<p>Salries did catch up. I remember m first slary after getting a PhD - 18K. Right now starting PhD salaries i this area are over 40K.</p>
<p>What will the young NYU student’s monthly loan payments be if she is going to be $80K in debt? She can’t get a 30 year mortgage for student loans, and the bank (Citi) loans are not going to be as favorable as the Staffords and Perkins. If she has put off repayment entirely until graduating and is not paying even the interest as it accrues, the amounts can be staggering. Is she even going to be able to make enough to pay for those loans? My son’s car at low, low interest rate is still a $200/month payment over 5 years. Add maintenance, gas, insurance, parking, tolls and he was well over $600 each month. He needed to buy clothes since he dressed in rags during college, had after and during work socialization expenses, and because he works in high tech would drop money on those sort of items, at deep discount, but still an expense. He was careless with his money but was not a big shopper. Ate out too much, liked buying snacks, drinks out, and it all added up way past his paycheck without student loans.</p>
<p>Comes to about 900 a month at 6% over 10 years.</p>
<p>i’ll be $60,000 in debt when i graduate from dartmouth. luckily the terms on my (swedish, government-subsidized) loans are such that i’ll “only” be paying $200-250 a month for the next quarter-century. as a noncitizen i didn’t have an in-state option; i could’ve gone to school for free in europe, but after living in the united states since middle school and making plans to stay here that seemed like too daunting a proposition. i hope it’s worth it? dartmouth’s financial aid was the best i got; if i’d gone to wellesley, my family contribution would’ve been $40,000 instead of $25,000.</p>
<p>edited to add: holy crap, $900/month is insane. i can’t imagine committing to that, not even for an ivy league diploma. thank god for socialism?</p>
<p>Good heavens, we paid $750/mo. on $54,000 in UG and law school loans and we didn’t even capitalize the interest!</p>
<p>Camellia, I remember you talking about that loan and whether you should take it. It was a sweet, sweet deal.</p>
<p>I can relate to the spinach, mac and cheese and Ramen… my wife and I used to enjoy?? noodles with tomato sauce - not Ragu but just plain tomato sauce. When times were good we would splurge and buy a can of tomato paste to add to the sauce and liven it up… </p>
<p>Of course I was 50 pounds lighter and probably in the best shape of my life 
We lived on $400 a month - 200 for rent and the other 200 for food, utilities and everything else. When times got really tough, I would go get a restaurant job for a few months to tide us over.</p>
<p>Citymom this is the article. Real wages have declined: </p>
<p>
[quote]
The median hourly wage for American workers has declined 2 percent since 2003, after factoring in inflation. The drop has been especially notable, economists say, because productivity — the amount that an average worker produces in an hour and the basic wellspring of a nation’s living standards — has risen steadily over the same period.</p>
<p>As a result, wages and salaries now make up the lowest share of the nation’s gross domestic product since the government began recording the data in 1947, while corporate profits have climbed to their highest share since the 1960’s. UBS, the investment bank, recently described the current period as “the golden era of profitability.” /quote]</p>
<p>[Real</a> Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity - New York Times](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ei=5090&en=ea4fce3d527e44a0&ex=1314417600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1157213084-Vf6r5wBMH61FKmtIQjR9qQ]Real”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ei=5090&en=ea4fce3d527e44a0&ex=1314417600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1157213084-Vf6r5wBMH61FKmtIQjR9qQ)</p>
<p>Here is another article below: [HOURLY</a> PAY IN U.S. NOT KEEPING PACE WITH PRICE RISES - New York Times](<a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DB123AF93BA25754C0A9629C8B63]HOURLY”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DB123AF93BA25754C0A9629C8B63)</p>
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<p>Citymom this is the article. Real wages have declined: </p>
<p>[Real</a> Wages Fail to Match a Rise in Productivity - New York Times](<a href=“http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ei=5090&en=ea4fce3d527e44a0&ex=1314417600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1157213084-Vf6r5wBMH61FKmtIQjR9qQ]Real”>http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/28/business/28wages.html?ei=5090&en=ea4fce3d527e44a0&ex=1314417600&adxnnl=1&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&adxnnlx=1157213084-Vf6r5wBMH61FKmtIQjR9qQ)</p>
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<p>Here is another article below: [HOURLY</a> PAY IN U.S. NOT KEEPING PACE WITH PRICE RISES - New York Times](<a href=“http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DB123AF93BA25754C0A9629C8B63]HOURLY”>http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9F00E0DB123AF93BA25754C0A9629C8B63)</p>
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<p>A few observations:</p>
<p>1) Back in 1980 I knew my chosen field was not going to be “high-paying,” but since I was living on about $250 a semester (above room and board) in college, $12,000 a year seemed to me like it would be plenty. Because I was not paying rent, utilities, insurance, car maintenance and replacement costs, business wardrobe expenses, student loan payments, etc., I had no clue as to how my expected salary would relate to normal living expenses. Unfortunately I think that is still true for most college students.</p>
<p>2) Our current TV – a 27-inch – cost us a couple hundred dollars many years ago. We had a tiny black and white TV for the first five years we were married. Yet every single one of our nieces and nephews (including the ones currently in college) have huge flat-screen TVs. </p>
<p>3) The wedding and engagement announcements in newspapers these days just blow me away. Invariably (and tackily) these announcements include a line stating that the couple honeymooned (or will honeymoon) for a week or two (or three) in Hawaii or France or the Dominican Republic. I know most (if not virtually all) of these newlyweds have massive student loan debt, but that does not seem to deter anyone from taking the practically obligatory expensive and exotic honeymoon. Doesn’t anyone “honeymoon” for a couple days in a moderately-priced motel within 200 miles of home anymore?</p>
