Be a millionaire

[dkveuro]

Okay...everybody wants to be one....Look how we wasted our college years.

(Q)$20, 000/year x 4 years = $80,000. If you spent some time doing some real research and put your college money in one semi-decent stock you could expect a 30% compounded return over 10 years. This could end up as a final total of $1,102,867.93 by the time you were 28 years old! (note: if this amount of money had been invested in Microsoft back in 1987 you would have made $42 Million dollars by 1997.) Instead you will give the money to a bunch of feeble lunatics who will actual brainwash you with all the ideas that lead to failure so that you end up, out of desperation, working at a job you hate and paying off student loans until you are 45 years old.(UQ)

If I was 18 again with what I know now, I'd be bloody dangerous !

[Hatterasguy]

Nothing is that simple: You do learn a lot in college that you otherwise wouldn't know if you stopped in highschool. College isn't a bad thing. You could also do what I am doing and go to a state school for 4 years, just about $5k a year I think my parants are picking up half.

But I do tend to aggree with you that $30k a year sometimes for more then 4 years is crazy. You could buy some property or start a development business.

Picking a stock to put everything into is tricky, no one knows the future. You probably would be better off buying IPO's if you can do that. Once a stock is public knowledge, IE recommended somewhere all of the big investors have already made their money and are busy selling to the regular guys. If you read about a stock in the WSJ the people who are going to make big money on it already own it.

[aklim]

All true. However, that is like me saying that if I hock everything I own and buy a bunch of lottery tickets when the Powerball climbs up to say 300 mil, I could win and be totally wealthy. You could take the money and invest it in stocks, property, IPO, etc, etc and be rich. In both sentences, the operative word is "COULD". I were a kollege student and I can tell you that the best bet for your money is kollege. What would you have IF the investment tanked? At least with the degree, you could earn a decent living because the employer sees that you at least have the discipline to stick it out for 4 years doing the course. If your investment tanks, what do you have? If you could pick out all the right investments, you might have a future as an investment person. Of course, someone did a statistical checkup and found that it was more likely that you could throw darts at a board to pick out an investment and have it succeed than go thru a stockbroker.

[Lawrence Coppar]

Originally Posted by dkveuro

Okay...everybody wants to be one....Look how we wasted our college years.

(Q)$20, 000/year x 4 years = $80,000. If you spent some time doing some real research and put your college money in one semi-decent stock you could expect a 30% compounded return over 10 years. This could end up as a final total of $1,102,867.93 by the time you were 28 years old! (note: if this amount of money had been invested in Microsoft back in 1987 you would have made $42 Million dollars by 1997.) Instead you will give the money to a bunch of feeble lunatics who will actual brainwash you with all the ideas that lead to failure so that you end up, out of desperation, working at a job you hate and paying off student loans until you are 45 years old.(UQ)

If I was 18 again with what I know now, I'd be bloody dangerous !

I would have rounded up to .94.....See, that is what I learned in all my years of college.

On the serious side, picking the next Microsoft is very difficult. And even if you did, would you have held it all this time? I am sure I would not had I invested in it years ago. I would have taken a profit long before it appreciated to the extent it did.

I went to two engineering schools. It worked out well for me. But eventually I tired of it and retired. The initial years of graduate school were supported by my working part time and a fellowship. The final years of graduate school were under the GI Bill and an assistantship. No regrets here and no debt to start off. Parents paid for my BS.

[dkveuro]

Originally Posted by Lawrence Coppar

I would have rounded up to .94.....See, that is what I learned in all my years of college.
start off. .................................................................................................... ......................................... Parents paid for my BS.

Picky, picky, picky........93. ninety smee....? And yer point is ?

See ? This is what yer get when someone gets edgeumicated !

[Lebenz]

A long time ago I investigated buying real estate instead of going to school. The plan was to buy a quad-plex, rent it out, and let others pay the mortgage while appreciation bought a ROI. While I had an okay job for income, the work was too close to hell on earth. My years in school have been “worth” far more to me than their cost. Ironically, because of school I had a very late start in earnings, so I still invest almost every spare dollar into retirement related projects.

The idea of making a mint while young is compelling, but happiness with ones daily activities is more compelling....

[cmac2012]

Newsweek (all right, all right) had a piece a few months ago written by a woman who detailed her nightmare in paying off student loans. She is going to be paying $1,000 a month until she's 64 (!?!).

