[boriscleto]

Ann Romney in Charge of Conveying Mitt's Warm and Fuzzy Side - Beth Reinhard - NationalJournal.com

[Nesster]

Mitt and Ann Romney--Portrayed by Sister Romney as Struggling, Just-Getting-By, Stock-Selling Students at BYU: How Tough It Was, Ye Know Not; How Tight It Was, Ye Know Not . . . | Recovery from Mormonism

"Journalists who buy that have short memories. I was living in Massachusetts when Romney first ran for the Senate, and remembered this interview with Ann Romney in the 'Boston Globe' (by Jack Thomas, October 20, 1994 . . . .)

"Of her student days with Mitt at BYU, Ann said:

“'They were not easy years. You have to understand, I was raised in a lovely neighborhood, as was Mitt, and at BYU, we moved into a $62-a-month basement apartment with a cement floor and lived there two years as students with no income.

“'It was tiny. And I didn’t have money to carpet the floor. But you can get remnants, samples, so I glued them together, all different colors. It looked awful, but it was carpeting.

“'We were happy, studying hard. Neither one of us had a job, because Mitt had enough of an investment from stock that we could sell off a little at a time.

---

"Ann was widely mocked for this at the time. I don’t dissent from the mockery. Her idea of her and Mitt facing 'not easy years,' having 'no income,' 'living on the edge' as 'struggling students,' was that the couple had had to face college with only sale of stock to sustain them.

"By Ann’s own account, the stock amounted to 'a few thousand' dollars when bought, but it had gone up by a factor of sixteen. So let’s conservatively say that they got through five years as students—neither one of them working—only by 'chipping away at' assets of $60,000 in 1969 dollars (about $377,000 today).

[jeffkrol]

$62-a-month basement apartment with a cement floor and lived there two years as students with no income.

The current rent is now $662 and no income....
3 whole years gosh.. some live their whole life that way.. so I heard.................

[boriscleto]

The current rent is now $662 and no income....
3 whole years gosh.. some live their whole life that way.. so I heard.................

There's a billion people on this planet that live on a dollar a day.

[grhazelton]

These folks are totally clueless!

Add this to The Mittster's fatuous remark that college students should "shop around for the best deal and borrow money from their folks" and Marie Antoinette's famous remark "Let them eat cake" comes to mind. And yes, she may not have said exactly that, but I'm sure you take my point. To be able to finance college by selling a little stock...how many of us worked full time to finance college or grad school....

[cardinal43]

...how many of us worked full time to finance college or grad school....

Yep, I worked my way through college by working in a service station, plus the GI bill. Keep in mind this was the late 60's and there really were "service" stations (premium was $0.36 a gallon). Also, the GI bill wasn't nearly as lucrative as it is now.