I've Paid $18,000 to a $24,000 Student Loan, and I Still Owe $24,000 - <AUTHOR> https://www.bustle.com/p/ive-paid-18000-to-a-24000-student-loan-i-still-owe-24000-9000788 <comment><USER2> Hacker News has a pretty well educated community, so it's not surprising that the general response seems to be that this was an obvious outcome. But this story is not unique to this woman. There are a huge number of people that seem to be in the same situation, and it's dismissive to just say that people should be more educated.

People aren't rational agents. They suck at making decisions about their long term well being. They're told that the best way to support their future is to go to university, so they take out a loan under the assumption that once they're finished, they'll earn so much that paying it off won't be an issue. And if you're not particularly financially literate, you might assume that this is fine since everyone else seems to be doing it. And you might also assume that they wouldn't lend you money that you couldn't repay.

The reality is there's an information asymmetry in favour of lenders. They know better than you how likely you are to repay your debt. And their incentives are structured to maximise their return, not clear your debt. So if the best way for them to make money is for you to not be able to pay off your debt, that's what they'll try to do. The harder it is for you to understand what you're getting into, the better for them. The less financial literacy you possess, the better for them.

I'm not arguing that the author shouldn't bear responsibility for her decisions. Of course people should understand the things that they agree to and meet their obligations. But there is a calibration problem when the pursuit of an education can lead to three decades of financial hardship.

<comment><USER3> You forget that there are also ignorant people who just take the loan whatever the deal is regardless if what they do makes sense - it just "feels" right for them. Then when the time comes to pay it back, they'll just try to moan it away. If there is enough people with such attitude so that it could be a good number of voters, there will be a politician willing to climb on it and force companies one way or another to waive the loans. Ultimately people should be taught to take responsibility and not that ignorance pays off.

<comment><USER4> _> Ultimately people should be taught to take responsibility and not that ignorance pays off._

You mean like the people who keep lending money to students who aren't going to be able able to pay it back?

<comment><USER5> Absolutely. Both lenders and borrowers shouldn't be able to bailed out.

(Somehow -- through mechanisms that are still beyond me -- this is exactly what happened in 2008. Absurd.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> This is -ahem- exotic, seen from Scandinavia.

In Norway, student loans are granted by the state; roughly speaking, the terms are as follows -

-They're personal; noone acts as collateral. Neither do you need to provide any - however, if you default, they _may_ go for your assets, within reason.

-No interest while you're under education (within reason; if you're delayed significantly, interest may start to accrue.)

-You get approx. $14,000/year, intended to cover living expenses, study materials, beer &c.

-Once you graduate, interest starts to accrue (at the time being: 2.08% per annum; after a few months, you have to make monthly payments.

-If you're unemployed, you can apply for postponement of payments; interest keeps running.

-If you're ill for any significant duration of time, you can apply to have interest stopped, as well.

-If you default on your loan, the lender may go after assets - bank accounts, vehicles, homes &c - but only after a long and involved due process, and they need to try to work with you to find a solution which isn't as drastic..

Edit: Also, the terms, including the caveat that interest rates may rise &c are being spelled out - more or less literally, they go through great pains to ensure you know what you're getting yourself into - and you get an estimate based on the expected length of your studies as to how much your monthly payment will be+when you will have repaid the loan in full.

<comment><USER7> Germany goes even further. They also waive part of the loan if you graduate within the regular number of semesters, with a high enough grade or if you repay early. Additionally it is interest-free unless you're late with payments.

<comment><USER8> Estonia goes even further than that. University is free as long as you don't fall behind (too much) in the curriculum.

<comment><USER7> University is mostly free in germany too (there's an administrative fee of ~200€ per semester). Those loans are just to cover living expenses so that everyone has a chance to study even when parents can't provide support.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> > Kids are taking loans out at 17 or 18 that they won't be able to pay back > until they're 40 or 50.

This is the big problem. Calling 18 year olds, kids, is basically saying that 18 year olds aren't old enough to be considered adults. Either you get the freedom of being an adult along with the responsibility or your leader decides what is best for you and you no longer have freedom. Even more so in her case. Her parents are ok the hook for repaying the debt. That means that they (ages 40 I guess) looked at the contact and thought it was a good deal. Is the author suggesting that 40 year olds shouldn't be allowed to get loans?

If that isn't enough she describes defaulting on a loan as something okay. She decides to fly abroad and just assumes that the loan holders won't require her to start repayment.

But even before that, she realizes in the middle of her undergrad that the tuition is to much. But she decides to get a loan on bad terms because she doesn't want to loose her friends. Come on. She decides to get a terrible loan because she is to shy to make new friends.

For poor people, who know how to handle the freedom of being an adult, student loans could be exactly what they need to succeed in life. But for irresponsible people like the author, I don't think any laws can protect her from herself.

<comment><USER10> Most 18 year olds have never had anything more than a minimum wage jobs and now they are supposed to be responsible for making decisions worth more than they've made in their entire life and lasting longer than they've been alive? Where is someone this age supposed to get the experience to make these responsible decisions?

I graduated about $40,000 in debt and it was only then that I realised how difficult it is to pay that back. Up until that point, it's just a number on a piece of paper. I managed to pay it back in about 2 years but I was lucky in that I graduated with Comp Sci which is in demand and got a pretty well paying job in my city for someone with no experience.

And I say lucky because choosing my degree was just based on an interest of mine in high school that I thought would be interesting. It's no different than other people choosing to study what's interesting but in my case, comp sci and programming pays well in the economy while history doesn't.

Student loans are a vicious supply and demand cycle. Students can take out loans to cover school so universities realise they can charge more which in turns leads to students taking out more to cover education.

<comment><USER11> > Most 18 year olds have never had anything more than a minimum wage jobs and > now they are supposed to be responsible for making decisions worth more than > they've made in their entire life and lasting longer than they've been > alive?

They're old enough to know that $10,000 is real money and that they should be asking for advice and help if they feel over their heads.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I graduated nearly the same year as the dates listed in the article, and I find it hard to sympathize with the author.

Why did she go to private university? There's no shortage of public universities with substantially better financial terms unless you get a FULL RIDE to a private institution.

When she had $67000 she decided to take another $24000 loan? With a variable interest rate? In the year 2010, 2 years after the financial crisis of 2008 she didn't understand how a variable interest rate was disastrous? I need to either suspend disbelief to entertain that idea or deduce that the author was beyond clueless -- she was actively disinterested in her future.

There is zero useful introspection on lessons learned or things she could have done better. Her takeaway in all this:

> If I can appreciate anything about this struggle, it's that it was > ultimately in the pursuit of something bigger than I would have achieved if > I had taken a job just out of high school in the Bronx.

I think many of us here agree there is an issue with predatory lending and student loans. The problem I have with this article is that it sets the debate back. For the civil rights movement, the NAACP very carefully considered and skipped a number of people to challenge segregation laws until Rosa Parks. This woman is no Rosa Parks.

<comment><USER13> I completely disagree with this comment.

In 1988, Bill Clinton signed the Higher Education Amendments which made student loans NON-DISCHARGEABLE. Essentially, he handed the students to the bankers on a silver platter. These loans should be dischargeable and forgiven, because in my opinion they are FRAUDULENT.

I don't think you realize the amount of damage this has caused to US society as a whole. There is an entire generation of kids whose lives were ruined because they were told to get a university degree which turned out to be worthless and expensive.

Essentially you are saying she should have known better. I read your comment and you say that she is clueless, and I cannot help but think that you are also clueless because you also do not understand how the financial system actually works. But you are not alone, because all of the "expert economists" also do not understand, everybody is clueless.

Believe me, this is a crisis that will be felt for generations.

<comment><USER14> If you make student debt dischargable, the cost of the loan must also include the cost of insuring against borrower default. I.e. students who don't default must pay for those who do, plus an additional amount to due to uncertainty in future default rates.

<comment><USER15> Welcome to the world of lending. Thats how its supposed to work.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> Once upon a time, kids (in the US) could afford to go to state schools without racking up horrendous debts. Now, the in state tuition in my state (NH) is over $28K a year. Education was once a societal priority. Maybe we should, as a society, value educating our populace as much as say, we value imprisoning them? [1] It wouldn't surprise me that we societally _do_ value it but something is thwarting us from getting what we value.

[1] $30-$60K year [https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-a-nation-of- incarce...](https://www.cbsnews.com/news/the-cost-of-a-nation-of- incarceration/)

<comment><USER17> Georgia does it right. The Zell Miller & Hope scholarship + cheap cost of living makes university incredibly affordable.

I literally made money while attending Georgia Tech for my engineering degree. 100% of my tuition was paid for by the state

<comment><USER18> Important to remember it was paid for from Georgia lotto proceeds, making it a tax on the poor to pay for middle-class education.

Disclaimer: Hope recipient

<comment><USER17> Tax, "a compulsory contribution to state revenue, levied by the government on workers' income and business profits or added to the cost of some goods, services, and transactions.".

