Barnes & Noble is criminal

While Hank makes a good point -- many young people do live beyond their means -- to hear some of the other folks on this thread talk, if the kids would just spend their summers flipping burgers at Mikey D's or taking call-ins at the local fishwrap, they wouldn't be in debt.

If y'all have kids, I'd suggest taking a look into what college is going to cost. Like, now.

Bootstraps ain't what they used to be...

 

Many 20-somethings spend beyond their means for reasons far beyond filling up on frivilous shit.

I was 27 when my wife (then my girlfriend) decided to go to grad school because she hated copy editing. She'd just had a serious illness and decided that a new lease on life was a good excuse to find something she liked doing. So she went to school to become a teacher.

When she applied, we figured it was fine if she took a year-and-a-half off from F/T work because I had two jobs. By the time she started her second month, I'd been laid off from both jobs. I guess I could try and curry favor with Hondo by blaming myself for my employers inability to read the changing tech market in mid-2000.

We ran thru our savings and racked up credit card debt to, you know, live. None of the jobs I got in the subsequent several years paid as well as the ones I had when she decided to go back to school and we've been unable to pay off her debts as fast as we would like. I guess I/we could curry favor with Hondo by blaming my wife/myself for not being a good enough teacher/writer to get a high-paying job.

So we're in our early 30s with plenty of debt and believe it or not I don't have an IPod, a Macbook or a PlayStation 3.

It's such a well-worn phrase around here, but it's well-worn because it applies so often: Go fuck yourself, Hondo.

 

I'd be willing to bet hondo understands extenuating circumstances, BYH.

Your situation is hardly the one he's describing.

 

The situation hondo describes, much like the version of the 1950s the Republian party tries to sell voters, doesn't exist and never did.

Lattes and ipods might make debt worse, but it ain't the root cause.

That's tuition and books and fees and gouging on rent in campus neighborhoods and a hundred other things that have made college ridiculously expensive over the past 15 years.

 

Tuition and books ain't the problem. I'm in school now. My wife graduated a year and a half ago. We're not in debt up to our eyeballs, and live in an apartment. We don't have credit card debt or car debt. It's not that hard.

 

When he tells SC that she should find a gig that pays for moving expenses, I'm sorry, but he's lumping every debt-ridden 20- or 30-something into the same boat. I'm sick of his neo-con, back-in-my-day-we-had-the-same-gig-for-30-years-so-anyone-who-doesn't-is-lazy bullshit.

 

IJAG's "Look in the mirror" was a tad superfluous at this juncture.

 

Then don't read me. Go write a blog on the merits of Krispy Kreme as opposed to Dunkin Doughnuts. All your 20-something pals will read that.

 

Wow. Is being an asshole easy, or does it take hard work?

 

Oooohh Hondo thinks me and my friends care only about fatting up on donuts. Ouch stop it Hondo.

That's tired and lame and not the least bit amusing, Hondo. As tired and lame and not the least bit amusing as everything else you post here.

Hey, how's Vince Young, biggest draft bust since Sam Bowie, doing? Nice to see you know as little about football as you do about everything else.

Edit: Good Doc, how dare you question Hondo. He is the Finest Man To Walk This Earth. Just ask him.

 

So much hostility, all for advising you crazy kids to save your money. With every post like this, Generation Whine re-affirms that's a classless bunch of crybabies who can't manage the simple act of handling their money without getting into $30,000 worth of debt and go running home to Mommy and Daddy ... who helped create the problem by being "Helicopter Parents," and never teaching them how to be functioning adults.

Now hurry up kids: 2-for-1 starts at Ruby Tuesday's in 10 minutes.