Backstory:
Both of us are third generation engineers, encouraged by our families to follow the same profession.
I was lucky to grow up comfortably; my father worked 9-5 every day while my mother upkept the home and took care of me as a stay at home mom. When I left for college, all financial support stopped. I married my high school sweetheart in college and we both graduated as engineers (her in 5 years, mine took me 8 years because I had to work full time retail during college for enough money to live along with fighting depression and adult ADD).
Once she began work as an engineer, we were even able to buy our first house with a rural development loan which avoids the down payment and
our mortgage payments are about the same as rent in the area. It took me a year to find a job, but I began my first engineering job at the end of 2020 and we had our first child at the end of 2021.
Fast forward to now, I work full time as an engineer for the state and my wife is able to work 10-15 hours a week from home when we can get her parents to watch our son.
And yet the debt grows. We are ~$22k (not including the $8k from my student loans) in debt at the moment mostly just from using credit cards to survive during college. All we can manage to pay is the minimum and interest each month, never really decreasing the balances.
We don't have any expensive habits, we keep spreadsheets and budgets to the best of our abilities. Life just costs so damn much.
My car is the same one I've had for over 10 years and is on its last legs. I have dental work that I need done but I can't afford it and can't take the time off to get it done. We had to worry last week if we'd have enough money to buy food for ourselves.
We were lucky and did mostly everything right, following the success stories told to us by our parents. But it just doesn't matter, we are stuck in debt. We hate this country (and this state) but all of our friends and family are here.
But my son is healthy and happy. He smiles every day and I can only hope we make this country better before he has to bear these burdens.