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As a guy getting married by 30 would be pretty crazy to me. I don’t know any guys in my social circle who fit that bill. I’ll actually be the first of my friends to get married at 36. Granted one of my friends is only 29 but he’s like me and has zero interest in ever having kids, but also sees no point of getting married. I can’t really blame him.
What some people forget - and I do sympathize with them - is you are playing a different game and don’t realize it. People often think, “Well how can I afford this house on my income?” Maybe you can’t, not in a major city, not unless you really made it or have saved for a while. Do you think everyone coming to compete in the major markets comes unprepared and penniless? They don’t. There is massive accumulated wealth and if your parents didn’t have any or didn’t give you any, yeah, expect it to be a harder uphill battle for you in competitive fields than it is other people. They are different worlds. And everyone is in a bubble so they don’t see the other side often. Everyone I know had college paid for by their parents except my GF and I paid for hers. I didn’t know kids coming out into the work force with student loan debt. So if you’re at ground zero, starting out not only with no net worth but also in debt, you can thank your parents for setting you up for the toughest possible path. They may have been great people and all of that, but competition is fierce and other people are starting way ahead of you, so if you’re not far above average it’s not easy to overcome that poor start and take away opportunities from richer, better connected people. That’s the world, nobody said it would be fair.
The best way to make sure that doesn’t happen to your kids is don’t have any kids unless you can arm them for success. I don’t have any respect for parents who push their kids out the door at 18 and pay for nothing after, “sink or swim,” that’s not the world we live in. We live in a world of generational wealth and if you want to have kids, that’s as close as possible to giving them no chance at all.
Well you can thank your well connected parents if you got a good job through their connection while screwing so many other hard workers and more qualified people. The blame is on the boomer generation that controls much of the management jobs and companies. They control much of the economy with how hiring and salaries should be.
Most traditional companies today have very high levels of people over the ages of 50 running the companies with old ideas. Except for silicon valley but in general older bosses take advantage of millennials.
Blame the boomers when they made huge bets on real estate market and artificially made debts easy to get so people could run up huge debts and crashed the market.
You can blame the boomers that ran companies for setting high employment requirements such as requiring a 4 year degree in a well known college which requires running a $150k+ debt just for an entry job that pays $30k+
Tech companies that are ran by younger management do not have such ridiculous outdated standards as long as you have the skills and motivation.
In my proverbial neck of the woods, anecdotal evidence is that the majority of people have married by 30; some perhaps for the second time. Many (most?) Have several children. Marriage seems to correlate with educational attainment; college grads are more likely to marry. Houses meanwhile, being stuck in a 20-year malaise, are affordable even for fresh graduates in entry-level jobs. It is not uncommon to have mortgage payments lower than car payments (or student loan payments).
Last edited by ohio_peasant; 07-25-2018 at 01:58 PM..
Reminds me of the idiot who got a degree in petro-chemical engineering, then complained he couldn't find a job locally. There aren't any oil fields in Cincinnati. Never were. The four very small oil refineries built at the turn of the 20th Century had shut down by the 1980s because of the cost of EPA compliance and the fact that it was far cheaper to ship gasoline, diesel and aviation fuel by barge up-river from Gulf Coast refineries than it was to operate them.
You have to go where the jobs are.
I'm not trying to make a value judgment, but there is incredibly little discussion of this from families, career counselors, professors, etc. Again, maybe it is due more to the culture of Appalachia than anything else. Few native young people move out and even fewer working age people come in.
If you were to look at the top 10%-20% of my high school graduating class of 2004, I'd say at least half remain in the area, mostly as medical professionals or teachers. Other than Eastman Chemical, the medical system and government employment in its various flavors are about the only viable employment options here. These people are not innovators or thought leaders - they're small town teachers, pharmacists, and nurses. Some did leave, but many of those who did had family ties to other regions. We did have maybe five to ten very high achievers that got the hell out for places like NY and SF.
I was an economics and finance guy. I was under no delusion that my local degree would take me to the floor of the NYSE or Goldman Sachs, but I thought corporate finance at one of the local medical systems or banks would be achievable. It wasn't.
I'm doing fairly well here now, but there's no way I'd be where I am today if I hadn't left.
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Originally Posted by s1alker
Yeah, more and more people are being forced to relocate to quite high COL areas in search of work. Many of them don't make it and become part of the growing homeless population.
Mostly gone are the days where good paying work in a cheap small town or rural place was widely available.
I don't know anyone who has done that poorly, but it is difficult to get established in a new, major metropolitan area if you're coming from some far-flung rural hinterland. Companies don't want to interview non-local candidates. If you're in that rural area, you probably don't have a lot of skills that a company would relocate you for. You probably don't earn that much income. It's difficult to start a social network from complete scratch.
Even getting to the major metros is tough. Charlotte is three hours away. Raleigh and Nashville are four to five. Going to an interview in one of those cities is at least one, if not two, days of PTO.
You do all that moving around when you're just out of college and can move with the smallest Uhaul truck because you only have the stuff that you had in your dorm room. You move before you are married and certainly before you have kids. You get to a "good place" and THEN when you feel rooted with a decent job and lifestyle you find a relationship and get married.
