> "I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children."<p>Uh, once Social Security goes bankrupt the practical value of having children will be the same as it always has been: someone to help take care of you when you're old and feeble. And on a macro scale, there is tremendous practical value in ensuring there are 18-25 year old consumers in a couple of decades. Facebook stock would tank if it ever became the case that it's primary demographic was a monotonically shrinking set.<p>Also, why are college kids today so bad at job hunting? "I applied to 25 paid newspaper internships and got rejected from every single one... So, I got a job at a work camp in Arctic Alaska..."<p>The only way to job search as a fresh graduate is to treat it like it's a job itself. When I was job hunting during law school, I'd bang out that many applications in a day. I know a lot of people who didn't operate that way: they'd apply to a job a week or so as they found something they thought was perfect (and take forever crafting the perfect application). Those people struggled. Hint: if you're a fresh graduate, and your job search strategy doesn't involve a spreadsheet to keep track of the huge volume of applications you're submitting, you're doing it wrong.<p>Yes, there aren't enough jobs for fresh graduates out there (outside software engineering anyway). So obviously if everybody treated job searching seriously it wouldn't help anyone. But as long as most grads are like this guy, you have a leg up by not being like this guy.
He wanted to pay off his school loans so he could "feel like a free person."<p>Now his entire life revolves around being a slave to his debt (living in a van in remote Alaksa, etc).<p>To each their own. But to me, this doesn't seem more free.
I spent two years driving from Alaska to Argentina. My entire expenses were $1200/mo, which is pretty much what I was spending before the trip just going to work every day.<p>Not paying rent and cooking all your own meals is a great way to save money.<p>[1] <a href="http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure" rel="nofollow">http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure</a><p>Coldfoot is not the northernmost truck stop in the world. I drove another 250 miles North from there. <a href="http://theroadchoseme.com/the-dalton-highway-to-the-arctic-ocean" rel="nofollow">http://theroadchoseme.com/the-dalton-highway-to-the-arctic-o...</a>
"Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless."<p>I can't imagine spending tens of thousands of dollars on something that is monetarily worthless just because it is of personal value to me. That seems incredibly self indulgent.
Read about this in 2009, [1, 2]. Anyways, looks like he has a new book out about his journey, called <i>Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom</i> [3]. If you search google for <i>Ken Ilgunas</i> looks like there is a full court press about it.<p>[1] <a href="http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/" rel="nofollow">http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/</a><p>[2] <a href="http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/duke-grad-school-on-pennies-just-live-in-a-van" rel="nofollow">http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/duke-grad-school-o...</a><p>[3] <a href="http://www.amazon.ca/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/054402883X" rel="nofollow">http://www.amazon.ca/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/0544...</a>
This reminds me of the time I lived in a van and took odd jobs to pay off credit card debt. Oh wait, that never happened...but it will if I find a publisher to give me a large advance for the book I write about.
I admire the determination to pay off one's debt no matter the personal cost, but I do not understand the life choices. There has to be more effective ways to pay debt than to move to the wilderness where you literally cannot spend 95% of your income.<p>Personally I favor the idea that it is better to focus your energy on earning/producing more, than it is to try to penny-pinch and cut costs. In today's world it seems there are innumerable opportunities to find money/success. But I acknowledge I'm saying that from a position of privilege, sitting here checking HN in my spare time.<p>Perhaps there was no other easy way for this English major to make more than $8 an hour, or perhaps he wanted the experience of going to Alaska (and also paying off his loan). But I would not suggest this as a first-choice plan to repay student loans!
I have always been a proponent of a more vocationally-oriented system like we have in Germany, it was outragous for me to see how much money people spend on "monterily worthless" degrees. Yet, I point out America's college system as the single best competitive advantage over the rest of the world. I so far couldn't find the words for it, but he put it soo greatly:<p>"Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless."<p>"I have little patience for critics who don’t see the value in a liberal arts education. We don’t mock people who have children -- and there’s no practical value to having children."
While his story is interesting, I don't think it should be a model for anyone else or an example of how to be prudent with your education or debt situation. It's almost as if he went to such lonely extremes so he could write about this later.<p>And blindly paying down debts is irrational; you need to look at the broader picture, not be intimidated by what you owe. Maybe that money would be better spent on other things in the short term. I have a low interest rate on my student loan and just pay the minimum.