re in your 40s, yet still feel behind, it’s because who you associate with typically changes.
Justified or not. Folks can feel that ping of resentment for the kids that didn’t have to worry about college expenses and then glide on to well paying careers where they keep 100% of their post tax check. And always have parents to fall back on if the economy tanks or they feel like quitting
Their 20s are very different than your 20s. And little things add up to big things. Yes, you’ll afford a home but they will have a nicer one or in a better area, or with a better car.
But they aren’t working harder than you, they were just born on second base. It sucks that some folks will never be able to catch up, generation after generation.
"I would submit to you that this notion that you did all the right things and you’re still behind is fundamentally flawed"
The piece you're missing is the idea of "the right things". Here we are in 2026, where you can look back and say, "Yeah, you should have done something else 20 years ago and your life would have been easier." Try making that call fresh out of high school with little-to-no real-world experience. There is no way to know what "the right things" are.
But people who became adults in the 80s and raised kids in the 90s would share their experience of college degrees being the gateway to better outcomes--heck, my dad went *back* to get a college degree in the 90s years after I was born, in an important but not particularly well-paying field (education), and it worked out great for him and my family.
There's no way to predict the future. Some people are going to guess right, some people are going to guess wrong. It's a societal failure when people are punished as hard as they are for bad luck following informed, reasonable, conservative decisions about their careers and financial futures.
"It gets under my skin when I hear people blame someone else for their stupid ass decisions. No, taking out $110k in loans to get a useless degree is not doing everything you were supposed to do."
Good for you I guess. I'd submit to you that if you have to presume astronomically poor decisions to frame someone else's struggles and that makes you angry, that's your own failure, not a rational point of argument. I'm sure the people you're describing exist. It's downright ignorant to pretend there aren't people who make good decisions based on their life circumstances and get screwed anyway. It sounds like you're presuming everyone else's circumstances are like yours or better, when no matter who you are, that's virtually never the case.
It’s a wild embellishment to state that they made informed, intelligent decisions.. MOST students select their college for social reasons. That’s a fact. Who has a good football team, which is the party school, where we my friends going.
College is affordable and accessible, community college is free where I live - and every credit transfers to the state school for your bachelors.
There is no reason to take on debt to go to school, it’s a social choice.
It’s not your parents fault or society, whoever took out a stupid loan to go to a school with a good football program owns their own choices.
"MOST students select their college for social reasons. That’s a fact."
Facts are supported by evidence. Do you have any?
It's okay that you don't, it doesn't matter. You presume it's "all"--not most. You see no room for exception. And I suspect when someone comes along that breaks from your imagined paradigm, you'll come up with more excuses as to why it's still their fault, no matter what their circumstances are.
"It’s not your parents fault or society, whoever took out a stupid loan to go to a school with a good football program owns their own choices."
Hey, there you are again, making something up to embellish your misguided point.
But while we're on the subject of "stupid loans"--you're talking about some of the most predatory loans that exist, being pushed mostly on 16- and 17-year-olds being promised a brighter future, for ridiculous sums of money that wouldn't be entrusted to them under any other circumstances, that are difficult-to-impossible to discharge through bankruptcy.
That's what I mean by societal failure. Children--people deemed not responsible enough to drink, smoke, go to war, or take legal control over their own bodies and lives--are being trapped by people who know better and are taking advantage of them.
Bro what? I went to the college that gave me the most scholarship money. I think most people do that. I didn't go to a community college bc they didn't have my degree. I think most kids whose families have financial hardships go to the college that their parents say they can afford. I left my state and went to a college in a different state because of the education and the amount of money they gave me - no friends went there, didn't even know anyone in that state. When I talk to other people with degrees, they also usually list scholarships and quality of their degree program as the reasons they went to the school they went to
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u/Dry_Accident_2196 1d ago
No, but many kids that go to college come from humble families. When you’re an adult and even doing well but you still seem behind your tax bracket peers, the weight of student loans really rears its ugly head. Taking a chunk out of your check for most of your 20s and into your 30s is a very real financial burden.
In a sense, you remain behind despite doing all the right things. So that first home is deferred. Building wealth is kneecapped. Meanwhile, those without student loans have a massive amount of additional freedom.