It’s hard to have much sympathy for this guy. He’s paying $35 per month on his debt while leaving his elderly parents to pay $600 per month for him. Instead of working more or cutting back his expenses he has now dropped his hours to part-time.
Interview
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9e7OH9iyDxA&list=PLWsfkEnxdVk_qakjMQbvuOAcExbBZLdYz&index=3&t=0s
Article
http://money.com/money/5647242/student-debt-money-makeover/
Based on the article…
If he is 29 now, he was born around 1990, presumably attending college during the great recession (2008-2012).
The $120,000 bachelor’s degree at a state school is probably list price for four years in-state, suggesting full pay (either high income/assets parents, or not-so-high in a state with poor in-state financial aid like Pennsylvania), but that he and his parents could actually pay nothing (so they borrowed the whole thing). Then he added a $70,000 master’s degree, possibly due to poor job prospects graduating into the weakly improving (from a deep hole) job market of 2012.
But he only recently reached an income of almost $48,000 per year, suggesting that any major-specific job prospects associated with his degrees are not that high income.
So it looks like he started from bad luck (the great recession probably kept his parents from being able to pay anything and limited his job options at bachelor’s degree graduation; plus whatever situation made him full pay at the state school) and added bad decisions (borrowing the entire cost of residential college to study something leading to a low/medium income career direction).
$70k and interest of that is for a Masters. It’s crazy that when he had undergrad debt he couldn’t pay off, his solution was to go back to school and take on additional debt for grad school.
I am completely flabbergasted. I have no words.
Sickening.
Another whiner who thinks the taxpayer should pay for him.
What??? And he’s proud of himself, and they’re shaking hands with him like he’s done something good and generous. Wow. What’s the makeover? Lame video, lame guy.
According to his resume Galperin received a BA in Journalism and Media studies at Rutgers and MA in Social Journalism at CUNY. In the video he states that his goal is to pay $35 per month on his debt until he dies. He previously made $27,000 annually but received a raise to $65,000. Since then he dropped his hours to part-time so presumably his salary dropped also. When the interviewer points out that by earning more, or making economies Galperin might spare his parents from the $600 monthly debt payment he states “I want to make my life today, not worry about what my life is going to look like forty years from now.”
OK, newbie to the college loan game here, but how is it even possible to get a student loan for $235K? At some point, wouldn’t the lending institution just say no, you’re a financial risk?
^ That’s the type of comment I expect from an 18 year old kid not a 29 year old adult who is looking to settle down and buy a house.
The undergraduate loans beyond the relatively small federal direct loans require cosigners (i.e. his parents cosigned most of his undergraduate loans).
However, much larger loans can be gotten without cosigners for graduate or professional school.
@tutumom2001 The article says they were private loans that the parents co-signed and now they are stuck paying $600/month for their selfish kid.
My daughter pointed me at this one (not about college debt, but similarly about living in the moment on the backs of your parents). These really are “click bait” articles, meant to be seen and shared with anger 
https://torontolife.com/city/life/spend-generation-manifesto/
@ucbalumnus That’s insane. I have bachelor’s and master’s degrees in journalism and make about his same salary. I live in a place with low cost of living and my combined debt (house, car, etc) isn’t even half that loan total. I can’t imagine taking on a loan like that. And, no, I’m not going to let my college student do it either. Now maybe for medical school if she plans on becoming a neurosurgeon or something that pays well …
Rutgers’ current NPC suggests that full pay for NJ residents starts at parental income around $90,000 per year. But who knows what Rutgers’ financial aid was like in 2008-2012.
Seems like they started in a bad situation (recession, NJ probably-not-very-good in-state financial aid) and made it a lot worse by borrowing the full cost to send him to college to study a major leading to a lower income career path. Adding bad decisions to bad luck unsurprisingly tends to lead to bad outcomes.
Kid is a looser. Needs a swift kick in the rear and a second job. I would be furious if I was his parent.
Medical students should not expect to get into any particular specialty, because many of them are very competitive to get into.
Medical students are almost assured of eventually getting a well paying job (by most standards, but some specialties do pay much more than others). However, they are expected to borrow up to $360k for the medical school, and then spend several years in residency being paid around $50k per year (so very little possibility of paying down any of the medical school debt, so the well paying job ($170k or so would be the typical expectation) income just means that the physician can start making a dent into the debt.
It helps to have wealthy parents to help fund medical school. Or be a resident of NM or TX who gets into a relatively lower cost in-state medical school, or be one of the few who gets into NYU or the first few classes of Kaiser medical school.
Actually, a recheck of physician pay suggests that the typical (lower paying) medical specialties pay about $240k, not $170k. Still not attractive if one has to go into $360k debt to eventually get there.
I don’t think the interview focused enough on the financial pain he is inflicting in his parents. If he chooses to keep the loan monkey on his back, that’s his business and his right. However,he certainly does not care about his parents. Unless they are ok paying that $600 a month. If those are co-signed loans, he will owe the balance due when his parents pass away. As he makes more money, he’ll owe more on his loans as well
This story was floating around Facebook the other day and the majority of the comments were focused on debt forgiveness. Don’t get me wrong, I think something needs to be done with out of control debt, but I don’t want to pay for the 40+% of college students that don’t graduate. I also don’t want to pay for people that don’t have any common sense. People have to be smarter when taking on debt and they really need to determine what is a need and what is a want. Clearly, grad school for this guy was not a need.