Are they ‘Generation Y Bother’ ”” or are they smarter than their parents?
Members of Generation Y are living with their folks longer and delaying such rites of adulthood as marriage and children, new data show.
One prominent economist said that, far from describing a generation of slackers, the data actually signify how “frighteningly calculating” this current cohort of young adults is.
So, young people today are lazy, dependent on their parents, and want to party all the time. I wouldn’t call that news.
One of my children really enjoys checking out the real estate shows on HGTV, which highlights properties all over the world. According to them, the housing prices in Canada are ridiculous, especially in the cities. Those don’t exactly bode well when you’re attempting to be independent at 22, even if you have a good job. When I was 22, in the late 80’s, I did graduate with a good job that paid me over $30,000 per year. I married young and my spouse made a little less than that, but he enjoyed a tax-free military housing allowance. Our townhouse mortgage payment was $650.00/month. For comparison, the nice apartments down the street from us now(really the only ones in the area I’d consider living in) start at ~ $760.00 for a one bedroom/one bath. Were we without children or with grown children, I’d prefer to have a 2 bed/2 bath but those start at ~ $1100.00/month(and this is in a state with a good economy and real estate prices). If you don’t want to go the rental route, you can consider owning, but you’d better take a solid look at new construction if you can find it. I saw a recent magazine ad that advertises bathroom renovation starting at $15,000. There can be a whole lot of roof damage into this state due to hail; a new roof on our house(2100 sq. feet) would probably cost $8000.00; we have good insurance but unless you really pay through the nose for it your deductible for a roof after hail damage is ~ 2% of the house’s value, so if we had to replace our roof we’d have to pay ~ half out of our own pocket. A much wealthier member of our current parish is faced with a similar situation, and he has a solid double income to draw from and nearly grown kids, but their school fees are through the roof(no pun intended). And, his house is way larger than ours with a more complicated roof layout. Even he is climbing the walls…and no wonder some of these young adults are still living with their parents. A lot of the new construction around here is also starting to gear towards duplex-building or multi-generational homes. It might be a wild ride for a while…
I couldn’t wait to turn 18 and get out from under the thumbs of my parents. I literally lived in a tent for a while, worked full time, and went to school full time, never getting a dime from my parents or taking out a Federal loan. It can be done if you really want to bust your hind end.
I’m at the oldest margin of Generation X and find it astonishing how much more difficult it is for my Gen. Y son. Yes, I entered university at age 17, graduated within 4 years, had my career and family going at the age he is now. But Reagan was president and while the country was far from perfect, there was still a lot of opportunity and optimism.
But look at what Gen. Y has seen and endured in the past 10 years — an unprecedented attack on our country, concurrent wars, steep tuition costs and hikes, the expanding housing bubble and its continued collapse, high unemployment, a depression of wages, and little job growth. The student loan shell game is especially worrisome and will keep these kids indebted for a very long time.
They’ve got to be cautious and calculating. I’ve implored my son to come home for a while so he can save money and get on stronger financial footing. He’s been trying to pay his student loans while still in school and is struggling mightily on $8/hour jobs. But he won’t. He’s determined to make it on his own. I think his pride is going to cost him and I worry.
I read somewhere that 85% of recent college grads can’t find a job in their field, and many are working low wage jobs. With factory jobs pretty much gone, and new jobs mostly in service (minimum wage), it is more difficult today to become independent right out of college and/or high school. Also, I was noting the other day to a friend that while income has remained stagnant over the last 10 years, college costs have increased at a rate greater than inflation, so it is possible that the cost to go to college has nearly doubled for many people in the last 10 years without any gain in income. This means that college is becoming less of a good investment with every year that passes. Many of these recent grads are not only earning minimum wage, but they are also paying back student loans, loans that were pretty much given with a promise of “don’t worry, when you graduate you will make enough money to pay them back.” Sadly, I have recently concluded that the “everybody should go to college” and “college = financial success” mantras are pretty much propaganda pieces to keep colleges making money, and I say this as someone who went to college and graduate school. At my most cynical moments I think that Generation Y is paying high tuition to learn skills that qualify them to work at Starbucks.
Granted, many in generation Y expect to live completely comfortably no matter what, and this could be part of the problem, but I will say that the job situation for the young is pretty bleak right now.
The Gen-Yers and Millennials that I know are indeed radically delaying marriage and other rites of passage. I’m thinking of the 28 year old, the 32 year old, the 25 year old — and of course there are others out there — none of them married or with any plans to marry, all of them with their nose to the grindstone trying to keep their heads above water.
I personally think they are most wise. Most of them come from perfectly dreadful family systems — we are now in our third generation of massive divorce, dysfunction, and child-parents [in maturity] who simply were never parented themselves and certainly had no idea of how to parent when they had children. It is shocking to hear their family stories — it curls the hair, after it prematurely whitens it. For Father’s Day this year, I wrote my Father a thank-you for his giving me **expectations** regarding the behavior of Dads and men in general — after having a shatteringly matter-of-factly, non-expectant conversation with a Gen-Yer.
I see a lot of cynicism amongst the Yers and Millennials that I know, and a lot of realism. They’d really rather not make the same mistakes that their BBers and now Xers made.
While there is no excuse, dysfunction has been around since the dawn of time. Today’s economics for young adults are either not great or pretty bleak, depending on your level of cynicism. YUCK