Lawrenceville makes the list as one the World's most hipster neighborhoods.... (Pittsburgh: low income, 2014)

[ForYourLungsOnly]

A list?! Neat. So legit.

I enjoy the "432 most hipster foods" too...pretty sure lima beans were on it or something. I wish Kim Kardashian really WOULD break the internet.

[rzzzz]

Most of the places I've been to on the list were more yuppie than hipster. Where does Lawrenceville fall on the hipster/yuppie continuum?

[theta_sigma]

I'm not even sure what the difference is between a hipster and a yuppie any more. Now that there are industries in which you can make bank while still looking like a textbook hipster (and it does take money to really cultivate that look), the distinction is fuzzy. I'd saw Lawrenceville now is more trustafarian than yuppie. Not a lot of folks wearing suits and working in finance down there that I've seen, but also not a lot of truly starving artists any more either.

[AaronPGH]

Nobody I know in Lawrenceville is a trust fund kid, and I know a lot of Lawrenceville.

[selltheburgh]

Agreed.

Most real estate transfers in Lawrenceville are with a mortgage except for run down places sold to investors who flip to homeowners with mortgages.

65% of sales in Brooklyn are cash.

[Mr.BadGuy]

If you are in a solidly working-class city with a decent swath of middle class, like Baltimore, Philly, Pgh, or Cincy, "trust fund kid" is more often synonymous with upper-middle class. Some of your peers might put you into this category if you parents helped you out and bought you some nice amenities while you were in school. Or (less often), if you are older, you might be classified as a trust fund recipient if you work in an exceptionally high-paying field and have more disposable income than your peers. My wife encountered this occasionally working in software, and was confused by it, since she grew up on Long Island and in suburban Queens.

If you are in, for example, D.C., NOVA, Manhattan, or N. Brooklyn, the "trust fund kid" label more often means that you are, literally speaking, an heir to a fortune. Examples would be one of my ex-employers (working for this person was a living nightmare but that is another story...) who is related to one of the founders of the Federal Reserve, or a buddy from my first stint in college, who was an heir to the TV Guide fortune. Because more people in these areas make six figures, the COL is higher, and there are more billionaires around to compare yourself to (if you are so inclined), the bar between "regular dude" and "trust fund kid" is set considerably higher.

There are vast differences between these two groups, in terms of wealth — we're talking about top 10% vs. top 0.1%. It's all relative, and it's also not an ironclad rule by ANY means. For example, the average person who grew up in Sewickley would define "trust fund kid" the same way people in SoHo NYC do, and the average person who grew up in Bensonhurst (a working-class Italian hood in S. Brooklyn) DEFINITELY defines "trust fund kid" like my friends did back in Baltimore and Pgh. Obviously, these are all generalizations...people can't be grouped into black-and-white categories this easily. I've moved around a lot in my life and lived in many different cities and states, so these are only my observations, not hard and fast rules.

[selltheburgh]

A trust fund kid is one who makes $10k-150k a year simply from interest and dividends from their family's wealth. There's usually a portfolio manager who makes a commission off of the money.

It can also be in the form of rental real estate that pays out to various family members. There are income and inheritance benefits to forming trusts. I think either Carnegie or Frick had one of the original trusts in the us.

I've seen unemployed people get approved for mortgages based on trust income. Lawrenceville isn't filled with these types.

Yes, "new Lawrenceville" is more college educated and their parents may have been more likely to be able to help them with living expenses, food, gas money, or tuition than previous residents. I wouldn't call most of them trust fund kids by any means. More privileged, yes...but as a parent I can understand wanting to make sacrifices to help your kids.

[Mr.BadGuy]

Originally Posted by selltheburgh

A trust fund kid is one who makes $10k-150k a year simply from interest and dividends from their family's wealth. There's usually a portfolio manager who makes a commission off of the money.

That's the definition I'd use as well, but it's often not the definition the college-aged/twenty-something crowd seem to be using in reference to the "trust fund kids" of Lawrenceville. I have to chuckle at my poor wife who, due to where she was born and raised (NYC area), and having basically only that as her frame of reference, was so confused upon hearing the "trust fund kid" label applied as it was. Actually, I still remember the incident that got her so confused in the first place. It was our first year in the city, probably late summer '06, and we lived off of Baum and Liberty. Our downstairs neighbors at the time were these two college guys and they invited us to their BBQ one afternoon. Despite having almost a decade on them, we figured, "Why not?" Their buddies filed in throughout the afternoon and at one point, they were all going on about this "rich barista chick" friend of theirs, a "trust fund kid", who would be arriving later with the "good beer."

