Tag: debt

Good Advice vs. Feel-Good Advice

Surfing around in the personal finance blogging and podcast world, there is no shortage of advice. Mostly good advice and some not so good advice. Oftentimes, advice that may be appropriate for some or even most investors would be completely inappropriate for others due to different risk aversion attitudes, investment horizons, and so on.

Occasionally, however, I come across examples of truly and irredeemably bad advice. Recommendations that are suboptimal under any and all circumstances I can think of, irrespective of the preferences and parameters of the individual. What’s worse, the financial experts spreading this nonsense do so not because of ignorance or incompetence. Rather, they are fully aware of the suboptimality and against better knowledge spread something that’s less than ideal. And the rationale? It may not be good advice but it’s feel-good advice. Let’s take a look at the two examples of feel-good advice I recently came across:

  1. The debt snowball: While paying down multiple credit cards, start with a card that has the lowest balance, even if that’s not the highest interest debt. Achieving a “win” of paying off one debt in full is more important than paying down all debts as fast as possible.
  2. Keeping an emergency fund in a money market account while still having credit card debt: Apparently, cash sitting around in a money-market account, earnings essentially zero interest is more important than tackling high-interest credit card debt.

In both cases, the rationale is that it makes you feel good. The “easy win” of completely paying down one debt or the sense of accomplishment of a having a $1,000 cash cushion certainly feels good.  Of course, those two measures probably make you feel better than the status quo, i.e., not tackling your debt at all or not having any savings at all. But wouldn’t the average person feel even better if they knew a faster way to get out of debt? Does anyone else find this troublesome? Do the financial gurus view their readers and listeners as a bunch of feeble financial fruitcakes? Is this some sort of personal finance edition of “You Can’t Handle The Truth” with Jack Nicholson / Colonel Jessup? Continue reading “Good Advice vs. Feel-Good Advice” →

The Other Student Loan Crisis: Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement

[It’s a pleasure to introduce Laur (Lauren) Davidson today. Laur is a senior at the University of Pennsylvania majoring in English and Communications. She wants to build a portfolio as a freelance writer and agreed to write a guest post for us – perfect timing because the ERN family is on vacation this week! The post is on a very timely topic: student loans and how they threaten even the parents’ finances if they cosigned their kids’ private student loans. Take it over from here, Laur!]

Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement

By Laur Davidson, a soon-to-be graduated freelance writer for hire

The sheer magnitude of the mountainous $1.4 trillion of debt weighing down 44 million Americans is rightfully grabbing headlines as a looming financial crisis. The devastating economic and social impact of student loan debt on borrowers, their families, the communities in which they live and the nation is well documented. Less known, but no less devastating is the impact student loan debt is having on well-intentioned parents who are suffering financially for having helped their students by cosigning their private educational loans. With the number of students unable to repay their private loans increasing each year, more and more parents are having to rethink their retirement plans.

Continue reading “The Other Student Loan Crisis: Half of Parent Cosigners Facing a Shaky Retirement” →

Five Unfortunate Facts about Student Debt in America

Our first guest post on the ERN blog! Ever! Let me introduce Drew Cloud who runs the fascinating blog studentloans.net. Not too long ago, I remember U.S. student loans surpassing one trillion dollars (a one with 12 zeros!) for the first time. Now we’re at $1.4t and the amount just keeps growing. Make sure you check out Drew’s blog, too, especially the treasure trove of data on the topic. Take over, Drew!

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A quick online search of student loan debt in America reveals the astonishing truth about the widespread, increasing expense of attending a college or university. Currently, more than 44 million borrowers have amassed over $1.4 trillion of student loan debt, and each year, the total continues to climb. While taking out student loans is now firmly embedded in the college experience for the majority of students, the picture remains bleak for borrowers. Here are five unfortunate facts about student loan debt in America to prove that point.

StudentLoanChart
Student Loans Owned and Securitized, Outstanding. Source: Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

Continue reading “Five Unfortunate Facts about Student Debt in America” →

Seven reasons in defense of debt and leverage: Yes, you CAN have too little of a bad thing!

We hope you had a great holiday weekend and a very Merry Christmas! If you are looking for the fourth installment of the Safe Withdrawal Rate series (see part 1, part 2, part 3), please come back next week. Who is in the mood for heavy-duty number-crunching when we’re still digesting the heavy meals and scores of eggnog from last weekend? Yup, every year around this time we reconfirm the concept known as “too much of a good thing.” Only those of you free of the sin of overconsumption can throw the first meatball, uhm, stone. I’m waiting… Still waiting… Nobody? See, we’ve all experienced overconsumption between Thanksgiving and Christmas. But is the opposite true as well?

Can there be too little of a bad thing?

The bad thing I’m talking about is debt. To many of us in the FIRE community, debt is a four-letter word – figuratively! An entire niche of the Personal Finance blogging world is dedicated to getting out of debt and that’s a really good cause especially for those with a low or negative net worth. Paying off credit card debt at 18-20% or student loan debt with high single-digit percent interest rates should be priority number one. But that doesn’t mean that all debt is bad. For us in the ERN household, we’re blessed to never have had any sizable debt, except for a 30-year mortgage that we plan to pay off not a day earlier than we have to. We enjoy the ultra-low interest rate (3.25%), the tax-deductibility and putting our money to work with higher expected returns elsewhere. We love Leverage!  Continue reading “Seven reasons in defense of debt and leverage: Yes, you CAN have too little of a bad thing!” →