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.

A word of warning

As much as my blog entries are too subjective, this one just might take the cake for subjectivity.

I'm about to get all touchy feely right here.

100k plus is a very economic state, one this country has cultivated and grown.  Lawyers, doctors, PhD's.

But that has bleed into the normal spectrum of society.

My hope and dreams of being an accountant; at 18 it was hopes and dreams of being an accountant to the stars.  The end state I believed I may have been capable of was all but out of the question when 2 crushing realities were realized.

The first being the realization of what 100k plus means for the regular layman.  Of which I will elaborate on,  and the other being that I'm stuck in this place, for good and bad.

This is home.  Pittsburgh.

An average in the city of average.

They call it the City of Champions, but its more the city of the middle class and more so lower class.  I guess that all American society as the income gap grows to a much greater extent than the American dream was outlined to be.

So back to my touchy feely story.

The feeling of being so debt ridden almost outweighs the feeling of being poor.  See the poor are free to live as their income allows, with assistance from social systems if them utilize them to their fullest extent or even at all, while debt just sits there, crushing hopes and hard work and totally devolving any future reality of having an American dream.

The Life Equation seems to be squashed by the American Dream.  In a sense of where I head in my writing, more so my rambling, it is a positive step towards a more universally marketed product.  In the path to my eventually happiness or content state of being, its a crushing blow, but one that was realized during the accumulation of that 100k plus.

See, as I make the average wage, actually my dreams, more so goals, before 30 goals to be exact were meager.

Make 50k. Modest current economic state goals in a rising middle class worker world.

I, at 31, lay just under that so just behind that meager, considering a family to support, goal.

How can I complain about that?

Well, first off (well more first off, as evidenced by this blog, I'm a complainer), the only goal that was accomplished was solving the Rubix Cube, a goal I've backslid on and cannot longer complete.

I kid, and I digress.

I found a wife, a house, and a masters.

All good things, but not all easy things.

And most certainly not without a constant looming 100k plus with a 50k minus job.

And the constant realization of the death of ones dream, the seath of the American dream, and sure fire failure.

Hey, its depressing, but its 100k plus life.

Options

I try to formulate goals every year, month, or really as I have the motivation and time.

When those stars align, which isn't as often as I'd like or need, I put my future's goals on pen and paper and more importantly, in my busy, and forgetful, head.

Goals are good to have but only get one so far.  The more realistic gameplan would be to formulate and act on options!

I include way to many and's in my ramblings.  As a disclaimer.

But as an 100ker, options are limited.

I currently have 3 bills over 5hundy a month, work 7 days a week(although I promise myself I wouldnt bring that up again as I do at every turn), and am trying to raise a family, albeit only one child.

But options fo exist.

Everyone with any job, had the same set of options I have there.

1) Deal with it.  Which most do and will continue to do based on their given set of circumstances, 100ker or not.

2) Quit.  Well, thats a limited and desperate option with too many negative consequences to list. But nonetheless, an option.  One my wife puts out there for me often, but i bitch often so its tit for tat.

3) Get a new job.  I'm working on that but anyone in that circumstance knows the difficulty and hard work that option requires. 

4) Flee.  How that option came up so quick may be the severity of my situation, only magnified by my own thought process, but also an option.  With the most and numerous negative consequences.

5) Quit having goals and plans and options.  Which to myself doesn't seem plausible.

6) Have faith.  Have some sort of stitched together form of hope and faith in one of the above, more positive, options.

So there are options,  vague as they may be; we all have them, but wheres the line drawn in order to pick the correct one.  Not relying on myself is whats necessary, in a sense, and for another blog that I'm not capable or faithful enough to compose.

Selah with options.

Metrics

There are many decisions made in this world that are based on very subjective points of views and opinions. 

The decision to attend college, or what to 'do when you grow up' should not be based on pure feeling and luck.  Your opinion matters but its not going to get you to the best place in life.

Many career paths are muttled with failure and wrong turns.  If you happen to be on a career path to a passionate dream and you are willing to work at all costs, that dream can become a reality.

