Hi pal, Did you hear? The Department of Education launched applications for one-time student loan debt relief. Yay! Thank you, Daddy Biden! For the record, no, I do not have student loans. My parents paid for my first three years of college. The first year was an absolute failure because I thought I would be a mechanical engineer (HA!). I quickly realized, “No, boo. This kind of math is not for you. You’re pretty good at math, but not that good.” After that first year, I transferred and went to a community college for two years. In 2004, it was $18/unit. Most classes were 3 units, meaning a semester-long class was $54. If you took a full load of classes, it might cost between $216 and $324. Books and other fees would double that cost. But comparing today, the same school now charges $46/unit. That’s a 156% increase! After two years in community college, I went to a state school while working for a big evil bank that provided incredible benefits, like sick pay, vacation pay, a retirement plan, and a thing called tuition reimbursement. If I took “qualified business classes” at a “qualified school,” they would reimburse me for my tuition and books if I got at least a “B” in my classes. Having these privileges allowed me to graduate college student-loan debt free. However, I still acted like a goddamn fool and graduated with credit card debt, but that’s another story for another day. All of this is to say that I’m fucking delighted that people are getting some of their loans forgiven. Although more could be done to help dampen the blow of inequality, this is a good start. And no, I’m not pissed that other people are getting $10,000 to $20,000 from the government while I am not. Allowing young people to access education without going into crippling debt is good for all of us! It’s better for society. Without debt, employees can use their wages to buy goods and services from small businesses. Or they can use those wages to invest in their future so their cute, adorable, retired old selves can afford food and shelter. Make education affordable again! Your finance friend,
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1. 👩🎓 How to Apply for One-time Federal Student Loan Debt Relief (HYG Original) 2. 🥗 ‘I felt like I failed’: inflation puts healthy food out of reach for millions of Americans (The Guardian) 3. 🥩 Beef Is Expensive—This Trick Makes Burgers Cheaper (Bon Appétit) The answer is probably already in your pantry. 4. 🚲 I Loved Bike Touring—Until I Got Paid to Do It (Outside) The perils of monetizing what you love 5. 🤓 A bookkeeping thing - How to Pay Yourself From Your S Corp: What is a Reasonable Salary? (HYG Original) 6. 🪒 How Millennials Killed the Guest Room (Architectural Digest) “The guest room as we once knew it is a product of the 20th century. Before the post-World War II housing boom, the idea of having enough extra space to keep a bedroom ready for visitors at a moment’s notice was pretty rare, and for the most part, only the wealthy could afford [it.] Postwar suburban houses offered more room to spread out—for the white middle and lower-middle classes, specifically—which meant that guest rooms became more common, along with dens or family rooms. The guest room was essentially a sign of modest but serious wealth: What’s not there—storage, an actual person’s bedroom, a real workshop—says as much as what is there.” 7. 🏚 For Domestic Workers, the Asian Class Divide Begins at Home (New Yorker) “Asians and Pacific Islanders belong to the most economically divided racial group in America, and the need for child care often brings together members from the top and bottom of the ladder. White-collar Chinese Americans might employ care workers from the Philippines or China; Indian American families, among the wealthiest ethnic groups in the country, might hire domestic workers from Nepal, one of the poorest countries in South Asia. Perhaps nowhere is the tension between the diverse experiences of being Asian American more evident than in these households. We spoke to five Asian immigrant nannies and au pairs (all of whom requested that we use pseudonyms) living in the New York area to find out how — if at all — their relationships with their employers changed over the past two years.” 8. 😞 We don’t have a hundred biases, we have the wrong model (Works in Progress) Behavioral economics has identified dozens of cognitive biases that stop us from acting ‘rationally’. But instead of building up a messier and messier picture of human behavior, we need a new model.
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