So apparently My sexual escapades are not fitting for blog entries. Now, any sensible person will tell you that your choice of life partner has more effect on your financial well being than any other BUT since certain of those among us who are celibant against their will are hating…let’s try a new topic, the art of casual conversation.

When I ask you, peon in Debtor’s Prison, how your day was, how you are doing, etc, the correct answer is “fine.” I don’t care if you just got your arm amputated and your puppy died in a vain attempt to save your mother from a burning building.

Next if I ask you a question you should immediately identify how I am trying to seguay into a conversation about myself. Obviously I don’t care what you think. If you just stare blankly I will eventually launch into a monologue that will amount to talking to myself without the stigma BUT you can create the illusion of dialogue with phrases like “I don’t know what do you think?” I could ask for your frikkin name and that is still the best response you can give.

Next if I ask “Are you around at [such and such time]” the correct response is no response simply wait for me to tell you where to be at that time. Of course you are around, you’re unemployed or underemployed. You have no money therefore no worth therefore no life. But for the pathetic sound of your voice a thank you might be in order.

The point is you are a non-entity. That’s why people talk over you, cut you off or treat your latest contribution to a conversation as if it never happened. The sooner you learn this and start playing by the rules the sooner your life will start to make sense albeit in a tragic sort of way. But buying into the rules has it’s advantages. It’s like hazing. Play by the rules, believe in the rules, work to get to the other side of the coin.

In addition to trying to find another conservative voice for the blog I’d love a writer who has kids.  I mean I know I pursued higher education almost entirely for selfish materialistic reasons but what about someone in a lousy dead-end job who goes back to school to get a better job so he can buy a house with a yard and a white picket fence for junior?

This is usually the subject of ITT commercials, which I’ve noticed cater more and more towards recent immigrants. I assume all but these recent immigrants see right through them. But then I saw the Will Smith movie “The Pursuit of Happyness”. For those of you who don’t know, the movie involves an unemployed father who takes an unpaid internship for a chance at a job that will make him a gazillionaire. While not quite the tear jerker that was “The Blind Side” it had it’s moments, was based on a true story, and everything worked out. But what about real life?

Now here’s the tradeoff that comes immediately to mind: On the one hand you’re raising a kid, prob don’t have help from parents or family and have “adult” as opposed to “college” expenses…but on the other hand you have worked and therefore probably have some savings and aren’t out drinking yourself stupid every night.

The next thing that comes to mind is the mentality. I remember having a vague idea of “making it” as being the point where I had enough disposable income such that I could have certain specific possessions and still have plenty leftover to indulge whims. Again I am speculating, but I think as a parent “making it” is just getting to that place where you can provide your kids at the same or better level than the average parent of a child in your child’s class or the class at the better school you hope to move him to.  Basically you’ve given up on fun forever.  Maybe the parent wins here.

But what about the parent for whom things don’t work out? They can’t move back into their parents house because they are the parent.  I know my face still burns with shame every time my mom looks at me. I have no idea what it must be like to have a child you that way.  In fact I can’t think of a surer recipe for madness.

Mike Triforce here.  Hold the applause.  I am just not in the mood.

A few days ago I wrote a post about how the Princess was around less and given our financial bind I naturally assumed that that was due to finding or at least actively seeking gainful employment (though the couch, unwashed dishes and unwalked dog surely missed her) but I was wrong. I am still in shock but I had to…I don’t know…let me just say it.

The Princess…went back to school.

What. The. FUCK?! This trifling, shiftless, good-for-nothing waistrel has been nothing but an anchor around my neck.  She can’t…we can’t…there’s no…

I mean, where to begin?  Ok, I’ll just say it.  I was counting on her daddy’s money.  Money that could have floated some of our bills or paid off some of MY LOANS for the education that is PAYING OUR BILLS.  Instead that money is going to pay her tuition so she can study Art History or some other useless endeavor.   I just wanted to tell her that those people leading the guided tours at museums aren’t speaking from academic knowledge, they are just repeating what they are listening to…they’re not deaf, that’s an earpiece. 

