As a personal finance blogger, a particularly fun this is the tons and tons of emails I get from random people and companies with random finance info in them. But sometimes these emails contain news that is kind of interesting. Here’s are a few in honor of a new semester starting! 

LendEDU is finance website that helps students get their money in order, take out loans, refinance loans, etc. They sent over an update with the following facts about student loan debt these days:

• Nationwide, the average student loan debt per borrower for the Class of 2019 was $29,076. This is an increase of $511 from last year’s figure, $28,565.
• 75% of graduates from the Class of 2019 at non-profit 4-year public and private colleges had student loan debt. This is slightly down from 56.99% for the Class of 2018.
• On a state level for the Class of 2019, the average student loan debt per borrower ranged from a low of $16,633 in Utah to a high of $41,579 in Connecticut.
• On a school level for the Class of 2019, the average student loan debt per borrower ranged from a low of $2,825 at Bryn Athyn College of the New Church to a high of $65,401 at New York School of Interior Design.
• For the Class of 2019, borrowers from private institutions left with $31,556 in student loan debt on average (55.40% of grads were borrowers), whereas borrowers from public institutions left with $28,501 in student loan debt (54.60% of grads were borrowers).

It’s interesting (in a horrifying way) how long the average debt has hovered around $30,000 for college. I remember being shocked by that number and then double shocked when my own graduate degree debt came out almost exactly in that range too.

Some useful tricks from above though include going to school in Utah or possibly at Bryn Athyn College of the New Church, which sounded a little to me like a cult, and after looking into it… might be a cult. J/K, j/k… or am I?…

This also left me a little curious about how much interior designers make and a little Googlin’ told me that according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the average is $51,500, though Payscale.com claims $49,629.

I really thought they must make bank for that level of debt, but seems pretty average to me.

Another interesting and equally horrifying email I received from CampusBooks.com notes that new textbook purchases are up 30% from previous years and it seems to be because some students are scares to buy preused books due to COVID.

Even better, textbook sellers have figured this out and average prices have gone up 27%.

College aged readers, just a heads up – the medical journal The Lancet did a report earlier in the year where they tested how long the virus stays alive on various items.

The virus could be detected on paper money for up to 4 days, but far more likely for a book, no viable virus could be found after 3 hours on printing paper or tissue paper.

So this means that by the time the book you buy on eBay arrives to your house, that virus is very likely dead. Or feel free to hit the book with a blast of Lysol. Or buy early and leave the package sitting by your front door for a few days.

Don’t fork over an extra 27% for that random textbook you’ll never use again out of fear.

Ok, maybe the new college info I’ve learned this week is a little depressing. But after that degree you’ve racked up all that debt for goes to work for you, you may start to think about… how much longer you’ve got to work. 

Here’s something a little more fun – International Living has created an Overseas Retirement Calculator. I definitely had some fun playing with it.

The calculator asks for your age, estimated income in retirement, and savings. I set it fairly conservatively with an estimated income of $1,500 and $700,000 saved at retirement and it offered me these options:

• Vietnam (cheapest option)
• Bolivia
• Bali
• Cambodia

I did notice the little catch was that it projected some pretty late retirement days for me. It has me moving to Vietnam at $1,000 a month on Feb. 10, 2058. I’d be 74. Bolivia was at $1,035 on Jul. 6, 2059. Bali $1,072 on Dec. 27, 2060 and Cambodia was $1,080 on April 23, 2061. The dates definitely made me laugh.

On the plus side, maybe Americans will be allowed back in those countries by then.

I have definitely thought a little about retiring earlier to a foreign country. I also have kind of always wanted to move back to England, but I certainly wouldn’t save any money doing that.

Have you ever thought of moving abroad?

And random fun story, for some reason I’m unsure of, I get a lot of emails about personal finance info and tools for Germans.

Fairly unsure about how that one happened.