I'm [48F] about to have a blow-out fight with my daughter [17F] over where she will go to college

Have your daughter make a reddit account and have her PM me about what it's like getting out of college with 6-figure debt with a liberal arts degree (not that there's anything wrong with journalism or writing fiction, but she's not going to be making huge amounts of money straight out of college).

I'll tell her that I get where she's coming from - that I was that 17-year-old with visions of the perfect university and the perfect life. And that signing a magical piece of paper frpm the loan company to make that dream come true sounded like such a wonderful idea.

Then I'll tell her what happened when I had to start paying the loans back.

I'll tell her all about surviving off of free samples at the supermarket for lunch. About having to have a tooth pulled because I couldn't afford a simple procedure to save it. Being able to afford a cellphone for about 7 days a month (prepaid). About scrounging for change to afford enough gas to get home from work. About having to explain that even though I had a full-time job and made decent money, I was living paycheck to paycheck because of the enormity of my monthly student loan payment. That the only reason I wasn't homeless was that I have the greatest boyfriend on the planet, who let me live with him for free. That I couldn't go get a drink after work with the coworkers, or to a movie with my friends, or on vacation with said boyfriend. Money was for loans, credit card debt, and bills. Nothing else. Absolutely nothing else. That I didn't qualify for things like subsidized healthcare or food stamps because my income was too high. Yeah, they don't take your student loans into account when you apply for things like that.

And if, for some reason, any of that sounds like the romantic ideal of the "starving artist," I'll tell her, it's not. It's soul-crushingly depressing. It's a weight on your shoulders that makes it damn near impossible to get up in the morning. It's something I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

And I'll tell her about where I am now, no longer living paycheck to paycheck. About how it took years for my credit score to recover, and to pay off the credit cards. About how I can now (age 29) afford things like food and gas, and even have enough to have a little free spending money and to put into savings at the end of the month. My friends, on the other hand, are all getting married and buying houses (you mentioned that she's comparing herself to her friends, well, she won't be able to do that for long), and I'm still paying off my loans. How I'm financially comfortable, but when all is said and done and I've finally paid off all the loans, it'll be close to $200k total (not counting the credit card debt I piled up in the first few years out of college). I could have bought a house with that. I could have taken a year off of work and traveled with that. I could have done a ton of things with that.

Signing that stupid, "magic" piece of paper 11 years ago changed my life forever, and not in a good way.

I'll tell her all these things. And she might not listen. If I could go back in time, and tell my past self exactly how much I was about to fuck up my life, I don't know if the naive, optimistic, intelligent teenager would have listened.

Tell your daughter that you don't want future-her wishing she could go back in time and bitch-slapping past her. Because that's what I would do. I would bitch-slap the fuck out of past me.

/r/relationships Thread