Y’all starting to feel we were raised on some ideas that didn’t pan out?
Posted by goodhobbies@reddit | Xennials | View on Reddit | 289 comments
Hey everybody, I was in 1982. In my middle age, I have come to believe that almost all my problems are the result of a lack of good mentorship or poor planning. For example, my finances are way more of a mess than they need to be, but don’t you remember when we were kids how the message of every movie was that adults shouldn’t care about money? In retrospect, that was stupid advice. I wish good personal finance had been drilled into me from a young age in the same way that Spartans were raised for warfare. I could go on. But more and more, I am realizing that many of our generation were raised on a bunch of trends and theories that were not really well thought out. Almost everything that I actually find that I want is almost the opposite of what I was told that I would want as an adult. What do I really want? A quiet, conventional life with my wife and kids. Moderation. Sobriety. Stability. Humility. Safety. Friendly relationships with my neighbors and community. A spiritual life. Extra money for childcare and help keeping up the house. Zero debt.
hamburgler26@reddit
"College loan debt will totally be worth it"
Oops.
stinkytoe42@reddit
To be fair, the tuition rates and the way student loan programs worked have changed drastically, and started the change right around the time our generation would have been ready to go to college.
I remember when I first went to college in the early 2000's, we had subsidized and unsubsidized loans, and if you took only subsidized loans then you had interest rate caps, and very lenient deferrment programs (often with not interest accrual when on deferment). Also they could be discharged via bankruptcy (supposedly).
I went back to school in the mid 2010's and the loans offered had a much larger interest rate cap, and could not be discharged via bankruptcy. Also, when the student loan forgiveness program was in existence, my first round of loans were able to be discharged (except I had already almost completely paid them off), while the second round could not.
Don't even get me started on the base cost of a credit hour, or the cost of text books, and how they rocketed up in that same timeframe.
We caught the beginning of the up tick on this. Had the financial burden not shot up so drastically starting in the late nineties, then that advice would have still been good advice. But, well, yeah...
hamburgler26@reddit
Oh that is the crazy thing, feel like we got super lucky and in our situation we've at least been able to manage, some people are just fucked.
Grad school in 2008 is what really hammered us though. Sure the career allowed for double the income at least, but all of that extra income just poured back into student loans that we're still not fully in the clear on.
YoohooCthulhu@reddit
In 12th grade one of our school’s guidance counselors came to class to talk about college and student debt. Her specific example was a student who was anxious about attending his 40k/year college, but after his first year he liked it so much that he smiled every time he had to sign the loan paperwork; the lesson being that we should go somewhere we’re really love and not care about the debt.
Fortunately I thought this story was crazy and went to a very affordable but selective state school. But I wonder how many kids bought that line of bs.
birchskin@reddit
Man, take a look at that state school now and I'll bet it's closer to that 40k now than what you paid... Shit has gotten so much worse, I do pretty OK and have savings for my kids but I'd have to be in a much different spot to cover college for my kids even at a reasonable state school. I'm already talking to the older ones about scholarships and doing math on the economics of it, and if we can pay for it for them without loans it'll be a surprise for both me and them!
cranberries87@reddit
And it shot up rapidly. I graduated from a state college in the late 90s. The entire cost, including room and board, was $20,000. By about 2005 or so it was maybe double that amount.
RedDawnWlvrines@reddit
I was just talking to friends about this. Graduated college in ‘99 and the whole 4 years was less than $25k
kungfuenglish@reddit
Including living expenses?
kungfuenglish@reddit
Well living expenses have probably nearly doubled in 20 years so yea
birchskin@reddit
Yeah it's wild, I feI dropped out in 2005 from a meh state college and it was $16k/yr, and it's more than double that now. I really feel for the younger generations.
YEMBOTT@reddit
By 2005 that was the cost of one (1) semester
onion4everyoccasion@reddit
Spirited-Location-85@reddit
Forever grateful for the no-nonsense financial aid advisor at my community college who very clearly informed me I had to pay it back, it will not go away in bankruptcy, even if I stayed at the same low-paying job I had at the time, they would still be there. This was not free money.
Because of her, I genuinely confused the university financial aid advisor when I transferred by not just signing off on the full amount I could get because I didn’t need as much as they were offering.
LemurCat04@reddit
I’m forever grateful that my loans went directly to my bursar and not to me. I’m also grateful that I graduated before private loans became a thing.
badteach248@reddit
I actually avoided student loan debt for a long time, then when I changed careers and needed a specific degree I plunged deep into Uncle Sam's pockets. Im glad I did, but every month that payment hurts.
mosesoperandi@reddit
State school prices in the '90's were s pretty amazing deal, but I get that most folks in this sub narrowly missed the window before they started skyrocketing.