What next? Oh, pretty convenient how you go back to school just when we could use a second income most?  Is working really so distasteful that you’re willing to pay thousands and thousands to, if anything, make your employment prospects lower?  After all, would you rather have a still somewhat attractive 27 year-old waitress/bartender with no degree or a 30 year-old no-longer attractive waitress/bartender with a degree? Why not just lie about having finished college like your brother and like you do on your facebook page?

Oh and please, don’t think this earns you any respect.  There’s taking time off and there is quitting.  You quit school because school was harder than living off daddy and just not going.  Now you’re quitting again, because living on your own terms is harder than crawling back to dadddy and humoring him by going to school so he can sleep better at night about having raised a failure of a daughter.  You do realize that doctoral candidates younger than you will be receiving their degrees on your hypothetical graduation day right?

This is the last thing I’ll say because I realize I am ranting.  I realize I can be an asshole sometimes.  I realize sometimes I say things that are out of line, but at the end of the day I tolerated FOR YEARS my girlfriend working in an industry where guys essentially pay her to flirt.  I know she’s slept with alot of them…in the bathrooms of some of the establishments (how do you think we met?) and yet I deal with it.  I deal with it better than most men would.  But I’ll be DAMNED if I have to compete with 17 year-olds in psychology 101 class inviting her to the party at the frat they’re rushing, hoping to bang her once she’s tipsy off jungle juice.

The Princess has gone back to school.  Still can’t believe it.  Unless she can suck a golf ball through a twisty straw I might have to finally put this bitch on the curb.

I love being a lawyer. I don’t work and get paid while many of my classmates who worked hard are out in the street. Everything is better when someone who once considered themselves your equal can’t afford it. However for the past couple of months I have been rolling with some finance kids from NY and cash has become a bit stretched keeping up with them. The downside of their jobs of course is they have to actually work. Sure, I could be a millionaire in a few years but I’d rather just take the steady paycheck that is based on a fictional abstraction than a sporadic one based on results. Also it seems like every firm in Philly and Jersey willing to meet the NY market is dragging their feet with hiring.

Which brings me to the subject of the Princess. I know many of you doubt the wisdom of keeping her around but look at it this way: Now that the till is a bit empty instead of continuing to roll with the finance kids and their model-hot Swedish entourage I can fake an emergency at work and get some free (though somewhat bland and routine) sex at home. Further, I can put some pressure on her to drum up some cash.  Now usually I would say that that is synonymous with asking her daddy. I let her run-up a 15k tab knowing she could never pay me back, charging some healthy interest in the hopes of getting a daddy check, or in leiu of that unofficially taking over one of his rental properties aka nicer place and no rent. Did I mention I haven’t paid my student loans in several months to finance these NY trips? Anyone who hasn’t deduced that has never been with a swede. Tiger is a damn fool. The only woman he should have cheated with was his wife’s twin sister.

But here is where I give the Princess her do. I think…I think she actually found a job! A real job where she’s on a payroll and pays taxes like an adult! Here are the clues- she’s gone during the day and when she is around she seems tired but not the lazy I’ve been up three hours already tired but the I have done something productive today tired. She also comes back looking borderline respectable/high class slutty.

Granted their isn’t much she is fit to do but one thing she could do is sell real-estate particularly to single male investors. Successful real-estate agents can make a mint. I’m almost proud of her.

Now before all of you go calling me a dick or a chauvinist let me say I will not be spending her first commission check wining and dining a six foot Swedish model before becoming intimately familiar with the details of her anatomy. I will use her money to pay our rent and my back loans…thereby freeing up my own money to go Ikea shopping.

