debt

Saddled With Student Loans, Bestselling Author Worries, ‘I Don’t Want To Die Poor’

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by Terry Gross

Michael Arceneaux’s previous book, I Can’t Date Jesus, centered on his experiences growing up black, gay and Catholic in Texas.

Writer Michael Arceneaux has a tongue-in-cheek message for young people right now: “Please don’t be as much of a mess as I was.”

Arceneaux graduated from Howard University with a degree in broadcast journalism in 2007, just as the Great Recession was kicking in. He faced a dwindling media landscape — and more than $100,000 of private student loans.

Arceneaux writes about how student loan debt has affected every aspect of his life in the essay collection, I Don’t Want to Die Poor. His previous memoir, I Can’t Date Jesus: Love, Sex, Family, Race, and Other Reasons I’ve Put My Faith in Beyoncé, was a New York Times bestseller that helped put him on the path toward paying off his college loans. Even so, he says he still doesn’t feel financially secure — especially amid the economic downturn that has accompanied the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I’m still [as] worried about my earning potential as anyone else is right now,” he says. “Everything is so fragile and it’s just really scary. It makes me really sad for other people, who I know don’t have it as fortunate as the both of us talking to each other right now.”

Despite the stress of his college loans, Arceneaux doesn’t regret the risk he took — instead he questions why working-class students are put in the position to assume overwhelming debts for an education.

“A lot of people ask me, ‘Would you go back and do anything differently?’ No! That’s the wrong question,” he says. “The question more people should be asking is: Why [do] so many people in this country have to go through that? Why should I have to take out a six-figure loan just to have the same access as a lot of other people?”

Interview Highlights

On continuing to struggle financially, despite experiencing success in his career

I became a New York Times bestselling author the same week I lost my health insurance. … I do have a foot in both worlds, because I just really know how difficult it is to attain social mobility. And I say this with respect, but I don’t think most people in media and entertainment recognize that even being able to exist within these industries — which are really designed for people who can afford sacrifice — that most people can’t afford those sacrifices. … I think oftentimes what’s missing is the working-class perspective, because while the book is … about chasing a dream, it’s also about real economic anxiety, which I heard is a topic people love to talk about — and yet don’t really hear [about] from people [with] my background’s perspective.

On being worried about both his physical and financial health right now

I just turned 36 on Easter. I’m black. I’m in Harlem. I was actually planning to go to Texas and spend more time there. But it’s not the best place to go either. So it’s not lost on me that of the people [who] are dying, they are basically my [race and class]. So I am worried about my health. In terms of my finances, much of the book … I talk about student loans, but also write about the fact that we can’t always control our fate, as evidenced by the fact that I graduated during the first Great Recession and now, on the heels of me finally feeling like I have some security in my life — which for a lot of people my age was really their first time to feel it — now we’re in the wave of a pandemic. So it’s very scary.

On his mom’s reluctance to co-sign for his student loans 

It wasn’t out of spite. It wasn’t jealousy. It was out of a real, genuine concern for her child, knowing how difficult this country makes it for people like us. … She apologized for that, really not long after it happened, and has supported me along the way. It’s my guilt and my shame that I carry, because to me, my struggles with that debt — which impacts her credit — I don’t want to be another black man letting my mama down. That’s what that is. But even my mom, to her credit, is like, “Boy, stop worrying about that. I’m not worried about that. You’re doing the best you can. You’re gonna pay it off.”

On missing a payment for his student loans and getting relentless calls from collection agencies

They will hound you. Some people are nicer than others. Sometimes I’ve gotten calls as early as 7 or 8 a.m. … They call you whenever. They don’t care. Some people are nice. But the thing is, they’ll call me and say, “You owe such and such and such.” But if I don’t have $3,000 to give you that day, or even $1800, I don’t have it. And then they say, “Maybe I’ll have some options”… But the reality is you don’t really have any options — either pay or your credit is going to go to hell.

The people that are mean sometimes, which is really interesting, they are like, “Well, why don’t you have it?” And then start giving you career advice. And what annoys me about that is like, “OK. With all due respect, you’re working at a call center. So you are speaking down to me based on the presumption that because I can’t pay my bills, I’m broke or poor, and so by virtue, I should be treated less than?”