<p>It does seem that the majority of kids graduating from college expect to immediately have AT LEAST the same standard of living as their parents. I believe the massive disconnect between the salaries these kids will earn and the standard of living they expect will cause them lots of grief for years to come.</p>
<p>Heck, we were poor back in the days when you couldn’t charge your groceries to a credit card!</p>
<p>Does the real wages for hourly workers really apply to those with advanced education, especially in desirable fields? I think not so much. Pay for engineers, computer geeks, accountants, pharmacists etc has gone up fairly quickly the last 5 years.</p>
<p>Barrons, the real wages argument doesn’t necessarily apply to those with advanced degrees. Since most Americans don’t have a bachelor’s degree, let alone a master’s/professional degree, it is a serious matter, especially for those without some post-secondary education. Some college graduates are still working in jobs that pay minimum wage or could have been easily acquired with just a high school diploma. This makes it very difficult for some college graduates to “move on” with their lives if they cannot afford the lifestyle they are accustomed to because they have student loan/credit card debt and must endure higher gasoline/rent/grocery prices.</p>
<p>“It does seem that the majority of kids graduating from college expect to immediately have AT LEAST the same standard of living as their parents. I believe the massive disconnect between the salaries these kids will earn and the standard of living they expect will cause them lots of grief for years to come.”</p>
<p>I suspect they’ll get over it. Most of the young adults I knew who graduated from college when I did had to take a pretty humbling step down in terms of standards of living pre-college and post-college. I came from a very middle middle class background, but starting salaries for most professions in the region where I lived were still quite a bit below our middle class parents’ salaries. </p>
<p>I don’t think we’re giving the young kids today enough credit. It will probably be a shock for them to get out of school and face reality, but if their parents don’t bail them out time after time or lavish them with gifts in a misguided attempt to ease their pain, they will eventually adjust their expectations.</p>
<p>A close friend’s daughter took out a lot of loans even though she commuted to a state school and worked her way through college. She then went to law school and really cranked it up in loans. However, she is now working on a partnership track in a major city at a major law firm and making 6 figures in pay. Still, the loans are ornerous. She needed clothes, bought a condo (modest one, and a great deal, but Boston is expensive), has a car, regularly visits her parents who have had health issues. Talking to her, she feels she is still poor with all of the payments she makes. Can you imagine if she did not have a high paying job, or if she had gone to a private college on loans?</p>
<p>Then I guess it boils down to what are the kids plans after college, what is his major. To go to an expensive private school, accumulate huge debt and then to work for a minimal wage while having upper middle class appetites is likely to be a problem. To go to your dream school, to get a degree that is likely to give a reasonable job and to live frugally for several years after college is more reasonable. Also, even if the debt is accumulated by a student, parents may be willing to help. Some parents have a limit on what they can contribute during college, but do not refuse to contribute to paying-off educational loans for 2-3 years after graduation.</p>
<p>Nowhere in the article does it say her parents had any money saved to pay for their daughter’s college education. Her mother took out $22K in loans and the writer says the family had “other financial obligations” but this middle class family had NO money saved for college?</p>
<p>At that point they should have had the hard money conversation. “We’re sorry, but we don’t have anything saved. You’ll have to go to SUNY.” End of story.</p>
<p>And they may have had good reasons for not having any money saved. It’s the families that have lived large for years with boats, expensive vacations, and McMansions that really deserve boos if they haven’t saved anything. But I’m getting off topic.</p>
<p>I heard that bail out for student loan is coming too.</p>
<p>[American</a> Rhetoric: Movie Speech from Network - Howard Beale is Mad as Hell and He’s Not Going to Take it Anymore!](<a href=“http://www.americanrhetoric.com/MovieSpeeches/moviespeechnetwork2.html]American”>American Rhetoric: Movie Speech from Network - Howard Beale is Mad as Hell and He's Not Going to Take it Anymore!)</p>
<p>The total bill for SUNY would be about $60K. At SUNY Buffalo, I would guess she would get about $2500 a year in merit money bringing total to $50K. If parents pay $22K and she pays $15K, she would have about $13K in loans. I am surprised that her parents have not paid anything other than the first two years via loans for NYU. Also not much in earnings from student, did she work? Could she afford to live in those ultra expensive NYU dorms? I think that she did not live very sparsely. I know several kids who went to NYU with even less aid, and somehow parent and kid were able to scrape it together. One young man took off a year and made some money and worked throughout and also lived at home.</p>
<p>Sad story…but the NYU story for many…at 18, kids do not understand 100K in debt(think about it at 10$ per hour and more years than they have been alive)…Mine got in and finally saw the light…worked hard and got a free ride… FREE vs 100K was not worth it to her…THANK GOD!</p>
<p>Citymom, a big part of the problem is that most of these kids believe they are certain to make lots of money when they graduate and have no idea what real averages salaries are or that most pre meds don’t get into med school and most aspiring to work on Wall Street can not. My DS who has had lots of financial exposure was totally unrealistic about what it was like to live on an engineers salary before grad school.</p>