Please Take What is Left of Me
Though I Must Admit
It’s Not Much

I Cannot Take Care of You
In the manner you deserve
I owe so much

I Cannot Promise You That
Things Will Improve
The Principle Does Not Shrink

My Family Loves You They Want to Help
But my education bankrupted them
And Still I Was Forced to Borrow

I Was Promised A Job Several in fact
I studied diligently so I would be ready
The Job Was Not There

I Wander The Earth – You are My Only Compass
The uneducated and the rich mock me
I am humiliated

I labor intermittently for those younger and without my knowledge
They smile at me and whisper when my back is turned
I am labeled a failure

Generations past marveled at my opportunity due to their sacrifice
Now they turn their face from what I have become
I am a disappointment

I cannot ask you to make this burden yours
The feather cannot become one with the rock
So I stay silent

What is Left of Me is Yours
But I Stay Sikent for You
And it Breaks Your Heart

Making My Failure Complete

If you’re living off the grid summer is the best time to travel – less clothes to take, easier to hitch hike since more students are on the road, and you’d be surprised how much free food you can get if you know how to find a barbecque honoring a grad, dad, country or a vet, and that’s not even counting block parties.  Recently I have been traveling and I found myself in Washington, DC where I saw Laurence Fishburne at the Kennedy Center in the one-man bio drama Thurgood.  Just in case any next of kin ever read this, yes I wore a coat and tie.  And I was blown away.

Benito says he’d give back his JD, earned in the guilded halls of the ivy-league, if they would just relinquish his debt.  He calls the piece of paper worthless.  It is of course an understatement to say that Justice Marshall’s JD, earned in extremely more modest accommodations at a time where most law schools were still segregated was priceless, not just for him personally but for our country.  The play alludes to the fact that Justice Marshall saved up enough for tuition working in the service industry and that his mother sold her engagement ring and wedding band in order to help pay his way.  I know an author at the New York Times that would have frowned upon that.

Read on to find out why I think debt might be the new Jim Crow.

It is difficult not to tread into covered territory.  Benito just wrote about parents sacrificing to send their kids to school.  I wrote about HBCU’s about two months back.  So please forgive me if I get repetitive.

Fishburne portraying Justice Marshall stated that one of his early cases had to do with getting equal pay for African-American teachers in a segregated school system.  In a rare call home I was reminded that my own grandmother was a school teacher who NEVER received pay equal to whites and this was reflected in her virtually non-existent retirement well after the laws changed, and this lack of retirement transformed what would have been an inheritance for my mother into unpaid bills, bills which were coming at the same time that I needed help with tuition…help I eventually received in the form of a loan that to this day has gone unpaid, and has more than tripled with interest.  I don’t think my story is unique as far as the plight of African-Americans is concerned.

Now, with that in mind, let’s examine the purpose of Jim Crow.  If one accepts that the purpose of Jim Crow was to keep a race once held in bondage, as close to the state of bondage as possible, and in that sense Jim Crow was an evolution of the remnants of slavery…could this new debt regime be part of the evolution of Jim Crow? Something that is harder to attack through the courts and through marching?  It’s an established statistical fact that black families with equal incomes as white families are worth only a small fraction of what that white family is worth.  Tuition for both college and graduate school has grown far beyond what an individual can expect to earn prior to getting that education, thereby bringing generational wealth to the forefront and in a way resurrecting past discrimination to directly affect the first generation that never went to a segregated school.  And yes, this is the first generation of graduate school age that never attended  a segregated school.  Brown v. Board was 1952 but Boston was having desegregation type RIOTS in the 70’s.  We have a black president but his parents’ union was illegal in a number of states when he was conceived.  We haven’t come that far people.

Sorry I ramble.  Anyway, with me so far?  So, thanks to that meddlesome Justice Marshall we can go to school, but Beck, Palin, Coulter and the rest of the Klan want to hold us back.  How?  Well, we all know what a big deal it is when the first person in a family goes to, say college.  Why? Because that usually marks the beginning of when that family is able to accumulate wealth which is the beginning of freedom from an existence dominated by daily or weekly subsistence.  So, from the Klan’s perspective, it’s not the education so much as it is the wealth that is problematic, and what better way to destroy wealth than to assign debt?  Worst case scenario (again from the Klan perspective) is that the minority in question gets a good job and after three decades more or less breaks even and his children are regulated to the same, thereby preserving the massive inequality that exists today.  Best case scenario the minority has a hiccup in employment, or does public interest work, or has an illness in the family, can’t pay his loans and by the time he is 50 is in a worse situation financially than if he’d dropped out of high school at 15 and started working at the local fast-food chain or grocery store.

