Q: 'Buried' in debt, can he dig out?

USA TODAY, in partnership with ABC News, is exploring the issues of being young and in debt in a six-week series that began Monday, Nov. 20. We've paired five twentysomethings with members of the Financial Planning Association who are lending advice. And we're offering tips for managing debt, cutting expenses and saving. Follow the entire series and find online tools and resources at youngdebt.usatoday.com.

Remember when you were sent to the principal's office in high school and were threatened: "This will go on your permanent record"?

Remember your relief when you realized that a school day's discipline report didn't really follow you all through life? Well, Todd Townsend has learned that there is, in fact, a permanent record. It's called a credit score. And his isn't very good.

VIDEO: Todd's life with mom Darsie

Two years after graduating with a degree in theater from St. Lawrence University in Canton, N.Y., Townsend, 25, finds himself loaded with student debt and working at a job that doesn't pay enough to make the payments.

He earns $10.50 an hour as a concierge for a lodge in the Lake Placid, N.Y., area. His student debt totals $47,000.

After graduating from St. Lawrence in 2004, Townsend headed West to attend the Art Institute of Colorado in Denver. There, he racked up more debt.

Then he decided to follow his dream to be an actor and moved to New York City to find work. He lasted 4½ months.

"I lived like an animal," he says of his big-city life, spent eating ramen noodles and absorbing job rejections.

Like thousands of young people, he retreated to safety: Mom's house. In fact, 19% of the twentysomethings polled recently by USA TODAY said they had moved back with their parents.

"It was a good financial decision" to move back home, Townsend says.

Still, he's the first to recognize that "girls don't think it's sexy."

Now, Townsend's dreams of entering the theater world are being deferred.

"I graduated from a great school with honors, and I'm not using the degree at all," he says. "Schools don't prepare you for the real world."

Townsend remembers his first day as a freshman when, "You got a meal card, your class schedule and a credit card application," he says. "I was 18 years old. I didn't know it was wrong."

Every one of his college friends, Townsend says, got a credit card and ran up debt to the limits. He did, too.

Townsend also signed promissory notes for college loans without really understanding the terms. Now, he's stuck with a variable loan at 14.25% interest.

"I kept accruing loans and interest on the loans, and I found myself buried," he says.

At the moment, Townsend's happy to be earning a steady paycheck, and he's paying a minimum amount of rent and utilities to his mother.

It's not free?

"She loves me," he says. "But not that much."

THE ADVICE: Knuckle down and get a better job