[howeyc]

That's a cop out. I'm nearly 40 as well, and I know I was making coherent financial decisions at 15. Expecting individuals to think rationally at 18 is completely valid.

I will admit though, a lot of my peers at that age were making dumb decisions, but quite a few knew they were doing so at the time, and did it anyway. Their concerns were not for the future, and they readily admitted as much. Facing the consequences later in life is the result.

[acuozzo]

> Expecting individuals to think rationally at 18 is completely valid.

How do you account for my case? https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33318674

[howeyc]

You made a decision and are dealing with the results. I don't see the issue.

If you "didn't know" how to do math (I learned the math required in high school, perhaps you didn't), you could have spent an afternoon learning what you needed to make a decision affecting the rest of your life.

Here it is in 5 minutes:

30K per year, 4 year degree, 120K total.

Calculate payments of 120K loan with X% interest over term of Y years. Mortgage calculators all over the place will work as substitute if you can't do it yourself.

Decide if this is what you want to do.

[acuozzo]

> I don't see the issue.

I replied specifically to this: "Expecting individuals to think rationally at 18 is completely valid."

I quoted it within my reply to point out exactly what I was choosing to address; no larger issue, no hidden agenda requiring you to read between the lines.

I don't think it's valid to expect 18 year olds to think rationally about matters like this because it requires speculation.

18 year olds don't have 18 years of steady life experience to guide their predictions for the future. They don't have 18 years of clocking in and out at the same job. They have, instead, 18 turbulent years of childhood and adolescence, even in the best case.

With that out of the way…

If wall street can't time the market, then how can 18 year olds? Do you really expect them to sit down and accurately calculate projected inflation and the probability of various economic downturns?

What about the graduating class of 2022? Do you expect them to have accurately predicted a 40% drop in the value of the USD back in 2017-18?

What would be the value in their arithmetic if they hadn't?

[orwin]

You forgot about inflation, can you add it in 5 minutes?

[orwin]

You are ignoring the elephant in the room, and that's capital. Cultural capital.

I'm from a rural area. Luckily, i'm not in the US, so me and my peer don't have outstanding debt, but i was around when the "Revolving credit" (also called "credit revolver" in my country) came full force in my area. Well, actually, revolving credit were here for already ten years. The suicides came full force (hence "Revolver". Get it?).

All adults. Mostly women, but not only. I was 13 when the first one offed herself in my village. She was around forty, and i knew her kids. "It takes money to make money" and all this crap worked well until that time. They were rational: their parents contracted debt in the 50s and 60s to build their business/farm or build their houses. Why couldn't they do the same? But the inflation was 10 to 15% at the time. They had no financial education, and the only example they had was from a time where everybody indebted themselves and it worked well. We had shows talking about "lever effect" and praising how clever the company was to indebt itself.

Circa 2005, the procedure to bankrupt yourself in my country became way more accessible and nowadays the revolving credits are less predatory.

Still "Expecting individuals to think rationally at 18 is completely valid." have nothing to do with endebtment.