Nothing about the lotto is compulsory or based on income. I don't think its fair to say that its a "tax on the poor".

This scholarship has been great for the state overall and was a smart move. Georgia Tech is now a top 5 engineering school in the us, and top 10 worldwide. UGA became a highly ranked University. The tier 3 schools became tier 2, and tier 2 schools tier 1.

If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a brain drain on your hands.

<comment><USER19> Lotteries are marketed pretty directly to lower income folks, and you can tell it's working because they're the ones buying most of the tickets. They also spend a higher percentage of their income on it. This is just sort of empirically clear, like do you see lottery signs in upper middle class areas? Nope. You see them in the "poor" grocery stores (not Whole Foods), gas stations, and liquor stores. For maximum convenience, some check cashing/pay day loans have lottery booths too.

Source: [http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the- poor-...](http://www.businessinsider.com/lottery-is-a-tax-on-the-poor-2012-4)

> If it wasn't for this scholarship you'd have overall worse schools, and a > brain drain on your hands.

I mean, if you're OK with this kind of redistribution (FWIW I am too, it makes a lot of sense) then I think we should ask the richest of us to foot it, not the poorest of us.

<comment><USER20> They're marketed at that target segment to avoid the problems that came with not providing a state-sponsored version of those services. If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the people running the often- fixed games fought over the right to fleece people. The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that would happen anyways.

<comment><USER19> > If you look back at the history of the lottery, it started out as black > market, unregulated gambling that led to violence and other crime as the > people running the often-fixed games fought over the right to fleece people.

I think a game (quoting Powerball here) where your odds are 1:292,201,338 is by definition a fleece. All that happened here is the state is reserving that right for itself, justifying it as taxing a vice. This is a common theme -- look at cigarettes and alcohol -- but in basically every case it's lower income people who are shelling out.

> The modern, state-run lotteries just provide an outlet for gambling that > would happen anyways.

This is a common policy argument (see cigarettes/alcohol above or legalizing drugs), but does this even make sense? White collar crime is pretty rampant, so what if we legalize it and make an embezzling tax? Or human trafficking is a persistent scourge, what if we legalize it and tax it?

Furthermore, these vice taxes are regressive flat taxes. If we start legalizing things and replacing the criminality with a tax, really that only opens it up to people with means. It's still ruinous for lower income people to engage with it. Which is -- you probably won't be surprised to hear -- another reason the lottery preys on lower income people.

I think we should just admit that this stuff is discriminatory -- a lot on class but at least a little on race.

<comment><USER21> There's a clear difference between gambling/drinking/smoking/drug abuse and the crimes you mentioned like embezzling and human trafficking. The former are self victimizing while the latter directly victimize others. That's the rationale behind legalization and why nobody would suggest it for regular crimes. Essentially it's giving people the freedom to make their own mistakes as long as they aren't hurting anyone but themselves. Instead we tailor the laws to protect others from being hurt by collateral effects (no smoking in public buildings, no stealing for drug money, no advertising cigarettes to kids, etc) and we raise money, often to support programs to educate people about the risks of those behaviors and help those who want to recover.

From what I've seen from places that have legalized various vices, it seems to always end up doing more good than criminalization.

<comment><USER19> There's really no such thing as a victimless crime, because there's no such thing as an act that affects only the actor. Drinking alcohol has an impact on others, smoking cigarettes has an impact on others, same with gambling and so on. You can separate based on "collateral effects", but the whole thing is a continuum and we draw the lines arbitrarily.

I dislike this line of reasoning because it leads us naturally to the conclusion that vice taxes (etc.) are the best we can do because some people are very incorrigible and many people are a little incorrigible. While I think we'll never eradicate "vices", I do think most of them have root causes and the most effective thing would be to treat those. If we think Behavior X is unhealthy to the self or societally damaging, sure taxing it is a way to balance out the damage to society, but that does nothing for the person. If we spent time fixing smoking, for example, we'd save so many lives and so much money that it's kind of bewildering that we haven't done it.

I do think legalization in general is better than criminalization -- but only because the US criminal justice system is deeply harmful. It would be better if we treated the more serious users of vices instead of imprisoning or aggressively taxing them.

<comment><USER21> Ok, but who gets to decide where to draw the line between harmful behaviors and nonharmful ones. One could argue that just about everything we do has some degree of risk, some more than others. As you say it's a continuum. Should we ban unhealthy foods? Should we ban contact sports? How about extramarital sex? The values of the person you ask will dictate whether any given thing is a vice or a pastime.

What right do you have to say whether the enjoyment someone finds in a vice is offset by the damage it does to their health or finances or social life? And for any given vice, usually the ill effects are a function of how heavily one uses the vice. So does a full ban to save the few who overindulge balance against depriving the rest of the option to make small trades against their own lives for some pleasure? Should we ban alcohol to save the alcoholics at the cost of everyone else being able to unwind with a beer? We tried that and it didn't go very well.

Evidence seems to point to education and access to treatment being far more effective than bans. And it's very difficult to get any kind of long term results by involuntarily treating someone, so I'm not sure there's much to be gained by criminalization with enforced treatment instead of just punishment.

At the end, you pretty much have to let people make their own _informed_ decisions. Anything else sounds like a step toward an authoritarian state dictating everything you do.

<comment><USER19> > Ok, but who gets to decide where to draw the line between harmful behaviors > and nonharmful ones.

You're right, this is tricky. But consider China's opium epidemic in the late 19th century. A lot of legalization advocates argue that drug use is a victimless crime, but in that epidemic 13.5 million people were addicted to opium. That has a huge social cost. Or US prohibition in the early 20th century: alcohol was leading to awful domestic abuse and it caused women to be the strongest supporters of the 18th amendment.

In fact the prohibition case is interesting because I think we went about it entirely the wrong way, which was the point of my parent post. If we simply criminalize the act then we're essentially saying whomever commits the "vice" is incorrigible and has to be separated from polite society. One step better is to tax the act so society can in some ways be reimbursed for the cost of the behavior. But the best step would be to discover why so many people are abusing alcohol in the first place and solve that problem. We'll only have the justification to do that though, if we recognize that the people who fall victim to those vices deserve our support, rather than just being abandoned as morally weak or fundamentally lower than us.

The cool thing about that is then we don't need to have some weird arbitrary line between, "oh 2 drinks is OK, 4 drinks you're going to jail". And we help people who fall victim to alcoholism or whichever vice we're talking about. It's a win-win, if only we can get over our preening moralism.

But in general you're right, there's not a lot of daylight between an act and a crime because not everything we regulate has a moral underpinning. But that doesn't mean those regulations can't do good, and it certainly doesn't mean that just because we enact some regulations we're inevitably headed towards totalitarianism. That's just a slippery slope fallacy.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> As others have mentioned, this seems like a test case issue of bad financial planning. There are lots of ways to get into such a situation, not all of them student loan related.

Frankly if you look at only the numbers, then 170,000$ total on a 95,000$ is what you'll get for a 20 year loan with 6.5% interest (give or take). From what I can tell from the article she will be paying it for roughly 20 years. If you take a fixed-rate payment (I.E. paying the same amount monthly for the entire loan, rather then paying the same percentage of the remaining loan every month), this is exactly the situation you'll get - I.E. the first few years your payments go almost entirely to interest and only later years you pay for the principal.

These are very common financial instruments that you can get from a bank or credit company. Especially if your parents are cosigned.

I think the main takeaways are rather these:

1\. How in the world is a variable interest loan based on LIBOR (which the article alludes to) gets to 11% interest? that's prime + 8%, at least. That's practically loan-shark territory. How is a government led (and financed) aid program have such an insane interest rate?

2\. When you take a loan for investing (such as education, or starting a new company), I.E. leveraging, you should always consider whether the future value of the investments is higher then what you borrowed. I'm assuming she studied for jobs that don't pay well.

3\. American education is insanely expensive. It's probably cheaper to just study abroad for a few years and come back (like she did for her master's degree).

<comment><USER23> Not defending student loans or the entire predatory infrastructure that supports them, but rates on _all_ unsecured loans are nasty.

Home loans can be cheap because they are secured by the value of the house: if you default, the bank thinks it can sell your house and still make a profit.

Unsecured loans yield nothing when they go bad, so they have absurd interest rates whether the loan is for education, business, or whatever. That's why many people choose to eg take out a second mortgage when starting a business: better interest rates, because it is secured, but you lose your house if your business fails.

<comment><USER24> Educational loans are guaranteed by the US government. When she defaults, Sallie Mae will sell her loan to the government and will be compensated 100% for all principal and interest.

The US government now owns a non-performing loan which they then sell for 10%-15% of what they bought it for to - you guessed it - Sallie Mae loan recovery. Since this loan can't be discharged by bankruptcy, part of every paycheck she ever earns will be garnished, every tax refund will be seized until Sallie Mae gets their money.

<comment><USER23> My understanding is that only _federal_ student loans are insured & guaranteed by the government, and that private student loans, while they benefit from the whole "can't be defaulted on" thing, can still go bad.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> Ah student loans, the magic money factory (for the lenders, that is) preying on youth ignorance.

