Student Loan Forgiveness

President Biden announced student loan debt relief yesterday. Under this program the Department of Education will forgive up to $10,000 of federal student loans for borrowers under certain income limits. Borrowers who also received Pell Grants (a subsidy for low-income families) are eligible for up to $20,000 of forgiveness.

Biden's plan has supporters and detractors. The detractors are all over the political spectrum. From the left, people are saying it's not enough. "I'm 65 and have $300,000 of loans!" read multiple news headlines. From the right it's being called everything from unfair, to inflationary, to theft— and that's just in the mainstream media. I can only imagine the unhinged claims echoing around the fever swamps of conservative media.

The new program is not directly relevant to me; I paid off my student loans years ago. But there's an interesting what-if. What if a program like this were available years ago? What if I had just graduated recently and still had loans to pay off?

— I was fortunate to graduate with a relatively small loan balance. I qualified for academic scholarships that, together, covered at least two-thirds of my costs. Work during the year and during the summers covered at lot of what was left. I graduated after 4 years with loans of just $6,000. That was lower than the debt a lot of people graduating around the same time owed.

— Of course, $6k then is not $6k today. Applying a simple inflation adjustment doubles it to $12,000. College costs have risen much faster than the rate of inflation, though. Instead of merely 2x due to inflation it could be 4x if scaled proportionately to how the full cost of the private college (Cornell University) I attended has grown since then. So, maybe $24,000 if I graduated earlier this year.

— Even my hypothetical $24,000 loan is a light burden. Figures from the Education Data Initiative reported in a recent USA Today article indicate that the average federal student loan balance today $37,667. I think that represents the balance after people have already paid whatever they've paid. The average upon graduation would be higher. And the average upon graduation from an expensive private school would likely be a lot higher, too.

But let's go with the figure of $24k. That's like a new car loan. I'd be graduating from college and already owe as much as financing a new car. (And not a fancy new car, BTW. We're talking Toyota Corolla money here.) I'd welcome debt relief of $10k. It wouldn't pay off loans of $24k but it sure would make a big dent in them. Even if my loan balance were $40k, knocking out a quarter of that would be nothing to sneeze at. Edit: $10k is $100-200/month depending on term. Not a huge amount, but enough to make a difference for anyone struggling to pay for basics each month. I'd sure appreciate the government giving me a hand-up as I started my career.

Drugs are Free Now?

I filled a prescription at the pharmacy yesterday and it was... free. So was a different prescription I filled several weeks ago. I haven't seen this since... well, ever. Even back in the 1990s there was a $5 co-pay on filling a prescription.

What's changed? Well, it isn't that I've switched to some super platinum-trimmed health insurance. In fact a few months ago I switched from a traditional PPO insurance plan to an HDHP/HSA plan. Long story short, these plans entail reducing costs by shifting more of them onto customers upfront, figuring that customers will consume health care more cost-effectively if they're paying for more of it out of pocket. So I actually expected that, in exchange for lower premiums, my prescription co-pays would go up.

What changed is that, apparently, health insurance companies are seeing the Big Picture. If their customers choose not to treat minor illnesses because the medications cost too much out of pocket, they'll spiral into major illness. And covering treatment for a customer with major illness will cost the insurance company way more than $10, $25, or even $40 on prescription co-pays.

Hiking Volcanic Crevices at Black Point

I said I would do it and I meant it. I am catching up on pictures— and video— from hiking back in June. Recall we took a three-day weekend in mid-June and drove out to the eastern Sierra. That was an adventure in itself, including a literal midnight drive through Yosemite and road construction at 9,000'.

Our first hike that weekend was at Black Point near Mono Lake. Black Point is a dark gray (ha! It's not really black) volcanic dome just north of the lake. Often it's completely ignored by people looking for the iconic tufa structures. ...That's been us, BTW. We've visited the tufa a few times but didn't think to investigate other places around the lake until we were planning this trip.



Black Point is remote. It's a few miles off of paved roads. Dirt trails were no obstacle to our Nissan Xterra 4x4, though. We even explored a little-used side trail and found a way in around the back side of the rocks. We parked about 1/4 mile below the ridge and hoofed it up to the top, an ascent of about 100'. Finding this back way in was nice because it was much less climbing, and less distance, to cover on foot versus coming in from the main parking area.

In the photo above we're looking west-ish toward the crest of the Sierra Nevada. Part of Mono Lake is laid out below us.

The point of this visit isn't to climb atop the rocks and look into the distance. I mean, that part's fun. But what's really unique here is to climb down into the rocks and investigate the narrow crevices.

Watch on YouTube

I captured a number of short videos on my iPhone while I was exploring the narrows. I stitched them together in the video above. Watch it for amazing views and my narrative on what your seeing and how this place was created.

In beauty I walk.