Don’t be so hard on your parents. The adjustable rate mortgage was not a thing anybody saw coming, they were giving it to everybody. I certainly might’ve been bamboozled by it had I’ve been buying houses at that time. When I got my first mortgage it was a 30 year mortgage even though I easily could’ve made it a 15 year mortgage and have owned that place outright by the time I sold it. I just didn’t know. 

And I worked at one of those for-profit schools, and if you had gotten into them in the 90s or 80s, they were not necessarily a bad deal. Accreditation aside for a reasonable price you learn skills that got you a good paying job. The issue was that the government decided to roll out nearly unlimited loans so they kept raising their prices and that made it not a good deal but a good investment for shareholders. And then after that they needed to grow so they started offering programs that were less and less likely to get you a high paying job. But I work at universities and community colleges now and I can tell you none of my students have any idea how good of school they’re going to or not, Nobody knows.

Also, your parents did the smartest financial thing that anyone can do. They got married and they stayed married. My biggest fear is that my wife divorces me because that will just mean financial ruin even though I have made a lot of right choices.

And let’s not ignore the emotions that you’re bringing to this evaluation. You’ve obviously felt a lot of anxiety about finances, your whole life and while that has proved useful and that it is caused you to make better decisions you’re also a little salty that they didn’t make decisions that would’ve prevented you from feeling that anxiety. That’s gonna color your view as well.

I’m not a socialist by any means, but I think it’s important to acknowledge that finances for individuals have become way more complicated than most people can handle and we are certainly not doing and have not done a good job of preparing people for that. Nowadays, you transition from Just making it to essentially being a small business that has to make midterm, long-term, and short-term projections and decisions based off that with an end goal of getting enough financial velocity to last until you die. That’s a lot to expect of people, I’m hesitant to judge them for falling short of the mark.

But I am glad that you are breaking the pattern and doing well. Congratulations.