 A huge question when it comes to going to college is should you take out student loans? And that is what we're going to be talking about today. But before we get into it, make sure to gently tap the like button, hit the subscribe button, ring the notification bell and let's jump right in. So this is going to be a pretty quick video today. I'm basically going to go over kind of like the origin of student loans, why they've kind of gotten out of control or they've gotten so high and what you should do about it. First of all, let's talk about how much college is going to cost. Now it's going to be slightly different depending on what study you look at or what data you look at. But basically, the total cost of college, if you add in rent and your cost of living is going to be somewhere between $80,000 to $100,000 for a four year bachelor degree. And you're also going to go on average almost $40,000 in student loan debt, right? So that's about $20,000, $25,000 per year for four years of total cost. Now, when I say a four year degree, a lot of the time people are going to end up taking more than four years for a four year degree. Sometimes they end up changing their major in the third or the fourth year, or they just take a lot longer than it should take in order to get that four year degree. And sometimes that's kind of the college's fault. Now on the high side, you do see some colleges charging absolutely ridiculous tuition and fees. So the most expensive college in the US at this point anyways, is going to be Harvey Mudd College at $77,589 a year. Right behind them is going to be the University of Chicago and Columbia. But typically for the different types of colleges, what they're going to charge is going to be around, for a private four year college, it's going to be $32,000 a year. That's about $128,000 for the full degree. And that's just for tuition that doesn't add in all the other additional fees. For a public four year college, but you're attending it out of state, it's going to be about $23,000 a year. So for four years, it would be just under $100,000. For a public four year college where you're attending it in state, it's going to be about $9,400 a year. So for four years, it would be a little under $40,000. And for a public two year college or a community college, it's around $3,400 a year. So if you attended it for two years, it would be $6,000 to $7,000. Right. So this data is kind of just giving you a general idea of how much college is going to cost and how much you're going to go into debt for college. If you do decide to take out student loans, this is of course just for the average person. Some people have parents that pay for all of their college, some people don't get any help at all. So this is going to change depending on your specific situation. Now let's go over student loans and talk about the things that pretty much nobody talks about, but are extremely important. So first of all, let's talk about the positives of taking out student loans. The reason that this whole student loan system was created in the first place is there were many people who couldn't afford an education, right? So they couldn't afford to put themselves through college. And so the government made programs to where basically anybody could apply to get into a college and get that paid for. However, they had to take out what's known as student loan debt, right? So this whole system was created with very good intentions. It was designed to make it to where anybody can get an education. This was also back in the day where pretty much the only way for you to get an education was to go to college, whereas today it's not like that at all. There's many different ways for you to get educated. Now by the way, the student loan interest rates on these loans, because every loan has an interest rate, of course, at least last year they were about 4.53% for an undergraduate loan, and they were around 7% for a graduate or grad plus loan. So the loans that you take out if you go to undergraduate are going to have lower interest rates than the ones you take out going to grad school. Now there's actually a lot more to that. I made an entire video where I kind of compared those and all the nuances of them. And basically the loans that you take out for undergraduate are much better in pretty much every way than the ones you take out for grad school. You have more protections, they're less interest rate, there's more things you can do with them, there's more ways to pay them off, etc. And again, you can just search my channel for that video if you want to check it out. I believe I called it like the truth about student loans or something along those lines. And then there was another video where I touched on it where I talked about should you go to grad school. Now let's move to the con side of things. The way that the student loan system was set up, even though it had very good intentions, created some unintended consequences. When the student loan system was first created by the government, only a very small percentage of people had to use it in order to go to college. And those that did use it usually didn't use it to pay for all of college, it was only a small part. Now more than half of Americans who go to college have to take out student loans and on average they're taking out around $37,500 in 2019. And overall, students owe about $1.8 trillion dollars in rising. This is the highest type of debt out of any type of debt out there, except for home mortgage loans. It's higher than credit card loans, it's higher than car loans. And some facts about student loans when you compare it to other types of debt is it has some of the highest default rates. On top of that, it can't be discarded or gotten rid of in bankruptcy like many other types of debt. There's also less consumer protection laws than other types of loans. So for instance, they can take you to court, they can seize your wages, they can garnish your social security checks, disability payments, all without a court order. And like I mentioned before, graduate loans are much, much worse than the undergraduate variety. And I'm not saying all of this to scare you, I just want you to be aware of the reality of what taking out student loans is like. And you knowing the truth is going to allow you to approach this situation with caution, right? So getting a college degree can be a life changing experience. I've talked about this a lot on the channel, but people who get college degrees on average are going to make much more than people who don't get college degrees. There's also a lot of other benefits of going to college that are outside of making money. But with that being said, if you are going to take out student loans in order to get a college degree, you need to be very, very careful. And the truth is most people who go to college, you know, they're 17, 18 years old, they kind of think of student loans like monopoly money, they're not going to have to pay it off for another like four and a half, five years, probably they don't even have to think about it. And so they don't really take it seriously. And it all goes back to basically the way that they set the system up, student loans have basically become a blank check. And this is why student debt growth has grown by 500% since 1999. And it's only going to get worse and worse if things aren't changed. Colleges and the entire student loan system is still back in their old, you know, 1900s way of doing things when in reality, there are so many different ways of getting educated that shouldn't cost nearly as much. But colleges know that getting a college degree is almost like the American dream. People dream of it all throughout their childhood. Parents want their children to get a college degree. They know that people are very emotional and attached to it. And so they know, especially when you combine that with the student loan system that they can basically charge as much as they want, right? So I kind of just wanted to go over the pros and cons and just give you a very realistic idea of whether or not you should take out student loans. And really the answer is going to be take out the least amount of student loans possible for you to be able to attend college. Now, there's many ways of doing this, making sure that you're budgeting, you know, living below your means, working if you can, you know, attending colleges that are not ridiculously expensive, great ideas to attend community college, for instance, for two years before you transfer to an in-state school, that's going to save you a ton of money, getting classes out of the way so you don't actually have to take them in college and therefore saving the total amount of time that you have to spend in college. It's actually very easy if you plan ahead for you to knock off like one year of your college and that would save you 25% right there. And these are all things I go over in my other videos. So if you haven't done it already, hit that subscribe button, ring the notification bell, and comment down below any thoughts, comments, criticisms, etc. that you have on the video and I will see you guys next time.