Money Lessons for High-School Graduates

May 25th, 2011

The sooner you start learning the easier it will be
Here are five things every high-school graduate should try to remember:

Debt is slavery
“The borrower is slave to the lender,” says the Bible. When you have monthly payments to make, your life choices are greatly reduced. You can end up chained to a job you don’t like, unable to take the low-paying, entry-level job in your dream field or pursue further education to gain the qualifications for the career you really want. Constrained after College a study by researchers from Princeton University and the University of California at Berkeley, found that graduates who borrowed heavily to pay for college were less likely to take public-service jobs than those who didn’t borrow.

College debt takes its toll
Going deeply into debt to pay for a prestigious college degree rarely pays off in the long run. Not only does it saddle you with a large, pressing debt that limits your options upon graduation, you’re not likely to be any more successful either. A recent study by economists Stacy Dale and Alan Krueger found that, once you control for aptitude, career earnings don’t vary based on the college attended: if you’re smart enough to get into a brand-name private university, you’ll do just fine going to a state college. What will determine your success will be your aptitude and your work ethic, not the name on your diploma.

Rich friends may be broke
When I was in high school, I hung out with a girl whose parents lived modestly and drove a beat-up station wagon that you could hear coming from a mile away. Our other friend drove a BMW Z3 and made fun of the junky cars we drove. Four years, a real-estate crisis and a few foreclosures later, the Z3′s gone. My friend’s parents who drove the station wagon sidestepped the crisis; they owned their home outright. The dangers of conspicuous consumption are best learned vicariously, and here are a couple of factoids that might get you thinking. According to Thomas J. Stanley, author of “The Millionaire Next Door,” the most popular car among millionaires is the Toyota Camry, and only 7.3% of millionaires own a bottle of wine that cost more than $100.

Materialism is misery
Lives of thrift and conscientiousness lead to less stress, greater enjoyment of the things we do have and a lighter carbon footprint. But most of our societal associations with wealth are deeply connected with materialism: luxury goods, power and status.
“The more materialistic values are at the center of our lives, the more our quality of life is diminished,” says Knox College psychologist Tim Kasser, author of “The High Price of Materialism.”

TV makes you feel poor
One of the fastest ways to make yourself better with money is to smash your television, or watch it less. A 1997 study by researchers Thomas O’Guinn and L.J. Shrum found that people who watch more TV believe that a higher percentage of Americans have tennis courts, luxury cars, maids and swimming pools.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 25th, 2011 at 6:33 am and is filed under Advance Cash Loan, Cash Advance, Economy, Employment, Finance, Loans, Money, Personal / Internet, Scholarship / Education, Student Loans. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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