• half_fiction@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    6 months ago

    I don’t know, I think it depends on a million different factors. I’m around your age and struggled badly financially out of college. I spent more than a year completely unemployed and when I finally got a seasonal retail job, it was a big fucking deal. Took about 6 years busting my ass climbing the ladder in that department store moving cross-country (costing several thousand dollars) before I started making $50k. In the meantime, my $40k principle had grown 25% during the unemployment deferment and my interest started to snowball because despite years and thousands of dollars in payments, my monthly payment didn’t even cover the interest.

    So yeah, while I no longer make a low wage, it was really fucking difficult to claw out of that hole (office jobs treat you with a ridiculous level of skepticism if you’ve been working full-time in retail.) It took the better part of a decade and meeting a partner whose second income helped defray the cost of living before I was actually able to see my amount owed go down. I honestly feel very lucky that things shook out the way they have because I can easily imagine it ending differently and certainly there are many for those it has.