This guy just moved to a jungle to escape his student loan debt?

[disneysteve]

That's surprising because most preschools (at least in my area) require an associate degree in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and those that do hire non ECE candidates will make it a requirement for new hires to get their degree within X number of months.

There are always at least 2 people in the room, a head teacher and a teaching assistant. She can't be a head teacher but she can be the assistant. It's not a long-term job for her but it kind of fell into her lap and was a perfect first job for her. Money is decent. Hours are good. And it will keep her from having a gap in her resume that she has to explain once she finds something more career-minded for her.

[~bs]

Actually, you'd be surprised. I had peers in medical school who had degrees in almost every field you can think of. After graduating, and often after working for a few years, they decided they wanted to become doctors so they went back and took the science courses they needed to qualify for admission but they didn't get new degrees. So you very well might encounter a surgeon with an English degree or history degree or business degree. You do not need a science/pre-med degree to get into medical school.

Well, of course they'd need the appropriate medical schooling as well as the english degree. lol Taking "easier" 4 year degrees,then switching to a different track at the master or doctor level isnt new.

[~bs]

That's surprising because most preschools (at least in my area) require an associate degree in Early Childhood Education (ECE) and those that do hire non ECE candidates will make it a requirement for new hires to get their degree within X number of months. Many also offer work / study where you work at the preschool / day care during the day and go to school during the evenings and weekends.

Most English majors I know end up as journalists so that's another path for her.

depends on your state, but teaching is 1 career path that generally doesnt require above a 2 or 4 year degree (at least at first), and doesnt require a specific degree. They have stardardized tests to pass before becoming a teacher though.

[amastewa93]

And, by the way, she made her final student loan payment last month so she is now debt-free 7 months after graduation.

That is FANTASTIC!

[Gailete]

Unbelievable! When I think of my autistic son coming out of school where he got his associate's degree for medical coding and other stuff in a medical office. Since he was having trouble finding a job for what he trained for, he worked his high school grocery job and signed up at temp agencies. Finally got a part-time job and so worked it with the grocery store. Then the medical office gave him full time and he worked part-time at the store. Then he moved to be closer to his main job and save the cost of so much driving. So quit the grocery job, but as he had financial goals he wanted to meet he is working fulltime and part-time still. He had loans and through those years of balancing sometimes up to three jobs he had gotten them down to about the last thousand when my folks gave him a gift of money to finally finish them. What he did would be tough for anyone to go through and balance those jobs and paying off student loans and his car loan (no other debt - he doesn't own a credit card at 35) without having problems like autism. But he made it and I am proud of him. When the boss is away he is in charge! So for me to see stories like this guy's makes my blood boil. One assumes that he has no disabilities to put roadblocks up from finding a job he could do. How he couldn't live on the money he had coming in while living with mom is mind-boggling. He was making more than we live on! I would have loved to see what he was spending while living with mom. I wonder how his mom felt knowing she probably won't be seeing him again after coddling him. Wonder too what he is doing for a living in India. It seems more and more young people refuse to take responsibility for themselves anymore. I wonder if his wife is working and supporting him now.

Why does anyone go for a degree in philosophy in the first place without a clear path of how they plan to use it? One of my older son's friend got his degree in Philosophy and one of the jobs he worked was at a call center! My son and the third Muskateer were landing jobs that made them money.

[amastewa93]

So for me to see stories like this guy's makes my blood boil. One assumes that he has no disabilities to put roadblocks up from finding a job he could do. How he couldn't live on the money he had coming in while living with mom is mind-boggling. He was making more than we live on! I would have loved to see what he was spending while living with mom. I wonder how his mom felt knowing she probably won't be seeing him again after coddling him. Wonder too what he is doing for a living in India. It seems more and more young people refuse to take responsibility for themselves anymore. I wonder if his wife is working and supporting him now.

Why does anyone go for a degree in philosophy in the first place without a clear path of how they plan to use it? One of my older son's friend got his degree in Philosophy and one of the jobs he worked was at a call center! My son and the third Muskateer were landing jobs that made them money.

I agree! I share your frustrations. When I first read/wrote about it I was LIVID. Then I realized there are plenty of people doing this. They simply run away from their debt instead of working out a way to take care of it. What always blows my mind when this is revisited is the amount he ran off for. A little more than $20K in debt was enough to send him packing... I can't wrap my mind around that. Just pay it and move on!

[koelek]

I decided to write a whole blog post on this one today, which you can check out below. However, I wanted to get your opinions on this...

This guy (Chad Haag) moved to the jungle to escape his student loan debt. He essentially just moved to India, stopped paying, and is allowing the loan to go into default. He is literally running away from his debt.

What are your thoughts on this? To me, it is kind of infuriating... especially as someone with about the same amount of student loans as this guy. I think it is ridiculous that people do this!

