HAMILTON – Local 31-year-old Madison Clair, a newly licensed veterinarian who currently owes a combined total of $118,846 in federal and provincial student loans, reports that her greatest dream is to someday owe at least six times that amount of money to a bank in order to own her own home.
“Every time I see that monthly loan payment leave my bank account, it feels like a little piece of my dream is dying,” said Clair, who spent the last six months of graduate school making ramen in a student lounge coffee pot to survive. “And in this case, my dream is to free myself from an unimaginable amount of debt in order to take on an even more unimaginable amount of debt before the housing market gets any worse and I’m forced to live in a rented apartment with seven roommates like some sort of over-educated but equally doomed Snow White.”
Clair’s friends and family worry about the feasibility of her dream, and have encouraged her to set more realistic goals.
“Is she capable of going into six-figures into debt for a place to live? Of course she is. My baby can do anything she sets her mind to,” said Clair’s 67-year-old father, a retired school bus driver who purchased a three-bedroom home in 1982 with a handful of spare change he’d been planning to use for bus fare.
“I just think she needs to be a little more realistic and not get her hopes up. Six figure debt for a house? Doesn’t seem likely to me. But six figure debt for some sort of large van that she’s forced to live in? Now that just might be attainable.”
Clair’s father also added that, even if Clair is unable to obtain a jaw-dropping six-figure mortgage, the interest she will pay on her student loans over her lifetime will add up to a mortgage-like figure, allowing her to get the “homeowner experience” without actually having a place to live.
At press time, Clair’s older family members were encouraging her not to give up hope, before heading out to a city council meeting to oppose any new homes being built in a 500km radius.
