Extreme Saving: A Man, His Van and Five-Figure Debt

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-30/extreme-saving-a-man-his-van-and-five-figure-debt.html

by simonreed • 13 years ago

40 61 13 years ago

Read about this in 2009, [1, 2]. Anyways, looks like he has a new book out about his journey, called Walden on Wheels: On the Open Road from Debt to Freedom [3]. If you search google for Ken Ilgunas looks like there is a full court press about it.

[1] http://www.salon.com/2009/12/07/living_in_a_van/

[2] http://blogs.newsobserver.com/campusnotes/duke-grad-school-o...

[3] http://www.amazon.ca/Walden-Wheels-Open-Road-Freedom/dp/0544...

mindstab• 13 years ago

More anecdotal evidence that the value of America arts degrees is far less than their over inflated cost

jnazario• 13 years ago

i came here to say something like this, albeit a lot less tactfully.

that said, i admit that i'm torn. on the one hand, we definitely need people to study history, language, writing, etc. the arts, and the liberal arts, are what help define a culture and help us develop that culture, those values, and pass them down and create a rich history. i wish our society valued that more, or rather appreciated what we have (and are at risk of losing).

the other side of it is the practical side. when i read that he had difficulty finding an internship at newspapers, that he had to push carts at home depot i thought "shouldn't that have been a sign to him that he's going to have difficulties in finding a role in the job market?" but the risk is that we, as a society, push towards vocational schools and away from developing thinkers, and that we stagnate because of that.

i'm glad he's writing about it and finding traction there, i assume he can use that to pay down his debt. that said not everyone - not by a long shot - can do that. the consumer marketplace just doesn't have that capacity.

this leaves me to wonder, then, about what roles we as a society have for the bulk of the people out there, and how to best serve them for education, expectations, and our future survivability. i am not creative enough to have any good ideas to help solve that challenge.

sliverstorm2• 13 years ago

It seems to me the problem is not that we don't value history, language, etc- it's that it has become commoditized, as so many people get degrees in those fields. That probably drives down wages and drives up tuition.

GFischer• 13 years ago

I've heard that Germany is MUCH more pragmatic, and heavily promotes technical and vocational schools, and tries to fit (or strongly pushes/forces?) students into the studies that are more likely to lead to success in the workplace.

My uncle works in heavy industry, and he says German workers are vastly better trained than any others he's worked with (mostly from South America, and some from US and China).

I've read about the lack of plumbers, carpenters, mechanics and other skilled tradesmen. I believe more people should be taught those (and definitely don't believe them inferior to, say, programming):

http://www.marketplace.org/topics/business/report-shows-worl...

About Germany:

http://www.imove-germany.de/cps/rde/xchg/imove_projekt_inter...

benjamincburns4• 13 years ago

Value is only quantifiable in the context of a purpose. Is a liberal arts degree valuable as an instrument to garner income? Statistically, no. Is it valuable as a set of experiences which help to better understand the world we live in? Absolutely.

But does that make it valuable enough to justify the cost? I dunno. Ask Ken Ilgunas.

tnorthcutt• 13 years ago

How can you say for sure it has the second type of value?

mahyarm• 13 years ago

Is that secondary value best given by a college experience or finding it yourself then?

lern_too_spel3• 13 years ago

Absolutely not. What did he learn that was worth $32k to him that he couldn't have learned at a cheaper school or by himself? Networking in his field is of little or no value.

lern_too_spel3• 13 years ago

Absolutely not. What did he learn that was worth $32k to him that he couldn't have learned at a cheaper school or by himself for free? Networking in his field is of little or no value.

pyoung• 13 years ago

Well, considering he is now a published author, with a second book on the way, maybe there was some monetary value form that degree after all?

Of course this isn't the case for the vast majority of liberal arts graduates.

tekacs2• 13 years ago

Points at his own comment elsewhere: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5795016

Essentially: surely that depends on your notion of value?

grecy• 13 years ago

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.

Not paying rent and cooking all your own meals is a great way to save money.

[1] http://theroadchoseme.com/the-price-of-adventure

Coldfoot is not the northernmost truck stop in the world. I drove another 250 miles North from there. http://theroadchoseme.com/the-dalton-highway-to-the-arctic-o...

orangethirty• 13 years ago

I would love to do that. Bookmarked the site for later reading.

grannyg00se5• 13 years ago

"Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless."

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.

szx• 13 years ago

This: "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."

300bps• 13 years ago

In many cultures children take care of the parents in their old age. Is that not practical value?

In farming cultures, the more children you have the more workers you have. That seems practical as well.

I think his analogy is flawed.

tekacs2• 13 years ago

I'm pretty sure food falls into that category. :P

Edge cases aside, surely 'learning how to think' or indeed just learning is tremendously valuable - surely the ultimate value that all other kinds are implicitly converted to (cf. heat in thermodynamics[1]) is 'personal value' such as satisfaction?

[1]: A simplistic view, please don't flame me. :/

grannyg00se5• 13 years ago

Valuable for sure.

A lot of things are personally valuable but you don't necessarily spend tens of thousands of dollars on them - especially when they have no monetary value. And you have no real income.

Avshalom• 13 years ago

So uh. What do you eat? Any hobbies? Pay more than a couple grand for a car? Underwear, do you own any?

grannyg00se5• 13 years ago

Not sure why you're interested in my personal situation but here goes.... Food is a necessity - plus it's not monetarily worthless.

I don't spend tens of thousands of dollars on my hobbies - they're near free.

