# bills and loans



## rmwilliamsjr (Aug 9, 2005)

i finished my BA in 80 and went to Westminster West for a couple of years.
I never borrowed any money for school, having been able to pay for most of it with working and the GI bill.

i knew several friends that had maybe 5K in student loans.
only one friend had big loans, from both Dordt and Westminster.

My kids are mostly through university, all state schools and they each borrow 5-8K for their undergrad degrees.

but talking at church i see people with triplet digit undergrad-seminary or undergrad-grad school bills. I know things have changed in the decades since i finished, i know my experience with my kids is biased towards the cheap.

there is a range of experience here that is broad enough to see trends, i think. Is this acceptance of huge student loads a consistent reality? do we really think that a new Pastor having 60-100K in student loads is an acceptable thing?


how much does it cost for someone to go to Covenant College for 4 years and then Covenant Seminary for 3? practically.
to compare my wife finished Covenant College in 71 and had 10K in student loads. They took her 10 years to pay off and several years they were our biggest bills.

something big is going up underneath our noses and i am surprised.

....


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## Puritanhead (Aug 9, 2005)

I don't know, but I got a lot *bills and loans* and clicked this thread... All I need know is an eccentric multimillionaire to befriend me, see my genius, and pay off my debt, and send me back to graduate/professional studies.


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## crhoades (Aug 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> I don't know, but I got a lot *bills and loans* and clicked this thread... All I need know is an eccentric multimillionaire to befriend me, see my genius, and pay off my debt, and send me back to graduate/professional studies.



when you find this person drop me a u2u!


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## sastark (Aug 9, 2005)

I finished my undergrad with around $8000 in loans. I didn't take any student aid until the last two years of a five year undergrad career. I think it is acceptable (and some times necessary) to take student loans, but I, personally would not want to have 100k worth of debt hanging over my head.

Besides, being a pastor's kid, I wonder how in the world any pastor would be able to pay off that much debt. How much do PCA ministers make in a year?

Despite my personal unwillingness to be in that much debt, I do have friends who are District Attorneys (both the husband and the wife). Their debt for college is huge, but then again, I imagine they make enough to pay it off without much problem.


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## daveb (Aug 9, 2005)

> _Originally posted by rmwilliamsjr_
> 
> do we really think that a new Pastor having 60-100K in student loads is an acceptable thing?



I certainly don't think this is acceptable. That new pastor has to find a large church to pay him well enough so he can pay those loans back. I think this ends up limiting where people can minister and that is unfortunate.


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## BrianBowman (Aug 9, 2005)

Check out a blog article on this very subject by the assitant Pastor at our local PCA church.

http://twosons.blogspot.com/2005/07/pastors-and-money-dirty-little-secret.html


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## Puritanhead (Aug 9, 2005)

Sometimes if seems pastors ought to consider getting a secondary job, for a few years to perhaps a decade after seminary, and find a church with more of a support structure and other pastor(s). 

Christ was a carpenter, and the disciples and apostles had professions... The Apostle Paul was a tentmaker, Peter was a fisherman, Luke was a medical doctor, etc. While churches may support pastors and aid their ministry endeavors, there is no promise for financial provision in the Scriptures for pastors that preach. Modern pastors have only been acclimated to salaried pay-- by tradition... and yet most cannot make "ends meet."


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Aug 10, 2005)

The average student debt in New Zealand after finishing university, I believe, is somewhere around the $15,000 mark. This is growing quickly and there are plenty of people with $30,000+. It is easy to imagin how such debt can arise. If I wanted to go to university and seminary then that is $12,000 for fees just for university, probably more than that again for seminary, plus living costs for the best part of a decade. The fact that there are not really any good seminary options in New Zealand aside, the cost overall is far too high for what most Pastors would be able to afford to pay off over their life.

It would be good if people tried to work inbetween university and seminary as that at least would give them time to pay off some of the loan and keep the interest levels down.

 Our government is promising, if it wins the election, to cut all interest from student loans. I just hope they will actually do it  no one is really doubting that they will.


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## Puritanhead (Aug 10, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Abd_Yesua_alMasih_
> The average student debt in New Zealand after finishing university, I believe, is somewhere around the $15,000 mark. This is growing quickly and there are plenty of people with $30,000+.



I thought you said education in NZ was free before!


