Steve Grasso
THE REALITY
My college years were some of the best of my life. While at The Ohio State University, I got to celebrate the football team's improbable National Championship my freshman year. I enjoyed more Dave Matthews Band concerts than any regular human being would in a lifetime, and met my wife while working at the school's Rec Center. I even manged to earn a Bachelor's in English in the meantime, and then a Master's in Education from Wright State University shortly there after. Both degrees have assisted me in my dueling careers as an educator and a content marketer the Wealth Club team here at Artifex Financial Group. Oh, I forgot to mention; none of it would have been possible without the assistance of student loans.
At the age of 32, I have roughly $100,000 in student loans to repay. If I continue to pay at my current rate of a whopping $430 per month, will be paid off by the time my 5 year old son graduates from college. That number has evoked a lot of emotions over the years. In the past I have felt embarrassed to share it, overwhelmed by it, and most frequently anchored to it. That number is also a reality that I not only live with, but manage and plan around.
THE RATIONALE
I have been considering writing this article for a while now. I waffled back and forth about making up a generic story or using my own considering the angst it has caused. I landed on sharing my own story because I sense that it's far more of the rule than the exception. It also doesn't make me any less successful or even out of the ordinary. It simply just IS. I might go as far to say if you're between the ages of 22-36 and graduated from a 4-year college (or beyond), unless you grew up in a family with generational money or earned a full academic or atheltic ride, you have dealt with/are dealing with student loans. Over the next few weeks, I will examine the way student loans have created a new reality for young Americans. This series of posts will push for the need for financial education in American high schools, expose a system that allows the business of higher education to drive tuition prices through the roof, and offer solutions for living with student loan debt.
While student loans are not considered "bad debt", they do constrict a budget and can hold you down as they accrue interest. Everyday, we see articles such as this one from The Washington Post that shows how millienials are more likely to live at home with their parents than ever before even though employment is soaring and rates are low, or this from Business Insider that proclaims young people are planning to work until they die. The groupthink of the older generations in response to this conundrum is people in my demographic are more either more lazy, more distracted, or both. I propose to that demo, however, to riddle themselves this as they spin yarns about walking to school shoeless, uphill both ways, in three feet of snow: had they left school and joined the workforce with a mound of debt the size of the cost of a modest home before even depositing one paycheck, how would they feel about their prospects of saving for retirement or buying a home? Gives a little bit of a different perspective, right?
THE (FAR TOO COMMON) STORY
My wife and I have been able to carve out a sound living for our family thus far. She is a self-employed online health and fitness coach (and a beautiful one at that ;), to a small extent tapping into her degree in Marketing but much more importantly, her passion for connecting with and helping others reach their goals and improve their lives, to build a very successful independent business. As mentioned previously, I spent six years as an teacher and joined the Artifex team last year. We, like any other couple our age, hope to grow our family, set our kid(s) up for success, have some nice things, and maybe one day live here. All things considered, we live very modestly, and quite honestly, somewhat below our means if you looked solely at our AGI. We've owned our home for four years now. While it's very comfortable and set up to our liking, is probably too small to house many more additions to our three-person family and a work-from-home business. We have aspirations of building exactly what we want, which will happen in time. That amount of time, of course, would be much shorter if that amount quoted in the second paragraph was even one-half of what it is.
THE PLAN
Since it's a reality, we're not hiding from it. Since we're not hiding from it, we have a plan to attack it. We have done some consolidation, pay diligently, and continue to chisle away at it. As mentioned, over the next few weeks, we will discuss ways to deal with student loan debt while also planning for the future. The intention of this blog is to spark conversation about the student loan debt epidemic that has swept through people of our age group and those slightly younger. If you can relate and would like to join the discussion, click the link below to join in our mailing list to engage with this three-part blog. I encourage readers to share this blog and more importantly, their stories and plans in the comments in support of one another as we're all in this together. If you're reading this and you're one of those "uphill both ways" fogies who has a millenial playing esports in your basement, then you should probably follow too. Maybe together we can come up with a plan to get that sad sack up those stairs and out on his own.