And young people seem to feel a kind of pride in knowing jack nothing about loans and interest calculations and "only the payment matters" because hey, math is hard and is not "cool". And "nobody told us how to calculate that" well, it's not like there are no ways of finding out.

But it seems the smart way is to default on this (as long as it doesn't affect the co-signer, or the co-signer should default on it - if possible - as well) .

<comment><USER26> Even if you go into default because it is a student loan the IRS will garnish any return and send it to the creditor and of course your credit score will drop. Doing so may force a more reasonable interest rate than what you previously. I am interested if anyone on here has taken this route.

<comment><USER27> Nope, they just resell it repeatedly tacking on ~$1,200 each time. I once saved up enough to pay off my last loan and they resold it before I could get a check in the mail which meant I didn't have enough money so I was like "screw those people" and bought a car instead. Probably not a good plan but, you know, screw 'em.

Don't even think they bother to send a bill anymore since they'd have to fight with the IRS to (not) get money out of me.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> I'm a dual citizen. The European model is wonderful, but there are also some things to be careful of here - the authors article is basically a story of her own experience - with some key facts omitted.

The author never discusses the degree they got for all this expensive private education! That is critical point.

She doesn't discuss what her own parents suggestions beyond her father correctly pointing out the idiocy of these loans! I find it hard to believe they pushed for a degree that gets you an office job at $20K? That makes no sense if you know working class or first gen immigrant families.

The only angle here is the big bad system doing her in.

Seriously working class parents are generally focused on solid white collar jobs. Ie, nurse, accounting, construction management up to doctor. First generation immigrant families - even more intense in this area

Even a masters in something boring like accounting or nursing (blue collar white collar jobs) pays way better - you should expect $100K within a few years accounting side and RN's can easily do $74/hr - which is reasonable. You'd be starting at 40 - $50/hr.

In European system, much of education is free, but access to courses depends on your performance in high school. The germans here will know of the "Abitur", high school graduation and university entrance degree all rolled into one. And for selective (high cost to state) upper education - the bar is not low to get into programs! The European model also has a lot more vocational training and its not looked down on as it is here. So it's a different model.

I went to private school -> and picked the one that gave me those most financial aid by far! I ALSO applied to state universities. For those who thing the University of Michigan, University of California, University of Virginia etc isn't "good enough" for them - get a grip.

School is what YOU make of it most of the time and sometime I wish I'd gone to a state university

<comment><USER29> You are missing the point of how strongly people in US still believe that you can achieve the American Dream if you choose whatever field, just work hard and are good to your job. Most Americans are not consciously aware of the class system that exists in contrast to most Europeans and other foreigners. There is also a disproportionately higher percentage of people that seek true satisfaction from their jobs (live to work) than seeing it as a job (work to live). It is not even PC to say that your parents are working class or you are 1st generation immigrant so I advise you to become a nurse, doctor or a plumber. In addition, as history has shown again and again people can and will do poor or risky financial decisions if given the opportunity across the whole spectrum (e.g. from payday loans to very expensive underperforming actively managed funds with huge fees). For a financial institution it may make sense to have 11% interest rate and a 20% chance that people will default before paying at least the principal but these interest rates make life unbearable for the people who have them and is detrimental for the society. Finally people would probably make better decisions if they had an advisor like you but truth is that most people that come from low socioeconomic status either cannot imagine their selves being for example doctors (they even don't know anyone, an uncle or a family friend) and they have no access to advisors like you from their environment.

<comment><USER28> I agree - for profit colleges in particular seem to prey on this.

For example, we had like 3-4 chef schools nearby - 100K in tuition?!? That is a totally false dream, those "degrees" do not get you anywhere!

But my point though was - the article left out what HAD to have been some feedback from parents AND what her degree was. How we can read this whole article without some context about her degree.

It's not that someone else would say your first gen so do a practical degree, I'm saying that a first gen immigrant family - they are talking at the family level about this. And practical degree can mean doctor, it can mean computer programmer - so it's still shoot for the moon. But these are degrees with big and growing markets.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER30> It's easy to nitpick at this particular author for the choices she's made but I think that skips a really important aspect of the larger situation: structural changes to the economy/jobscape that are working against people.

The article I keep re-reading is this one from the highline -

[https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor- millenn...](https://highline.huffingtonpost.com/articles/en/poor- millennials/?mobile=1)

If the author had made the exact same college/career choices 20/30yrs ago - the outcome very likely would have been much different.

</comment><comment><USER31> It sounds like the real culprit's the university that charged a ton of money for a useless education.

<comment><USER32> hmm did they force her to get one?

<comment><USER33> How is there not enough competition to provide a good education at a lower price?

It shouldn't be this hard to find a good, affordable education.

<comment><USER32> It is easy there are many good online options in many cases with very reasonable cost.

<comment><USER33> Just to throw this out there,

The experience of living in a dorm, and socializing with people... That was the best time of my life. I wouldn't trade that away, if I could help it.

<comment><USER32> well I guess the question is what can people do if they can't afford to pay for that option.

<comment><USER33> The question I'm trying to ask is,

Why isn't there enough competition to provide "live at a good, affordable college"?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER34> It is a pity that the expensive colleges don't at least teach their students about the principles and practice of usury.

<comment><USER10> The expensive colleges benefit from this practice just as much as the companies issuing the loans.

<comment><USER35> Yes, this easy credit environment allows colleges to rapidly raise tuition. They love it.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> As a data point I'm from Sweden and I have loans of around 300k SEK (34k USD) and my interest rate is 0.13%. Yes the rent is so low you shouldn't ever repay it faster as it's even better to just stick it in a savings account despite the poor interest of 0.7%.

<comment><USER37> I'm from Australia, my 5-year Software Engineering degree netted me a loan of about $20,000. The loan has no interest, though it is indexed with inflation.

If I earn over $54,000 AUD in any year, I will pay a few extra percent in income tax per year until it's paid off.

If I never earn over $54,000, or pay it off so slowly it will never actually get finished, then so be it, and that's fine.

I think everyone in the Developed would outside the USA sees that when you make things for-profit (Health, Education, etc.) the result it always more profit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER38> One of the main reasons I will be strongly encouaging (read: insisting) my fortunately-dual-national kids to avoid university in the USA. It was staggeringly expensive when I went to US college in the 90s. Now it beggars belief.

<comment><USER39> We moved back to NZ when my eldest hit high school, here college is much cheaper with interest free loans so long as you stay in the country and pay them off as required (or are in school), we used a small portion of what we made from selling our Bay Area home to pay off our kid's loans free and clear when they were done - best decision we ever made

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> Does the average career of a graduate with comparative literature degree provide enough income to pay off a debt of this scale? If this were a medical or law degree, the decision to take the loan would be more justified.

I wish the high school kids were taught more about career and finance. Obtaining higher education is not a goal that should be achieved by any means, it is simply an optional tool for building the career.

<comment><USER41> When did college turn from learning institutions into career factories?

<comment><USER42> When we scaled it to the level it's at today. A university education was at one time for academics and our best minds. There were plenty of jobs for everyone else. Those jobs are gone and a university degree has scaled to a level where many students wouldn't be there under the original intent of the university.

The purpose of the university has changed as our society has changed. But we are using the old, unscalable model to try and scale a university degree for the many.

<comment><USER43> I describe this as the last bastion of socially acceptable racism.

PoC are less likely to get a college education, so requiring a degree helps to restrict the labor pool without bringing the EEOC down on the company.

<comment><USER42> It's more a socio-economic thing than racist I think. It's disproportionately affects you the lower on the wealth heiarchy you are.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER44> Reading something like this is just horrible... As someone who received a mostly free education I can only shake my head in disgust at these companies and a government allowing people to be extorted like this...

</comment><comment><USER45> Stopped reading at "Variable interest rate" and "may have been explained to me at the time (I truly don't remember), but I know I didn't fully grasp what that meant". Uhhhh yea well, you not grasping "what it meant" and not doing your due diligence is what got you into this mess, jackass.

<comment><USER46> In her defense, when I went to college, we had financial aid advisors whose job it was to explain the options. I can say unequivocally I was not prepared to make that decision on my own at that age. Years later, it came out that Banks were giving those advisors kickbacks to steer students to their most profitable loans. In typical fashion, the banks and schools paid a small fine and promised not to do it again, with 0 recourse for the students.

Fortunately I didn't get stuck in something this ugly, but i definitely could have.

Our schools do a VERY poor job of educating students on fiscal responsibility. It's actually something I think every high school should have as a required course.

<comment><USER47> I think it should begin earlier. In primary school, kids should learn that debt is bad. Animal Crossing has done more for this than schools have.

