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I went to college and paid for it myself with the job I had at the time. Starbucks during my first 2 years at community college, transferred the credits, then worked at a firm and paid for the next 2 (in-state tuition in Tx). Neither lazy, nor in debt.
I wasn't in a frat, I avoided leeches, and I didn't take 2 years off to follow Phish, backpack though Europe, and any other distraction. Focus and you can succeed.
I did the same as did my wife......zero debt. I attended a private university, tuition was 70K for my last 2 years (transferred from community college). If I didn't have the money, I paid with a credit card but by the time the semester was over it was paid off.....short term high interest debt was better than low interest long term debt.
Funny you mention backpacking through Europe.....we had a friend go for the summer .....yet she never finished college! Oops.....wrong priority!
Many pensions get cost of living adjustments. There is indeed bankruptcy risk.
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You want to include "unfunded liabilities", but how are you defining that? Does the definition assume 2% annual future real GDP growth?
No need to take it to that level of detail, when we can be conservative instead. Using good sources I calculate $567K per worker. I'll be very conservative and say it's half of that, $283K per worker.
I am so tired of older people bashing the younger generations for being lazy.
I'm 40 yo, and if I'm being honest, I'd say the generations younger than mine are smarter, more talented, better spoken, and more productive than mine or the boomers. And they better be as this economy is atrocious compared to when I grew up! How soon we forget that it wasn't always like this. My parents were never required to work around the clock, they didn't make a lot of money, yet we could afford to live in a nice house in a nice neighborhood, and we never wanted for anything. Try doing that today! It wouldn't happen, the numbers don't come close to working.
I've never bought the notion that school is 'dumbed down' nowadays. Kids are learning things much younger than I ever did and you can really see it in the way that they speak, the way they write, and the way they think.
Do you know what really bothers me as well? All of the condescending economic advice that I see on this forum directed at those trying to eek out a middle class lifestyle. Some of it is unrealistic, some of it downright ridiculous, some of it is even sound, but that's not the point. The point is that a collectively self imposed dramatically reduced standard of living is a bad idea for everyone. No one should be willing to accept it in today's day and age.
What we need, as a people, are more well paying jobs. Period. That's the bottom line.
They are not so much lazy as naive and distracted. Distracted is understandable, with the constant media barrage of advertising designed to create demand for shiny junk. The naive part comes from thinking there is anyone out there who is in the least concerned with their success or failure. The educational administration has no interest in the well being of students, it just wants to put warm bodies in seats and collect funding. Management is by metrics, and they are just a number. If they can do that by predatory lending tactics, they will.
As for good paying jobs, there will never again be good paying jobs for everyone. There will never even be jobs for everyone who wants one. Service jobs are mostly just make-work, and manufacturing jobs have been automated out of existence or sent where people work for nothing.
Most people would! They'll run the risk of wishing they could afford to live comfortably in a tent.
The way I see it, the gov't would need to borrow at least another $50 trillion at low interest to kick the can down the road for another 20 years. I'm not going to place my bets on that happening. Fortunately I'm not a millenial so I get to live in an RV.
There has never been a 30-year period when broad-market equities did not beat inflation.
I, a millennial, might be able to live in an RV too but currently can't afford it due to land usage. If I could buy a tiny lot in my town for $10k then I could pull it off. As it stands, I just rent a room in a shared house.
Millennials (also known as the Millennial Generation or Generation Y) are the demographic cohort following Generation X. There are no precise dates when the generation starts and ends. Researchers and commentators use birth years ranging from the early 1980s to the early 2000s.
I was born in '86. Had I been born just a few years earlier, I would have been a member of Generation X. *shudder* I feel old.
There has never been a 30-year period when broad-market equities did not beat inflation.
Bernard Madoff consistently beat inflation too, until he didn't. The stock market is likewise a Ponzi scheme during a time of heavy gov't borrowing and many other dire things left for future generations to clean up. If you retire near the start of a depression, it's going to be meaningless to you that the market might pull out 30 years hence.
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I, a millennial, might be able to live in an RV too but currently can't afford it due to land usage. If I could buy a tiny lot in my town for $10k then I could pull it off. As it stands, I just rent a room in a shared house.
BLM land is currently free to live on, and there's lots of it.
For millenials my advice is buy rentable property. The one thing you can count on for the rest of your life is population increase. To me it's silly to have a 4% mortgage and gamble a dollar on the stock market for the hope of 7% with high volatility. Put the dollar against your mortgage instead, to get a risk-free 3% rate of return. Buy a house to live in as soon as possible, get mortgage-free as soon as possible, and keep buying property. There's almost always a place you can buy for 10% below market, in which case your transaction cost was zero.
[quote=oldtrader;37303521]Millennials, have a few problems.
1: They feel if they have a college degree, that they should have a job, that pays $50,000 to $100,000 to start.
I would be happy to just get out of poverty wages. I make less than 10K a year at my current job.