Sure this plan screws over poor whites, but poor whites have always suffered the residual side-effects of institutional racism.  Think any of the 15 year-old Confederate soldiers who died ever owned any slaves? Poor whites continue to be pawns of the system.  Borrowing heavily for school themselves they turn their anger toward African-Americans and resentment builds over the handful of blacks who benefit from scholarships or certain Affirmative Action programs…just like the elite power structure intended. 

It’s the same war.  As the enemy evolves battle becomes necessary on multiple fronts.  In the beginning their was one front, blue v. gray.  In the second act their was the courtroom front and the marching front.  Now the fronts are many. Debt is one of them.  Debt cannot be defeated with a musket, or a brief, or a sign with a catchy slogan.  I don’t know how we as the collective can defeat debt but I think the first step is awareness.

Here at Debtor’s Prison, we’re not big on posting links within articles.  But here’s one

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6Ahttp://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/29/your-money/student-loans/29money.html?pagewanted=1&adxnnlx=1275242514-wCTp6UtEV1S1hPtiShkU6A

I could respond to this point for point but that wouldn’t be fair to our readers too lazy to click the link and in order to provide themselves with the necessary context SO instead I will give the opposite scenario so my post stands alone.

Johnny and his parents approached college with a grim determination: to get through the process with as little cost and effort as possible.  Like many parents with their own lives Mr. and Mrs. Johnny were anxious to get another body out of the house and college savings weren’t what they could have been if certain cars hadn’t been leased and certain boats hadn’t been purchased.  But you only live once.  Besides, if Johnny possessed any particular gifts there would be scholarships.  There were no scholarships.

Johnny was going to state school.  But state school wasn’t free.  It ended up being cheaper to set Johnny up in his own place and let him get that Associate’s Degree before moving on to State.  When their friends asked where Johnny was attending school they said he was taking some time off to visit Europe.  Reluctantly, they sent him to Europe for a month to substantiate their story and so Johnny would do well enough to transfer to state after two years.

While getting his Associate’s Degree Johnny met working adults with children who had gone back to school.  After babysitting for one such parent, he’s offered a part-time job in a real office getting real experience in IT networking.  Johnny continues to work there summers after transferring to State and one Winter after his parents inform him they are only paying for three semesters.  Johnny gets college credit for his work and graduates in the same class as his peers. 

On the night of his graduation Johnny becomes intoxicated and hits and seriously injures a minivan filled with the relatives of a fellow graduate from out of state who paid more for a single class than Johnny has paid for his entire Bachelors.  Because Johnny befriended the son of a cop in community college he is able to name-drop his way out of any citation.  Instead the mother of the other graduate is charged.

Johnny goes to work for the IT shop full-time at a starting salary of $65,000.  His parents paid a total of $19,000 for his entire education.  During his college years Johnny was able to save $27,000.  Two years later his company pays for his MBA where he meets Lyla.  They fall in love, date, and eventually get pregnant.  Johnny considers proposing when he discovers that Lyla owes close to $150,000.  He cites that, not the kid, as the reason for their break-up.  He is currently 28, making six figures, and romantically involved with a young medical resident, a local waitress, and a 19 year-old high-school senior who hopes to attend his community college (where he lectures) after finishing summer school.

…Is this the new American Dream?

I graduated from Medical School two weekends ago.  For those of you non-doctors imagine your college graduation plus winning the Nobel Prize and the Super Bowl.  That’s how you are treated by friends, family and people who would like you to think of them as friends or family.  The best though is the love you get from doctors…the same ones who will be treating you like garbage once residency begins. But for now it’s all good.

All the attention though attracts it’s fair share of haters and the numbers are multiplied when for whatever reason people think you don’t deserve what you’ve got or getting what you’ve got would have been harder for them.  Think Obama’s Nobel Prize or Eli Manning’s Super Bowl.