<comment><USER35> I believe nations do this on purpose. Educating people on savings and thrift can have bad economic consequences

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER48> Ah yes, student loans when I was studying the interest on the loans were much lower then what you were getting for a savings account. So what we did was loan money, put it on the savings account, earn the 4-5% interest and at the end of studying we would pay off the loan straight away. Keeping the profit :)

</comment><comment><USER49> Now let me ask this - if there would be a proposal in Congress to disband Sallie Mae and do away with these bad loans, just not let people take loans that they can't pay - which side of it she would be on? I have little doubt she would claim this is terrible and makes only rich people to afford education and ruin the country and so on. And would never vote for any representative that proposes that. But when she gets exactly what she, and her parents, and everybody around them, enthusiastically supported and voted for - subsidized loans that there's no way they could afford otherwise and that are way beyond her means normally - it's suddenly terrible and somebody else's fault.

<comment><USER50> What about a proposal to return to subsidizing higher education the way that most developed countries do, so that prohibitive loans are no longer necessary in order to acquire it? In the Information Age, isn't having an educated workforce a public good?

<comment><USER51> So the solution to a problem of unaffordability is to have Uncle Sam pay for it and take it out of the tax payer's pocket? That lady couldn't pay for her expensive education, so I should?

Since I graduated 15 years ago, the public University I went to has increased costs significantly and massively improved student amenities. Baristas and rock climbing walls and whatnot. Why? It improves rankings and people will still pay for it, subsidized by student debt. If, say, people actually had to be able to afford the bill, I bet all the expensive nonsense and massive staff beuracracy would shrink in no time and the schools would go back to costs being classrooms and books.

<comment><USER52> UK: over the last decade or so we have moved from a grant based/free tuition system of finance for university students to a (capped) fee paying/state loan one.

Not sure which is best. The move the fee paying/state loan has seen the salaries of University managers rise significantly. The part time degree sector has been significantly reduced in volume.

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40511184](http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-40511184)

I do personally think that the classrooms + books + dorm/shared house route with subsidy for less affluent ones has benefits.

<comment><USER49> > the salaries of University managers rise significantly.

> classrooms + books + dorm/shared house

I think we can notice what's going on here. I do not know about the UK, but if you look at education costs in the US, it becomes painfully obvious. It's not books, classrooms or dorms the students are paying for. I mean, think about it. Which books can cost 100K over a bachelors degree, where most knowledge has been known for centuries already? Classrooms have been built years ago in the most places, and their marginal costs of maintenance is negligible. Dorms are not that expensive to run either, not to the tune of tens of thousands per year per student, unless you're talking about luxury which most people neither need nor can afford. So subsidizing those necessities should not cost much. Something else is driving the costs up.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> Some comments are discussing doing this to a 18 year old, but it seems to me she is saying this happened in her 4th year. So really it would be when she was 21-22. Not to defend predatory lending, but let's be a little more intellectually honest.

</comment><comment><USER54> I'm just not sympathetic. College isn't meant to be free, and choosing private colleges without considering the costs just isn't somebody else's fault.

I've got 3 kids to put through college, the first just finished freshman year. It's fine-- he broke his hump studying for a good ACT (this led to good scholarships), he's working internships over the summers to raise cash. My wife and I cover what's left, it's not too much to bear.

My son's room-mate is doing even better. He's in Army ROTC, his school is completely paid for.

We're not wealthy and college is not breaking us. If there's a college debt emergency, it's an avoidable one.

</comment><comment><USER55> It's a bit sickening to see many the replies here crapping all over this woman. I suspect that most (all?) of us are quite a bit older than 17, and have taught ourselves a decent amount about finance in the meantime. And yes, I'll admit that my knee-jerk reaction is often similar to the negative ones here.

But then I _really_ think back to when I was just graduating from high school and figuring out how to pay for college. I didn't understand much about finance, or about loans. I had no idea how repayment worked, or how the majority of each payment would go toward interest for a long time. I didn't know how much in total I'd pay, or even how to figure that out. My parents (who co-signed some of my loans) tried to help me, but their understanding certainly wasn't all-encompassing either. There's pretty much no such thing as "financial education" in K-12 schools in the US. They don't even teach you how to balance a checkbook, let alone tackling the concept of debt.

I was lucky. I was lucky that my interest rates were low, and stayed low. I was lucky that I got a stable, well-paying job (with regular raises) after college and was able to exceed my monthly payments. It was all luck. I could have just as easily ended up in a bad situation. If I _had_ ended up in a bad situation, I hope I would have been mature enough to accept at least some of the blame for it.

But that doesn't mean predatory lenders are off the hook. That doesn't mean it's ok to avoid telling a potential customer exactly how repayment works, ahead of time. That doesn't mean it's ok to charge exorbitant fees and penalties that make it harder to repay. That doesn't mean it's ok to make someone jump through hoops to access and understand detailed information about their loan accounts. And the lack of up-front, plain-language transparency is disgusting.

If you're not swayed by that, let's talk about outcomes. We're raising a generation of new adults who will be crushed by debt well into their 30s and often later. These people can't meaningfully participate in the consumer side of the economy while they're forking over half or more of their paycheck to lenders. If there are massive defaults, that will be a huge drain on resources: economic, financial, and educational. And the next generation of students just won't bother being students. They'll see what happened, and forego higher education. In some cases, that will be ok, and they'll be financially better off for it. In most others, though, it will just weaken the level of education in the US, which hurts science, engineering, research, technology, everything. Even if you have no compassion for the students with crushing debt, at least consider the scope of the problem all this causes, and be pragmatic about it.

<comment><USER56> Luckily I never had to face these predators. Living in a place where universities charge around $1000 per semester and having parents that didn't charge rent allowed me to get by with jobs on the side.

One of our economy teachers explained: "As students you can get a loan from the state with no interest. You're stupid if you don't take it and keep it for some extra interest." I calculated the interest this would generate and decided that it was too much hassle for few extra bucks. And I didn't want the temptation either.

</comment></comment><comment><USER57> Can't she refinance that floating rate debt? 11% is horrendous.

<comment><USER58> Is it easy to get a regular loan of >$25k with no securities though?

<comment><USER57> I'm not US based, so I don't know. But I don't see why it wouldn't be possible if someone has been employed on a decent income for years. Even paying 5 or 7% would be better than 11%.

But I would assume she has looked into that.

<comment><USER59> One problem is that she has a lot of debt and a history of missing payments.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER60> I'm pretty surprised to learn student loans accrue compound interests. I genuinely thought they're illegal in consumer lending.

<comment><USER61> I don't think I've ever seen a bank offer anything other than compound interest on a loan. It's definitely legal and most likely the default for every account.

<comment><USER60> Interestingly I came across this article [https://thefinancebuff.com/is-home- mortgage-simple-interest-...](https://thefinancebuff.com/is-home-mortgage- simple-interest-or-compound-interest.html)

I think as the article pointed out we might've different standards in referring to what is compound interest.

But my original point is that I thought consumer loans would not incur interest-on-interest (as in if you're late in payments for your car loan, the interst "compounds" due to higher unpaid principal, but the missed interest would not add to the principal), which seems not be the case for student loans as per the author.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER62> This issue is fascinating to me as it so perfectly straddles the dichotomy between personal responsibility and harmful systemic problems that individuals can't manage alone. Both sides have very strong points.

Of course, with this view, some sort of moderate compromise seems necessary. However, I wish I had more I could say about the issue with confidence.

</comment><comment><USER63> > If, like me, you didn't receive a ton of financial education in high school, > and you're wondering how that's even possible, welcome to my boat.

While it is true that high school definitively needs a "basic finance" class (where taxes, these loans, how to save, how banks work... are explained) she got a TON of warnings, and she took a loan.

</comment><comment><USER64> So, what is your rule of thumb for how much college debt is acceptable? I'm suspect its about 1.5x your expected starting salary[1] with the degree you are going for. At some point, I need to go through the job stats and do some loan calculations.

1) I mean average, not your dream job in SV for example.

</comment><comment><USER65> Trivia: A lot of the student loans that are paid off when Bitcoin etc prices increases are private student loans.

</comment><comment><USER66> There is a lot of talk in this form about lack of information regarding student debt in this form. I will be starting an undergrad degree next year and am wondering what are some good resources that provide information about the dynamics of student loans?

<comment><USER67> find out if the debt is in your name or your parents' name

find out if you need a cosigner

find out the rate and if its variable or static

find out if theres a prepayment penalty

find out if interest compounds while youre in college

once youve found all that out, take the total balance and put it into a compound interest calculator. if you owe $25,000, you'll end up paying $30,000 or more usually

find out if you'll have a job where you can pay that debt off quickly

</comment></comment><comment><USER68> Why are the interest rates on these student loans so outrageously high when they aren't dischargeable in bankruptcy?

Shouldn't they be pegged a hair above the prime rate, since the holder is more or less guaranteed interest payments for life?

</comment><comment><USER69> maybe you shouldn't have gone to private school, or not gone to college at all.

<comment><USER70> I am also wondering what degree she go where the starting pay is less then $20k / year.

</comment></comment><comment><USER67> I enjoyed the depth and honesty of this journalism. It's good writing.

