Financial services companies go into overdrive around Valentine's Day, along with florists, chocolate makers, and jewelers. Usually, it's surveys about love and money, with advice on avoiding financial conflict with a partner.
Student loan company SoFi has thrown its hat into the ring with that old standby of V-Day marketing: VD.
Here's the pitch. It seems 39 percent of millennials would rather disclose a preexisting sexually transmitted disease to a potential partner than reveal their debt, according to a survey of 2,000 millennials SoFi conducted, using online poller Survey Monkey. In addition, the survey found that serious debt was the second-biggest romantic deal-breaker, after workaholism.
Both STDs and debt are epidemic in America. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced late last year that STDs were at an "unprecedented high" in 2015. So is student loan debt, SoFi's bread and butter. Total student loan debt stood at $1.4 trillion as of September, double the amount in 2009. It makes sense that a potential partner's debt would play a bigger part in relationships today.
In fact, debt shame may be epidemic in itself.
Melanie Lockert, 32, remembers how she felt when—$81,000 in debt after getting her bachelor's as a theater major at California State University at Long Beach and a master's in performance studies at New York University—she couldn't find a job in her field. Six months after graduation, she was on food stamps and working for $10 an hour in Portland, Ore.
Her debt highlighted her mistakes and shortcomings and "made me feel guilty that I went to a crazy expensive school," Lockert said. "It represented a huge amount of shame for me, because I thought I'd done everything right. I'd worked hard in school, had a part-time job, did everything that I was supposed to."
Of the survey, she said, "I don't think anyone would actually want to disclose their STD status, either. But what it's saying is that debt and money still has very much of a taboo." Student loan debt is synonymous with the millennial generation, she said, "but no one wants to say, 'Hey, I graduated with $100,000 in debt, do you want to get married?'"
A partner's significant debt "could delay the purchase of a first home, require cutting back on vacation or travel, reduce retirement contributions, along with plenty of other financial sacrifices that a debt-free partner wouldn't require," said financial planner Jon Powell, of Ferguson-Johnson Wealth Management, in Rockville, Md.
Here's the vicious circle. "The old adage 'out of sight, out of mind' is the solution for many people, and thus the problem," said financial planner David Mullins, of Mullins Wealth in Richlands, Va. Balances build, interest accrues, "and before too long, there is a four- or five-figure monster arriving in the mail each month to say hello," he said. "The problem is, the debt makes you feel bad, so to feel better, you spend more. The cycle can continue until a breaking point is reached."