Once again there is no easy answer. I am not going to tell you to hide your accomplishment like it’s something to be ashamed of and I am not going to tell you to proclaim your greatness extra hard because some are trying to cover their ears.

You should be sensitive i.e. Don’t show up at an unemployed person’s parent’s house, even if they are not there. You will be the subject of a phone call and your popularity with that person will plummet. You should also stand your ground – don’t let some random acquaintance tear you or your vocation down and proclaim in a self-righteous fashion they would NEVER do what you’re doing (yes this happens to doctors too) in order to justify not being as accomplished as you.

Are you a birthday person? If you are the type that settles for nothing less than an all out birthday party complete with gifts, invitations, cake, a meal and at least two activities than you probably want to and should celebrate your graduation with the works.  If you’re the type that normally just has a nice dinner and a glass of wine on your big day than you should probably make do with the smattering of cards from Aunts and a knowing smile from your parents.

Finally it’s more likely than not if you’re a longtime reader of this site you are probably on the other side of this coin.  It sucks, it’s not fair and I can’t imagine. Now congratulate the graduate. They will understand the fact that you can’t take them out for drinks or spring for a crazy roadtrip to AC. If the graduation has given them a big head and all they do is chatter about their future salary please don’t take it personal 99% of the time they don’t know what they are doing. Give it time and hopefully they will go back to normal – and if not their loss.

Finally, as you well know, you can graduate today and be on skid row tomorrow. Doctors aren’t immune either. We are always one lawsuit away from ruin and we still don’t know what affect healthcare reform will have.  If a graduate is pulling a Mike Triforce there is a good chance his comeuppance are on the way. In the meantime don’t hate me cuz I am shinin’.

Being a mother is tough today.  Particularly if you are the mother of an inmate in debtor’s prison.  At a stage in life when you the parent should be looking forward to weddings and grandchildren, to eating holiday meals in the first homes of your children, and to finally receiving a little financial help, whether its to take a dream vacation or simply so you don’t have to worry about coming up short when the mortgage is due…you instead are finding yourself financially supporting your children.  And let’s be honest, you’re not “giving them a little help” like a down payment so they can afford a nicer home for their young family, you are providing them with all the essentials, shelter, food and transportation.  Just like when they were 10.

However here’s the difference.  Even a parent of a ten year-old who is doing rather poorly in school expect said child to be relatively self-sufficient by the time they are in their mid-twenties.  However if you are the parent of a child in their late twenties or early thirties with no job prospects and a crippling debt load you must deal with the uncertainty of whether that child will EVER be self-sufficient even if they have been academically successful all their lives. 

A running joke on this blog is the, for lack of a more eloquent phrase, the crap I take for living at home with my Mom.  Underneath that delightfully dysfunctional surface however there are deep, deep issues as I believe there are for all mothers.  Seeing your child’s life on pause, seeing them battle depression, low self-esteem and general sadness is heartbreaking for any parent.  It is particularly heartbreaking when that parent feels somewhat responsible. 

If you have a mother worth her salt she pushed you, challenged you and demanded the very best of you in everything you did, particularly with respect to your education.  Your mother then probably encouraged you to go to the better (and probably more expensive) of your college choices.  She encouraged you to go to graduate school.  And if that choice hasn’t worked out perfectly no doubt she feels somewhat to blame.

Look kids, here’s the deal.  You are not dead yet.  Not even close.  Nobody knows what will come of your degree over the course of your lifetime.  Remember, going to school was about more than the paycheck you would get when you came out.  It was about pride.  It was about confronting an elitist world, standing toe-to-toe with the best and saying “I am.” You did this, and nobody can take it away from you or from the woman who sent you.

Finally, I will leave you with this – the way you got into and through college was by bonding with your mother.  You guys were a team.  You fought through the financial aid red tape, the application process, and the endless issues of crazy roommates who somehow always got invited to dinner when your mom was in town.  Remember, going to college wasn’t just about you, it was about moving forward as a family.  That still ought to be your collective goal.  Moving forward as a family.  Some battles have been won, others have been lost, but the war rages on and the alliance is strong.