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## SolaScriptura (Aug 10, 2005)

Wow, I'm amazed. I've heard of people having to take lots of loans to afford school, but I was able to do my undergrad and I'm now going into my final year of grad studies and I've never taken a single loan.
In that same time we were able to pay off my wife's undergrad student loans!

It is doable. You just have to be disciplined - that is, be willing to accept a lower standard of living than most people who make the same amount as you - and it helps if you're willing to do things like join the Reserves (they paid off my wife's loans AND gave her a source of income) or work for companies that give financial assistance for schooling. (Like UPS or Starbucks...)




[Edited on 8-10-2005 by SolaScriptura]


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## Puritanhead (Aug 10, 2005)

That's probably because Southern is not like a law school with $28k yr. in expenses or an expensive undergrad institution... I believe one can goto to some quality seminaries for $3k yr. tuition w/o scholarships. The housing is extra... RTS is probably one of the more expensive seminaries...


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## blhowes (Aug 10, 2005)

This is kind of a related question, as I too have considerable debts.

Mat 13:7,22 And some fell among thorns; and the thorns sprung up, and choked them: ...He also that received seed among the thorns is he that heareth the word; and the care of this world, and the deceitfulness of riches, choke the word, and he becometh unfruitful. 

Substantial debt can at times choke the word and potentially keep a Christian from bearing the intended fruit. If that debt was incurred as a result of sin (poor self-control, lack of faith, desire for the easy life, or whatever), the Christian can confess and repent of the sin, but the reminder of the sin remains until the debt is paid off. Often, or more often than not, the debt remains for years to come.

How can a Christian, who knows they'll have this burden for years to come, not become like the seed sown among thorns, but instead live like the seed sown on good soil?


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## Puritanhead (Aug 10, 2005)

Well Mr. Howes -- not to shrug off personal responsibility, but I think our American civil society, political and financial institutions have a way of inculcating this aggrandizement of debt -- public and private -- for the enrichment of a fudiciary elite at the expense of society at large. Soon, over $1 trillion of federal taxpayer money in the annual budget will be merely for the provision of paying interest on the large debt. Bankers grovel about insolvency and have spearheaded an initiative to reform bankruptcy laws while they do nothing to correct their lax lending practices and easy credit... The whole nature of our debt-based monetary system is conducive to the aggrandizement of debt-- and the incentives are stacked against accumulation of savings and capital... it can actually be detrimental or disadvantageous to save money now. In a Cato Institute study, economists Leband and McClintock surmise in their research that there is much more to U.S. economic activity than the producing of goods and services, and that groups and individuals spend an enormous amount trying to appropriate the wealth of others (and conversely preventing that appropriation.) That amount is perhaps $800 billion to $1 trillion. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in costs from 'transfer activity' or 'legal plunder' borne by our society. As Frederic Bastiat says, "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." This proverb is all to applicable in our time and in our nation. 

To say heavy financial burdens are always or entirely the fault of the person who bares exorbitant debt misses the point about the misplaced priorities in our American society, the high cost of living, and the ill effects of political manipulation, reckless government spending, and the utilization of the instrumentality of the law to appropriate vast sums of other people's money. Avarice is instutionalized and effects everyone-- it's present in the greed that compels politicians to raise taxes far in excess of economic growth, and put a mortgage on future generations. In North Carolina, state taxes have risen on average five percent per year since the 1970s and yet annualized real economic growth pales in comparison. It's felt in the exorbitant costliness of the overregulated and quasi-socialized health care system, and likewise in the education racket where annualized tuition inflation is sometimes annually approaching double-digits. 

*What gets most young people is education expenses, and college education is seen as a necessary hurdle to overcome. One most often get credentials, and they go beyond a bachelor's degree to open up a door of opportunity to certain professions and management jobs. Increasingly, in our time, unless one finds an entreprenuerial niche, not having a Masters degree is like being a second-class citizen particularly when one is married and starting a family. People can dub ambition to better oneself as avarice... but I know of one of my brother's friends that just had a baby, and their family had to come up $15,000 to pay the bill. You cannot raise a family without a decent-paying salaried job... and such jobs are only attained by getting the requisite costly educational credentials. Increasingly, young people (particularly Christians) are putting off starting families (and of course marriage) for longer and longer times well into 30s, and it owes to lack of financial resources, lack of career opportunities, or heavy debt burden from college.*

I have more debt from college expenses than my parents had when they got their first house. College tuition inflates at ridiculous rates... For example, my law school raised tuition the same year I started roughly some $4,500 in one year I believe.

