Scoreboards

I've written before about the onset of depression that financial burden brings, and its an obvious in this world.

In a society based around a financial competitive economy, the strongest survive and the weakest live off the taxation scraps.  Some days I wish I were the one living off those scraps.

Working 7 days being an 100k pluser feels like hard work.  But what if thats wasted energy with too much friction and backforce to gain any positive momentum forward?

I'm an avid football fan, college and NFL, as many are, so I cant say I'm much different from any college graduated middle class male, but in seeing the sport, there is a lot of "hard work" put into getting to those levels, whether it be the player or the coaching and support staff.  But that hard work appears to pay off.

But what is the distinction?

On HBO's series Hard Knocks, theyre currently covering the Texans, and more so the NFL celebrity that is JJ Watt.  He appears to put more hard work in than anybody.  It appears hes working hard after practice, hes very disciplined, speaking of a 10 hour sleep schedule, whcih according to him rejuvenates the body and allows for more physical and mental awareness.  I cant imagine the sacrifice that takes, trying to live on a 14 hour day.  I wouldnt have a kid, ill tell you that.

But the fact remains, I do, and I am trying to support and start and raise a family, with good values, and trying to center life around that, when the definition of hard work is sacrifice, or at least a large component.

So I sacrifice a lot of my time to work, work inefficiently apparently as my hard work only drives me backward.

Where does a 100k pluser attempt to break the mold and beat the overwhelming financial odds?

Well, I cant say i have that answer but I can send out the siren song, which in the end appears to be me only bitching and maybe fruitless for any other struggling 100k pluser.

Just there I realized that this sole bitching wasnt going to help.

Perhaps a support group.

I know noone with 100k plus in student debt.  At least noone as vocal in complaining about it.

Twos sites i quickly found were Student Loan Sherpa and Ready for Zero.

Both appear to have started as blogs and gained momentum, which i quote have not.

But more research is always needed.

The support group sounds like a good idea, but how does something like that start, where do you meet, will there be truth or just unwanted nonsense, is it possible?

Maybe a possible ad pitch for a blog and then a proposal.  Or maybe just do it, paper, online, where?

These are spit ball ideas in a blog entry that was meant to define myself as a lifetime loser, as a failure.

But these ideas could make us all get something we desperately need, hope.

Hope for zero, hope to not call ourselves 100k plusers.

I dont know the severity of this problem, I know I lay at the bottom but I know I can't be the only one.

This is my plea to myself for a true siren song and the courage to sing it.

Excuses

I was having a real tough time coming up with something to write about, and usually my topic for forced writing around those times is motivation. Motivation because of my lack of at those times.  Well this time it may be based on the hangover or the head cold or the lack of sleep.

There in lays the problem, the problem with student loans, the problem with amounting debt, the problem with our, American society.  We base our lives off excuses, excuses derived from entitlement.

And there are many who recognize this obvious epidemic.  You see it in the news daily, media sources push the sense of entitlement to a new level with each passing day as many minorities and majorities protest against injustices.  While these injustices do exist, and awareness is key, what happened to going into the system and trying to change it from the ground up, through education and job growth, and then empowerment through the position to be able to make choices to change things for the better.

But no, it is deemed acceptable to sit around and bitch.  Hell, as im doing now.  I'm not the vocal minority, even though I most certainly should be with 100k plus in student loans. 

Real change doesn't come from temporary fixes brought about in response to the vocal.  But change is brought about by action.  And most of the times this must be done on the personal level, for to change society and the way of the world is much more difficult, and I can find innumerable excuses to fight that internal urge, and external work that would need to be put into such a change.

But we will continue to rely on excuses, and blogs.

An Ignorance fueled by Entitlement.

I've heard a couple good quotes regarding excuses, and more so life and what occurs.  They both have the same meaning but using different verbiage.

The first is from one of the more successful persons from my graduating class who owns and operates several establishments, and in your early 30s that is quite an accomplishment. Im sure its an adaptation of a quote but quality and true, true to the excuse bearer:

Life is 10% of what happens to us and 90% of how we react.

Bad grammar if you ask me, but like I said, I'm the bitcher using words and shes the worker establishing herself and her business.

