Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
According to psychologists Jean Twenge and W. Keith Campbell, a survey of more than 37,000 college students showed that narcissistic personality traits rose as fast as obesity rates from the 1980s to the present.
P.S. I am a millennial, just thought it was interesting and relevant.
You need to treat tuition separately from tuition + room and board, because that infers that if you didn't go to college you wouldn't have to eat, or live somewhere. Tuition at Duke is 47k/yr. that is very high, but ~25% lower than 60k.
Also, private schools like that have a ton of need based aid. Most private schools offer atleast 25-50% off tuition for those accepted that don't come from very wealthy or high earning families.
BINGO. I've pointed this out several times, to no response. Newsflash, folks - at 18 and after high school graduation - YOU'RE AN ADULT. You have to eat and live somewhere, and this is going to cost SOMEONE money every single day for the rest of your life. Rather than grousing about how much it costs to go to college and live in the dorm or an apartment (or even a house) and eat for four years (what am I saying - five or six or even seven years in many cases!) without working or by working very part time, how 'bout some thankfulness for this window of opportunity? Many people start working full time and paying all of their own expenses the summer after high school graduation. For many BBers, this was the reality.
If a person can't afford college, one thing to consider seriously is the college benefits offered by a four year stint in the military. Not only will ALL your expenses generally be paid, you will actually be paid a monthly stipend while attending college after your enlistment/commission is over. Not only that, you can usually rack up some classes while serving actively.
It's all about doing WHAT YOU CAN AFFORD. If you have to take out massive student loans, generally speaking, you're not living within your means and need to look at other options.
So we're back to "I got mine on the cheap. You can pound sand. I paid for mine working part-time jobs. You can go to Afghanistan and get shot at for yours."
Why not plug your personal "just starting out" numbers into 2015 and see how it works? For instance, the sorts of jobs I worked to pay for school pay $9/hr today. (They paid about 25% more than minimum wage back then as well.) That isn't going to pay for the above-mentioned degree from Duke. That isn't even going to pay for two years of community college and then two years at Duke. I'll concede that those kind of jobs would never pay for a school like Duke -- not even in the 1960s. But once upon a time they would easily pay for a school like UNH, which I have rolled out the numbers for several times.
I think it's bad enough that we have placed most four-year schools out of reach without taking on debt. No need to cheer about it, too.
Do you actually know any milennials who aren't asleep at the switch? I do, and they are doing just fine. I have a nephew who is 24 years old. When he was in high school he applied to the US Naval Academy, got his congressional nomination and just missed admission in the final cut, probably because his best high school buddy did get in. Instead he got a full ride NROTC scholarship, which included everything but incidentals. He dropped out of that program because they made him major in civil engineering. He said he didn't want to be an engineer, but I think he just didn't want to study that hard. It turned out to be a dumb move. He finished up his senior year just a few credits short of a degree, thanks to changing majors. That was the year his university decided to drop the program, so he was stuck with no degree, though with minimal debt. He needs to transfer to another school to finish the degree, but went back to CC to finish an associate's so he will never have to take a lower division course again.
He's engaged to a gorgeous young woman and they are getting married in August, paying for the wedding and honeymoon themselves. He has always wanted to try farming, so this spring he is putting in his first 300 acres of crops. He scrounged equipment, leased land and secured financing himself. If the farming works out, he may never go back to school, but he certainly has a lot to learn. He seems to have the capacity to be an autodidact, so that may not be a problem.
Did I mention he is 24? His fiance is 23, and she has found a 9 month community college med tech program that will assure her of a high paying job. They are tackling life together, and like above average people of all generations, they will do just fine.
About 70% of high school graduates think they are going on to tertiary education. That's nonsense. There is no way that large a percentage can ever succeed in life. They have neither the intelligence or the initiative to succeed at anything. They will be just like every generation; about 30% to 35% will be fairly to very successful, another 25% to 30% will do OK, and the rest will never amount to anything at all. "All men are created equal" was just rousing revolutionary rhetoric with no basis in reality.
I know plenty of Millenials that are doing poorly, even though they've seemed to do a lot of the right things. I was an economics major who worked and had an in-field internship in college, graduating in 2010. I wasn't brought on full time, wasn't close to any major job centers, and ended up having to take $14/hr work with a hundred mile roundtrip commute at an IT call center job to pay the bills. I had stints of no health insurance, working as a temporary, no benefits, and no chance for promotion in any of the six organizations I worked for during those three and a half years. It definitely wasn't pretty.
I ended up getting my first professional job in 2014, nearly four years after graduating college. I've relocated from the South to the Midwest TWICE because that's where the jobs are. I've had to completely leave family, friends, and a support structure behind to do decently. I'm one of the fortunate ones in that I was able to get back on track - many of my peers from high school and college have STEM and accounting degrees, and are working low wage menial employment if they remained in Tennessee.
If you are an unemployed poetry manager, maybe you should have majored in something better. Yet when you have unemployed accountants, civil engineers, IT people, financial people, etc, you have a larger structural issue going on.
Do you actually know any milennials who aren't asleep at the switch? I do, and they are doing just fine. I have a nephew who is 24 years old. When he was in high school he applied to the US Naval Academy, got his congressional nomination and just missed admission in the final cut, probably because his best high school buddy did get in. Instead he got a full ride NROTC scholarship, which included everything but incidentals. He dropped out of that program because they made him major in civil engineering. He said he didn't want to be an engineer, but I think he just didn't want to study that hard. It turned out to be a dumb move. He finished up his senior year just a few credits short of a degree, thanks to changing majors. That was the year his university decided to drop the program, so he was stuck with no degree, though with minimal debt. He needs to transfer to another school to finish the degree, but went back to CC to finish an associate's so he will never have to take a lower division course again.
