Quote:
Originally Posted by unluky
100%. My father was raised as 1 of 9 children and was poor enough he never had shoes till the snow fell. His father died when he was 5 - so they were the definition of POOR. But it was the 30's - so lots of poor people - they all made due. He quit high school his senior year to join the military and never finished or did college. But from those poor beginnings he understood money and taught us to be very conservative and to buy with money not credit for everyday things.
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Totally agree. Dad wasn’t of quite such circumstances but came from modest means and tried to install the value of money at an early age. Can’t say I followed it 100% (have to touch the iron for myself to know it’s hot), but I screwed up at the right time - college. Graduated with a student loan, credit card debt and bad credit. Spent my 20s living on cash and crawling back out and learned a good lesson on the value of patience, savings and delayed gratification.
That’s why I don’t by the sob stories nowadays on student loans - most have basically a car loan’s worth of debt. It’s easily paid off if you stick to a budget and aren’t spending a ton of money going out to eat/drink, using the latest gadget, or otherwise spending beyond your means. Those who have 100k+ either went to medical/law/business school and will recoup it over the long haul or made a bad decision to borrow 6 figures for a major that won’t get you a job capable of paying it back easily.
The lesson I learned in my 30s was that when you wonder how some people you know afford the lifestyle they seem to have, it’s that they really can’t. Eventually you see them drown under a mountain of debt because they’ve been spending everything they’ve earned and more. Many of them probably have 69 month loans that they’ll trade in at 3 years and take a bath on depreciation and trade in value versus what they owe..