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Students Are Using Their Loan Money To Buy Cryptocurrency, Study Says (fastcompany.com)
Student loans aren't just for buying textbooks, No. 2 pencils, and apples for bribing teachers anymore. According to a recent survey, as many as one in five college kids may be using their student loans to cash in on the cryptocurrency craze. From a report: The Student Loan Report surveyed 1,000 current college students with student loan debt about whether they were asked whether they used their student loan money to invest in cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin and found that 21.2% of them have Sallie Mae to thank for their cryptocurrency investment. Many students borrow a little more money than is necessary to pay for tuition and books, according to Student Loan Report. The leftover cash is typically used for college living expenses, but some wily students think that investing in Ethereum or Ripple may be a better investment than a bachelor's degree in comparative English literature.
I don't know about cryptocurrency, though.
What I do know is that I felt very proud to not take the full cost of attendance out as loans when I was doing my degree. I thought (and the "adults" told me) that I was very smart to minimize my borrowing.
I know two separate people who took out the full cost of attendance loan (max they could get) every semester they were in school, and used that money as down payments on their first rental buildings. Years later, they both now have small real estate empires, the loans are paid off, and one retired in his '30s, all started by student loans. Both leveraged their student loan debt into investments that paid off.
Meanwhile, I was under the debt thumb for years and years and am still working for a salary 50+ hours a week. Someone was smart, and it wasn't me (despite what the older generation applauded me for).
On the other hand, I'm not sure that cryptocurrency is quite the same deal. Seems like it would be smarter to invest and rent-seek as the people that I know did.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW