Sunday, September 9, 2007

Suze Orman show

Last night I was channel hopping and ended up in CNBC where the Suze Orman show was on. Oddly enough I do not think I have ever actually watched it until last night. When I turned it on they were talking about student loans and how people are graduating with loads of debt and therefore not able to reach their potential because they spend all of their time worrying about debt or focusing on paying down debt.

There was a woman on the show, and I did not get to hear where she was from as I came into it midway, that had around $120,000 in school loan debt. That was not the most shocking part.

It started out as only $40,000.

And it was for a 12- month culinary school program!

Her monthly student loan payments are around $700.

She was currently working as a pastry chef - making $7.00 per hour!

Whoa. And I thought the student loan debt that we have was bad - at least ours is for a total of 3 degrees. Yikes.

I have to wonder if this woman had any clue how much she would be making as a pastry chef once she finished school? Because $7.00 per hour is less than $15,000 per year - and the schooling was $40,000. It is not hard to see that maybe that is not a great choice.

Now I feel somewhat lucky to be making what seems like a fortune compared to this poor woman.

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