Know someone struggling with student debt? Processed food may have a bad rap now, but it wasn't always that way.
Know someone struggling with student debt? Pass along the link below.
Know someone who is now in college? Tell them to carefully weigh borrowing in the first place.
I am not sure how helpful the 5 tips in the Chalkbeat article below are; I'm long past college, I'm not a student loan expert, and so much changes so quickly that I'm not going to tell you they're good, bad, or in the middle.
If you are currently struggling with student debt, I figure the tips can't hurt, so please give it a read (or pass the link to someone who is struggling), and tell them to reach out to someone who can offer genuine, personalized help. See, in particular, the part about "avoiding scams" in the article.
My main purpose for posting this link was to give me entree into a sermon about whether or not you should borrow for your education. This is something I feel confident in speaking about.
If you know someone in college now, if you know someone thinking about it, or you are that someone please give careful consideration to borrowing to get an education.
If you want my thoughts on the matter they are these:
--Borrowing for an education is valid, but only a few programs are worth it. I believe that Engineering, Nursing, and Trades are the only really valid programs to borrow for (at the undergraduate level**). All three have a solid job market. All three have a salary high enough relative to the cost of the loan to justify borrowing as a way to get to the workforce sooner.
--If you don't want to be a nurse, an engineer, or in a trade, by all means follow your passion. Understand two things, however. Your degree will likely at most get you a basic level job, the kind where they just want a diploma and don't care overmuch what in. Those jobs don't pay back loans quickly. I.e. this is not a good investment to borrow for.
--It's even worse if your passion is a field where you do not earn a lot but need a degree. Being a gym teacher is a good example. Perfectly good thing to want, but you are signing up for a lifetime of low wages. Don't add a debt burden to that.
--If you are in the two categories directly above this, investigate other ways to fund your passion so you don't borrow. I know firsthand that scholarships often sit unclaimed. Go to your school's financial aid office and ask for a list. A couple hours writing an essay and collecting transcripts can pay $500. You will not beat that hourly rate anywhere.
--Consider getting a trade and bootstrapping your way to a career. If a trade is tolerable but not your passion, join an apprenticeship program and learn to be a plumber. You will almost assuredly earn while you learn and then have a good paying job to fund your later education. Use the proceeds of this trade to fund your future education (and/or take night or online classes in your passion). Lastly, Colorado has great programs to support needed fields like CNA or ECE. The education there is highly subsidized (i.e. cheap to you) so you can get that certification cheap and then use that just like I mention with apprenticeships.
--Lastly, do not be in a hurry. Education is not a race and nowhere is it written that you must have a bachelors by age 22. If you have a decent job that is keeping you clothed and fed, keep it and go to school part time. Even one class a semester is progress. Getting that degree will take longer, but c'est la vie. You graduate clean.
Borrowing is not inevitable and my thoughts above are not intended as an authoritative or exhaustive list. If you want other ideas, consult your local community college or career center.
**You can also add things like borrowing to get an MD or JD here. Those are valid things to borrow for due to the commitment required, but I am restricting myself here to undergraduate degrees.
https://www.chalkbeat.org/colorado/2024/08/08/five-tips-to-assist-with-student-loan-repayments/
Processed foods have a bad rap now, but people in my grandma's generation and earlier loved them (and with good reason).
That time of the week again, last post til Sunday and that means something interesting and not political.
I wrote earlier in the week about this being a busy time of year for me and it is. I am not a full on homesteader, but I do enjoy growing food and preserving it (as much for the learning as the eating). I also enjoy reaching back into older recipes, doing things the slow old-fashioned way.
As a quick side note to that, if you are also interested in such things, I put a YouTube trailer for a PBS documentary (there is a book too which I've read and recommend) called "Fanny's Last Supper" where they recreated a Victorian, upper-class dinner party, with no modern shortcuts even to using a stove with actual fire inside. Recipes are included in the book, though I've not tried any (save for veal stock). Brain balls anyone?
Back to processed food.
My point here being that these activities (cooking the old way, growing/preserving food) are incredibly time and labor consuming. I mean sometimes hours daily. This brings into sharp relief what I mention above: that processed and canned foods were a wonder for your grandmother's generation and were loved.
They were loved for their convenience. Imagine something that freed up hours of your day enabling you to do other things--generate income, relax, it's your time now. Wouldn't you welcome it?
Like many things, it's probably reasonable to argue that this good idea eventually went too far, but our modern perspective (informed by relative luxury and standard of living) lacks a true appreciation for just how much time was spent in the past simply in preparing our daily bread.
If you want to read or learn more, I put a couple links second and third below. The second is a pretty thorough overview of the history and impact of canned food. The third is a history of how processed foods aided the 1950's housewife (the 1950's being, arguably, when processed foods really hit their stride).
That's it for now. Back to my own preservation and cooking. I just gotta keep reminding myself that winter will be here and I can relax and live (somewhat) off the labor I'm putting in now.
https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/features/the-tin-can-revolution-the-humble-invention-that-changed-the-way-we-live-2069082.html
https://www.womenshistory.org/articles/how-highly-processed-foods-liberated-1950s-housewives