Re:Stanford CS007: Personal Finance For Engineers
by kamaal on Monday November 27, 2017 @10:00PM
(#15793920)
I guess this should go without saying.
Never take a loan you can't afford to pay back? Immigrant or other wise.
Re:Stanford CS007: Personal Finance For Engineers
by aaavl2821 on Tuesday November 28, 2017 @12:51AM
(#15794766)
it isn't a matter of being able to pay the loans back, it's a matter of opportunity cost (she is a doctor so will be able to pay the debt back, but if she had a better understanding of finance when she took the loans she would have done some things differently). If you really want to start a company for example, having a lot of debt rules that out. So maybe if you want to keep optionality to start a company, you go to a cheaper public college instead of taking a loan to go to a private one, or you decide to work instead of grad school, or you just save more. If you don't understand the opportunity costs of debt, it's hard to make those choices
My girlfriend is from an immigrant family and left undergrad + grad school with almost half a million in debt without having worked full time in her life, and is completely overwhelmed and underequipped to deal with this. Given how many great engineers and entrepreneurs are immigrants / from immigrant families, financial education programs for undergrads should focus a lot more on these issues