I would have just posted the link, but you have to jump through hoops after you click to read it. Article below.

There's something wrong with this picture. Free marketeers will say, "Oh well..." but that doesn't cover it for me. I would no way in hell want my kid to have to go through this.

Kids should do a little blue collar work for a few years before college. Give a grounding in what the world is like. So many people are clueless when they (their parents, actually) fork over major bucks for a hopeful return.

Another route is that of a former college bud. His dad bought a medium size rooming house, main 2 bed unit on the ground for his kid and room-mate, about 4 rental apts. on 2nd & 3rd floor. The kid was managing the building as part of paying for college.

Anyway, here's a harrrd cautionary tale:

Newsweek
February 7, 2005

Struggling to Pay the Mortgage on My Mind
Saddled with loans and tied to my lender for 30 years, I'm an indentured servant at 7. 4 percent.

Anna Marrian
Marrian lives in New York City.

They fly out of my mailbox every winter like a swarm of locusts. Computer-generated loan-consolidation mailers promising relief from the student-loan blues. A recent flier delivered to my rent-stabilized Brooklyn address read: "Under the provision of the higher education act the federal government has reduced the interest rates on current borrowers to the lowest rates in history: 2.8 percent." I dialed the 800 number, feeling like a teen on her first day of summer vacation, the possibility of freedom in my belly. The answer was the same as usual. "If your lender owns your loans and you've already consolidated at 7.4 percent, I'm afraid you're ineligible for a reduced rate," said the scripted telesalesman.

I always call in the naive hope that the government has decided to repeal the one-time consolidation rule. That would mean that thousands of borrowers like me, who locked in high-interest loans in the late ' 90s, could refinance at current rates. I pay two-and-a-half times as much interest as today's borrowers. Each month, $442 of my $531 payment goes straight into the coffers of one of the largest lenders in the country, while my debt receives a paltry $89 a month. Watching my principal creep down is like watching an ocean evaporate.

Unlike credit cards or personal loans, I can't sell, refinance or renegotiate my student loan, ever. I went to college at 24, genuinely excited about my education. After spending five years working odd jobs and traveling around Europe, I understood its value. My middle-class family had too much money for me to qualify for scholarships and not enough to subsidize my education. My proud British mother thought paying my own education would build my character. So I took the maximum loans I could over four undergraduate and two graduate years. I worked a few part-time jobs to cover basic expenses. I lived simply and spent most of my time in the nearby library immersed in my studies. I'd deal with my loans when the time came. My main priority was graduating with honors. When I did, I was $105,000 in the red.

Six months later, my repayment schedule arrived in the mail. I did what any neophyte advertising executive earning an entry-level salary would do. I panicked. The statements, full of financial legalese, made me queasy. I lay awake nights doing the math, trying to get my monthly salary of $2, 300 to magically cover the $1, 000 monthly payment my lender was asking for, my similarly priced rent and my weekly ration of ramen noodles. It wasn't happening. I deferred payments for a year and slept better under the cover of denial.

Twelve months and a small promotion later, I phoned the lender explaining I still didn't have the money. I knew they couldn't put me in jail, but I worried they'd garnish my wages. A cheery representative suggested I consolidate my loans into one so I could make a single payment. I could also lock in my interest rate to protect the loan from fluctuations in the market and extend my term up to 30 years. She suggested a plan of $250 partial interest payments a month. Desperate for a solution and too impatient to read the fine print, I signed on. What the operator didn't tell me was that interest rates could fluctuate to where they are now--a record low. She also neglected to mention that two years later, the principal would be untouched, while the compounded interest would send my debt skyrocketing to nearly $120,000.

I considered bankruptcy: no longer allowed. Ovary donations: too old. Working for Halliburton in Afghanistan: I have ethics. In the end, my family offered to lend me what they could to take the principal out of the six-figure zone. But I still have another 27 years of payments. I'll be 64 when I'm done. By then, the lending company will have made $138,000 off my debt. A new borrower, at 3 percent, will pay back less than half of what I do. Three percent--that's an extra $250-plus a month, savings that could go toward a property down payment or a 401(k) (I will pay off my loan just in time to find Social Security bankrupt).

We've heard a lot about the government's commitment to No Child Left Behind. But how about the middle-aged graduates left behind? As the lender is a publicly traded company whose net income has increased substantially since 2001, it's the shareholders who are reaping the benefits of my 7.4 percent.