On the one hand, I am sorry for him, seems like the loan was huge if he decided to move to India. On the other hand, everyone must be responsible for his actions. A lot of students are taking student loans every year and then are paying them off. I also took a student loan, because I wanted to continue my studies, to have a degree. So, I have no other option than to apply for a loan.

[~bs]

Welcome to the jungle!

[myrdale]

The Dan Emery Mystery Band has a song titled Student Loan. One verse of the song discusses a girl he knew who was hiding out in Brazil.

[amarowsky]

you can look at it this way.... (to be honest I didn't read the article , but I'm following the information of the anecdote). I don't need to read this because it's a principle debate, as no one cares about this person that no one knows.

On hand 1: This person is not accepting their responsibility for a legal commitment they made earlier in their life at the start of school.

on hand 2: We have a system of educational subsidies that is predatory on young, not fully developed minds. And to further piggy back on that, (if the person is fortunate enough to have responsible and informed family/guardians to guide them) will support these kids singing up for massive piles of debt, based on a well propagandized social promise that your kids NEED to have college education. Because this can be emotionally fueled, it can get out of hand quick.

I am disappointed with this kid's mind set. But I have ZERO sympathy for these predatory lenders that are subsidized from the federal govt. They shouldn't be able to make money like this. And they should be bearing the risk for students that can't (or wont) pay their loans. They should have never unwritten such a ****ty loan for an awful product (L.A. Degree) as it's not worth that cost IMO. If the unitversity had to sell the degree for what it's actually worth, it wouldn't require such a massive loan in the 1st place. This is just poor motivators for this type of market.

We oughta not be screwing w/ this market AT ALL (We being, our gov't using our tax dollars poorly). Find a better way to educate our children. America needs, BADLY, to figure some of these important human capital systems out. (Healthcare & education being 2 of the big ones, Healthcare FYI being about 25x size the problem that education is) .

[disneysteve]

on hand 2: We have a system of educational subsidies that is predatory on young, not fully developed minds.

This is true, though also not limited to student loans. I've seen plenty of young people get into big trouble with car loans, for example. They borrow a stupid amount to buy a car. Then a year or two later they decide they don't like that car, buy a new one, and roll the old loan into the new loan so that they are thousands of dollars underwater. It shouldn't be allowed, but it is. There is very poor regulation on the lending industry in general. But the banking lobby has far too many of our elected officials in their pockets.

[amarowsky]

This is true, though also not limited to student loans. I've seen plenty of young people get into big trouble with car loans, for example. They borrow a stupid amount to buy a car. Then a year or two later they decide they don't like that car, buy a new one, and roll the old loan into the new loan so that they are thousands of dollars underwater. It shouldn't be allowed, but it is. There is very poor regulation on the lending industry in general. But the banking lobby has far too many of our elected officials in their pockets.

Motivations from Our Gov: SPEND before you save please (not the way it has always been)
I think this is one of our Core issues in the USA these days.... Constant motivation+propaganda to finance the things you want today to pay for them in the future. Effectively arresting the lion's share of people's ability to save & thus prepare for ANY external disruptions.

If we had a decent interest rate, there would be a cost to spend though financing. And there would be a stronger "baked in" motivation to save, and purchase responsibly. I know, saving is BAD for the ownership class profits, in an economy. But we can't live on credit cards forever.... Even though our country is (in essence) doing that writing debt bonds against our petro dollar to complement our tax revenue for paying our spending.

Keeping interest rate low, is a strong way to keep people spending perpetually on the Hedonic Treadmill (those that are not tempted enough through advertising & new social-media norms). D.Steve's anecdote of leap frogging car ownership, because they get "boring" is a perfect example.

GDP CEILING ISSUE:
The issue I hear... Is we can not immediately jack up the interest rate. As this would cause the legions of people who have levered themselves to the hilt, to either default or be overtaken by interest (assuming not everyone was able to fix their interest rates, and some will feel the sting of variable financing). In a perfect world, it would have been slowly ramped up, causing people to be a bit more patient to buy the things they want. (But if I'm not mistaken, this will slow the economy). From what I read from Thomas Piketty's book "Capital" , he expressly mentions that there is no way to maintain a constant GDP growth of anything in excess of 3% long term. (Historically, all mature, well developed nations, will have excess of 3% GDP only during growth and/or unique circumstances [tech/raw material revolutions excluded]. Which makes our GDP targets unsustainable.. Most of these historical examples were from France, UK, Germany I believe. And for reigning 1st world developed nations, the sustainable average is supposed to be closer to 1-2%.

