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Frozen in Debt
"All these dreams cost money, and all my money – for as far into the future as I can see - will go to repaying my college student loans..."
By Clare Robbins
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Clare Robbins graduated from a private liberal arts college with a typical debt load – tens of thousands of dollars. In light of this week’s congressional hearing about student loan debt, she sent us her reflections on how these leftover college bills and her strategies for paying them make her a financial advisor’s nightmare. (January 16 on Marketplace)
When I think of all the things I’d love to do with my life – travel the world, start my own non-profit, pursue a higher education – there’s this one annoying voice of dissent that always pipes up. It says, “Um, hello? Student loan debt!?”
What am I thinking? - the voice says... All these dreams cost money, and all my money – for as far into the future as I can see - will go to repaying my college student loans. Don’t get me wrong, I don’t take my college education for granted. And I’m thankful that I even had access to credit.
But, I’m sitting on a mountain of debt...over $65,000 worth. Until I put a couple loans into forbearance, my monthly installments were over $600! Furthermore, I have a big personal defect that prevents me from really getting somewhere with all these repayments: my ideals. I was that stereotypical radical liberal arts, women’s college activist. I studied “Critical Social Thought” and did performance art about racism. When I graduated, my progressive-minded friends and I faced a challenge: how do we do work that we feel good about, and...pay the bills?
Some of my peers didn’t even mess around with the idea of satisfying work, and headed straight corporate firms. The hope was that an artistic, socially-conscious lifestyle could wait until our thirties. I suppose that would have been the financially sane decision, but could I have stayed sane working for “the Man?”
It might sound cliché, but I truly had to think: getting that low-paying non-profit gig would also be an investment in my emotional and mental well-being, and in a peer network that nurtures me.
I’ve finally settled into work in public radio and I feel good about that. But that means picking away at my debt mountain with a toothpick, when I could have opted for a shovel.
Then there is the future. I definitely feel like my ability to think big and manifest "the next episode" in adulthood is tied up in financial fear. The thought of pursuing graduate studies seems laughable; a home of my own – unimaginable; and service work abroad - indulgent. I know I am incredibly privileged to even entertain those ideas about my future. But this isn’t what most college grads worried about a generation ago.
- Clare Robbins graudated from Mount Holyoke in 2004 and nows work as a producer and reporter for Youth Radio Los Angeles.
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