Problem, a lot of them took what are worthless degrees for all practical purposes. A study has been done, and found that well over half of the top 128 degrees, all have starting pay under the $50,000 level and as little as $30,000 to start. These degrees have several times more graduates, than positions open in their fields. When they get offers at the normal rate of pay for new graduates, they post on these threads complaining they were lowballed and did not take the job. They were not going to work that cheap. They took the easy way going for degrees with easy courses, or something that they thought would be fun. They are not reasonable in their expectations. Of course Petroleum Engineers are in short supply write their own ticket, and start about $100,000.
I would think I was "lowballed" if someone offers me what amounts to a volunteer stipend. One-thousand dollars per month is not a lot of money, even if you budget carefully.
2: They think that if there is no work in their field, all they have to do is to apply in other fields and they will qualify for the job. They think the degree is the key to a top paying job, no matter what it is. They fail to accept the fact, that others took degrees for that job, and they are the ones that will be hired.
Even receptionist jobs and unskilled labor positions require certain training and experience that, surprisingly, just having a college degree doesn't guarantee you have. My parents always told me, though, that I should be able to get a job doing something if I have a degree.
3: They complain on these threads, that they are asked questions they don't want to answer, as they had not practiced the answers. Especially if the questions are to find what type of person they are, and how they will fit in at the job with existing personnel. They think all that is important, is what degree they have, and any experience they have. They are wrong of course, but they fail to accept the fact they are wrong. They blame their failure to get a job on the HR and HM departments. However other people impress those same HR and HM people and get the job. I remember from my corporate days 40 years ago, when I was acting as HM many times, we had the same problem with them back then, so this problem is not something new.
I will admit that I don't interview well. I'm planning to join a speaking club so that I can maybe get more practice.
They just cannot accept the fact, when they go on an interview, the way you act, and the way you answer questions that are sometimes used to test your ability to think on your feet, solve problems, etc. will be the difference between getting and not getting a job. When you refuse to answer those questions, you are always placed in the reject pile. Some refuse to take certain tests, etc., with the same reject pile results. When you go for an interview, there will be several people with equal qualifications. Those people are evaluated on their ability to fit into the team they will work with, and their attitude. The best fit gets the job.
Yes, the "best fit" gets the job. For me, that translates to countless hours of self-preparation, additional study of my subject, and everything I can think of that might help me seem more qualified than the next applicant. Sometimes, though, it's not even a fair fight. A teacher who was laid off due to budget cuts is much more likely to be re-hired than someone new that the school might have to invest in a little to train.
Anyone that has been to 6 or more interviews and no job, should realize they themselves and their attitude are what is keeping them from getting a job.
I've interviewed with just about every school in the county. It might be me, but I did everything right that I knew to do. It's only now that I'm realizing that my initial preparation was not enough.
4: They are angry that they have to be investigated. They say why credit checks, why check past work history, why check for arrests, etc., etc., etc. Anyone can be checked out today. A simple one that women may check out before they date a man what type of man he is, to make sure what kind of man wants to get involved with them. It is so easy to check out people today, companies will do it before they hire you. If you have something to hide that may keep you from getting a job, then don't apply for a decent job today.
A credit check wouldn't yield satisfactory results with me, because I have hospital bills and other debts that I haven't been able to settle due to my low income. If a job requires a credit check, I usually don't apply.
They are not so much lazy as naive and distracted. Distracted is understandable, with the constant media barrage of advertising designed to create demand for shiny junk. The naive part comes from thinking there is anyone out there who is in the least concerned with their success or failure. The educational administration has no interest in the well being of students, it just wants to put warm bodies in seats and collect funding. Management is by metrics, and they are just a number. If they can do that by predatory lending tactics, they will.
As for good paying jobs, there will never again be good paying jobs for everyone. There will never even be jobs for everyone who wants one. Service jobs are mostly just make-work, and manufacturing jobs have been automated out of existence or sent where people work for nothing.
I agree with the last paragraph.
The millenial generation will be known for many things. Home ownership probably won't be one.
As for good paying jobs, there will never again be good paying jobs for everyone. There will never even be jobs for everyone who wants one.
There never have been enough good paying jobs that want one. A lot of people worked at less than top pay year after year. Some because they did not have enough education, and some because they just did not fit in well for good paying jobs. Some because there have always been jobs that matched the degrees people held, did not pay well.
There is considerable growth in the workforce from 1950 projected to 2050. Interesting information. One reason for not enough good jobs, is the jobs are not increasing in number, as fast as the population in the employed years is growing.
Service jobs are mostly just make-work, and manufacturing jobs have been automated out of existence or sent where people work for nothing.
Some people prefer service type jobs. Some people take them by necessity, which is the same as in the past.
Some manufacturing jobs have been sent to other countries, but at the same time a lot of foreign based companies, have opened manufacturing facilities in the U.S. such as 10 foreign auto companies now have manufacturing facilities in the U.S. Some have been automated jobs out of existence. Look up Tesla auto plant in California, which is largely automated using few in comparison to auto manufacturing in the past.
The majority of the younger generation largely does not want to do manufacturing line jobs, and have educated themselves away from manufacturing jobs.
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