They are very entitled and foolish but they do make pretty good money. $70k and $90k is nothing to sneeze at. The median household income in the US is a bit under $60k. They’re making $100k more than that. They seem to have made mistakes as young people, never learned and let it snowball. At that income and how relatively inexpensive their house is, they should be doing well.
I don’t understand their neighborhood or the apparent private tuition for 3 somehow being $15k. And if the kid is 17, shouldn’t he be out of HS in a few months? What is the college plan? And why are they charging medical bills? We’ve had some unexpected and big bills and the hospital has always let us make interest free payments that were pretty low as long as we paid something each month.
Is there a followup story with this. Did they get out of debt?
The story was only posted 2 weeks ago, I'm guessing this is a current situation.
I think it was written over the summer from the references to prom and changing schools but I’m sure not much has changed between the interview and this month when it was published.
I agree when I first started reading I thought this could be us but then the exceptions come in. We do pay off student loans, we do get cars fixed smartly instead of losing money, have higher income, lower mortgage, kids go to public school.
People don’t take the time to get a good financial advisor or tax guy they just think let me cash the 401k out and the taxes will work itself out. But that isn’t the case. And they can’t build an emergency fund because their house is figuratively on fire.
But these people instead or trying or learning are burying their head in the sand. And in the other article posted, economics definitely plays a part in it too. Wage stagnation, prices going higher, more available credit, higher expectations.
Post by farmvillelover on Nov 24, 2018 0:41:08 GMT -5
Eff these people and their sense of entitlement. TBH I don't have any sympathy. The part about their son getting $15 in sushi from Whole Foods? Came across as just being funny to them. Their life is one big snowball of bad financial decisions. It's not like this is a case of people who don't or can't know any better. They do but they just don't care.
That story is pretty gross. They are coming across as if they are almost proud of their complete recklessness, especially having 3 kids.
Guarantee the follow up in the future will be that they filed for bankruptcy and screwed over all of the creditors, etc. that they owed money to. Their clear entitlement lifestyle is really most likely to sting their kids in the future. I have no sympathy for them.
Post by cabbagecabbage on Nov 24, 2018 7:58:20 GMT -5
So I read it again and I didn’t see direct statements or insinuations they are in a HCOLA They are total image chasers so they throw in the details that their neighbor has a Jaguar and all that BS but I live in a modest Chicago suburb with houses that cost similar to theirs and some neighbors drive luxury cars and some drive beaters. I could say similar throwaway brags about my neighbors and have it be technically true. These people are sad in their fixation on image and money and I’m sure their language skews toward image inflation. They are probably jealous of their Jaguar neighbors but not noticing their late model compact car neighbors. All we know is they studied in Boston and live in the suburbs of a NE city. Maybe it’s Pittsburgh or Syracuse or some other medium sized city. I don’t think it could possibly be a large city for those prices.
No sympathy here either for these idiots. They've taken a large sum of money from their not-wealthy parents and squandered it, he sleeps with headphones so his thoughts don't keep him awake, and their relationship has deteriorated to the point that the only thing keeping them married is not being able to afford living apart - AND THEY THINK THEIR KIDS DON'T KNOW ANY OF THIS.
I don't get how they can keep asking the student loan creditors to just keep pushing back when they have to start paying them. In my experience, you eventually run out of options. Deferrment on federal loans is 3 years I believe.
I don't get how they can keep asking the student loan creditors to just keep pushing back when they have to start paying them. In my experience, you eventually run out of options. Deferrment on federal loans is 3 years I believe.
I wondered this too especially since their household income is so high, I don’t see how they can keep saying it is a financial hardship. Student loan creditors don’t care if you have credit card debit generally and like you said, you can’t defer federal loans very long.
I know someone who registers for a single class a year at the local community college that he doesn’t go to in order to help him defer his student loans. He’s years out of school. :/
Lol, if my family swung by the grocery store to grab something for dinner and teenage me came back with sushi and a smoothie, which is probably almost $30 including tax. Let's just say my mother would not be pleased.
Lol, if my family swung by the grocery store to grab something for dinner and teenage me came back with sushi and a smoothie, which is probably almost $30 including tax. Let's just say my mother would not be pleased.
This article is certainly an anxiety trigger.
This is also killing me! I’m a grown ass adult who isn’t in over my head in debt and I almost had a heart attack when I bought a poke bowl at Wegmans one day on a whim and it was $14. My mother would have had no qualms telling teenage me to GTFO with that nonsense unless I was buying it with my own money.
Post by imojoebunny on Nov 24, 2018 22:16:22 GMT -5
My empathy for these people is low. They made a series of poor choices, despite having other options, given their education, and ended up with, not just with no retirement, at 46 years old, despite earning a lot more than the average, but in significant debt. They wasted their opportunities. I am friends with people who make less, who live in neighborhoods, others would not, find second incomes, to send their kid/kids to private school, I have no issues with that, but they make the sacrifices. This couple doesn’t. That 15k a year, for 12 years, is a big part of their problem, as is going into large amounts of debt for an education they didn’t use, and buying/leasing houses and cars they can’t afford. A few thousand a year here and there in multiple categories, it adds up. You can’t fix that shopping at goodwill. I can’t imagine how much money they have wasted on interest alone.
