Zero Hedge, on student debt:

“The key to having it discharged is to make just enough money to stay clear of bankruptcy, but not enough to really survive above the poverty line. This is because it’s hard to have student debt discharged in the event you go completely broke. However, if your discretionary income is so small as to render you incapable of making payments, the government will start you on a program whereby a monthly payment of zero dollars counts towards the 300 “payments” you need to make to have your debt forgiven. Toe this line carefully (i.e. don’t slip up and start making too much discretionary income) and the entirety of your student debt will be forgiven in 25 short years without your ever having to pay a dime.

“You’re welcome.”

If you do utilize a deftly downsized lifestyle to discharge your student debt for 25 years, then by the end of that time, you’ll be used to it. Indeed, by that time you wouldn’t have it any other way. And furthermore, you’ll have been pioneering the new way of life that we all need to embrace. We will thank you for it.

Could Zero Hedge’s claim really be true? If so, it’s the key to not just discharging onerous student debt but to reversing the bloated, materialistic, growth-economy bias via inspiring new, indebted graduates to start actually learning how to live lightly on the land.

Interesting that I found that one startling paragraph at the very end of a post that made no mention of it in the title.

Class Of 2015 Sets Student Debt Record

Because to anyone who has been following the subject, it’s no surprise that 2015 student debt hit a new record; but what a wonderful surprise to learn of a way out that is good for, not just one’s own peace of mind and heart, but the heart and surface of the planet as well.

And yes, it’s an intense, challenging discipline, indeed, it’s an art form, to learn to live, essentially, below the scrim of the matrix money culture. Not only, for example, in a tiny home with no mortgage (or in my case, ’twas a yurt, for nearly 20 years), but in all sorts of other ways. I started to make the transition decades ago. It’s fun. Try it, you’ll see.

Oh yeah, and check out Daniel Suelo, The Moneyless Man.

And this: German grandmother who has lived without money for 16 years.

And one more, about a moneyless family.

Update, later same day: Here’s what one young man did — and how that first wild, courageous decision morphed into a different mind-set, skill-set, and life-style.

I secretly lived in my office for 500 days