Vice President Joe Biden is the chairman of the White House Task Force on the Middle Class, which released its annual report last week that examines the state of the American middle class. The report, which was presented to President Obama on Friday, discusses steps that the Administration is taking to combat the challenges facing the largest socio-economic class in the country: joblessness, childcare costs, care-giving for the elderly or those with disabilities, student loan payments, and retirement security.

Key Proposals

I’ve been doing research on the various reward catalogs of credit card companies when I discovered my favorite reward, a student loan rebate check from the Citi ThankYou Network, had gone up in price. I would routinely cite that reward as one of the main reasons I kept using my Citi card. A few short months ago, for 10,000 points, you could get a $100 check written to your student loan servicer. That came out to each point being valued at 1¢.

My weekend financial project is to shore up the kids’ 529 college savings accounts. With my oldest child a mere eight years from starting college, and us dreadfully behind in accumulating savings, I have decided it is time to move college savings up the list of priorities a bit.

If you have a student loan debt balance that is close to or exceeds your annual income, this is for you. Income-Based Repayment (IBR) is a new way to lower your federal student loan payments starting July 1, 2009. It caps monthly payments and forgives remaining debt and interest after 25 years. And if you’re a teacher or work in government, nonprofit, or other public service jobs, you could have your federal loans forgiven after just 10 years.
Here’s an animated video about the topic from IBRinfo.org:

On a macro level, debt was a force behind the incredible economic expansion over the past two centuries, and the availability of debt at the family level played a role as well. Despite all that debt has brought society, many financial gurus and authors vilify debt and explicitly call the idea of borrowing money “evil.” Typical mass-produced financial advice often calls for avoiding debt as much as possible. Is this a realistic goal in economically developed nations in the twenty-first century?