He's engaged to a gorgeous young woman and they are getting married in August, paying for the wedding and honeymoon themselves. He has always wanted to try farming, so this spring he is putting in his first 300 acres of crops. He scrounged equipment, leased land and secured financing himself. If the farming works out, he may never go back to school, but he certainly has a lot to learn. He seems to have the capacity to be an autodidact, so that may not be a problem.
Did I mention he is 24? His fiance is 23, and she has found a 9 month community college med tech program that will assure her of a high paying job. They are tackling life together, and like above average people of all generations, they will do just fine.
About 70% of high school graduates think they are going on to tertiary education. That's nonsense. There is no way that large a percentage can ever succeed in life. They have neither the intelligence or the initiative to succeed at anything. They will be just like every generation; about 30% to 35% will be fairly to very successful, another 25% to 30% will do OK, and the rest will never amount to anything at all. "All men are created equal" was just rousing revolutionary rhetoric with no basis in reality.
In the past there was still some opportunity for those who "would not amount to anything". They could get living wage jobs in factories or other unskilled work. Today these people will be working at Walmart, part time while collecting welfare, or just collecting welfare altogether.
Yes, and I'm reaching back to the 1960s for when the single breadwinner could support a family. Not your particular era, but still the Boomer era.
For the umpteenth time -- 1968 was the best year to be a minimum wage earner. As we progress year to year, buying power worsens.
So let me ask you -- how would you go about buying a house today if your younger self was moved to 2015 and earned double the minimum wage ($14.50) and your wife made the minimum wage of $7.25. How much house would you two be able to afford?
I've answered this before but I'll answer it again. Less than five percent of Americans working today make minimum wage, and most of those are part time workers.
If I made $14.50 an hour, I wouldn't be considering buying a home. That's only about $30,000 a year. I don't know many adults over 35 who are making such a low amount, though I'm sure they're out there. But using your hypothetical situation, the couple in question would only be making $45k a year, well below the median income of $54k in the US. However, the median income for household's in which the wage earner(s) have a bachelor's degree is nearly $70k, so if these two people have degrees and are only making $30k a year, I'd say they probably haven't made the best decisions when it comes to education and career. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ion_Income.jpg
I couldn't afford to buy the house I'm in now with our current incomes, despite combined income in the low 6 figures. We bought at under $200k and it's now worth close to $700k. I bought my first new car for $2,500 in 1973, when I made minimum wage working full time while going to college and the payments
were $74. I had a 2 bedroom apartment for $150. Even in the 60s, though, I can't imagine buying a house on just double minimum wage. My parents bought in the early 50s and moved up to a much bigger home in 1962. Only my father worked but he had a job that was probably 7-8 times minimum wage in both cases.
Not sure when you bought your house, but in 1980 $200k is today's equivalent of nearly $600k when you consider inflation. And that's not even factoring in areas where real estate has appreciated faster than the inflation rate.
Your $150 rent in 1973 is today's equivalent of $800.
That rushing sound must be the point going over your head.
The couple who bought their house in 1978 (back in the days of double-digit everything) did so on two incomes. One making twice the minimum wage. The other making minimum wage. They could buy a house with that kind of income back during the horrible Boomer recession days.
Take those same numbers and plug them into 2015 -- what does $14.50 per hour and $7.25 per hour buy the couple starting out? Bupkis, that's what. What kind of schools do they have to choose from without taking on massive amounts of debt? People COULD make a life for themselves even with what amounts to low wages -- and this is during those horrible double-digit everything times that Boomers on this thread whine incessantly about.
People who are in the same position today are on welfare. That's the economic reality.
So we're back to "I got mine on the cheap. You can pound sand. I paid for mine working part-time jobs. You can go to Afghanistan and get shot at for yours."
My dad and my ex husband both enlisted to earn their college degrees (in 1960 and in 1981). My husband worked 90 hours a week during the summer to pay for every bit of his college costs during the school year (and worked part time during the school year to add to that amount) in the early 80s. My daughter and both my sons in law did the same (within the past six years). I worked nearly full time (35 hours a week) to pay for half my college costs and ALL of my living expenses in the early 80s. None of us, including my kids and their spouses, racked up a single cent of student loan debt.
My point is - look at creative options rather than simply grabbing the student loans because they're there for the grabbing.
I've answered this before but I'll answer it again. Less than five percent of Americans working today make minimum wage, and most of those are part time workers.
If I made $14.50 an hour, I wouldn't be considering buying a home. That's only about $30,000 a year. I don't know many adults over 35 who are making such a low amount, though I'm sure they're out there. But using your hypothetical situation, the couple in question would only be making $45k a year, well below the median income of $54k in the US. However, the median income for household's in which the wage earner(s) have a bachelor's degree is nearly $70k, so if these two people have degrees and are only making $30k a year, I'd say they probably haven't made the best decisions when it comes to education and career. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...ion_Income.jpg
There are a lot of people making that little. Here is some census data from back home in Hawkins County, TN. You could be a highly educated scientist in Hawkins County and be only making $20-$30k, because those are the only jobs available.
Quote:
The median income for a household in the county was $31,300, and the median income for a family was $37,557. Males had a median income of $30,959 versus $22,082 for females. The per capita income for the county was $16,073. About 12.70% of families and 15.80% of the population were below the poverty line, including 20.40% of those under age 18 and 17.70% of those age 65 or over.
That's not saying someone with a good background should settle for those low incomes, but many do and choose to remain near their families and friends.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
