zlacker

>>tysone+(OP)
I broke out of poverty. Why can't they do it too? It was a simple thing for me, a combination of studying hard, focusing on my future and the death of my father.

You see, my parents were both fishermen. It's a grueling, painful job that can destroy your body as you age leaving you with back problems and forcing you to retire early. It also paid poorly and had a lot of risks. Which unfortunately for us, resulted in the loss of his life. His boat had capsized after a routine trip. Turns out there were some issues with the way the boat was built, stuff that should've been caught by the owner. My father and three others died that day.

It was because of his death that my mother filed a wrongful death suit with a lawyer that was luckily working pro-bono, winning a small sum of money that she put in an account to be released on my 18th birthday, money that ended up being the only reason why I was able to go to college and become a software engineer.

So why do I bring this up? It's not for sympathy, but rather to illustrate that my parents were some of the hardest workers I've ever known. They were rewarded for their efforts with little savings, broken bodies and a life of poverty. For a lot of people it doesn't mean a single goddamn thing how hard you work or how hard you try. I bring up personal stories like this because I've talked with coworkers and friends who think that grit and hard work is all you need to make it. That jobs will elevate people out of poverty by virtue of existing.

>>fzeror+6S
i can't tell if you actually think it is simple or not. you and your mother are fortunate for that professional class lawyer who worked pro-bono for no material gain whatsoever.

>>marnet+3U
My point was that none of it was simple. There are many other poor Americans that have had issues pop up like this but are unable to afford or find lawyers to represent them in court. You're absolutely correct that we're lucky that not only did we win the suit but that the lawyer took on the case.

Other people aren't as lucky.

>>fzeror+pU
Is there a reason you couldn't simply have taken out a student loan?

>>darawk+2V
I absolutely could've. My college offered student loans to me as a means of paying for my education but if I had $0 to my name upon hitting 18, my life would've been radically different. As I mentioned in another comment a lot of that money went towards helping my family with FAFSA supplementing my school costs. I was effectively responsible for supporting my entire family and given my other health/mental issues at the time I don't know if I would've survived a full time job as well. Suffice to say dealing with a lot of these issues as a kid leaves your outlook fairly bleak without ways of helping yourself.

If you consider my situation to be the norm for a lot of poorer students, then you also start to see where the student debt crisis comes from and how it ties into the economic well-being for many people my age. There's a lot of people where they would have no choice but to dive straight into a lot of these predatory loans without prior education or finance knowledge and graduate knee deep in debt.

In another way, I was lucky that I graduated college with only $0 to my name. I could've graduated with -$40,000-80,000.

>>fzeror+wV
Right, but had you graduated with that debt, you would have been able to pay it off due to the salary you'd earn with your CS degree, right?

>>darawk+411
It's hard for me to say what would've happened as we drift further and further off into a pretty different hypothetical life but for reference it took me quite a long time post-grad to find a software job. It certainly wasn't due to a lack of looking, but rather that I lived in an area without many opportunities which meant that I would need to be relocated in order to kickstart my career.

Eventually I landed on a great company that was willing to do that, but it was a difficult search as an entry-level developer. Would I have been able to pay off my debt? In 5-10 years maybe. That's still a large burden for people to bear, and we're in one of the better paying careers.