She needs to refinance her loans. My mom refinanced hers from 8% to 4%.

Or, she should pay the student loans with a credit card or home equity loan, and then go bankrupt.

</comment><comment><USER71> Why can't you just refinance a loan with this kind of interest?

</comment><comment><USER72> Didn't read the article, but this makes me wonder if compound interest is ethical, as opposed to simple interest.

</comment><comment><USER73> Maybe someday we will actually enact policy to prevent predatory lending practices to our youth.

We could fix this really fast to by allowing people to default on these loans.

</comment><comment><USER74> Removing default risk from loans provided to young people for education is so perverse it almost goes beyond words. Re-introducing the ability to default would actually set a fair price on these loans -- interest rates would skyrocket, tuition prices would go down, or students would shift towards cheaper universities. If doing so results in massive outflows of tuition from universities for relatively worthless degress, and a large number of students deciding to forgo college altogether, that is what you call a "market correction" and would be extremely healthy.

The reason we are in this mess is because the loans are not priced properly because, other than the debtor dying or being unable to provide a steady income stream, or the government deciding to reverse policy, there is zero default risk. These loans are _already_ yielding 8% in a market that has a risk free rate of about 3% over 30yr, and these loans cannot be defaulted on without a change in government policy! This should tell you just how fucked things are -- if students seeking degrees that will earn $20-30k/yr could default on these loans they would probably have a 20-30% interest rate (if not higher) or probably just wouldn't even be offered, since the default rate would be hilariously high, so the higher education market would be forced to correct.

Loans should not be a de-facto life-long indentured servitude to a lender. It's an abject moral failure of our society that this has been allowed to go on as long as it has. The day of reckoning will come eventually, maybe in a year, maybe in a decade, but when it does it's going to leave a gigantic crater in the interest rate markets.

This does _not_ mean I am sympathizing with the people who have made poor financial decisions. Once corrected, these individuals should be free to declare bankruptcy and default on these debts, like any other, and pay the price for their actions in being unable to secure further lines of credit, potentially for the rest of their lives. This has real consequences: no credit cards, no car loans, no mortgage on a new house. This is the price we all agree to pay in the case of being unable to pay our debts: we cannot borrow money for many years if ever again. However, except for these poor souls, borrowers do _not_ agree to being lifelong slaves if they make one poor financial decision or fall upon hardship that prevents repayment.

The loans are mispriced, and the lenders should have had higher interest rates on them knowing the risk of default was extremely high on a liberal arts major going to school for $50k/year. I am simply recognizing the fact that in this sector, the market has been distorted and is deeply corrupted by the removal of a fair market for student debt. These banks deserve to be wiped out on these loans.

</comment><comment><USER75> A basic personal finance class in high school would go a long way. Anyone take one of those in high school ( or even college )?

<comment><USER12> I graduated around the same time as the author, and I can't remember whether it was my loan provider (MyGreatLakes) or FAFSA, but I had to take a quick financial course online where every term in my student loans was spelled out: including interest rates, interest-only payments, amortization schedule, etc.

I'm surprised if this isn't standard, because it should be (with a refresher course every 6 months)

</comment></comment><comment><USER76> I have no empathy for anyone who gets in debt to go to a private college instead of going to a state school. Even better most state 4 year colleges have partnerships with even cheaper two year colleges where you could stay at home.

I went to a no name state school and within three years of graduating I was making just as much as students with tens of thousands in debt and had no debt.

</comment><comment><USER77> We need to teach basic financial literacy to our kids. This is my takeaway from this article.

<comment><USER78> If you add "…because there are a lot of usurers out there who will exploit you" I agree.

I mean, we don't want victim-blaming and that's that. We want to teach all sorts of safety practices to kids too, but that doesn't mean if someone is abused or mugged etc. that we focus only on the victim's actions and skip fighting the abusers.

</comment></comment><comment><USER79> How hard can it be to understand that businesses doesn't just hand out money without expecting anything in return? This is just stupidity and carelessness...

And clearly refinancing would be a good option to get a way better interest.

</comment><comment><USER80> No shit, pay more than the minimums. That's personal finance 101.

</comment><comment><USER81> An interesting article about a person who got every warning, knew all the details of her own undoing but is trying to claim ignorance after the fact to put the blame on the "big bad industry" who really did nothing wrong here.

She's a fool who complain that her principle hasn't gone down when she never actually paid anything towards it. And yes she knows that and yes they and her parents, old teachers, friends and any advicers she has ever talked to explained that the basics of a loan are that you pay it down and pay interests on it.

She's mortified that a variable rate interest loan has a rate that varies.... and sure as hell she remembers them telling her that, she's just playing dumb to sound the victim.

Oh and ofcause they make the details of the loan "almost impossible to find!...." in a tab called details on their website....... or if in doubt you know, you could call them. What sort of black hole level of entitlement is she living in?

Education is costly in the USA, this is horrible and wrong. But hell Tesla's are costly too, you'd get no sympathy if you buried yourself in debt to buy a Tesla and then didn't pay off the principle for years.

In the ideal world she could have been denied the loans on the basis of her lack of ability to manage her own financiancials. But then it would not be the land of the free, and she would just have been complaining about that instead.

<comment><USER82> That seems like a bit of an unfair reading to me.

Yes, ultimately everyone is responsible for managing their own finances, and it seems like the author acknowledges that and her own part in their mismanagement.

But expecting young people to make rational, fully-considered choices about taking loans in order to receive education is a tough sell. Higher education is often - sometimes unfairly - seen as an essential requirement for making progress in many careers. And in a situation where so many people are struggling with unmanageable debt, it seems that "every individual is responsible for their own choices" is a less useful position than "what is wrong with this system nationally and how can we fix it". It's kind of like US healthcare: participants are almost obliged to participate in the system, and for various reasons can't be considered fully rational consumers.

There are lots of things that can be done, though. A change in culture making college education less essential; better loan programs; excision of bureaucracy; single-payer education systems; the list goes on.

The answer is a lot more complex than "college students need to make better decisions".

<comment><USER83> Completely. Nobody sat me down to explain debt, they just explained that it was an option to go to the school I wanted to go to. I'm pretty much an idiot now, I can barely comprehend how stupid I was at 18. So to think that I somehow could fully realize the repercussions of student loans is less than unrealistic.

It's a many many billion dollar industry versus some (mostly) naive kids. I'm on the side of the idiot kids on saying that the moment in time we are living through is brutal. I hope we find a fix for future kids.

<comment><USER84> > I'm pretty much an idiot now, I can barely comprehend how stupid I was at > 18.

HN expects one to add to the discussion rather than simply quoting and liking, but it's hard to add anything to that quote :-)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER85> As harsh as this may sound, she is not that smart, and the whole article reads like an implementation of natural selection with respect to personal finance.

Sure, it is debatable that cost of U.S education is too high and loan companies are predatory. But, her case is not one that is emphasizing either of those problems.

She chose really expensive education options that wouldn't lead to a reasonable return, especially ones she could not afford, and didn't read the papers she was signing, and chose to top it off with another loan when she realized the earlier one was bad. After all of these, the article pleads sympathy from readers trying to shift the blame.

<comment><USER86> 1- You shouldn't have to be smart to have a happy life.

2- The purpose of adolescence is to make mistakes and learn. Having those mistakes color decades of your life is not a great situation.

<comment><USER85> Nothing is stopping her from having a happy life, except her own idiocy about spending money that she doesn't have on something that doesn't provide value in return. Think about it as an expense than "education", then you start to see the mistake for what it is.

2 - of course we make mistakes and learn. Small or big is up to us. But, the individual should own it, and not write an article about how unfair life is that it let them make those mistakes... I can always buy an expensive with the rent money for the entire year, but that's not life being unfair to me. It's my failure to see where the path leads in the short term.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER87> [https://www.bustle.com/profile/kaitlyn- cawley-1912533](https://www.bustle.com/profile/kaitlyn-cawley-1912533)

"She has a bachelor's and a master's in comparative literature from The American University of Paris and Trinity College Dublin, respectively."

This person chose comparative literature as major, studied _abroad_ and did master's, with $95k loan, and claim that this was "to transcend my working class upbringing".

EDIT: Removed the part that probably caused the flagging.

<comment><USER88> Please don't post denunciatory rants to HN, regardless of how right you are or feel you are. Perhaps you owe no better to comparative literature majors, but you do owe this community better.

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

<comment><USER87> Thanks. Sorry about that. Removed the denunciatory part.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER89> This thread is a perfect example of everything wrong with the hn crowd. Yall make me sick.

<comment><USER90> Elaborate?

<comment><USER91> Not GP, but the tone is that everyone else is stupid and emotional, especially those who want to pursue non-STEM (for a very narrow definition of STEM)/finance degrees, and that everyone obviously had the same advantages the average HN poster had.