The public sector in America eats up over one-third of the economy, and for the more productive well-to-do give up 40% of their income from taxes. Successful businesses in America pay exorbitant taxes even higher than socialist Sweden for example. These high business taxes are passed onto consumers in the form of higher prices, and to employees in the form of reduced salary and wages. 

*Life is a rat race, and the bottom eighty percent of bread-earners have seen no real (i.e. non-inflationary gains) in their income since the 1970s.* The government used to produce a so called misery index which was based on a compilation of various economic indicators, but stop producing it because it was so anguishing. Now, since the Clinton years, they just manipulate economic statistics to make things appear better than they are -- and are not adequately distinguishing between inflationary growth and real economic growth.

*All I wanted to do was make something of myself -- get an education, finish my doctorate, pass the bar, and get a respectable salaried job, so I could do what most everyone wants to do... start a family, get a house, do right by my future children and give them things I never had (i.e. private K-12 Christian education). I wanted to be an advocate, an attorney, an officer of the court, and a principled one at that, and try and help people through my professional activities... not just line my own pocket or chase ambulances as a financial hustler. I was crazy though perhaps to try and be a joint law and divinity student... and God has humbled me.*

To say debt is just some intangible thing or financial status visible only on paper, ignores the dead weight it puts on your shoulders as you labor in vain carrying it... it feels like a bag of bricks on your back and shackles on your feet.


Proverbs 22:7


[Edited on 8-10-2005 by Puritanhead]


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## SolaScriptura (Aug 10, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> That's probably because Southern is not like a law school with $28k yr. in expenses or an expensive undergrad institution... I believe one can goto to some quality seminaries for $3k yr. tuition w/o scholarships. The housing is extra... RTS is probably one of the more expensive seminaries...



You're right, Southern isn't very expensive. And I don't make apologies! I think that more people should use wisdom in choosing where to go in order to keep costs down. I chose to attend Moody Bible Institute partly because (at the time) I was a dispensationalist evangelical and Moody is probably the most prestigious Bible college... but it also is tuition free (thanks to a ridiculously large endowment). So I paid maybe $600 a semester in fees. That was it. And I got some great courses while I was there. I chose Southern (over TEDS or WTS or RTS) largely because of cost - the other factors being the professors and the library. When I was a Southern Baptist I was paying only about $125 a credit. Now I pay double. But I still get scholarships that almost completely pay for my schooling. (One semester I got so much financial aid that I actually MADE $200!!!)

Even RTS is doable - they have that program where if you can get a church to pay 1/3 of the cost then the school will pay 1/3 leaving the student with the remaining third... that makes the school very inexpensive.

In short, I think that people need to look at what they want to do and and decide if their chosen field really necessitates a degree from some expensive private or out-of-state school. I understand that some degrees (like law or medicine) are just going to be expensive no matter how you slice it - but these programs also get you jobs in fields that are highly lucrative. (Yet even in these fields the military is more than happy to pay your way in exchange for your service....)

The bottom line for me is that I really believe that when it comes to going to school and getting through without debt, the saying "Where there's a will, there's a way" is quite true!