Hey - there's no women in those small towns anyway! You don't want to live there because there's nothing to do, anyway! So get out, get a good job, and THEN get a life. I don't get why people who hate their hometowns move back there after college and expect things to be great for them. I KNEW while I was in high school that I wouldn't be sticking around.
I'm not going back to a dorm lifestyle with roommates or something at 32. I'm not targeting the Boston or NYCs of the world - personally, I'd be perfectly fine moving to Charlotte or Raleigh. I need a better job market with a moderate cost of living. They have plenty of amenities for me. Somewhere where I won't have to leave town if something happens with my employment. I'm fine with a Costco, Whole Foods, and a minor league baseball team that doesn't run an abbreviated season. Hell, even Knoxville, TN or Greenville, SC are massive steps up for me.
I lived in Indianapolis for three years. Other than the lack of outdoor rec and weather, it was better than here. At the time, I was likely going to lose my job in Indianapolis, and my current position matched my IN salary. I doubt I would have taken it if my Indy job wasn't in such jeopardy.
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Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
In "family oriented"/honor-cultures, it is considered to be incumbent to return home, or perhaps to never leave it. This engenders a cultural cycle of self-limitations, which then becomes an economic cycle.
A variant on this, is somebody who does take the initiative to permanently move away, in search of a better job. 20 years pass, and our migrant still hasn't quite put down roots. Then perhaps retirement looks, or maybe job-loss. Then what?
This cannot be stressed enough.
I come from Appalachia. There is a significant Scots-Irish "honor culture" undertone here, and throughout rest of the rural South and Appalachia.
I moved from southwest Virginia to Des Moines, IA six years ago. You wouldn't believe the comments I got from coworkers in Virginia about turning my back on the area, my family, burning bridges, etc. It was extremely ugly.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ohio_peasant
In my proverbial nexk of the woods, anecdotal evidence is that the majority of people have married by 30; some perhaps for the second time. Many (most?) Have several children. Marriage seems to correlate with educational attainment; college grads are more likely to marry. Houses meanwhile, being stuck in a 20-year malaise, are affordable even for fresh graduates in entry-level jobs. It is not uncommon to have mortgage payments lower than car payments (or student loan payments).
Yep. You can find houses for under $100,000 here. People get by on very little, but their expectations are low. Families band together to provide necessary support. None of them could swim alone, but together they can build enough of a boat to stay afloat.
I really can't think of any women that I know personally that have good jobs for the area (say $50,000+), are under 35 or so, and without kids.
It depends on what your goals are I guess. My parents expect me to move back and marry some country girl even after 8 years. My sister thinks I'm going to move to Japan and marry someone over there for citizenship. I don't even know if I'm going to stay in the US, but I do know NYC is my new home hopefully into retirement. I don't hold any traditionally American values such as home ownership or marriage though and would be happy to be alone for the rest of my life. NYC gives me enough social interaction that I don't need a lifelong partner.
US is very different regionally, it's interesting to think about sometimes.
I’m always amazed the differences even between not far away areas. In my high school, a wealthy, private Catholic school, not a single person in my class of 242 was married by 24 or had any kids. That’s ridiculously young anyway so I’m not surprised. But my GF is 24 and I swear half of her classmates are already married and some even have kids. They are babies! I can’t imagine that, my life was just getting started at 24, no wonder these people don’t accomplish anything. There’s not time or money to achieve in life if you immediately start having kids right after college.
I'm sure 30 year old's are thrilled at the prospect of having children in a world where 58% of the wildlife on the planet was exterminated in the past 40 years and we have entered the sixth extinction with absolutely no sign of slowing down.
Worse, this behavior is encouraged by the system.
Additionally, human labor capital will continue to be replaced with technology. It's a massive threat that will one day encompass, perhaps every single human labor category.
Then we get these clearly biased and complacent comments from baby boomers who cannot wrap their head around how the world is changing and instead are shaking their fists at immigrants on television and trying to deny people health care.
Thanks for this.
Religious values that allowed beta men to have loyal wives are gone so what you have now are branch swingers that use provider males for resources before cheating on them and taking them to the cleaners while going to screw around with the bad boys. Marriage for "good men" is risky without a prenup as women are genetically wired to want bad men (or as they call it "fun") and they have a lot of legal power.
I'm 37, single, with around $500k laying around. Living the peaceful life... I've accepted my situation that the whole fairy tale life with a loyal wife and stable family isn't happening. I've come to embrace it.
Religious values that allowed beta men to have loyal wives are gone so what you have now are branch swingers that use provider males for resources before cheating on them and taking them to the cleaners while going to screw around with the bad boys. Marriage for "good men" is risky without a prenup as women are genetically wired to want bad men (or as they call it "fun") and they have a lot of legal power.
I'm 37, single, with around $500k laying around. Living the peaceful life... I've accepted my situation that the whole fairy tale life with a loyal wife and stable family isn't happening. I've come to embrace it.
Nothing wrong with that. And yes I won’t use that term, but let’s just say there are many guys out there who put up with anything and they are easily played. I don’t compromise my values on anything and it really is my way or the highway - it’s a great way to live and I highly recommend it The relationships I have are fantastic and the people who choose to be on the highway, well may the wind always be at their back and the road rise up to meet them. No ill will here but I don’t have to settle or compromise so I don’t.
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