Unfortunately I'm old enough that I'm now looking at putting my kids through college, and the answer of 'you have to stay in town and take CS' seems ridiculously narrow. Even state schools run around $40K a year if you're out of state, and unfortunately my state college system is overrun with trust fund stoners. I was lucky in that I went to school before higher education in the US was turned into a money tit, and it kills me that I cannot offer my daughters the same opportunities I had.

<comment><USER87> [https://www.bustle.com/profile/kaitlyn- cawley-1912533](https://www.bustle.com/profile/kaitlyn-cawley-1912533)

"She has a bachelor's and a master's in comparative literature from The American University of Paris and Trinity College Dublin, respectively."

My daughter's in college, so I know personally how expensive college is in the US. I know of many kids who did have to make tough choices due to financial constraints, even for middle-class families.

And you simply don't choose comparative literature as a major and study in a private school in Paris and then Dublin, if you can't afford. There are clearly cheaper (but possibly inferior) options. This person clearly chose more expensive option and now complain that the choice was too expensive. It's like buying a Mercedes and then complain that auto loan payment is too high.

<comment><USER67> In theory, the Mercedes can be reposessed if she starts missing payments, and she can file bankruptcy to protect herself from spiraling debts.

In this situation, "a degree can't be repossessed", so the IRS and banking system will squeeze every penny they can out of her since she can't declare bankruptcy to get rid of these loans (that she's paying!)

What she really should do is negotiate a refinance, put the loans on a credit card, and then go bankrupt. She won't have good credit for 7 years, but she will also lose the $65,000 worth of debt hanging around her neck too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER92> Financing is just all-around bad news that should be strenuously avoided.

At the same time, I'm sure her deal with the devil was very clearly spelled out in 8pt type.

It is very hard to wade through that much whining when it comes from a literate and numerate middle class kid, in a western country, in the age of Google.

<comment> lloyd-christmas > in the age of Google

Rose colored glasses.

It's probably worth keeping in mind that the internet of endless information is still relatively new. I went to college in 2003. Google was a freshly minted verb[0]. "The age of Google" probably didn't even really start until after I had graduated. I know that it wasn't part of my college life. I think it was my sophomore year when "wikipedia" started showing up in school ethics codes. The countless blog articles available to you right now simply didn't exist. You assume this info was at everyone's finger tips, but the people who wrote most of those articles probably graduated after I did. ROI of education really only became a conversation topic after the financial crisis started to display a permanent effect on the workforce. My younger brother is about the author's age, and we were still ingrained with the mindset of "that's just what you do after high school". The pro/con list had very few cons until relatively recently.

[0] [https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/the-f...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2014/06/the- first-use-of-the-verb-to-google-on-television-buffy-the-vampire- slayer/373599/)

<comment><USER92> I also attended during the dark ages. Even then, the value proposition was questionable to anyone paying close enough attention.

Books on it had been written. Talks on it had been given. This lady was just too focused on the gold at the end of the rainbow to care.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER93> She went to private schools. No sypmathy.

Though I do think variable rate loans are kind of outrageous in a general sense. And I find it curious that one was the only option.

<comment><USER78> Do you have sympathy for other irresponsible victims? If an party-hard sorority girl is flirty and into drinking and then gets raped, no sympathies? Honestly, it's _harder_ to have sympathies in such cases, but we should still work to find it and to focus on criticizing the actual abusers who took advantage of the irresponsible victim.

<comment><USER93> I really think you're stretching.

One of America's diseases right now is the entitlement of those who think they that they're obligated comfortable success if they check the right boxes without ever stopping to think or do the math. And when they dig a hole, I do not feel sorry for them. (And I don't think it's remotely like rape.) If her article was about how she was stupid, and how somebody could avoid making the same mistakes, and how she'd learned, I might be sympathetic. But it's not.

I fail to see how making bad, but clearly demarcated, decisions, is remotely like rape. (So on some level, yes, I don't see her as a victim.) (And yes, I do have a chip on my shoulder because I could see this kind of thing coming and so turned down the University of Chicago to go to a state school for less than half the money - my best guess is I'd have graduated with something over $120k in debt had I accepted, from the state school I graduated with almost zero.)

<comment><USER78> It's perfectly fair to criticize her article, criticize her decisions, emphasize the responsibility that people take in watching out for their own long-term best interest…

But when financial institutions are making massive _profits_ off of other people's irresponsible decisions, you can't ethically just say that's fine. The ethical way to deal with irresponsible people is to teach them to be responsible, not to exploit them.

As long as powerful interests are profiting off of irresponsible people, those interests will actively seek to encourage continued irresponsibility…

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER94> So uh, why doesn't she move out of the country? She already got her masters abroad.

An US citizen with a masters degree could basically immediately get a 5 year Schengen visa. She's obviously an extremely privileged person who could go anywhere she wants.

It just seems stupid to stick around and keep paying.

Edit: Almost feels like it's somehow offensive to suggest that there's life outside of the US.

<comment><USER95> > An US citizen with a masters degree could basically immediately get a 5 year > Schengen visa.

Maybe I'm wrong but I was under the impression you needed a job (sponsor) first. Why should a US citizen waving a masters degree around be given the right to work?

<comment><USER94> You get a job seeking visa, and find a job. Not at all hard stuff for a white highly educated american.

Far easier than paying off her debts anyway.

I've helped friends with this stuff recently and all I keep hearing is how they get special treatment because they're the only white english-speaking people applying.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER96> I find it hard to feel sorry for her. This is what happens when you only live in the moment. Going to grad school out of the country is exciting. However, doing it without any research on your loans was dangerously impulsive. She didn't state the reasons, but I would guess it was to impress or stay with friends.

I lost all sympathy when we she decided to live in one of the highest cost of living cities in the world. It is a simple choice. Delay satisfaction or live outside your means. She displayed a consistent pattern of living outside her means. Don't be surprised when you realize that you're not rich and these actions have consequences.

<comment><USER97> "When I was 18, I fully believed that taking out student loans was the only way to achieve my dream and my parents' dream for me — to transcend my working class upbringing."

This is not living in the moment, not at all.</comment></comment>


It's Official - America Now Enforces Capital Controls - <AUTHOR> http://www.zerohedge.com/article/its-official-america-now-enforces-capital-controls

<comment><USER2> And a good thing to. It stops US companies that rely on government provided infrastructure from shirking their financial obligations.

If that's too much to ask they can move to one of their tax havens that has little infrastructure and install their own electricity, plumbing, roads, and schools. But they won't do that. They'll bitch about this law for a while, pay their taxes and get on with it.

This is little more than complaining about a tax loophole that was suddenly closed. The common man on the street already pays 15-25% in taxes, why corporations think they would stay exempt makes me shake my head.

<comment><USER3> > It stops US companies that rely on government provided infrastructure from > shirking their financial obligations.

It also stops foreign companies from getting their money out.

If you were a outside the US and considering investing, how would this affect your decision? Is this result good or bad?

I ask because I like foreign investment and recognize that foreign investors have alternatives.

<comment><USER2> Then I should amend it to say that it stops all companies that rely on US infrastructure from shirking their financial obligations.

If you were a foreign investor you'll read the tax code and weigh the pros and cons. If you don't like the terms invest somewhere else, you'll find a lot of developed countries have had this on the books. If you make a profit in the US expect to get taxed on that profit. Small companies do it, big multinationals should too.

<comment><USER3> Suppose that a foreign investor is thinking about loaning my company $1M. This rule says that 30% of my loan payments will be seized at the border.

What sort of interest rate will that investor demand?

> If you make a profit in the US expect to get taxed on that profit.

You didn't read the regulation - it says nothing about profit. It says transfers.

The obvious hack is to buy goods and export those for resale. This increases transaction costs and leads to comparable export control regulations.

Congrats - you've just killed your economy.

> you'll find a lot of developed countries have had this on the books.

Oh really? Please provide relevant cites.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Why your startup will probably fail - <AUTHOR> http://www.shoestringlaunch.com/2012/05/why-your-startup-will-probably-fail/ I wrote this for a local start up blog in Australia, thought it might be relevant to post on here. <comment><USER2> I just sent this link to my co-founder. It's something I want him reading the moment he wakes up today!

Great read! I resonate with so many things said here.

I was buying into everything before I even knew what the business was, but after some clicking I like your idea behind Bislr.com even more.

<comment><AUTHOR> Thanks! Really appreciate it.</comment></comment>


Chrome and the blank new tab button - <AUTHOR> http://blog.zachwaugh.com/post/17375802400/chrome-and-the-blank-new-tab-button

<comment><USER2> Recall that Google recently changed the "+" operator in search from forcing inclusion of a search term to "Google+ Direct Connect" [1]. The removal of the "+" from the Chrome new tab button is simply another step toward focusing the "+" symbol on the Google+ brand. I would expect to see something like a Google+ toolbar baked into Chrome in the not-too-distant future.

[1] [http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answe...](http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1711199)

</comment><comment><USER3> Chrome team: we did UX research and found it doesn't hurt, but actually helps!