Please use this only as a consideration, that the point I'm sharing, that others have made evident to me, is this level of growth & consumption is not natural, and has a breaking point. GDP is a very antiquated metric, according to a lot of economists and intellectuals I follow. So perhaps we should STOP using GDP in common discussion (at the time I read this it made a lot of sense, [not using GDP as a metric] but to be honest I forget the specifics... I'll have to re-read up on this, but take any GDP data w/ a grain of salt... It's not what we oughta be focusing on).

Solutions: (or ideas in the right direction)
1) Demand products that are more sustainable (repairable, modular, upgradable, more buy it for life style)
2) Start to increase the interest rate, make people not feel liek FOOLS for saving cash for once... (a quick step back to the late 90's and early 2000's).
3) Teach people to consume less, or just live within their means.
4) Stop supporting free technology w/ advertisement driven models (if you can afford too).... Pay for your content, so your not constantly inundated with a relentless assault of advertisements. These ad's strongly impact the authenticity of the media you consume. It's not healthy, and it's promoting **** CONTENT. Nothing is free, if you're not paying for it, your likely the product. Change that. (Get off cable , get on podcasts, blods, forums, anything that doesn't have the long greedy hands of corporate money on it). So you're getting information & entertainment from individuals and not "executive sales teams" that assure nothing but garbage.
5) Don't buy **** you can't afford, to impress people you don't care about.
6) I'm sure we can come up with a lot of others....

[disneysteve]

Get off cable , get on podcasts, blods, forums, anything that doesn't have the long greedy hands of corporate money on it

Really? There's plenty of advertising there, too. On this very page, right now, is an ad for credit counseling services. I listen to several podcasts. They are all advertiser-supported. It's pretty tough to find any quality content that doesn't include advertising, even if you do pay for the content. Look in any magazine. Even though you pay for the subscription, every issue is still 30-50% ads.

[amarowsky]

Really? There's plenty of advertising there, too. On this very page, right now, is an ad for credit counseling services. I listen to several podcasts. They are all advertiser-supported. It's pretty tough to find any quality content that doesn't include advertising, even if you do pay for the content. Look in any magazine. Even though you pay for the subscription, every issue is still 30-50% ads.

lol I didn't even notice the adds at the bottom until you mentioned them.... (currently seeing Merrill boot ad's as I just bought a pair yesterday and was re-searching an upgrade for hiking boots). I guess I was speaking with a distinction, that I failed to explain. The distinction I see between passive and active adds.

Active adds are the one's I'm referring to. I'd say these are generally anything that arrests your attention from what you were focusing on. I.e. Commercial interruption. You were actively focusing on a program weather listening or viewing, and that media content was completely re-focused from what you wanted, to what they wanted you to see. So if you were paying attention, there is a gap in the signal you were focused in on. (I'd imagine this re-focus of attention, impedes the info to "stick" to your memory, more than it would have been, w/o the interruption).

Passive adds are everywhere.... As you mentioned, stuffed into magazine pages, banners on web sites, pop ups, billboards, car advertising, etc... These are things i was not really focusing on, and they are competing for my attention. Where the active ones, force me (for a brief moment to pay attention). Passive adds may have some level of effect, but generationally speaking, I think roughly my generation (33 years old) and below have only seen ad's taking up every square inch of everything. So I feel pretty good about my ability to not let them steal my attention (although I bet there are some pro-add papers that show data otherwise).

All that being said, I will gladly pay to have less of my attention stolen.... I get a lot of people value their time less, or differently.

When you see or hear a show, podcast, website, anything put out by a company. And every sq inch of space on the site is filled with adds, or they interrupt every 15 minutes for an add break, or anything that is clearly them looking to get paid... You can often see how desperate that channel is, by how quickly their willing to sell out. Especially if they put out publicly, that they are successful. You can make the quick math, if they are trying to get much more than they need, to the point it is costing them some of the integrity of their message output. When "making More money" gets in the way " of the product" their providing, it's about as classy as "Jean shorts and Dirt driveways".... Just looks desperate, gluttons, who care about income more than what they're doing. At least for me, as of recent, it's been a pretty good "eye ball test" that their content is not worth supporting... When you hear more authentic people, it's easier to trust they're trying their best, and you get a lot less of a "B.S." feeling. I think the Joe Rogan podcast does this better than most. Costco gives me this feeling to (although not add related).. I just feel like "I'm pretty sure I'm not getting screwed". Heavy adds gives me this feeling often. I'd rather pay for authenticity and honesty, rather than received a well polished, add funded , committee created turd (at least how everything feels to me off of cable TV for example, news especially).

Does anyone else have this feeling? I don't mind some... I get sometimes adds are necessary for income. But Too many.... just makes it feel like a really really fake message.

[Snicks]

I know one supposedly cannot default on student loans. However, what if one took out a bunch of cash advances on credit cards, used the cash advance to pay off the student loans and then defaulted on the credit cards?