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## SolaScriptura (Aug 10, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> Well Mr. Howes -- not to shrug off personal responsibility, but I think our American civil society, political and financial institutions have a way of inculcating this aggrandizement of debt -- public and private -- for the enrichment of a fudiciary elite at the expense of society at large. Soon, over $1 trillion of federal taxpayer money in the annual budget will be merely for the provision of paying interest on the large debt. Bankers grovel about insolvency and have spearheaded an initiative to reform bankruptcy laws while they do nothing to correct their lax lending practices and easy credit... The whole nature of our debt-based monetary system is conducive to the aggrandizement of debt-- and the incentives are stacked against accumulation of savings and capital... it can actually be detrimental or disadvantageous to save money now. In a Cato Institute study, economists Leband and McClintock surmise in their research that there is much more to U.S. economic activity than the producing of goods and services, and that groups and individuals spend an enormous amount trying to appropriate the wealth of others (and conversely preventing that appropriation.) That amount is perhaps $800 billion to $1 trillion. There are hundreds of billions of dollars in costs from 'transfer activity' or 'legal plunder' borne by our society. As Frederic Bastiat says, "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." This proverb is all to applicable in our time and in our nation.
> 
> To say heavy financial burdens are always or entirely the fault of the person who bares exorbitant debt misses the point about the misplaced priorities in our American society, the high cost of living, and the ill effects of political manipulation, reckless government spending, and the utilization of the instrumentality of the law to appropriate vast sums of other people's money. Avarice is instutionalized and effects everyone-- it's present in the greed that compels politicians to raise taxes far in excess of economic growth, and put a mortgage on future generations. In North Carolina, state taxes have risen on average five percent per year since the 1970s and yet annualized real economic growth pales in comparison. It's felt in the exorbitant costliness of the overregulated and quasi-socialized health care system, and likewise in the education racket where annualized tuition inflation is sometimes annually approaching double-digits.
> ...



 I think you are right about how our culture pushes us towards debt... And I think your final paragraph is dead on.


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## blhowes (Aug 10, 2005)

> _Originally posted by SolaScriptura_
> I think you are right about how our culture pushes us towards debt... And I think your final paragraph is dead on.




So, Ryan, what do you think? Since society helped cause our debts, they should help pay them off. Do you think we have a case here? We'll sue 'them' (whoever 'them' is) for 100K, plus whatever expenses you incur...


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## Puritanhead (Aug 10, 2005)

Mr. Howes I hardly disagree with you on your point-- I just think some people often get in debt because the system and culture are stacked in favor of it... and that doesn't need to be forgotten or swept aside. And yes, a great deal of people bring their debt upon themselves.



> Substantial debt can at times choke the word and potentially keep a Christian from bearing the intended fruit. If that debt was incurred as a result of sin (poor self-control, lack of faith, desire for the easy life, or whatever), the Christian can confess and repent of the sin, but the reminder of the sin remains until the debt is paid off. Often, or more often than not, the debt remains for years to come.
> 
> How can a Christian, who knows they'll have this burden for years to come, not become like the seed sown among thorns, but instead live like the seed sown on good soil?





[Edited on 8-11-2005 by Puritanhead]


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Aug 11, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> I thought you said education in NZ was free before!


It is free to a point  and when you do pay the government takes most the financial burden. I was a bit misleading as I should have said these were New Zealand dollars which are less than US dollars and these are government loans so they control it all and it is paid back like taxes (ie. 10% every year until it is paid off) and when you die the debt is not passed on.


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## Puritanhead (Aug 11, 2005)

And who pays for the government Fraser? Nothing is really free, is it?


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## Abd_Yesua_alMasih (Aug 11, 2005)

I guess those silly people who get jobs and pay taxes?  (joke...)

[Edited on 11-8-2005 by Abd_Yesua_alMasih]


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## Puritanhead (Aug 11, 2005)

As Frederic Bastiat says, "The state is the great fiction by which everybody seeks to live at the expense of everybody else." 

You're learning grasshopper. Redistributing someone else's money usually entails a lot of additional administrative costs along the way.

Countries with freer markets and mininmal wealth redistribution and minimal economic controls usually have more prosperity, more productivity, a better quality-of-life, and higher per capita incomes. Countries with more socialist fringe benefits usually have less...


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## blhowes (Aug 11, 2005)

> _Originally posted by Puritanhead_
> Mr. Howes I hardly disagree with you on your point-- I just think some people often get in debt because the system and culture are stacked in favor of it... and that doesn't need to be forgotten or swept aside. And yes, a great deal of people bring their debt upon themselves.


That's so true. A person, for example, who struggles with covetousness, is bombarded by all kinds of ways to 'live the easy life', 'get what they deserve', etc. Almost anybody can get a credit card, and start that downward spiral into the debt abyss. 

Having said that, God has given us everything we need in the scriptures to avoid that problem and the negative influences of society, if we'd only heed scripture's wisdom. When we ignore what the scriptures teach, and instead follow the world's way, we can get ourselves into debt. When we do that repeatedly over a period of time, the debt can become overwhelmingly large...which led to my question about the parable of the seed sower and how we can live fruitful Christian lives with that ever-present debt hanging over our heads, reminding us of past indulgences.


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