Also they think that Betsy DeVos is going to save them and wipe out their debt. Right sure. Keep thinking that.
I read that differently- I thought they heard that all of the debt in forebearance was going to be called in so they would have to pay it.
I don’t get the point of these articles unless there are steps and updates. I gather there are lots in similar situations who that would be helpful for. This is just....a story?
I know someone who probably has a lot in common with this family. Champagne taste on a beer budget and wanting to keep up with the joneses.
The person I know has a luxury car, luxury shoes and bags and gets blow outs constantly. her social media is all posts of upper class events and things that give off the vibe that she is wealthy. She is far from it.
Despite getting 13k per family member per year from her in laws ( the max allowed as a gift for tax purposes), they are constantly fighting over their lack of money because it’s spent on nonsense.
Also, these people in the article have no interest in reducing their debt and spending. They said their plan is for life insurance to pay for everything when one of them dies.
I have no empathy for them either. My brother and his wife do not have a college education. They live in a MCOL area and maybe make 80k combined. They save like crazy, have zero credit card debt because they spend within their means. They have two kids and make it work because they don’t keep up with the Jones. They also don’t shop at WF.
Post by HoneySpider on Nov 25, 2018 10:09:31 GMT -5
I hate these kinds of articles. They made bad choices....ok, that happens. But to know you made bad choices and continue to do so while having this "woe is me" attitude? Yeah no, not feeling sorry for you.
We live on less than half of their salary in a HCOL, and we own our house (our mortgage is more than theirs). We made the decision for me to SAH for a while and know that things will be tight and we have to adjust our spending and expectations accordingly. It's stressful sometimes but we are managing to make it through with no cc debt and paying all of our bills on time, including my SL. And the stress is definitely not that intense that I'm considering divorce.
Post by dr.girlfriend on Nov 25, 2018 10:57:58 GMT -5
I'm stuck somewhere between empathizing and being so mad at them. They have obviously gotten help -- from their parents, from the school who seems to be giving them a hell of a deal on tuition to try to insulate the kids from the parents' mess -- and yet are still digging themselves deeper. But, on the other hand, I think that they are both seriously in denial and she at least is depressed, and I sympathize with the idea of a problem being so insurmountable that it's easier to just do whatever you can to pretend it doesn't exist. There was a time when DH and I were engaged but not married yet and I had just started my first job out of postdoc and we had a few financial hits in a row, and I worried about money CONSTANTLY. Like, I would be at work, working with a patient, and suddenly realize I had spaced out to worry about money. I can't imagine how numb you would be after living like that for years, and how it might sap the motivation to actually try to change things.
It may sound hokey, but I think this board really saved me from potentially going down a wrong path. I first got on to talk about buying a house and the board was like, "Um...you are nowhere NEAR ready to buy a house" and at first I didn't want to hear it, but the more I looked around on here (well, back on The Knot) the more I realized all the things I wasn't considering. And that has happened at least a dozen times over the years -- everything from making sure I have adequate life insurance to letting me know when mortgage rates dropped and how to refinance (2.75, y'all!), to advocating for a salary bump that literally increased my salary almost 30%. DH has always been very "head-in-the-clouds" about money -- he grew up dirt poor and just doesn't seem to "get" a lot of money issues. He's totally on board when I explain it to him, but left to his own devices he's more of a "I'm going to quit my job and direct the next Hollywood blockbuster" kind of guy. I don't think he on his own would have been able to help me much -- before he met me he had never made a reservation at a restaurant, and considered himself rich when he had more than $20 in the bank. You guys gave me the larger picture in time for me to start making the right decisions early on. They don't have that kind of sounding board, and instead are enabling the hell out of each other.
I'm glad it wasn't just me. I was sort of hyperventilating a little bit reading that.
At the very least AT THE VERY LEAST someone needs to tell them the most important thing:
If you don't pay your student loans, they will take it out of your social security and then you will be well and truly fucked if you don't get your shit together NOW.
The article was mind boggling and all but just commenting to say I didn't know this. (I don't actually have any student loans though and I'm already collecting SS).
I'm glad it wasn't just me. I was sort of hyperventilating a little bit reading that.
At the very least AT THE VERY LEAST someone needs to tell them the most important thing:
If you don't pay your student loans, they will take it out of your social security and then you will be well and truly fucked if you don't get your shit together NOW.
The article was mind boggling and all but just commenting to say I didn't know this. (I don't actually have any student loans though and I'm already collecting SS).
If they are federal loans, yep. They can also garnish wages.
I can't believe they basically just burned her mother's money. Omfg. Appalling.
That said, they could probably dig their way out of this mess depending on the interest rates of their various debts. Their mortgage amount seems fine on their income (we have almost $500k in mortgage debt and our income isn't that much higher than theirs) but continuing to finance stuff they can't afford is obviously killing them. If they're not willing to pull their kids from private school or skip sushi and smoothies I'm not sure there's much to be done.
I'm glad it wasn't just me. I was sort of hyperventilating a little bit reading that.