Although my debt is extreme, my borrowing, perhaps, cavalier, my intolerance for fine print irresponsible, I'm far from alone: $23 billion worth of student loans were consolidated above 7 percent in the late ' 90s. Today the banks are making 4 percent over the current market rates off those loans, which are owned by real people scraping along in an economy that favors big business over the little guy. We got duped.

Sleepless Nights: I lay awake doing the math, trying to get my salary to magically cover the $1,000 payments.

[Lawrence Coppar]

Originally Posted by dkveuro

Picky, picky, picky........93. ninety smee....? And yer point is ?

See ? This is what yer get when someone gets edgeumicated !

The roundoff was an attempt at humor. My point was that education worked well for me.

On the other hand, I have known many people who cannot manage money. I don't know where decision making is at its worst. The worst decisions occur in the areas of sex, religion, and money management.

[Hatterasguy]

My business degree from a very good state school should cost me just under $25k. I had the oppertunity to go to a very nice private school at say $35k per year. Now even my math challanged mind can understand those numbers.

Besides if I really wanted to I could work my but off and go to a big name business school for my last year. Just to say I have a degree from Columbia for example. I won't though because I don't need a name on my degree to succed, nore do a care that much.

People make poor decisions I have no sympathy for people who get out of school with hundreds of thousands worth of debt. They chose that burden and will have to live with it.

Personaly after only one year at college I am glad I am going. I feel that it will teach me higher level skills faster then I would have learned them in the outside world.

My $25k is being better spent on my business degree then anything else I could do with it, at this time. My next $25k though will be better spent on a house.

[dkveuro]

Originally Posted by Lawrence Coppar

The roundoff was an attempt at humor. ................................................................

Implying............. mine isn't ?

[dkveuro]

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Newsweek (all right, all right) had a piece a few months ago written by a woman who detailed her nightmare in paying off student loans. She is going to be paying $1,000 a month until she's 64 (!?!).
.

My point entirely, but missed for the most part.....

[Lawrence Coppar]

"Although my debt is extreme, my borrowing, perhaps, cavalier, my intolerance for fine print irresponsible, I'm far from alone: $23 billion worth of student loans were consolidated above 7 percent in the late ' 90s. Today the banks are making 4 percent over the current market rates off those loans, which are owned by real people scraping along in an economy that favors big business over the little guy. We got duped."

I have no sympathy for this person. Wonder what she was studying? Did she have any idea that her major would provide an income that would repay her borrowing? People do stupid things then expect rules and policies to change to accommodate their lack of planning and analysis.

She could move out of NYC. That alone would save a lot of money.

[pxland]

Originally Posted by Lawrence Coppar

I have no sympathy for this person........... People do stupid things then expect rules and policies to change to accommodate their lack of planning and analysis.

She could move out of NYC. That alone would save a lot of money.

This is rational thinking at its finest. Finally a viewpoint that's easy to agree with.

[pxland]

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Kids should do a little blue collar work for a few years before college. Give a grounding in what the world is like. So many people are clueless when they (their parents, actually) fork over major bucks for a hopeful return.

That would be nice, but few would ever attend. You think kollege is expensive now, wait until the # of attendees are cut in half

Originally Posted by cmac2012

Unlike credit cards or personal loans, I can't sell, refinance or renegotiate my student loan, ever.

I can, why can't she?

Originally Posted by cmac2012

So I took the maximum loans I could over four undergraduate and two graduate years. I worked a few part-time jobs to cover basic expenses. I lived simply and spent most of my time in the nearby library immersed in my studies. I'd deal with my loans when the time came. My main priority was graduating with honors. When I did, I was $105,000 in the red.

Where the hell did the money go? If you take the maximum amount and don't use it for living expenses......Did it disappear?

Something about this story doesn't add up. I took the maximum amount (every penny they would let me) and spent it on Busch Light and jaegermeister (sp?), and am in much better shape then this moron.

She probably got a gdamn philosophy degree. Serves her right.

[boneheaddoctor]

Originally Posted by pxland

That would be nice, but few would ever attend. You think kollege is expensive now, wait until the # of attendees are cut in half




She probably got a gdamn philosophy degree. Serves her right.

Well that would mean all the liberal loons would have to find honest work for a change.

And if she got a philosphy degree, then I hope she agrees its worth it as she flips burgers adn pays off that loan.