Lorena_in_SD@reddit
I transferred from our local community college to the local state university; I was there for 4 semesters. Each semester, we would pay my tuition, then get another bill for a tuition increase just after the start of the semester - and you couldn't register for the upcoming semester if you had a balance due. By my final semester, tuition had effectively doubled.
LemurCat04@reddit
Yeah, this chart really tells a story. Penn State published it about 5 years ago and I don’t think those have changed their trajectories.
stephsco@reddit
I think Xenniells were probably the last to see college costs as manageable.
badteach248@reddit
Went from 5k a year to 9k a semester by the time I went back to school.
iggly_wiggly@reddit
Still paying off me shit at 45
ThrowAwayColor2023@reddit
I tried to warn my friends in the late 90s, but they all smugly told me I was wrong. If I were a jerk, I would be the smug one now.
MillenniEnby@reddit
A big part of it was how the loans were marketed. My college’s finance person told me I’d be paying back X dollars a month. Cool. Totally manageable. She’s in my corner, I’ll just give the form a quick skim to check the numbers and sign. Oops. She didn’t mention it was X dollars a month for each loan, and the amount I borrowed had been split up into half a dozen smaller loans.
LemurCat04@reddit
That sucks, mine told me to consolidate mine as soon as my six month bumper was up and then to get into income-driven repayment as soon as possible because that would lock in a very low monthly payment until they were paid off.
Miiirx@reddit
It's crazy that doing something like that is legal! When you're young, you don't always have to tools to defend yourself against such predatory practices.. did it change?
hamburgler26@reddit
Oh and if you pay that amount you make no progress ever and the interest just compounds and 20 years later people end up still owning the same amount that they've already paid.
goofytigre@reddit
It's the subscription model at its worst.. You never really own your education.
ThrowAwayColor2023@reddit
That's absolutely heinous. I'm so sorry.
MillenniEnby@reddit
In hindsight, it was pretty naive of me and I wound up luckier than most with my student debt. But it really is easy to see how so many people got gamed by the system when we weren’t given the tools to navigate it properly and the terms we were agreeing to were hidden and buried in the fine print.
life-is-satire@reddit
All the financial projections we researched in HS were based on averages and not starting salary.
My mom gave the advice that “you’ll be set with a degree.” Got a degree in psychology from U of M and made $22,500 in 2000 after graduation, less than what a new teacher made.
No clue how much childcare was until I got pregnant. I added it all up and I was up $200 at the end of the month after you figured in all the expenses. Luckily, my husband is in a skilled trade.
My parents had a knack for talking like they knew about a subject.
Feeling-Ad-8554@reddit
This was ubiquitous bad advice that we received from the adults in our lives.
Pm_me_some_dessert@reddit
I joined the military specifically to avoid student loans. Military service didn’t work out but I scored enough money to get through school with no debt and then a $0 down mortgage, both of which gave me huge legs up, so to speak.
Would I recommend either of my kids attempt the same thing? Absolutely not.
MotorPuncher@reddit
Systemic poverty is Uncle Sam's #1 recruiting tool.
CrazyMinute69@reddit
DD214 Alumni
$0 loans.
SilverAsparagus2985@reddit
I guess in a way, I’m thankful I never bought into a false dream and it was never even provided to me, because I never had to settle with the disillusionment. I can see pros and cons from both. But the picket fence American dream was always a false hope and only meant for a certain subset group of people.
Emergency_Process622@reddit
"You can be anything you want go to college and a high paying job is guaranteed for you". I'm same age and I remember this being a thing told to us in elementary / middle school.
There was an economics elective in high school for seniors that spoke a tiny bit about stocks and finance.
Otherwise nothing really. It's almost like there's been a long play to dismantle the middle class and create the ownership class and the rest of us.
suchalittlejoiner@reddit
Yup. I was told that my major wouldn’t matter, as long as I had a college degree. That I should just take classes that sounded interesting.
GreppMichaels@reddit
The irony is up until maybe 5-10 years ago, this was very true in tech, but a lot of jobs in general. Companies like Google and Apple used to really preach how unique their staff was.
85 and I have a degree in Philosophy/Poly Sci and worked in business consulting/sales/specialty finance roles and worked a lot with bankers too.
I used to work with this recruiter that I think liked my unique background, it helped me in the more consulting style sales roles.
Now everything is just about numbers, money, and AI with literal AI screeners looking through your resumes. It's about buzzwords and checking off boxes, and most job fields looking for incredibly homogeneous candidates.
The arts used to be looked for to bring unique POV's in many fields, now it's frowned upon because we have like 4 sociopath tech bros leading everything.
kashy87@reddit
In tech your certifications tend to matter and prove what you can do at a significantly more meaningful way to an employer.
suchalittlejoiner@reddit
It definitely wasn’t true until 5-10 years ago. Imagine graduating into a recession with a history degree and no job.
