Free From Broke

A Personal Finance Blog for Regular Folks

Debt

Debt. It can be used wisely to help free up money to build wealth, but most of us struggle with debt. Take a look at articles that help you deal with debt and eliminate your bad debt.

Have a Student Going Off to College? Teach Your Child about Student Loan Debt

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If you have a soon to be graduating high school senior, she has hopefully been accepted to several schools and is in the processes of deciding which to accept.

Your high school students should be blissfully debt free right now, but as soon as she decides what school to attend, that may all change.

Far too many students decide what college to attend because they like the campus or the atmosphere or because they want to move far from home.

Ideally, before she even begins to apply to colleges, you, as the parent, should sit down with her and discuss finances.  This conversation should occur no later than before your child makes a decision as to what college to attend.

Most parents would like to pay for their child’s entire college education, but that is often not possible due to the current economy and rising tuition costs.

Chances are, if your child attends an expensive university or private college, she will have to take out student loans, sometimes tens of thousands of dollars worth of student loans.  The cold reality is that she may be paying these loans for the next 10 to 20 years, and she may have to delay important life events such as getting married, having a child and buying a home all because of her student loan debt level.

Ignorance Is Not Bliss

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Should You Charge Your Boomerang Kids Rent?

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Years ago, children graduated from high school, got a job and shortly thereafter got married, bought a home and had children.

This pattern may have been delayed a few years as more and more people obtained college educations, but the pattern remained basically the same.

Now, however, the number of adult children living with their parents has skyrocketed.  In fact, as recently as 2010, Calculated Risk shared that nearly 13.5% of individuals ages 24 to 35 lived at home with their parents.  This group has even been given their own name—Boomerang Children–because they leave the nest for some time but then return back home, sometimes for years.

If your adult child has moved back in, should you charge them rent?

Why Do Adult Children Move Back Home?

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Bank of America Mortgage to Lease Pilot Program

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Although the foreclosure crisis is making far less headlines than it once did, it is still a big problem in America.

In fact, underwater mortgages are back to 2011 levels, currently at 11 million homes or 22.8% of all residential mortgages.

For those 11 million homeowners, an underwater mortgage represents an impossible financial situation to rectify because homeowners can’t sell their home but also can’t afford the payments and for most, it will likely be many years, at least, before they see the value of their home return if they see it at all in their lifetime.

When a homeowner can’t meet their mortgage obligation, the bank or mortgage lender holding the loan suffers because the bank still has to make the payment to the investors holding the loan.  These toxic loans aren’t draining the balance sheets of these large banks but it does affect profitability and that’s bad for business at a time when banks have underperformed the stock market since 2009.

For four years, banks have tried to get these bad loans off their books.
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Student Loan Debt Bubble – Is This Our Next Economic Crisis?

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As if the student loan problem wasn’t already approaching crisis levels, it may get a lot worse.

In 2010 more than $100 billion worth of student loan debt was taken out, making the total amount that Americans owe for education now more than $1 trillion.

The average graduate leaves school with $25,250 in student loan debt and faces decades of payments.

Although the recent student loan reform may ease the burden by making it possible to lower the payments based on the borrower’s level of income, some students face loan payments that are higher than they would pay on a modest size home mortgage.
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