2 Trends Related to Student Loan Debt

I am really interested in personal finance trends, writing about personal finances, and discovering connections that I haven’t seen before. It’s with these new facts about me in mind that I bring you two charts that were part of two separate reports from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York (FRBNY). I discovered the two graphs when I was researching a recent blog post on the need for college grads to set financial goals and make plans to achieve them.
Let’s take a look at the first one:

What struck me was that throughout the “Great Recession”, student loan debt continued its growth unabated. It appears the economic struggles that Americans faced during the crisis didn’t slow the growth of the staggering loads of student loan debt being accumulated by college students. As a matter of fact, I think more students were forced to turn to student loans because their financially struggling families could not help them with the cost of attending college or they had to severely cut back on the help they could give. The ever-increasing cost of attending college also didn’t help the situation.
Of the types of debt shown in the chart, only automobile debt has grown beyond its pre-crisis levels. Probably because Americans put off replacing their cars for so long, that they could no longer wait. Count me in that group. I have a ten-year old car with almost 250,000 miles on it and I’ve been budgeting to replace it later this year.
On to our second chart:

The second chart shows proof of a trend that I had only known from anecdotal conversations. Millennials are living with their parents in record numbers. According to a second FRBNY study, one of the biggest reasons young college grads have delayed getting out on their own, is the student debt load they live with after graduation. The loans are causing young graduates to put off a lot of adult milestones like getting their own place, becoming married, investing in their retirement, starting a business, and more. If you are one of these “Boomerang” kids, your goal should be to take advantage of the time living at home to pay down your debts, set goals and build up your savings.