my fear

We elected a new Prosecuting Attorney a cycle back.

By all indications, he did his job well. He streamlined the office and made it work better.

Of course there was a fly in the ointment. The job paid a whole lot less than he had been making as an attorney, and his financial house was not in order when he took the job.

He negotiated a deal where one of the entities he oversaw paid him directly (I don’t understand that one), and he would repay someone else. But when he missed a huge payment he resigned.

Now he has declared bankruptcy. He shows debts of over a million and assets of little more than his house and car, but he owes more on both than they are worth.

But what caught my eye was that he still has $122,000 in student loans from the 1990’s. It seems he has been paying on them for 11 to 19 years and he still owes that much.

Payments on those loans would be in the $1400 a month range.

What scares me about my grandkids future is not their intelligence or their social skills, but that to get what they see as the necessary education for their chosen life, they take on too much debt.

I read that the average student graduates with about $30,000 in debt, and one estimate is that the repayment rate is about the same as payments on a decent car, which would not be bad, but the now ex-student probably has one of those too. Another estimate was that about half the student loans in California are not being paid down (interest only payments, or less).

If my brilliant grandkids all get high paying jobs they may be in tall grass, but if one of them would like to follow a less financially rewarding career, they better know how to cook beans and eat cheap.