As promised, I met the young lady later that evening, over a can of the Genesee Cream Ale she brought. She was a Pitt student who worked at Crazy Mocha part-time while her parents helped out with rent and bills, and bought her a couple sets of fancy designer clothes and shoes each year. She didn't have a trust fund as you, or I, or any financial planner worth his salt would define it. But because our neighbors were self-financing their college 100 percent, they felt they were in a totally different socioeconomic stratum than their barista friend. And throughout our 5 1/2-year stint in the 'Burgh, I noted, with some amusement, that this alternative definition of "trust fund kid" popped up quite a bit anytime college-aged kids were comparing their standards of living. My wife still struggled to understand, but having seen it already in Baltimore when I was that age, I knew exactly what was going on.

[rzzzz]

I lived in Bushwickburg way back in the 90s and again from 2009-2012. There were a lot of kids getting their rent covered but I only met one actual trust fund guy. He wasn't living in n. brooklyn, though. He had a loft in both Tribeca and Dumbo, house out in Hamptons, etc. Different level. Someone getting their $3500/m rent comped usually just seemed to mean their dad was a dermatologist in Denver, or similar.

[SteelCityRising]

Originally Posted by selltheburgh

More privileged, yes...but as a parent I can understand wanting to make sacrifices to help your kids.

I guess this just boggles my mind because when I was 15 I begged my parents to let me work as many hours as I could at a nearby grocery store upon turning 16 so I could save to buy my own car on my own, which I did (still miss my old Ford Contour, Bertha!) If you're going to be supporting your children financially WELL into adulthood, then you're not teaching them any sort of fiscal responsibility. I'm now in my late-20s, and I know MANY peers who have their parents pay many bills for them so they can have their yuppie/hipster lifestyles subsidized. That's gross negligence on behalf of liberal parents. If I'm cutting it too close financially at some point due to an unforeseen mishap (i.e. January's $700 pothole fix) I don't whine for a handout from my parents. I pick up extra shifts at work. It seems like today's Millennial generation lacks a strong work ethic, and a lot of that can be squarely blamed upon incompetent parenting. Even my partner endures anxiety attacks at night sometimes because he has no clue what he wants to do with his life "when he grows up" (he's older than I am), and instead of forcing him to see a career counselor, which would be MUCH MORE HELPFUL, his parents just keep paying most of his bills for him. If I didn't pay over 50% of our outrageous utilities, then he wouldn't be able to afford to live with me.

It's one thing if you're a 25-year-old software engineer making $67,000/year at Google, leasing a BMW, and renting a 2-BR flat in Lawrenceville for $2,200/month with a roommate who is a 27-year-old attorney aspiring to make partner someday. It's another thing if you're a 26-year-old barista making $25,000/year at Starbucks, driving a car your parents bought for you, and just paying half of your rent of $1,100/month in Shadyside while your parents pick up the slack. I have ZERO respect for peers of mine in the latter demographic.

My prospective business venture is a fine example here. I know I will be very successful when I launch, and I know any investor would make a nice return on their start-up contribution. My father is interested in investing, but I'm not going to accept any contribution from him. I'd rather pick up a second job delivering papers in the early-AM to make additional income necessary to invest the 20% equity into the business that most traditional lenders look for than go to family with my hand out.

Generation Xers are rearing a children of hapless and helpless Millennials (in many cases, anyways). The next time your 30-year-old comes home asking for money, why not hand them a newspaper with potential second job opportunities circled?

Isn't there a saying "Give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. Teach a man to fish, he'll eat for a lifetime?" When did we as a society lose sight of that? A lot of you people are out-of-touch Baby Boomers who don't have direct experience being a 20-something and/or interacting with 20-somethings on a consistent basis. For every one CMU grad I see driving to work at Google in an Audi I see two others who are five years older than (s)he driving to their part-time job at a restaurant in a vehicle subsidized by their parents. Whatever happened to being a self-starter? The economy is booming again. The unemployment rate locally is around 5.0%. There's no excuse to have the handouts right now.