This only makes sense under certain conditions, mainly the expectation that you will make enough money later (like after getting a degree), and have access to the required credit (so student loans, a wealthier cosigner, or an informal loan). It might help to imagine that you are paying a fee to a third party (the expected interest payment) to transfer some money from a wealthier future-you to poorer current-you, and accepting a risk of larger costs if future-you makes less money than you expected.
If having free time now increases your earnings later (have better grades, graduate earlier, learn more skills, meet more people) this can be a great bargain even on strictly financial terms. Even if it’s a financial wash, you might accept a heavy fee when making this inter-temporal-wealth-transfer in order to avoid doing the boring jobs and have a more pleasant time.
As an aside, there’s some sort of tragedy where the people for whom this option makes the least sense are the quickest to take it, and those who would actually benefit from it have absorbed the admonitions aimed at the first group, and feel that they’re being financial prudent by avoiding any sort of debt, even when doing so makes them worse off in the long run.
Borrowing money is worth seriously considering.
This only makes sense under certain conditions, mainly the expectation that you will make enough money later (like after getting a degree), and have access to the required credit (so student loans, a wealthier cosigner, or an informal loan). It might help to imagine that you are paying a fee to a third party (the expected interest payment) to transfer some money from a wealthier future-you to poorer current-you, and accepting a risk of larger costs if future-you makes less money than you expected.
If having free time now increases your earnings later (have better grades, graduate earlier, learn more skills, meet more people) this can be a great bargain even on strictly financial terms. Even if it’s a financial wash, you might accept a heavy fee when making this inter-temporal-wealth-transfer in order to avoid doing the boring jobs and have a more pleasant time.
As an aside, there’s some sort of tragedy where the people for whom this option makes the least sense are the quickest to take it, and those who would actually benefit from it have absorbed the admonitions aimed at the first group, and feel that they’re being financial prudent by avoiding any sort of debt, even when doing so makes them worse off in the long run.