A Sorry State of Affairs

I just read some startling facts in a short piece written by Mandi Woodruff, editor of an online publication called Business Insider. Headlined “The Real Reason So Many Americans Are Poor,” (see http://www.businessinsider.com/fixed-costs-drive-americans-to-poverty-2013-11), Woodruff referred to an interesting book published in December 2012, "Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry," by Helaine Olen.

Consider this: 

• Housing, health care, and education cost the average family 75% of their discretionary income in the 2000s, compared to 50% in 1973.
• The price of health insurance doubled in the period between 2001 and 2011.
• The cost of raising a child increased by 40% over the last decade.
• The median income for families in the 35 to 44 age bracket fell by 14% between 2001 and 2010, from $63,000 to $53,900. In addition, median income for Americans ages 45 to 54 fell from $66,800 to $61,000 in 2010.

     These kinds of figures confirm what I am trying to get at with this book, that it’s more difficult than ever for a young adult today of independent means, without any outside support, to get an education and simultaneously cover basic living and survival expenses.

It’s not impossible, however. Nothing worth anything has ever been easy to obtain. As my father used to say to me all the time, “you get nothing for doing nothing.” Still, when looking back at the cost of living and college tuition, it’s shameful that we as a society have come to this sad state of affairs. Who is to blame? What strategies can be implemented by prospective college students of any age today to earn a degree that has a return on investment, regardless of discipline, without going overly deep into serious debt? 

These are hard questions to answer. When we look into many of the real stories out there, we see numerous students saddled with extreme debt, being forced to drop out before completing. Then, to make matters worse, we hear politicians calling for reductions in federal student aid and increases in student loan interest rates.