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
Yeah that's the story of how I got my worthless (but relatively cheap) BA. I wanted to go for masters but realized I was already in a hole and wasn't going to find a job in that field anyway. So I decided to YOLO and enjoy all the cool electives. I'm glad I did.
suchalittlejoiner@reddit
Why are you glad you did? Didnt it make it harder to get a job?
Specialist-Leek8645@reddit
I put in my time, got the degree and saw there were no jobs. Had to do something else anyway. I'm glad that I took cool electives that I still use. I'm a nerd type so to me it was worth it to get those. Realistically tho, it was a waste of money bc its main job was to get me a career and it didnt. None of it made it harder to find a job, but didn't make it easier either. I ended up staying at my unrelated college job, got full time.
Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit
Everyone keeps talking about how "they never taught us about money in school."
Are you sure? I went to a public school and we had comprehensive units on budgeting and investing in middle and high school, usually in math class.
You sure you just weren't paying attention?
rathaincalder@reddit
Curriculum varies by state and in some cases the school district within those states.
I have a degree in economics—you can sure as fuck bet that if something like that has been offered in either of my high schools (in 2 different states on opposites sides of the country) I would have been there.
Also, if I can still remember “health” class with the troll-like wrestling coach, so I don’t think my memory is faulty (yet!).
Honestly, your experience sounds like the real outlier…
Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit
Well then we should be working ro standardize school curriculums, not coming up with weird conspiracy theories about rich people.
Y'all give rich people way too much credit. They're mostly toddlers, impulsively grabbing at whatever they can get. Very few have the ability to "scheme" over a long period like you're implying.
rathaincalder@reddit
I wasn’t implying anything, that was the original commenter, but clearly unclear on how ‘Murica works, on multiple levels.
(A) In the American system system, school curricula are a local matter and attempts at national “standardization” by the Federal government have been repeatedly met with fierce, bordering on batshit crazy resistance—mainly through not exclusively by the right-wing nuts who are convinced that it’s the first step to taking their guns and sending in the “jackbooted thugs” lol.
(B) There is a well-documented history in America of exactly what the original comment suggests: using segregation (de facto and de jure), “tracking”, school districting, admissions criteria, and other dirty tricks to keep various populations (primarily poor and/or minority) in their place. Notably, in the context of (A) this was not the result of the “vast conspiracy” that you ridicule, but the result of thousands of local officials / communities exploiting the opportunity the federal structure provides them.
Also, I am a rich person (definitely not born that way!) and I resemble your remark! I am not a toddler but I definitely have an interest in making sure there are enough poor people around to clean my house and wipe my ass when I’m too old to do it myself!
Mammoth-Cod6951@reddit
Yeah...middle school?! I think I was in the last class that offered a home ec and woodshop class in my junior high. These classes were gone by the time my sibling started three years later. Definitely not replaced with classes on investing and budgeting.
Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit
I'm with you on that one. We got rid of those soon after I came through and it was a real shame. I loved shop class. I still have the shitty bookstand I made.
rathaincalder@reddit
We still had auto shop and I think wood shop in my high school (definitely not in junior high lol!) but they were, sadly, known as the dumping grounds for the “losers” and were avoided if you had any ambition. Now I honestly regret not taking them—not least because a lot of the “losers” were cool dudes and mostly treated this chubby little geek well.
It’s a pity, really—most of the classes that I still remember and appreciate today (as in knowledge that I use on a daily basis) were the random, less serious ones: art history, music appreciation, a couple of random literature classes. I work in finance, so I’m actually fortunate that I used my economics degree on a daily basis—but the last time I had to solve a differential equation by hand? Literally the day of the final and never again. Should have taken more music classes while my hearing still worked, damnit!
MoridinXP@reddit
1982 This was also the prevailing wisdom taught to us. Go to University and you'll be fine. When this didn't pan out nearly as well as advertised (even in a Business related field) I was very bitter for quite a while. But I came to realize that we weren't lied to per-se, it's just that the rules of the game had changed so fundamentally that it was no longer true. Now that everyone was doing that, plus several "once in a lifetime" events, "everything for the shareholder" mentality and it was a downward spiral that we were never fairly prepared for. Which brings us to today, the dying gasps of late-stage capitalism and enshittification of pretty much everything. So...now we have to make it up as we go along watching it all burn down around us.
Cptcodfish@reddit
Came to say the exact same thing.
max_power1000@reddit
This. Our parents told us these things because those were the rules when they went through. College was selective enough that just graduating was basically a ticket to the middle class or higher for them. They couldn’t hav predicted the outcomes we got.
