No, used my money to set myself up to go back to school. The worst investment in my life. I sas a self-taught software engineer, leveled to senior at a startup that ended up being acquired by a big tech company. I decided to get degree because I didn't want to be held back from doing what I wanted because I didn't have the paper. So I got into a top CS program at the exact worse time. When I started inflation was like sub 2 percent and funding myself seemed reasonable. I had a reasonable plan, but it wasn't reasonable when inflation jumped 9-11% during 2021-22. It changed everything, first it made loans very expensive. 2nd made it hard to get back into the labor force. But basically I've regretted my decision to go back to school, but it is what it is. I made a bad call I guess and now stuck with it and a life almost doesn't feel worth living. The rate increases didn't help, the overhearing in pandemic obviously destabilized the job market but the AI bubble has suffocated the economy. I think it popped I think things would been frozen in the economy. It's basically been going on for close to 3 years now and everything is frozen. I have a job thank god, but by virtue of having gone back to school at that moment I'm now making a lot less than I did before covid but I'm stuck with the student debt at high interest rate. I've gotten myself stuck in the underclass, the bottom of the K. Its hard to describe how stuck everything had become at the bottom of the economy. It's frozen over completely you can't move. There are no opportunities. Going back to school made sense in sub-2% inflation / interest rate environment. Not when inflation was high and interest rates are high.

True. In this sense, the crypto craze was much less obnoxious than the genAI craze.

Although, with cryptocurrencies being forced into mainstream banking, this is also getting less true. You increasingly have to stay alert to avoid accidentally getting involved with them.