A solid majority of student loan borrowers in a recent survey said they would trade their 2020 vote for debt forgiveness.
The LendEDU website conducted the survey, which found that 62 percent of respondents would rather be debt-free than vote.
The website noted that the average student loan borrower has $28,565 in student loan debt and many will be paying their loan off for at least the next decade.
The survey gathered information about today’s student loan borrowers:
For Americans trying to move forward with their finances after college, monthly student loan payments year after year can be a drag. Buying a house or starting a family in your mid-to-late twenties isn’t as easy as it once was, and student loan debt plays a major factor in that.
How desperate are borrowers to move on from their student loan debt?
LendEDU posed a series of questions to 1,000 adult Americans with student loan debt to find out. Respondents had to decide if they would go through with each hypothetical scenario to have their student loan debt completely forgiven.
It turns out that respondents would be willing to give up a lot of things to get rid of their debt, including those willing to give up social media for five years (68 percent), give up all streaming services for life (60 percent), and give up all forms of payment except for cash for life (52 percent).
Other findings of the survey include:
Give up internet access for one year
- 55 percent of borrowers answered “Yes”
- 45 percent of borrowers answered “No”
Give up the use of Google Search for life
- 51 percent of borrowers answered “Yes”
- 49 percent of borrowers answered “No”
Give up being vegan for life or have to become vegan for life
- 49 percent of respondents answered “Yes”
- 51 percent of respondents answered “No”
Give up the use of a smartphone for life (can still use flip phone/standard cell phone)
- 35 percent of borrowers answered “Yes”
- 65 percent of borrowers answered “No”
Enlist to fight in a hypothetical World War 3
- 30 percent of borrowers answered “Yes”
- 70 percent of borrowers answered “No”
Give up the ability to travel anywhere on vacation for the next 30 years
- 24 percent of borrowers answered “Yes”
- 76 percent of borrowers answered “No”
Give up hot showers for the next 25 years
- 17 percent of respondents answered “Yes”
- 83 percent of respondents answered “No”
LendEDU’s methodology came from the an online survey commissioned by LendEDU and conducted by Pollfish polling company. The website states:
Respondents were only allowed to proceed to the survey if they were 18 or older, from the United States, and had some amount of student loan debt. The first two criterion were found through Pollfish’s filtering features that allowed us to filter on both age and location. The last criterion was found through a screener question that respondents had to answer correctly to proceed.
The poll was conducted on January 10, 2020.
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