Fighting for milk: Now is the time to take any kind of work you can get

In the movie Cinderella Man, Russell Crowe plays the part of James J. Braddock, a professional boxer who breaks his hand in the ring, forcing him to leave his chosen profession and work as a common laborer. Then the Depression comes, and Braddock's family faces starvation. Braddock returns to boxing with ferocious intensity and winds up winning the World Heavyweight Championship.

In the movie, a reporter asks Braddock to explain why he had become a better boxer. Braddock answered that he was a better boxer because he had discovered what he was fighting for.  And what was that, the reporter asked?

"Milk," Braddock replied.

Washington Post columnist Michelle Singletary made a similar point to people who have been laid off or furloughed from their jobs.  "Apply for any kind of work," she advised. Despite the economic downturn, some companies are still hiring, and all jobs bring in at least some money.

There was a time when experts advised people not to take menial jobs if they had been laid off from a professional position. A stint as a restaurant worker does not look good on the resume of someone who applies for a job as a financial analyst.

Also, many employers are reluctant to hire people who appear to be overqualified for the jobs they are seeking. Unemployed lawyers, for example, have difficulty getting employed as paralegals because the law firms believe that a licensed attorney working as a paraprofessional will be perpetually dissatisfied.

But these are desperate times, and they are becoming more desperate. If you have a home and a family, it makes sense to take any kind of work at all--any money you earn helps protect what is important to you.

After all, as the cinematic version of James Braddock showed us, working for milk is a dignified occupation.

Russell Crow as James J. Braddock: Working for milk

Michelle Singletary gives good financial advice to young people about student loans, and here are my two cents (think La Brea tar pits)

Michelle Singletary, a syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, gives good advice  to young people about managing debt--including student loans. She published a very good article awhile back that contained two good pieces of advice. I will summarize her suggestions and add my own two cents.

First, Singletary challenges the conventional wisdom that young people should begin saving for retirement as early as possible--while still in their 20s.  "Millennials' money is often too tight," she counseled, "and for the many who have student loans, they may be best served spending the first years aggressively paying off this debt."

I agree completely. It makes no sense for young people to put money in IRAs or other retirement accounts if they aren't managing their student loans. After all, if they accumulate student-loan debt that becomes so large they can't make their monthly payments, they'll wind up in 25-year income-based repayment plans, which may prevent them from ever retiring.  It is absolutely critical for millennials to get their student loans paid off as quickly as possible.  For young people, there will be plenty of time later to save for retirement after they pay off their student loans.

Singletary also signaled her disagreement with commentators who lament the high percentage of young adults who live with their parents. It is true that more people in their 20s are living with Mom and Pop; 28 percent, according to Singletary, up from just 19 percent in 2016.

But that may not be a bad thing. If a young person can economize by living with parents, why not do so? That leaves more money to save for a down payment on a house or for paying student loans off early.

Now here are my two cents.

When taking out college loans, students should keep in mind the possibility that they won't find a good job after graduating. If their student loan debt is modest, they can probably make their monthly payments even if they are in a low paying job. But if they borrowed a lot of money and can't make the initial monthly payments, they will be forced to apply for an economic hardship deferment, which are very easy to get.

Those deferments excuse borrowers from making monthly loan payments, but compound interest accrues on the principal. Borrowers who put student loans in deferment for three years will find their loan balances will have grown substantially.

Then--if they can't make regular payments on the larger balance, student borrowers will be pushed into 20- or 25-year income-based repayment plans. In my view, that is a disastrous outcome for young people who took out student loans to improve the quality of their lives, not fall into a lifetime of indebtedness.

And here is some more of my two cents. Never take out private student loans from Wells Fargo, Sallie Mae or any of the other blood suckers who offer private student loans. Those loans are just as hard to discharge in bankruptcy as federal student loans.  And when I say never take out private student loans, I mean never.

Finally, to reiterate advice I have given tirelessly for many years, don't ask your parents to take out a Parent PLUS loan to finance your college studies; and don't ask them to co-sign any of your student loans. If you love Mama and Daddy, don't suck them into a veritable La Brea tar pit of perpetual student-loan indebtedness, especially if you are already in the tar pit yourself.

La Brea Tar Pits

References

Michelle Singletary. Millennials get plenty of financial advice-but most of it is wrong. Herald-Tribune, May 22, 2018.

Parents Plus Loans can be a nightmare: "Teach your children well . . ."

Teach your children well,

Their father's hell did slowly go by.

Teach the Children Well

Lyrics by Graham Nash

More than three million parents have taken out student loans for their children's college education. Eleven percent are in default, and another 180,000 are delinquent in their payments.

Congress created the Parent Plus program in 1980, which allows parents to obtain student loans to supplement the loans their children take out to finance their college studies. As Josh Mitchell reported in the Wall Street Journal last week, outstanding indebtedness on Parent Plus loans now tops $77 billion. 

The government issues Parent Plus loans with little regard to whether the parents can pay them back. Many parents who take out Parent Plus loans have subprime credit scores, which means they run a high risk of default. As Mitchell pointed out,  the Parent Plus default rate is higher than the home mortgage default rate during the 2008 housing crisis.

Without question, Parent Plus loans are being issued recklessly. "This credit is being extended on terms that specifically, willfully ignore their ability to repay," a spokesperson for Harvard Law School's Legal Services Center charged. "You can't avoid that we're targeting high-cost, high-dollar-amount loans to people who we know can't afford them."

To its credit, the Obama administration recognized that lending standards for Parent Plus loans were too lax. In 2011, the Department of Education introduced modest underwriting rules to prevent parents with low credit ratings from taking out Parent Plus loans.

But the higher education industry protested, arguing that tighter underwriting standards for Parent Plus loans would reduce college access for low-income and minority students. In response to this pressure, the Department of Education withdrew the new rules.

Obviously, people who are taking out student loans for their children are older; two thirds of Parent Plus borrowers are between the ages of 50 and 64. Many of them have student loans of their own. Some parents took out Parent Plus loans expecting their children to get good jobs and take over the loan payments.  But sometimes that doesn't happen, and the parents find themselves responsible for paying off loans they can't afford to repay.

Parents who default on Parent Plus loans risk having their income-tax refunds seized and their Social Security checks garnished. And bankruptcy is rarely an option. Parents who default on their children's student loans will find it difficult to discharge those loans in bankruptcy even if they are unemployed or in ill health.

In an NPR podcast, Michelle Singletary, a finance columnist, pointed out that many parents take out Parent Plus loans to help their children attend expensive colleges their families can't afford. It is difficult, Singletary acknowledged, for parents to tell their children that a particular elite college is simply out of financial reach.

The child might say, "But this is my dream college." If that happens, Singletary advised, the parent must have the wisdom and fortitude to say, "Honey, you need to find another dream."

Or, as songwriter Graham Nash might put it, "Teach your children well" regarding their college choices because if you borrow money for your child to go to college and can't pay it back, you will enter financial hell, a hell that will go by slowly.

References

Tom Ashbrook. Parents On the Hook for Student Loans. NPR Onpoint (podcast), April 26, 2017.

Josh Mitchell. The U.S. Makes It Easy for Parents to Get College Loans--Repaying Them Is Another Story. Wall Street Journal, April 24, 2017. 

Note: Quotations in this essay come from the sources cited in the reference list.