If you're like most of us, a career is something you do, and made a limited choice to attempt to do while in college, not something you are.  Now that veers to another blog in another category of what one is and how to define that? But for this time and this place of wasted internet space, the choice is the ultimate answer.

I do have aspirations to create an entire life expense book but my 'passion', out of strong hatred is student loans.

Now, while racking up more student loans I received my MBA from a small Pennsylvanian school most likely not known outside of the tri-state.  There was a certain professor, who like all influential teachers one meets throughout their educational journey, made an impression, an impression that I should have understood and recieved prior to my secondary educational experience.  As I had not recieved this type of tutelage, I learned of a decision making process using solely metrics, and making that gut feeling, guess of a decision, one with numeric value, supporting the side chosen or not.

Using statistical evidence, and a linear regresion program, I believe it would be possible to map out an educated guide to life with specific emphasis on the 'Student Loan Decision'.

Locating, and expensing, the statistical program may be difficult but I, as well as openly recommending, plan on reading the school book I failed to open, Smart Data by James Rodgers.

Statistical evidence is the only basis one can know a more informed decision was made.  And when it comes to life, and student loans, we cant afford to be wrong.

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.

The Choice

100k plus is a choice, one that I was not aware of the implications and thus I sit here trying to find a forum to educate future generations, but it was still a choice to make.

As a 'lower' middle class teenager, college was most certainly an option, especially for someone like myself who excelled in that environment, but there were other choices, many of which I see my peers having made and doing much better than myself at this point.

Well, I guess there wasnt many choices, college, mooch, or work, as my simple mind can put together.  I chose college as did many of my equals, intellectually (ha that's a stretch for myself to deem myself intellectual but we'll run with it) not all economically, in high school.  Others who did not see the benefit of more schooling chose work.  I wont go into option b, but I assume there is a choice to do nothing and allow those, society and family, around you to cover the tab.

Work presented many benefits that college did not. Money.

I started working at age 15 and made a couple thousand each yeah but no more than 8k until I start my professional career.  Maybe that was a lack of motivation to be something more while being an academic but either way I did not make an above poverty level wage until 23 while those who chose work made a full time workers salary, whether that be even minimum wage, still add in up to around 15k a year.  Others took it further and work allowed them to make much more than that, thus receive the benefits of financial freedom prior to college graduates.

Work seems like a much more viable option, but the ceiling is much lower, or the potential ceiling I must say is much lower. But that's all obvious.

But that's also all a choice.

A necessary choice by a mind much to young and inexperienced to understand the life long implocations or either choice.

But that's another argument for another blog.

The choice I chose was 100k plus, one I assumed and hope would lead to an accounting position, a career path I was told in high school was booming.

I never made it to that career path, and thus I sit here and bitch, or preach, or try to pen words to show others(ha like who? I must ask) to make a more informed choice.

A New York Time article(today's for some reference other than my babbling) called 'Falling wages at factories squeeze the middle class' make the choice of Work seem much less viable, and the choice in general much more complex.  It basically sums up that manufacturing positions, which I saw some 'friends' pursue, do not simply pay as well as they once did.  Also obvious,  at least in my eyes, with that field being one sent to foreign (The Elephant and the Dragon, a economic commentary on the rise of both nations worth a read) labor markets that present a much cheaper landscape.  But is that what we must accept.

The article also goes on to explain and show the government's hand in the overall industry, as evidently seen in the auto manufacturing industry, while wages still have succumbed to a decreasing trend. 

One which may seem to be a contradiction in a democratic nation.

For the people?

For the industry.

For the company.

So how is work versus schooling going to win the debate?

I myself have seen wages by a manufacturing company in my community which was taken over by an Indian company, slashed.  A position that was somewhat well paying and held by one of my peers as I went off to college and saw him be able to support himself with the company but the company has been reduced to minimum or close to minimum wage positions for jobs that are above the duties of many workers at that same wage.

This trend is not a welcome in the battle of work versus school but that is what also must be understood, trends at the time of The Choice.

The Choice is not easily formulated, even with my hopeful Life Equation, but its a necessary and inevitable choice.

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.