Hello to this sub! Thank you so much for all of the information and effort everyone puts on here. It really made me more aware about issues of money.
That said, as a minor (and a rather sheltered one at that), I'm quite overwhelmed and stressed out because of college and the inevitability of student loans. I'm terrified for the future I just subjected myself too, and revelations of some family financial secrets that I didn't know about have made my fears worse. I want to do anything I can to prevent the worst of my debt early on. I'd like to apologize in advance if I get some financial terms wrong or fail to explain myself properly because I'm still learning about everything at once and it's a lot.
My current situation: I apparently have 1k USD cash in savings in some bank, close to another 1k invested in stocks, and a couple hundred dollars in my joint account with my mother. The latter is something I have access to and knowledge about. The others I haven't known of until I had to apply for FAFSA.
I have no credit card. I have to pay 15k in student loans for the next 4 years to finance my education at a state college. I'm applying to scholarships but no luck so far. I'm interviewing for a job and will make around $15/hr as a part-time student if I get hired.
I'm very lucky right now to be taken care of by my parents and to be living comfortably even though our financial stuff is all changing and complicated. However, the problem lies in my parents' financing.
They have some financial problems because of their divorce. In this, somehow, my mother lost her retirement fund (if that's possible) and she's approaching 50, so she's screwed. I have a younger brother going to college in the next couple of years. My parents have to take out 22k in PLUS loans for just my four-year education, on top of increased property tax of 8k per year and a second house for my dad because of joint custody. I might lose my stocks to help pay for everything.
I admit my parents are not really frugal or the best at budgeting and now we're in a very precarious situation where we're living like we still have money we used to have. This gives me the personal responsibility to take as much burden off of my parents' shoulders as possible by later taking care of my mom's retirement fund when she retires (it's our culture to take care of our aging parents once we "grow up"), financing my own stuff as efficiently as possible, and maybe even paying for my brother's college education. I have no idea where to start.
I want to start budgeting for my loans, learning as much as I can about PLUS and my parents' retirement and divorce crisis. Jobs are not going to be enough for this. Do I have to go into investing? Do I have to change my career to go towards a more lucrative field? (I absolutely hate STEM but I also hate the idea of crippling debt. My parents absolutely refuse to let up on my college because they've prioritized this so much so community college is an absolute, we're-going-to-get-evicted situation as a fall-back to save money.
TLDR: Still a minor, my family's bad financial situation is going to bite me in the ass later, and I need information and help to plan or just a place to start. I have no idea how to do any of this still, so I'm going in with almost no knowledge assuming (stupidly) that my parents would take care of it for me.
Submitted April 25, 2018 at 07:03AM by onioncasserole https://ift.tt/2HJEGN8
