People get tricked into loans they can't afford. "No, no, see, it's cool, once you graduate, you'll be rolling in it!" Queue 20 years of service industry jobs paying barely subsistance wages (happened to my wife).

Here's the experience with our kid, he graduated debt free 4 years ago.

When he was in high school, we got all these emails and memos about "FAFSA, FAFSA, FAFSA" and we went to the school and did all the seminars and all the forms and everything.

Kid got his first choice school - UC Davis - "Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."

Yeah no.

Kid got into his second choice school, Lewis and Clark, we thought "Great! In state school! This should be better..."

"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."

🤔 That's the same oddly specific number the out of state school dropped... if we could afford that, he'd be going to UC Davis.

Want to guess what his 3rd choice school came back with (University of Oregon Honors College)?

"Well, we've reviewed your FAFSA information, and counting tuition, scholarships, room and board, you need to take out parental plus loans of $56,000 a year for four years."

So three schools, 1 out of state, 2 in state, all working from FAFSA all came back with the same oddly specific number. What are the chances of that? OTHER parents would have been sorely tempted to go "Well, I guess that's just what school costs..."

WE bailed on the FAFSA system, enrolled him as a normal student at the University of Oregon. Tuition was about $10,000 a year, he had a scholarship that paid $5,000 a year, I ran the other $5K through my Amazon card for points, paid his rent, and gave him a $300 credit limit card for food and expenses.

4 years later he graduated with a CS degree, no debt and went to work at Intel making 6 figures.