I sold my car last year and don't plan on buying one again. But when I purchased it, I definitely made a self indulgent choice. I don't claim to be immune to temptation. But more to the point, it was never monetarily worthless and didn't put me tens of thousands of dollars in debt.

Underwear? I'm not sure what kind of fancy underwear would cost tens of thousands of dollars, but I'd definitely like to know more about that.

dasil003• 13 years ago

Really? When I hear self-indulgent I tend to think of your average American couch-potato lifestyle. This type of self-indulgence where you engage your love of learning for learning's sake doesn't really seem so bad in the grand scheme of things.

grannyg00se5• 13 years ago

His self indulgence resulted in a debt burden his felt quite threatened by. I'm not saying it's so bad though.

vijayr• 13 years ago

incredibly self indulgent

How? There are people who spend thousands of dollars on shoes, clothes etc. Heck, how many of us here spend tons of money on the latest gadget? Compared to these, spending money learning something just because he wanted to, is way better. And in any case, it is his money (well, it was a loan, still..), so he can spend however he wants (same goes for people who spend tons of money on the latest and greatest fad - it is their money)

grannyg00se5• 13 years ago

You can absolutely spend however you wish. The fact is we live in a pretty self indulgent society. Yes, if you spend thousands of dollars on shoes (per year, lets say) I'd consider that to be pretty self indulgent. But if you can afford it, why not right? I think where it gets a bit unreasonable is when you have to start living a lifestyle that you'd rather not live because of your self indulgence. Though I'm not sure that is the reality in this case.

wonderzombie2• 13 years ago

Not everybody is a rational, utility-maximizing machine. This "something" has less substance than a durable good but may provide a great deal of subjective value.

And, as for myself, rather than questioning the value of such an education in the first place, I consider it a problem that this it's as expensive as it is.

I also consider myself lucky that my passions and desires happen to align with -- or are at least complimentary with -- my economic interests.

circlefavshape• 13 years ago

This is one of the oddest things I've read on HN. What do you think money is FOR?

dagw• 13 years ago

I've probably spent tens of thousands of dollars over the years traveling and other experiences that are monetarily worthless. And honestly I probably consider it the best money I've ever spent.

quackerhacker• 13 years ago

I ALWAYS find the survival stories of college WAY more interesting than what you did to get your masters or what you majored in.

nchuhoai2• 13 years ago

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:

"Plus, I was graduating with a degree in English and history, which, though valuable to me, is more or less monetarily worthless."

"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."

fein3• 13 years ago

Ah yes, but the end of that last quote leaves a bit more:

"Why should we mock people who want to learn about their world and learn about themselves?"

Because you don't need a damn Liberal Arts degree to do that. It didn't cost me 5 figures to learn about my ego and my id; It cost me 5 figures to get a CS degree while doing so.

I also mock those with children, but only because I currently don't know a single person in my circles that should be having kids now, if ever.

When I hear a friend is pregnant, I just get depressed about all the opportunities they'll never have.

nchuhoai2• 13 years ago

I'm not disagreeing with you that at the margins, a liberal arts degree or the pursuit of knowledge at a college might not be "worth it". I just think, liberal arts people get a lot of shit for even wanting to do so.

Ultimately, it's about the second part of your comments. You clearly think they are doing something wrong with their lives, or they are not choosing the optimal route for their life.

While you are obviously entitled to your opinion, I do have some reservations about this kind of judgement. People have different views of what is a happy fulfilled life for them, so let it be.

(I know how ironic my "stop judging people" judgement on your judgement must sounds like, it's a fallacy I haven't been able to solve yet)

breadbox• 13 years ago

And your pregnant friends are thinking the exact same thing about you.

rayiner3• 13 years ago

> "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."

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.

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..."

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.

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.

MaggieL• 13 years ago

Just imagine paying $32,000 for a "liberal-arts education" that leaves you in a state where you make statements like that one. I guess that makes me one of the critics he's impatient with.

figbucket2• 13 years ago

If you work out savings of not having children and put the money in a decent savings plan you'll probably have enough to pay for better qualified care multiple times over what any children may provide (or not they're not obliged to help).

rayiner3• 13 years ago

Well in this hypothetical, the post-apocalyptic scenario that bankrupts Social Security also renders savings worthless. Having a kid is very robust against something like hyperinflation, lol.

In any case, that solution doesn't scale. Every form of retirement savings is just a way to earmark the production of someone else's kids (so long as human labor is needed for things, that is). If you invest in Google stock in lieu of having kids, you better hope that everybody doesn't get the same idea because then Google would have nobody to work there, and its advertising affiliates would have no working-age people to advertise to.

Guvante• 13 years ago

Except a child's benefit to society is quite large. A newborn is probably currently predicted to generate $1 million worth of economic benefit overall. (Actual numbers are hard to get perfect given the variance)

wikwocket• 13 years ago

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.

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.

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!

pud• 13 years ago

He wanted to pay off his school loans so he could "feel like a free person."

Now his entire life revolves around being a slave to his debt (living in a van in remote Alaksa, etc).

To each their own. But to me, this doesn't seem more free.

dreamdu5t2• 13 years ago

Consider the fact that his degrees are in fields that can be learned for free on the Internet and at the library. $100k in debt for History and English? Ridiculous!

leoh• 13 years ago

You are missing the point. Face to face relationships are invaluable and are the most important part of a good education. In liberal arts, there aren't dozens of high-quality, responsible IRC chatrooms, say, devoted to the intricacies of Nietzsche like there are rooms devoted to a single programming framework.

ahallock• 13 years ago

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.

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.

jaynos• 13 years ago

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.

Extreme Saving: A Man, His Van and Five-Figure Debt

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