At the very least AT THE VERY LEAST someone needs to tell them the most important thing:
If you don't pay your student loans, they will take it out of your social security and then you will be well and truly fucked if you don't get your shit together NOW.
The article was mind boggling and all but just commenting to say I didn't know this. (I don't actually have any student loans though and I'm already collecting SS).
I didn’t know this either. We are paying on our loans and not collecting SS now, but good to know for the future.
I just did my budget this morning and realized we overspent for the month (well, I knew we did, I just didn't know the hard numbers until I added them up). So reading this made me feel better lol. We will pull that money we spent out of savings.
I can see how easily things snowball. We have been struggling a lot to stay within budget since we relocated this summer. Everything costs so damned much and even thought we don't buy a lot of things, each time you eat out or go to an event or basically do anything that involves living, it adds up quickly. I can see how it would add up even more quickly for a family of 5 than for our family of 2.
However. That's life and you can't just throw your hands up and do whatever you want anyway. They have a high income IMO. It's more than double my HHI and I make my student loan payment every month and have no consumer debt at all. We don't have kids, but that was also a deliberate choice so I have limited sympathy for those who choose to have a bunch of them and then complain how expensive it is. It's not like that isn't something you chose. At the very least you could have stopped at 1 or 2 if you can't manage your money. I understand the importance of having kids (to some people) but I don't understand the importance of having 3 when you can't afford it.
Anyway. I wish them luck but they are going to have to seriously change their mindset if they want to stop this. The fact that they paid off debt with money from their parents and then ended up right back where they started is kind of gross, especially since their parents are not wealthy. It was probably a big sacrifice for them to receive that gift and they have just squandered it.
We will all end up paying for these people when they can’t afford their own retirement and senior-induced infirmity. I don’t find any of it funny.
I swear to God I wonder how this will one day trickle down to us and our kids and so on. I see some clients that although they made plenty of money during their working careers, they managed to spend it all and leverage against their home so that into retirement, they literally have almost nothing in assets. Of course they have social security but even almost the max in SSI ($2700~ in CA) isn't enough to pay for everything seniors will need: - housing - medical expenses - food - transp - utilities
I truly wonder how those with no game plan will survive without basically up and relocating. Which a lot of people here end up doing, I guess (Palm Desert, etc).
Not making light of their situation, but I feel like this article could be a great case study for high schoolers learning to budget.
A) don't let things pile up like this B) If you could go back in time and advise them against 2 of their prior finance mistakes, which would it be? why? C) name some things they could do to cut back on their spending now.
It could lead to some GREAT personal finance discussions.
...and, this post was a timely reminder for me to update my net worth spreadsheet where I track our retirement savings, all of our SL balances, mortgage, savings, car loans, the works. There but for the grace of god go I...
I can totally appreciate the feeling of not wanting to know the total number on SLs, etc. Calvin and I finished law school in 2006 and 2007, and it was not a good time to be a baby lawyer. I avoided putting all the numbers together in one place for a long time because I was overwhelmed. We knew the SL starting balance was around $260k combined, and we were making LCOL money. It wasn't great that I avoided looking at the total picture, but at least we a) were paying on the loans the whole time (what, you can't just defer forever?) and b) we didn't make any major financial decisions that would put us further in the hole before we fully got our hands around it. In August 2012 I finally started my master spreadsheet. At the time we owed $220k on SLs and had a net worth of $-120k. It wasn't a fun picture to put together, but it made it really clear what we needed to do. It'll be years before we're totally done, but we've come so, so far. Our SL balances are down to around $114k, and our net worth is up hundreds of thousands. Certainly didn't get there by way of Whole Foods, Nordstrom instead of rentals, and leased cars... I know a lot of people who don't have a good model for that kind of financial diligence though, and without a clear goal it's hard to make progress, and easy to let it slip away.
...and, this post was a timely reminder for me to update my net worth spreadsheet where I track our retirement savings, all of our SL balances, mortgage, savings, car loans, the works. There but for the grace of god go I...
I can totally appreciate the feeling of not wanting to know the total number on SLs, etc...
Way to go!
You just inspired me to check my own SL account. I graduated law school in 2009 with $225k in loans, ugh. As of my next payment in 6 days, I will be officially down to owing 5 figures instead of 6, yay! I plan to finish paying them off in the next 5 years or earlier.
I pay over $50k a year between my student loans and childcare for one kid, so I get how insurmountable these expenses can seem. We put off having a kid for years until we could comfortably afford one given my loan repayments, and made a lot of other life choices based on those substantial financial considerations. But these people completely pretend their loans don’t exist. It’s pretty rich to claim financial hardship to defer loans for decades and to get deeply discounted private school tuition when, really, they are just making very poor financial choices and spending money they don’t have. I feel for them a bit because the stress must be literally killing them, but they dug their hole - and then quickly dug it again after her hardworking, frugal parents bailed them out.
I would not be able to look at myself if my parents gave me 20,000 to get out of debt and I ended up in a worse situation. That is appalling.
Congrats to everyone who is paying off their SLs. I finally started to pay attention to mine this year, and I feel so much more in control of the situation than when I was avoiding logging into my account for years. Ignorance is not really bliss.