Pea-n-Me
DIS Veteran
- Joined
- Jul 18, 2004
Yeah, but I think that in these conversations, anecdotes about a relative handful of people doing the latter - mostly in very comfortable upper middle class families - are used to ignore how much more common the former is because of large-scale changes in work, compensation and cost of living over the last couple generations.
Except that statistics don't bear this out. It IS harder now, factually speaking. Rents are higher relative to starting salaries and to median incomes. Wages have stagnated while costs have risen, particularly for education (student loans), housing and health insurance. These are facts, not situations created by spending too much on Starbucks and iPhones. I have no doubt that there are kids out there who just don't want to let go of the comfortable upper middle class lifestyle they having at mom & dad's house, but that doesn't change the fact that it is harder for those who do want to get launched to do so now.
If I'm reading this right, your daughter is a degreed professional with multiple jobs who still needs to have a roommate and can't afford her own insurance... how can you argue that isn't harder than it was for our generation? Several of my high school friends became teachers, and even straight out of college they could afford a decent studio or one-bedroom apartment, without roommates and without second jobs, and most were able to pay down student loans ahead of schedule or start saving a bit for future priorities.
I only have a minute right now, but by comfortable, I mean able to pay everything plus doing things we all say working folk should start early such as putting aside emergency savings, saving for retirement, starting college savings if children are involved, etc.some of us intimately know the people we speak of through personal interaction-they are our family members, neighbors and co-workers not someone we might interact w/ for a few hours in a volunteer setting (and frankly-none of the multiple universities and colleges around me offer or solicit any volunteer opportunities for non students), the community opportunities are there to serve the community not to afford someone volunteering a socialization or observation platform.
i get what you're saying but i'll just throw this out there-
i can only speak for myself (but it was a commonality among those i knew back in the late 80's/early 90's)-
my car note was close to $300 a month (according to the inflation calculators that's about $562 now),
i had rent, utilities, car/renters insurance, health insurance, union dues, food and incidentals. my union dues were about what my dd pays for her cell phone so it's kind of a wash there.
did i live 'comfortably'? well, it wasn't in squalor but it doesn't even come close to what even 20 year old apartments offer these days (no microwave, fridge from the 50's, no dishwasher, microscopic little cooktop/oven, no washer and dryer on the property, no parking lot let alone covered parking). i could have gotten all of that but i couldn't afford it b/c the jobs i was educated for were in the high cost san francisco bay area and i (and most of my peers) couldn't afford those rents so we went with what we could afford-and commuted 2 hours each way/5 days a week. many of us also had side jobs to make ends meet. retirement savings??? i know everyone today runs around saying if kids don't start saving for this in their 20's they are doomed-but we didn't, we couldn't (didn't know anyone who really did until at least early 30's)-and we were not doomed (currently retired-and much more comfortable than i was when first starting out).
i think the level of 'comfort' can be fluid-what i grew up with as comfort certainly wasn't what i walked into as an independent self supporting adult but i aspired to it and managed to raise the bar over time. my dd certainly isn't living at the level she lived in here at home but it's better than what either dh or i had out the gate so that's progress.
p.s. i can't begin to imagine over $200K in student loans for a bachelors unless it was b/c of personal choice. many have posted tuition rates and others have shown how those can be reduced through opting to live off campus, in multiple roommate situations, at home commuting (which i did) so for me, i feel there has to have been some kind of options there that for whatever reason the person(s) made their own choice(s) on resulting in that amount of debt. i also kind of wonder what kind of $200K degree has a career path where the norm is starting wages of $24K per year? again-personal choices, but i have to think they chose a degree where the income doesn't support the expense (and how does someone who makes $24K a year pay off $100K in 10 years, i can't wrap my mind around those numbers-they have to be getting other financial help/have much higher income).
p.p.s. student loan repayment rates can greatly differ-dd has some that are JUST coming due for starting repayment and at about $12K she's looking at less than $90 per month (w/the interest reduction for auto pay). she plans to pay more but it really depends on the source of the loan and what the rates were like at the point it was taken, some are very manageable.
I quoted Colleen above because I think she hit the nail on the head with the bolded. Health care alone has jumped up in some cases 800% from what we paid when we were first done with school. You said you're in the San Francisco area - I don't have to tell you about housing! Where I am housing has taken off, too, not to mention cost of utilities, food, and everything else I can think of.
As for the $200,000 debt people, I never said their salaries were $24,000; in fact, their salaries are fairly healthy, probably in the $100,000-$150,000 range. Yet, still, they're having difficulty. People will probably say they're not managing things well. Idk, that could be. But the point is that none of us are perfect in how we manage things, but even for people who are relatively responsible, the pinch can be felt strongly when you start out each month $2000 behind the 8 ball, kwim?