The other is from one of Joe Paterno's biographies, the last notable one after his passing.  It was taken by him from Bear Bryant, both highly successful and both who did not make many excuses.  It was a poem by Heartsill Wilson that the Bear used in a public appearance:

This is the beginning of a new day
God has given me this to use as I will
I can waste it or use it for good
What I do today is very important because I am
Exchanging a day of my life for it
When tomorrow comes, this day will be gone forever
Leaving something in its place I have traded for it
I want it to be a gain,  not loss - good, not evil
Success, not failure, in order that I
Shall not forget the price I paid for it.

More Choices

There are many more choices in life other than to college or not.

But when college is the option then the choice is what to study.  Sure, where, how, and other questions also arise but what is the most important of those choices.

Talking with a 16 year old cousin, I find myself preaching on the words I write here. To not college.  And if I could go back I wouldnt change my decision, but I would hopefully do it better. Think about it more and realize there are many more years after college. Years that the decisions made before, through, and after are affected.

So the choice of what to study and ultimately Be is one that shouldn't be made lightly, but one that any young person does not know because they've barely experienced to know what is.  But nonetheless we give them that life defining choice and let them run into whatever life they choose, which the direction is chosen in some instances but paths and obstacles arise that were not necessarily by choice.

He, my cousin, wants to be an aerospace engineer, which to me sounds like a child saying I want to be an astronaut.  To say that you will start into this career path is one thing but getting through is a whole different, long and brutal story.  Ive known many an engineering student move elsewhere,  which are those unseen and unchosen paths and obstacles.  So I heeded him that warning along with a warning to chose a field like that, he also said mechanical engineering which seems a bit more obtainable but also a grueling effort is needed to succeed while in school.

I, as an accounting major, took a job for jobs sake and still believe in the accounting major as an adequate opportunity with a heed of warning that you, unlike I, must put in the work to find a position in the field.  But many come out with 'business' or 'management' or 'communication' or 'miscellaneous' degrees and look for miscellaneous jobs, not unlike myself.  So I ask what then is the point of those degrees.  And the point of educational institutions that give 'knowledge' but actually give nothing of real value, physical or future, such as guarantee of a position.  A guarentee of a grade is giving and even when that is sufficient, a job is still not given.

Maybe im being a child of my generation.

Entitled.

Maybe im just bitching. As always.

But read and know that the choice of 'what' is a fine point as to know to college or not to college.

Book Title

Its becoming more apparent to me that this is the forum to attempt to launch a book, whether read or words in a forest that fall and no one hears.

Nonetheless writing can take place with pen and paper and be much faster or typing can take place and be a little less faster but more concrete, at least more visible.

Im not sure visibility is the most important factor, but importance is the most important factor. Importance, and relevance.  Where can I as an opinionated and educationally desired individual add any value to educate others through my self education and experience.

Thus, I blog.

Blogging, and talking, and notching about debt is one thing; the question here lies what can I add to the conversation,  especially that I could include in my dream, of a book and of financial freedom, as they, the proverbial they, deem it.  But a debt adverse lifestyle would be ideal. 

One can either divest and throw away future potential or the lucky ones can invest in a future that provides that which they are working for, whether that be fulfillment, happiness, other's happiness,  but not for yesterday and yesterdays problems and financial burdens.  But that is the system banking and financial instruments have allowed.  One where the few with available financial freedoms allow the many with many financial obligations and lack of finances to secure debts so aggregious that their lives are owed to that debt.

I talk in philosophies but they are truths that many live with and any sense of worth outside of our earthly existence is diminished by our earthly existence.  Living contradictions for the life not lived.

Still we must look past finances, even 100k plus finances, and live to fight and educate and evolve another day.  So that future generations are burdened by the things worth burdening over, our reason for existence, our search for knowledge, our search for meaning, our search for other intangibles that finances could never bring.

Again, way too existential.

But when you're 100k plus that's where the mind goes, to philosophical reasoning as to the necessity of the 100k plus.

I hope none of this on anybody and am slowly, very dramatically slowly, to know that no one else will be in this position ever, whether that's just through meaningless words on a meaningless space of the internet, or hopeful action in the world I reside in.

Dear Obama....seriously

Dear Obama,

There is a crisis in America.  Many news articles and popular opinions have polarized on what to do with this crisis but it is most known.  So for me to sit here and elaborate on the student debt crisis would be futile.

