When my wife and I were a young couple we were involved in small groups in the first churches we attended and in those groups we were equal or slightly older than the other young couples. Many of them struggled with the "keeping up with the Jones's" except the Jones's were their parents. They expected (and were of an entitled mindset) that they should be affording the same lifestyle in the ways of housing, vacations, vehicles as their parents who were approaching retirement age with a completely different debt to income ratio and with established careers vs entry level jobs and empty nest versus new families. No joke, multiple ski trips, summer vacations, luxury vehicles (jeep grand Cherokees , SUVs, range rovers) and my wife and I are just shaking our heads at the idea.
Secondly, student loans were affordable and I now consider them predatory. After the .gov got into the student loan business college price skyrocketed. So you have a higher debt for no better paying of an entry level job. Then you look at what interest rates have done in the last 7-15 years (increased dramatically). So you have a whole group of people who were told that student debt was fine to take on (and it was when you could get a 4 year degree for well under 100k with a sub 5% interest rate) but it's no longer the same situation. It's why I feel their is a valid argument behind forgiving the student debt. There are people who have paid on their loans for over 20 years (and have often times paid equal to or more than the principal) but still have large outstanding amounts of loan to pay. We have essentially crippled a portion of a generation or more with lifelong debt that they were told to get and were told wasn't a bad thing but they have no hope to repay it. They have no prospects to retire because they can not accumulate any wealth because they can't get it from the student loan debt, they cannot afford housing with the job market and inflation making everything more expensive and they have a different viewpoint on work life balance than previous generations. Some aren't caring about retirement because they don't see it as an achievable goal so why bother.
