Editor’s Note - Indebted early
Money woes woo the recently graduated
Yeah. Thought it was easy, dincha? Went off to a private college and majored in something like medieval literature. All of a sudden, you’re out on the street in a tough job market, and Mom and Dad are saying, “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps.” Well, hell, just put another night of drinking in East Atlanta on the ol’ credit card.
Kids. I tell ya.
Alyssa Abkowitz is one of those kids (at least compared to me she is). She graduated from Emory in 2004 and then parlayed an internship into a writer’s position at Creative Loafing.
A few weeks ago, she was talking to a friend who’s a law student. He’s $150,000 in debt. “He would tell me how he’d stay up late at night and get stomachaches about it,” Alyssa says. “If the loan didn’t come through, he wasn’t able to pay for food for a little while, and he had to eat ramen noodles.”
Other friends were telling Alyssa similar stories. She started to read books and articles on what has become a social crisis: An incredible burden of debt is stacking up early on the twentysomething generation.
“I realized that these are things that aren’t just anecdotal,” Alyssa says. “I don’t know if I’d call them an epidemic, but they’re issues that are across the board for my generation.”
The issue became a great pitch for the cover story that graces this week’s paper. We thought it was a hot enough subject to serve as the topic for our Political Party talk show at Dad’s Garage (8 p.m., Wed., Oct. 11; for more information, check out the announcement alongside Alyssa’s story).
What the story doesn’t tell you is that the topic hit home — at least in a small way — for Alyssa. In her two years in the real world, she’s occasionally bounced checks or found herself in a financial bind of some sort. Luckily, however, she has one of those excellent Creative Loafing salaries. No worries.