I will, for my own sake and worth, make my situation known to you.  I went to college for more than 4 years, 4 and a half.  So my debt, and my failure, have led to the problem of my personal student loan crisis.  I received over 100k in private student loan debt, which is not the most talked about secondary educational means. And while I have in my own situation attempted to blame my father as I was just a signer to the loans, not the distributor and financial advisor, who was him. 

Is that right, or even lawful?  Without the initial education and advising, financial burdens like this should not be made available.  I was going to elaborate but allowing private companies the ability to issue such debt is irresponsible.  The housing industry, which was an obvious bubble, and proved itself to be just that, made light of this unnecessary financial obligations that were placed on consumers that were well under qualified.

If those individuals, who couldn't meet their housing payments with working careers and more than one income reached the point where a large majority of the consumers failed to meet the terms of the loans that were given to them by irresponsible for-profit corporations, how can students with no established income or credit history be given such burdens?

Student loans are a necessity in a society that has allowed its secondary educational system be turned into what the medical industry is now turning into, private corporations.  These student loans should be regulated and allow for consolidation, interest rate reduction, and, most importantly, income based payments, for private and public student debt.  These, however, are only necessary actions after the fact.  Before, education and advising is necessary and up to regulation and an established infrastructure that should be created by the governmental system in which they reside.

And that governmental system is you, the president. The lawmakers, the politicians, the ones whom the corporations have provided lobbyists in order to sway opinion when public opinion is such little real value.  The opinion and circumstance of the consumer has been devolved in an economy based on consumer need versus consumer focus.  And consumer need is really the result of solely a bottom line profit, allowing for rising prices of those consumer needs.

There is no overarching solution, but there are places to start. 

An honest response is the only place to start that I request of you.

Dear Obama....Student Loan Debt Consolidation

ehhmm.....Private Student Loan Debt Consolidation.

On my main source of news, Yahoo, there was just an article on is debt consolidation and if it is a scam.

I'm sure there are many scams out there, in fact, there have now been articles lately of student loan consolidation programs that are now scams.  Obviously it is a good racket to get into with desperate debtors with little to no options.

What are the options....default?  Well, no, except in the most forgone financial position, in which I have not educated myself with.  But I'm assuming its just about as easy to default on student loan debt as it is to get elected to the presidency, to which I'm trying to write to, but revert back to blogging on.

In a letter, in fact, I would want to address that there are very little options for private student loans offenders, in which, who is in fact the offender.  The consumer or the provider of the product that is only available to furnish the acquisition of a paper?  I'm framing myself, and all private student loan consumers, the offenders since this is a financial means to an end that should not be utilized in any circumstance.  As with any financial debt, there should be a  product of collateral such as a house or an item, but this is solely the futures of all cosigners and debtors as this debt is un-expellable. 

I, at this moment, 7 years into my loans, have paid around $70,000 on the 100k that I owe, while that balance has only decreased by around $10,000.  I have not missed a payment, I have not paid less than the minimum amount, which is, in fact, more than would be of a mortgage.  The rate isn't sky high but it is an average of 7 1/2 percent variable, which is subject to sky rocket upon good interest rates.  I don't know if I foresee that, with a poor economic landscape currently in America, but I, personally, was always used to a bad personal economy.  

I have attempted to consolidate this debt, with a consignor, which was unsuccessful as one requirement was that I make the amount of debt that I owe in a year.  And if that were the case, I wouldn't be sitting here wasting my time on what is a dream of a letter but more of a blog, and even more a journal of feelings instead of cold hard facts.

Consolidation should be available for that very fact, that I am a responsible consumer in that I have not expelled or not paid the debt I have, unknowingly, taken.  I say unknowingly as I was a child of 18 who signed papers that I was neither privy, nor cared, to understand what the consequences of the debt entailed.  But I was an ignorant consumer as is what should be prevented in the future, to not allow this ignorance to keep taking place but order mandatory education, provided at the expense of the loan providers.  This should be enacted, and I'm not aware of the history of the proposal or enactment of such laws.  Which is where this blog lacks.  But, experience, it does not.

So, as I should be allowed to consolidate student loans, I must consolidate this banter.