CNN, Tone-Deaf

So as my time-off wound to a close, I happened to catch this story on CNN.  You can watch it yourself, but a quick summation: Harvard MBA grad Joe Mihalic racks up $90,000 in student debt and pays it off in about seven months.  Impressive by most any standard.

But.

The thing about getting into a Harvard master's program is that someone who does is likely to have relatively significant means in the first place.  And even someone who had to take advantage of every scholarship they could find under every rock they could hoist is likely to come out of it with advantages that students from non-Ivy's don't usually have.  Mihalic says on his site that he "started a job with a modest income (relative to my banking and consulting peers) in the tech industry of Austin."  You may have noticed the use of "relative" there.  Mihalic admits to spending $1,300/month on "entertainment" before he got his act together.  He bought a house, furniture for the house, two cars, and a motorcycle.  His worries were that he wouldn't be able to start a family, or a business, or acquire a business and turn it around.  This was two years out of school.  Mihalic may have had a lot of student debt (more than the average student), but anyone who thinks he had anything else in common with the average student is fooling themselves. 

In the nation of Horatio Alger there's always someone eager to intentionally miss the point of any argument and change the discussion by playing the "stop belittling the successful" card.  But this is not about Mihalic.  Sure, he had means and resources most students could only dream of, but he responsibly put them to good use (eventually) and dragged himself out of the debt he acquired.  I truly mean when I say: good for him.

No, this is about CNN and it's pre-commercial break teaser about "learning a lesson or two" from Mihalic (and following up with a pithy "good lesson for us all" at the end of the interview--who is "us all" and how do I join them?).  Just a day or so before launching their hours-long Jubilee flogging (hosted by outdated British caricature Richard Quest and possible accessory to illegal phone-hacking Piers Morgan), CNN's midday programming deigned to tell soon-to-be and recent graduates that all they need to do is buckle down and acquire the resources of a Joe Mihalic.  No wait, they couldn't even be that honest.  Instead, they set up an insulting chart with five recommendations for reducing debt, based on Mihalic's plan:

• Got a roommate (I may be out of touch, but isn't this standard for most college and post-college students?)
• Didn't go out to eat (one I admittedly don't follow as much as I should, but given how much Mihalic says he was doing this after grad school, I have to imagine that he racked up more significant food bills than most)
• Took a second job (sure, right after I nab that first job)
• Sold unnecessary items (can I keep one of my cars and my motorcycle?)
• Planned free dates (see the thing about going out to eat)

In fact, some of Mihalic's strategies sound decent: dump the 401K, forget about savings (by the way, he had apparently accumulated some $30K in savings--just like all other recent college grads).  These might be extreme methods, but remember that in your twenties, student debt is rather more daunting than retirement planning.  More importantly for CNN: these suggestions wouldn't look so nice and inoffensive on the graphic.  It is Saturday afternoon, after all, can't do anything too heavy.  And heaven forbid they examine why college is so expensive in the first place or why debt amnesty pushes never seem to go anywhere.  No, just show them a clean cut kid who did the implausible and gloss over the privileges he had to both earn and inherit first--that'll let us tell those brats that "it can be done so they should stop complaining."

Young people aren't watching anyway, right?  Yeah, fuck 'em.