On how his life might have been different if he had come out as gay sooner

I would have gotten scholarship money, because there were organizations that provided scholarships for [queer] students, particularly those in need, who might have wanted to get away. But I wasn’t ready to face the truth about myself. … I helped one of my friends with her essay that got glowing reviews and won some money. I think if I accepted myself sooner, I’d probably just have an easier life all around. But, you know, you are who you are until you aren’t. Everybody works at their own pace. I would have liked less debt, but it would have been actually not probably the safest way for me all around to come out then. I’m not saying my parents would’ve hurt me, but I just don’t think it would’ve been the best environment for me, scholarship money or not.

Forgiving Student Debt Would Boost Economy, Economists Say

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Presidential hopefuls Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders want to tear up your student loans and set you financially free. That’s popular among voters – especially those struggling to pay off this debt.

Other Democratic candidates have more modest plans. But economists say the dramatic proposals from Sanders and Warren to free millions of Americans from the burden of student debt could boost the economy in significant ways and help combat income inequality.

Warren would forgive up to $50,000 for most people. Sanders would go further with total loan forgiveness. But with these plans having a price tag north of $1 trillion, such legislation would come with plenty of risks.

The reason debt forgiveness could have a big impact on the overall economy is that a generation of Americans is making major life decisions differently because of student loans.

“Children, it’s not about if you want them,” says Laura Greenwood in Montpelier, Vt. “It’s about can you afford them?”

Greenwood works for the state education agency. She’s 30 years old and makes $63,000 a year. “I make probably a better salary than a lot of my peers.”

But after paying for college and grad school, Greenwood owes $96,000 in student loans. And she says that’s got her and her partner feeling frozen. “Yeah. It’s always, we’re interested in having kids, but just cost of living and all our other bills and then the student loans, it’s just like the final straw.” She says it makes starting a family feel impossible.

So if people like Greenwood suddenly had this millstone of debt lifted from their necks, it stands to reason that would unleash pent-up desires and spending that would be good for the economy. A lot more people would have kids, or start businesses, or buy houses.

“In the short term, it would be very positive for the housing market,” says Lawrence Yun, the National Association of Realtors chief economist. He says his group’s surveys show that student debt has people delaying homeownership by five to seven years.

He’s not endorsing any particular plan, but he estimates that broad loan forgiveness would push up the number of home sales quite a bit. “Home sales could be, say, 300,000 higher annually if people were not saddled with large student debt.” Yun says that would be “a boost to the housing sector as well as the economy.”

The effects would go beyond the housing market. William Foster is a vice president with Moody’s, which just did a report on student debt forgiveness. “There’ve been some estimates that U.S. real GDP could be boosted on average by $86 billion to $108 billion per year,” which is “quite a bit,” he says. “That’s if you had total loan forgiveness.” Foster says it wouldn’t have to be total forgiveness to see significant results. And he says it could also help address rising income inequality.

“Student loans are now contributing to what’s perceived as lower economic prospects for younger Americans,” Foster says. After all — millions of people are delaying homeownership. And that’s the most powerful way for most working and middle class people to build wealth.

“A typical homeowner has net worth about $230,000, while a typical renter has only $5,000,” Yun says.

But while the idea of loan forgiveness is enticing, it would not be free. And this is a big reason plenty of politicians and policy experts are not on board. This would be expensive. Foster says Americans owe a lot of money on those student loans. “About 1.5 trillion. And that’s more than auto loans and credit cards. They’re the second-biggest debt item for households.”

Foster says most of these loans are from the federal government, and it could forgive them. But that would mean giving up the $85 billion in annual revenue it’s currently collecting on these loans. And, he says, “That would result in a wider fiscal deficit.”

Also, taxing people to make up the difference would be a drag on the economy. Economists say whether the boost from the stimulus of debt forgiveness was stronger than the drag from raising the revenue another way would depend on the details of the legislation should it come about.

And there are other issues. Many people would oppose a giveaway to, say, lawyers and doctors who stand to make a lot of money in the future but happen to have a lot of student loan debt. And you probably wouldn’t want to tax the working class to pay for higher-income college graduates’ loan forgiveness. That’s why presidential candidates are proposing to tax the wealthy to pay for it — which, by the way, Foster says would also create less drag on the economy from the taxes because wealthy people’s spending patterns are less influenced by such changes than people in lower income brackets.

Foster says there could also be what’s called a moral hazard factor here for future students. “Those students might expect future loan forgiveness and therefore they’ll take out even more money than they might have otherwise.”

That could create even greater levels of student debt. So there are plenty of potential pitfalls in all this. But policymakers who are pushing for loan forgiveness say they have plans to make it both fair and good for the economy and to do it in a way to make education more affordable for future students so they wouldn’t have to take on so much debt.