User feedback: we did no UX research and just believe based on our own opinion that this is bad. Plzchangeback</comment>


Why MySpace Failed (Or When You Kill The User Experience, You Kill Yourself) - <AUTHOR> http://www.wesleyverhoeve.com/why-myspace-failed-or-when-you-kill-the-user-experience-you-kill-yourself

<comment><USER2> A more humorous take on MySpace's slow demise ...

"For a brief period of time, MySpace was the site where everyone kept their profile and managed their friendships. But soon, the service began to attract fake profiles, the wrong kind of white people, and struggling musicians. In real world terms, these three developments would be equivalent to a check cashing store, a TGIFridays, and a housing project."

\- Christian Lander, "Stuff White People Like" - #106 Facebook <http://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/2008/07/31/106-facebook/>

</comment><comment><USER3> I'm starting to see this on Pandora.

I listen to it nearly constantly at work (I usually end up paying a $1 a month to keep listening), but the ads are starting to get out of control. It doesn't help that there is a very limited selection, and maybe as a result they seem totally untargetted. It's irritating to be listening to trace music while I work, and then cut to a commercial for Ford trucks with country rock playing.

Also, I was trying to use it at home this weekend, and while trying to change stations I was interrupted by video ads.

I guess on the bright side, the ads are "high quality", for mainstream products you might see on TV or radio.

<comment><USER4> May I recommend <http://di.fm> ? I've been listening to it for years, and all the ads on any of the trance streams are related to server hosting. They know their audience..</comment></comment>


The Three Cousins - <AUTHOR> http://www.eastsussexww1.org.uk/three-cousins/ <comment><AUTHOR> In the First World War, the rulers of the world's three greatest nations – King George V of Great Britain and Tsar Nicholas II of Russia on the one hand, and Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany on the other – were first cousins.</comment>


Flip-thinking: the new buzz word sweeping the US - Telegraph - <AUTHOR> http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/businessclub/7996379/Daniel-Pinks-Think-Tank-Flip-thinking-the-new-buzz-word-sweeping-the-US.html <comment><USER2> I wonder how long we go until there's flip-thinking in the cloud -- "use bare metal, it's retro and might make you faster..." :-)</comment>


Show HN: Our Christmas project / present to Grandma - <AUTHOR>

We made a really simple weba pp that people can use to share photos with their grandparents, who might not have a facebook account or in general are somewhat intimidated by computers.
Would love to get some feedback from HN, so we can make it better and make our grandma smile :)
You can check it out at: http://www.nannagram.com
launched www.nannagram.com. it's still a little rough around the edged, but we would really love feedback <comment><AUTHOR> clickable: <http://www.nannagram.com></comment>


Gmail is about to start testing verification-like logos for email - <AUTHOR> https://www.engadget.com/gmail-bimi-logo-verified-025752904.html <comment><USER2> Get lost. How about, "No"?

BIMI's real goal is to track people. No thank you, I block remote-load images because I value my privacy.

Gmail/Gsuite had better make this optional, or I'll be looking elsewhere for my email client needs.

</comment><comment><USER3> I hope those of us who don't like looking at logos have the option to turn it off. Unlike the chrome unwelcome omnibox popups for fedex and the like.</comment>


Show HN: Shicray.org - <AUTHOR> https://shicrayorg.appspot.com/

<comment><AUTHOR> Let me know what you think. It's in beta mode now so you can't actually buy and sell things. But you can help design the offerings.</comment>


Ask HN: What is a 'full stack' website? - <AUTHOR> Hi i was browsing a separate ASK HN question and saw someone mention a full stack website, and i've heard of full stack devs but never a 'full stack website'
is there a single composition of the components of a full stack website? Or does it vary?
Ask thread that mentions a full stack website: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16800510 <comment><USER2> That term is unusual enough that I've never seen it.

So-called full-stack developers are people who build the back-end (server side) as well as the user-facing front-end (client side). As far as I know, it only refers to web development, so the client will usually be a browser or native app.

Based on context, it seems like "full-stack website" means a website that has some business logic on the back-end. This would be distinct from a static site.

(A "static" site does technically have a back-end, but it would just be serving flat HTML/JS/CSS files that are unmodified.)

</comment><comment><USER3> Do you have a link to provide context?

<comment><AUTHOR> [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16800510](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16800510)

<comment><USER4> I think the first comment in that thread is what you're referring to. I'd hazard a guess that a "fullstack website" in this context means a site that is written entirely in Javascript (ex. React for the frontend and Node.js for the backend). The original thread question was looking for ways to improve knowledge in Javascript, so building a site entirely in that language would certainly be sufficient to give one an understanding of what you can do with it,

<comment><USER3> Since the commenter said "full-stack website with JS" I would assume that the commenter intended "full-stack" to mean both backend and frontend. If he meant "full-stack" to mean entirely Javascript there would be no reason to tack on "with JS".</comment></comment></comment></comment>


How Artifact became Valve's biggest failure - <AUTHOR> https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/2019-07-03-how-artifact-became-valves-biggest-failure <comment><USER2> I played the game a lot, before giving up. I played only draft and was pretty good (Mostly infinite and highly ranked).

I have two opinions on why the game failed. First, while it was a truly satisfying game and wonderfully complex the random elements where both anti Dota and truly fuck you rng where a flip of a coin decides most high level games. Now, the same could be said about most competitive card games but in Artifact it was so visible, felt terrible, and had no ways to play around it. Hearthstone has learned that good rng is about having a range of bad medium to good results. In Artifact it was as either game losing or game winning, every time. Terrible design and in my opinion the game could of removed all rng entirely and it would of been an amazing niche competitive game. The problem though is, the ranking system, tournaments, and pay to play economy made competitive play boring with no rewards. I am not exaggerating when I say the game would of not been a failure if it had a solid visible Elo ranking system.

Second opinion: the entire design philosophy was a failure from day one. Dota has over 100 heros. Imagine a hearthstone style game were on day one you had 100 heroes to choose from, each with their own cards added to your deck and having four skills (like hero powers in hearthstone). Games remain fast while still being complex and keeping the spirit of Dota (100s of options). I believe valve has no clue what their audience wants.

<comment><USER3> > I believe valve has no clue what their audience wants.

Maybe that's the problem - if they were trying to make something they think the audience wants. The audience itself doesn't know what it wants, let alone anyone removed from it making guesses on their behalf.

The audience didn't know they wanted DotA or Minecraft until they were made.

<comment><USER4> The point about Minecraft is valid, but DotA grew incrementally over such a long time (and with such a heritage) that it is very clear the audience was more involved in its making than any single developer.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how they priced it.

It may be that RNG is actually less of a factor in Artifact than in other similar games, but boy does it FEEL stronger. Every turn in a CCG lets you draw cards, and maybe you don't get the card you need, but maybe your opponent didn't also, you don't know, but instantly. But in Artifact, every turn drops creeps in the lanes for both you and your opponent, so you can instantly see if RNG has blessed you or cursed you.

It doesn't even feel great to win when RNG is on your side sometimes. Your opponent has built a huge bruiser in an early lane that will just demolish you there and win the game, except a creep spawns in front of him, blocking all that damage. I mean, I didn't do that, that was just luck. I didn't make a good play or build a good deck to get that one extra turn, I just got lucky with creep spawns.

Sure, there's definitely more around it that got me to that point where I _could_ get lucky, I understand that, but that other work doesn't feel emphasized, the last-second luck does.

And the biggest failure of the Artifact team isn't in the design of this, it's the hubris of not listening to the players complaining about it. It doesn't matter if you build the fairest CCG in the land, if it feels like swingy garbage, nobody's going to play it and it's going to fail. Standing above in their white tower, yelling down "but the math says you're wrong" doesn't matter if nobody's having any fun.

<comment><USER6> > If the price was the only problem, you'd still expect to see people playing > draft regularly, at least in the interim, especially since there are free > drafts you can play. But there's more wrong with this game than just how > they priced it.

Fwiw, price _was_ my only problem and i still stopped playing. Why? Because it felt the game's intentions differed from mine. It felt like the game was trying to be Magic, where as i just wanted to play a card-dota _game_ \- not invest in some market, continually buying packs, etc.

In addition to this, the drama and complaints surrounding the market also made me feel like the game was doomed for failure. And the type of game it was made me not want to play it if it died _(unlike a single player game, where i 'd happily play regardless of other people)_.

Just my 2c / context.

<comment><USER5> Yeah, I'm not saying it wasn't a problem for anyone, but that there should be a solid core of people playing drafts (free or otherwise) if the base game itself was legitimately great, since the pricing issue effectively goes away there. Maybe it would still keep _you_ away, but it shouldn't have kept _everyone_ away. The fact that only about a hundred people are playing means that the problems have to run deeper.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Commercial failure, perhaps. I'd suggest not delivering _Half Life 3_ (or even _HL2: Episode 3_ ) is their biggest failing. All the resources in the world, and they're happy resting on their laurels. It's such a shame.

<comment><USER8> Indeed there's no level of success for a narrative FPS big enough to warrant waiting so long on such a valuable IP. Why let the workflow/team get stale?...the answer must be that engineering was rerouted to Steam or porting or something but they could've made at least tens of millions * several sequels by now...

