Do the exact opposite of everything this woman does, and you should be in good shape.
This is 26-year old Marjorie Dillon, a recent business administration graduate of Robert Morris University. In a languid economy with shortened prospects, she has to suffer the ignominy of working at a job that she was qualified for out of high school – in her case, a part-time gig serving drinks in a bowling alley. Not sure how that distinguishes her from tens of thousands of other graduates, but keep reading.
A year before she was scheduled to graduate, Ms. Dillon made the curious decision to get pregnant. The story doesn’t mention whether she’d already lined up a well-paying job with child-care coverage, but it’s reasonable to assume that she hadn’t if she’s now working at the bowling alley.
Ms. Dillon borrowed money to go to college. Lots of it. She’s $120,000 in debt, putting her in a hole 6 times deeper than that of the average college graduate. A hole that’s exponentially harder for her to dig out of.
Granted, we’re viewing this only through the lens of Pittsburgh Post-Gazette writer Tim Grant, but Good Lord.
(Let’s not forget photographer Darrell Sapp. “Okay, look pensive. Forlorn. Desperate.”) Perhaps he asked her to “put a little Florence Owens Thompson into it.”
If you think this poor distraught woman (Ms. Dillon, not her Dust Bowl predecessor) deserves your sympathy, please stop reading and delete any bookmark associated with this blog.
Let’s not bury the lede any further here. This woman has a $150 monthly cell phone bill!
The authors try to use exclamation points as sparingly as possible, but if any statement calls for one, that one does.
“I can’t remember the last time I went grocery shopping,” Ms. Dillon said.
Which can mean one of two things:
a) she operates a large vegetable garden in her apartment complex’s common space;
b) she eats out.
She might go to food banks, but that seems like a point that the reporter would mention. It’s possible that the reporter is going out of his way to make Ms. Dillon look bad, but it certainly seems as though he’s doing the opposite. He leaves unasked a few obvious questions:
Why the hell did you have a kid?
She was 25 when she got pregnant. She wasn’t a confused, inexperienced teenager. She’s a college-educated adult who presumably knew what happens when sperm make contact with an egg. (Answer: they cost money.)
Who’s the father?
Oh, sorry. Is this turning from a financial blog into a post on morality? Only to the extent that Ms. Dillon’s creating a kid hampers her already shaky financial position. Without a breadwinning man around to ease the pressure on Ms. Dillon’s cash flow, her job – her duty – of creating wealth becomes more than twice as hard. If she was left on her own by a philandering cad – which would certainly elicit sympathy – she’s being awfully quiet about it.
Does that sound heartless? No, heartlessness is having a child without giving that child the opportunity to grow up with even a hope of prospering. Heartlessness is saying, “I have no intention of earning enough money for myself, let alone a baby. I’d much rather have my industrious neighbors pick up the tab while I watch my debt grow.”
The circle of pain and aggravation caused directly by Ms. Dillon starts impacting people long before it extends to you and me. Ms. Dillon’s 80-year old grandmother is running the risk of losing her house because she co-signed for Ms. Dillon’s loan. Not that the grandmother is exonerable here – she should have read what she signed and understood the risks – but she’s clearly suffering as a result of Ms. Dillon’s stunning lack of priorities.
Buy assets, sell liabilities. We’ll say it again. And if you can’t sell liabilities, at least don’t incur them. In case it isn’t obvious, $117,600 spent on a degree that results in a $7.25/hour job is not an asset.
Staying out of debt is not merely a smart thing for each of us to do, it’s a moral imperative if you plan on being a contributing member of society. Feed and clothe the poor? The best thing you can do for poor people is to not add to their ranks.
Yeah, her kid’s suffering. Fine. The post isn’t about the kid. It’s about a woman who made idiotic decisions (from her choice of college funding method to the spreading of her legs) and who leaves taxpayers to clean up the mess.
If anyone you know is thinking about applying for welfare or food stamps, tell them to do the adult thing and rob a bank instead. They’ll still be stealing, but at least with the latter they’re incurring some risk and engaging in an activity that has consequences.
“(Ms. Dillon) didn’t keep close track of how much she borrowed or completely understand the agreements.”
Why, were they printed in Farsi? She “borrowed” money from Sallie Mae, whose terms of agreement are fairly clear for a government organization. She presumably had at least one face-to-face meeting with a lender. She certainly met with someone in her college’s financial aid office, unless Robert Morris’ vice president of enrollment is lying.
That vice president, who pays more attention to detail than Ms. Dillon could be bothered to, points out that “she borrowed $43,290 in excess of the cost of tuition and fees.”
Read that again. As a college student – probably the one time in her life where it’s socially acceptable and even somewhat amusing to be financially struggling – she borrowed more than her likely annual post-graduation starting salary in addition to everything else. In the words of the legendary Ricky Watters, “For who? For what?”
So can’t you say anything productive or helpful?
Work hard at the $7.25/hour job. If you truly love your kid, do the noble thing and let someone more responsible take care of it. Pay cash for everything. Lose the cell phone and the car ($329 monthly) and the cable and the internet ($120).
In a society that’s busy redefining health care as a right rather than a necessity, it’s certainly easy for a 26-year old with a sense of entitlement to feel that other rights can include HBO and not having to wait for a bus.
The article also states that she has $300 monthly credit card payments. At a conservative 19% interest, that means she’s got about a $19,000 balance there, too. Ms. Dillon is certainly of the right age, sex and appearance to make decent money sharing the stage with Sinnamon, Sienna and Skye here. If she’s worried that such a career decision would cause her family shame and embarrassment, much better that they lose their homes and read about her in the local paper.
