It always seems to me there is a tremendous and marked difference between those who graduated from college in 2006 through 2009 versus those who graduated even a year later. I graduated from college in 2010, and I truthfully (and have talked about this with peers) almost had no lived experience of the recession. I found a job right away, while at that stage those even a year or two in front of me were scrambling for other options (which left many with second degrees/additional debt). Sometimes I think the older millennials in this group need their own category all together....i really feel for them.
Interesting. My wife graduated in 2009 and we did the grad school cause no jobs route. Our plan was to leap frog - I worked she went to school, then vice versa - but there weren't any jobs. So she did grad school while I finished my undergrad. I graduated in 2012....and did not find work. I tracked over a thousand applications that year but ended up working at a hair salon until I started teaching. I expected to make more in a different career, but teaching had health insurance (even if it was crappy). I didn't land a real career job until 2017. We definitely rode the long end of the recession.
My brother in law, a mechanical engineer, did the same (graduated in 2011, then grad school cause no jobs). He eventually got a job in 2013, but not in mechanical engineering, which he is still hoping to switch back into.
Then again my good friend graduated in 2012 and immediately landed a job, she had her loans paid off in three years.
There is probably a shift where conditions were improving. I wonder if we were on the tail of it, or if you and my friend were at the front. In other words, I wonder which experience was more representative of the group as a whole at the time. I'd love to see some studies on that more than just my anecdotes.
Thanks for sharing this. I would also be interested to read more - and find out what the collective experience was closer to as you say.
I think the most interesting aspects are the downstream effects. There’s a huge difference between having debt paid off by 26 versus taking on a hundred grand in debt at 26, that’s a hole that can take people their whole career to dig out of, and the double loss is in compound interest getting delayed and cut off when investing is pushed to later years.
😞
You're so right on the downstream effects! Consider paying 10k a year in loans vs investing 10k a year in the market. Huge difference twenty years down the road.
I really feel like 'owning a lot more debt, and 20% of an asset with ever-decreasing inherent value and unstable market value' should be called something other than 'home owner'. Like... going into the process of owning a home and living in the middle of that process does not a 'home owner' make... and the barriers for converting that debt into actual ownership is significantly harder and longer because of the issues here and also the extremely higher priced housing market than previous generations. They ain't home owners yet, not until they actually... own a home instead of their bank owning it.
It always seems to me there is a tremendous and marked difference between those who graduated from college in 2006 through 2009 versus those who graduated even a year later. I graduated from college in 2010, and I truthfully (and have talked about this with peers) almost had no lived experience of the recession. I found a job right away, while at that stage those even a year or two in front of me were scrambling for other options (which left many with second degrees/additional debt). Sometimes I think the older millennials in this group need their own category all together....i really feel for them.
Interesting. My wife graduated in 2009 and we did the grad school cause no jobs route. Our plan was to leap frog - I worked she went to school, then vice versa - but there weren't any jobs. So she did grad school while I finished my undergrad. I graduated in 2012....and did not find work. I tracked over a thousand applications that year but ended up working at a hair salon until I started teaching. I expected to make more in a different career, but teaching had health insurance (even if it was crappy). I didn't land a real career job until 2017. We definitely rode the long end of the recession.
My brother in law, a mechanical engineer, did the same (graduated in 2011, then grad school cause no jobs). He eventually got a job in 2013, but not in mechanical engineering, which he is still hoping to switch back into.
Then again my good friend graduated in 2012 and immediately landed a job, she had her loans paid off in three years.
There is probably a shift where conditions were improving. I wonder if we were on the tail of it, or if you and my friend were at the front. In other words, I wonder which experience was more representative of the group as a whole at the time. I'd love to see some studies on that more than just my anecdotes.
Thanks for sharing this. I would also be interested to read more - and find out what the collective experience was closer to as you say.
I think the most interesting aspects are the downstream effects. There’s a huge difference between having debt paid off by 26 versus taking on a hundred grand in debt at 26, that’s a hole that can take people their whole career to dig out of, and the double loss is in compound interest getting delayed and cut off when investing is pushed to later years. 😞
You're so right on the downstream effects! Consider paying 10k a year in loans vs investing 10k a year in the market. Huge difference twenty years down the road.
I really feel like 'owning a lot more debt, and 20% of an asset with ever-decreasing inherent value and unstable market value' should be called something other than 'home owner'. Like... going into the process of owning a home and living in the middle of that process does not a 'home owner' make... and the barriers for converting that debt into actual ownership is significantly harder and longer because of the issues here and also the extremely higher priced housing market than previous generations. They ain't home owners yet, not until they actually... own a home instead of their bank owning it.