<comment><USER9> When you control a near-monopoly App Store and can take 30% of revenue from so many successful developers, there's little incentive to actually make ambitious games

Steam is hundreds of times more profitable than any game could ever be.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> No the biggest issue wasn't the pricing structure.

Artifact was just not fun at all.

I've been playing a ton of MTG, HS, Gwent, MTGA, bought Artifact, played 5 hours, never touched the game again.

It's overengineered, unnecessary complex, too slow, too long, too random and at the end exhausting, frustrating and not that interesting.

Most people played one or two games of Artifact a day then moved too something else.

<comment><USER5> Exhausting is correct, I'd forgotten about that. A lot of games give you the "just one more" feeling, like you could have won, or could keep winning, if you just fired up another game right now and tried something just a little differently.

At the end of every game of Artifact, I felt like I needed to take a break and get some water. Talk about stream poison, if you have to psyche yourself up to get into every new game.

</comment></comment><comment><USER11> For me (and I think for most people) this quote from the article summed up why I did not play Artifact:

"However, it seems the biggest issue for Artifact was the pricing structure. First off you had to drop £15.99 to just buy the game, which would give you two starter decks and 10 bonus packs of cards. If you then wanted to get more cards, which would have been necessary if you wanted to build a top level deck unless you got incredibly lucky, you would either have to buy more packs at £1.49, win them in the game modes that require a ticket, which cost £3.75 for a pack of five, to enter, or simply buy the cards from the Steam Marketplace.

But the rarity of the strongest cards such as Axe, "a card you needed in 80 per cent of competitive decks," according to Swim, meant prices shot up. Within two days of launch a single Axe already cost more than the game itself. It felt like you had to put down a lot of money if you wanted to play with a competitive deck in the most competitive modes in the early days."

</comment><comment><USER12> For me, their business model was the biggest turn-off, I didn't even give it a try because of that.

Hearthstone is already strong in this market, they have $0 entry fee and only charge for the cards. It's a pay2win game, some like/accept it, and some don't. I don't. Because I'm not willing to pay some unknown amount of money for a game just to stay competitive everytime the meta changes. I play games for fun, and being destroyed in a game because of IRL money is no fun.

Now what I would consider as a strong alternative to Hearthstone, would be a game asking for a triple-A entry fee, and then charging nothing extra. In this game everyone would have the same chances, and nobody would have to feel bad just because they didn't invest enough money in a gambling scheme.

What Valve offered is a triple-A entry fee, and then charging for anything they can. Now how is this can ever be a good offer? I don't know. I simply ignored the game and moved on.

<comment><USER13> >Hearthstone is already strong in this market, they have $0 entry fee and only charge for the cards. It's a pay2win game, some like/accept it, and some don't. I don't. Because I'm not willing to pay some unknown amount of money for a game just to stay competitive everytime the meta changes. I play games for fun, and being destroyed in a game because of IRL money is no fun.

HS has actually pretty good system, I played it for first few years and spend almost no money on it (I got the adventure packs/tickets).

There are also a series on yt/twitch where players start from 0 and climb the ladder.

Given what HS could be I have to give it to Blizzard for balancing the free rewards to not be a grind-fest design to funnel ppl into buying packs.

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think they did the initial business model wrong, they should've started like hearthstone did, a totally free game with free cards, and the possibility to earn more free cards, and add the steam market later on or control the value early so it doesn't shoots up

</comment><comment><USER15> Responding to complaints about RNG by saying "actually our data shows that it's fair" is totally missing the point. People don't like that the game _feels_ too luck-based, whether or not it actually is.

<comment><USER16> It's funny because it's the exact sort of thing Elias and Garfield wrote about in their magnum opus on game design The Characteristics Of Games.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> They tripled down on the worst part of card games, paying to win.

<comment><USER18> Valve's revenue models are going to kill it. At least, kill it as a studio that can create high quality games. I not opposed to them making money and getting compensated for hard work but the level of greed is getting insane. For the Dota TI prize pool, they take 75% of the revenue from Battle Pass related sales (i.e. digital in-game items, like DLCs). Its not hard to understand why they do it, the profit is insane:

[https://dotesports.com/dota-2/news/the- international-2019-pr...](https://dotesports.com/dota-2/news/the- international-2019-prize-pool-surpasses-25-million)

However, why should the company ever spend the effort to build games? Making the Battle Pass content is vastly easier. I don't see how they are going to be able to wean themselves off such a juicy revenue stream.

Artifact was a result of this new reality. The game was designed from the get- go to optimize revenue from in-game digital items. Why should a digital card in a computer game cost $100? A rational person would realize it is an insane idea. I'm glad that Artifact crashed and burned.

I don't think Valve learned their lesson. The whole game industry is moving that way. E.g. free to play games with paid in-game items. I wish they could figure out a more healthy way to fund game development. Human nature being what it is, I'm not holding my breath.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I mean, this is exactly how card games work. People don't seem to have an issue buying into expensive Magic decks. You don't NEED to have the best though, no shame in drafting and pauper decks.

<comment><USER20> People are a lot more willing to dump money on a physical good that they provably own (because it's literally in their possession in their home) than on digital goods.

Artifact uses the microtransaction model to the very extreme, to the point where it costs real money to play a ranked game (not even to get new stuff, just to play a game). This has understandably turned off a huge number of people. With AAA games that have microtransactions, at least your initial outlay is buying a lot, and you don't _have_ to continue putting in money just to play it.

<comment><USER21> I think this is the key thing. The problem isn't that Valve charged too much. The problem is that _people thought_ Valve was charging too much. Why did they think that? It is because the pricing was too "in your face" and prevented you from actually playing the game. People will spend a lot [0] so long as they feel like they aren't being forced into it.

[0] [https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4by4e4/pol...](https://www.reddit.com/r/leagueoflegends/comments/4by4e4/poll_how_much_money_have_you_spent_on_league_of/?st=j6yljvcw&sh=30e30634)

<comment><USER20> > The problem isn't that Valve charged too much. The problem is that people > thought Valve was charging too much.

I don't think this is a meaningful distinction. The correct price is determined in large part by whatever people are willing to pay. The vast majority of the addressable customer base deciding that a price is too high means that it effectively is too high. Valve certainly hasn't maximized their profit at the current price level. And since the marginal cost of offering more product on digital goods is effectively zero, they have a wide range of options in addressing the problem, unlike manufacturers of physical goods who have a base price level of the cost of manufacture.

<comment><USER21> But what I am saying is that Valve could have kept the game effectively the same price and avoided the criticism by changing _how_ they charged the player.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I tried Artifact for a little while but got really into this other card game called Prismata around the same time. I suspect artifact would have done a lot better 5 years ago, when there weren't so many digital trading card games. Valve should have stuck to what they do best, which is waiting for people to make cool mods of their games and then buying / remaking them. Fortunately they seem to have wound up doing that anyways with Underlords.

</comment><comment><USER23> Price! People are not ready anymore to pay lot of money for one game. HearthStone which also needs lots of money in order to be competitive is also on decline. Just look at the twitch view counts (which indirectly indicates game popularity). 1-2 years ago HearthStone was at 2-4 position now usually it is at >15 position. People do not like that kind of monetization scheme any more.

</comment><comment><USER24> I'd say not capitalising on one of their greatest games is another huge failure as well..(HL3)

<comment><USER25> Not to defend them at all, but the longer it took to plan HL3, the longer it became a sounder business decision to just not do it for risk of not living up to the hype.

<comment><USER26> Duke Nukem Forever is one example of this.

But Black Mesa is a counterexample; they still haven't released Xen last time I checked, but everything they have released far exceeds expectations. Maybe Valve should pay that group to finish the HL series.

<comment><USER27> The first three maps of Black Mesa: Xen were just released a few weeks ago, actually.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzR3vllw6O0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzR3vllw6O0)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Pricing may have been a part of it but what did it for me was that it looks really complicated. I haven't played it so maybe it isn't but I am sure that just looking complicated kept a lot of people like me away from it.

</comment><comment><USER29> Nobody asked for a Valve card game.

We're all waiting for a '3' of any of their franchises.

<comment><USER3> "Nobody asked for" is an unproductive meme that gets parroted all too often. No one asked for Half-Life or Portal or DotA or even MtG either.

<comment><USER30> DotA was a well established Warcraft 3 custom game with the same name before Valve copied it.

<comment><USER3> Right, DotA was a mod no one asked for.

Portal was actually a similar thing. It started as a student game called Narbacular Drop. Valve hired that team, who turned the concept into Portal.

Likewise they hired Icefrog from DotA to work on DotA 2.

That's a good strategy.

<comment><USER31> It's an excellent strategy. To add to your examples: Team Fortress was originally a Quake mod, and Valve hired its creators to head Team Fortress 2's development. Counter-Strike was originally a Half-Life mod before Valve bought the rights and made CS:S, then CS:GO.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>