How couples sabotage their finances

As costs of college soars (with thanks to absurd union salaries and benefits, as well as absurd administrator salaries and benefits), those attending college have increasing trouble paying back loans. The fully expected consequence is Student-Loan Delinquencies Now Surpass Credit Cards.

A new report from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York delivers generally positive news about the economy with one glaring exception: student loan debt. The amount of debt and delinquencies are climbing, and some experts say the official numbers don’t even capture how big the problem really is.  In the third quarter, there were fewer foreclosures, increased credit card and auto lending (indicators of rising consumer confidence), and an overall drop in our collective debt load, led by decreasing mortgage debt. Student loans are another story.

It's interesting to watch some of the terms bandied about in headline news. For example, the LA Times headline reads S&P says student loan debt could be next financial bubble. Next? Could Be?

The following is a real life account by Stephanie Hood as told to LearnVest. It’s funny how you can do all of the right things–go to college, get a job–and then one day wake up with crushing debt.

If anyone was hoping that in the peak holiday month of December the US consumer would finally open up the purse strings and "charge" everything, we have bad news: in the last month of 2012 revolving consumer credit dipped by some $3.6 billion, a reversion of the modest increases seen in November and October, and the biggest decline in credit card debt since July of 2012. Yet overall consumer credit rose by some $14.6 billion and beat expectations of a $14 billion increase. Why?

The last time we looked at the most underreported debt crisis sweeping the land, which is nothing short of the second coming of subprime, namely the student loan bubble, we posted "the scariest chart of the quarter" in which the Fed had finally caught up with our prior data showing that student loan delinquency had soared to some 11% from the 9% reported in the previous quarter, even as the Fed disclosed it had issued some $42 billion in Federa

Student loans are now the No.1 debt burden that Americans carry, eclipsing credit card debt for the first time last year.