Considering that in the US our oligarchs have stolen much of the wealth of the entire nation, a significant percentage of the population has a negative net worth. This is by design. They are essentially getting as close to indentured servitude as they can.

Is this a European post I’m too American to understand? Plenty of people graduate college with tens or even hundreds of thousands of net negative worth. Getting to above 0 from that point is a big accomplishment, and could be considered “on-track” as late as your 30s depending on your income and savings ratio. That being said, I wouldn’t say you should hope to be in America-levels of student debt, so maybe that’s the joke and I’m just slow