Imbalance of power

Picking up where we left off, I am no longer ashamed of being poor or fat (at times I have to fight it harder) because of an awareness of systems that make it very hard -- if not impossible -- to change some of those things. 

That tendency to be ashamed and blame it all on personal flaws works to create misery and prevent finding and achieving what is possible.

It has taken me a while to understand how difficult it is to escape class. I say this even though one of the perceived escape routes was much easier for me when needed than it would be now.

When I went to college, it was relatively affordable.

For the record, I started college at the University of Oregon, Winter term 1991. Out of the 180 credits needed for graduation, I brought 51 from AP tests, plus one writing course taught at a college level for credit but offered at the high school. 

It was a late start because of needing to work. There was a lot of time taken off for work, as well as 18 months for a mission. I ended up taking eight terms of classes, spread out over the years so I graduated in June of 1996.

The fees for the AP tests were my first credit card charges. I finally became eligible for student aid in my senior year. (The 18 months of no income while on the mission really helped with that.) 

With all of that, working while in school and taking terms off to do nothing but work, I graduated with about $2300 in debt. If I had not gotten close to a third of my credits in high school, if I had not taken such a heavy course load, or if I had not been able to work while in school, it would have been more, possibly triple, but still...

Students today should be so lucky. 

Just in the last 20 years college tuition and fees have grown twice as fast as the consumer price index. This has not been due to the quality of education rising or the jobs that you could get rising, but rather to increased administrative costs and because capitalism allows profits to be extracted from any public good, even at the expense of the public good.

I was also fortunate in that the interest rates were not unreasonable at the time, and that a college degree really did increase your earning power. My personal struggle with interest rates is more that I have already paid enough to equal the cost of my initial mortgage, with hardly any decrease in the principal. By the time it is paid off -- if everything goes according to schedule -- I will have paid its value four times over.

I get pretty regular offers to take it off my hands. They generally offer an amount that would pay off the mortgage and most of my personal debt. Taking that would leave me with no assets and no place to live.

It is also a sever undervaluation. Now, the Zillow estimate is way too much, but potential buyer could get significantly more out of it than they are offering me. 

As they don't need a home, they could make a large profit on the sale. What they might be even more likely to do is to make it a long or short-term rental, continuing to restrict the supply of housing that makes it such a seller's market right now.

It would be easy to look at the numbers and think that you would have to be stupid to fall for it, but you don't; you only have to be desperate. There are a lot of ways for that to happen.

The offers were even more persistent when I was in foreclosure, and this isn't even touching on reverse mortgages preying on the elderly.

For years I was told to avoid debt, except for a house and schooling. 

It is more common now that people will advise holding off on college, and maybe choosing a trade school (like those never load people down with debt), but there was a lot of time in between where people who were doing everything they say is right have been getting screwed for it, ending up poorer while the haves get richer.

I have a lot of feelings about that, but I am past feeling shame for it.

The funny thing about this post is I started with education because I was going to go to one specific place.

That's just going to have to wait until next week.