YoohooCthulhu@reddit
It was kind of true for a brief period of time. One of my mom’s cousins is on the vanguard of the baby boom generation—he did so terribly in high school that his dad went on a quest to find a college that would accept his son. They found one which is not particularly highly rated but he graduated with a business degree; the demand for people with business degrees at the time got him picked up at NCR and he worked there for his whole career.
That edge declined somewhat to the younger baby boomers (my mom) but literally all my parents friends who went to college had long lasting stable careers and did massively better than my parents (who didn’t go to college).
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
It should be said that many very smart, capable, talented people did poorly in high school. So the takeaway shouldn't be "even this moron had it made just because his dad got him into a college."
BearCat1478@reddit
Many wealthy business owners I met in my career were not college grads, but people that were dumb enough to take incredibly risky steps with money and won. It happened quite often too, but after the early 2000's were through, I didn't see it as often. I asked one of them that I knew well why he didn't push his son to do better and get an education, he said "the world needs warehouse workers too". His son literally to this day just loads boxes into trucks but Dad has bought him his large home with an indoor pool and his fancy truck, and pays for his stay at home wife's childcare needs lol. Dumb luck is what I always think with this bunch.
brainvheart143@reddit
Yeah getting into and going to college was the goal. That’s why I’m fucked now. I used to not understand why kids would do pre med or pre engineering and now I’m working for all of them and their kids
birchblonde@reddit
What do you mean?
brainvheart143@reddit
I mean that no one told me what to do once I got to college. Like it was some magical thing that would advance me on its own. Then you get there and it’s all “you need x credits to graduate” or whatever but I don’t ever remember someone there discussing what I could learn that would help me after. And I was one of the lucky ones. I didn’t have to even pay for college.
Also, I’m a dumbass so there’s that.
Cool_Dark_Place@reddit
The whole "you just need a degree" thing was pretty true for a while with the Boomers, and also Gen Jones/early Gen X. My stepmom graduated college in 1980 with a bachelor's degree in music education, with a minor in math. She decided not to be a teacher... however that degree got her an instant retail management position when we moved to NC in 1985, and later... a mainframe computer operator position for NADEP at our local Marine Corps Air Station in 1989. She had zero experience in either of these fields... only the degree.
max_power1000@reddit
One of our best family friends ended up working for IBM and doing really well for himself. He had a geology degree. It was literally rocks for jocks at the school he went to. The degree proved he had enough commitment to see something true and that he would be trainable.
brainvheart143@reddit
Ok that’s super interesting bc I was here thinking it was bc of the networks built. My parents both graduated from Harvard but they also both went to grad school right away. I was like Jesus Christ I am tired I can’t imagine doing more school right now. Sounds like your mom is a super cool person.
Cool_Dark_Place@reddit
Thanks... she's a pretty cool lady! But yeah, I think with Ivy League schools, a lot of it has to do with networking. But for a long time... just having any bachelor's degree would usually get you at least an entry level position in most white collar professions. Basically, the degree was proof to your potential employers that you knew how to think, knew how to organize, and could see your goals through to completion. And, for a long time... that was enough to get you in the door.
brainvheart143@reddit
Let’s hope there’s still a little bit of something to that bc my company just imploded and I got laid off yesterday. I think I would rather chew my own foot off than update my resume. I feel like i don’t even understand how resumes work now with all the AI and filters.
stephsco@reddit
Hey, really sorry to hear about the layoff. It's everywhere now, and hitting our age group hard.
Original-Affect-4560@reddit
The simplest explanation is that you need to look for keywords in each job posting, and make sure those same keywords are in your resume. No idea what your field is, but say a specific application is listed as a requirement like ‘Hubspot’, if your resume only says ‘Salesforce’ (even though if you know one, you can learn the other), you won’t make it past their filter.
brainvheart143@reddit
Thanks!
STLFleur@reddit
Yep. I remember being told in high school that it didn't matter what you went to university for, you just needed a Bachelors degree in anything as that told employers you "knew how to apply yourself", and all of the doors would open.
stephsco@reddit
Student retention is an issue for sure. My university had a program that recruited Black students and included support like freshman year all were required to be in the same dorm and they had regular guidance counselor checkins. (Probably some other things I'm forgetting.) Sadly, the dorm this program used was labeled "ghetto" by white students and the program a punchline to some people (probably the people we can thank for voting in the currentadministration...) I went to a diverse high school and it surprised me in college how many students came from small towns with little diversity and straight up racist views. Some were clueless and open to learn, others not so much.
Colleges see drop outs mid-year freshman year and after, and I imagine those rates can be higher in certain population groups related to race or first generation in the family college students. All to say, some colleges do not excell at retention, and it can definitely be more challenging for students facing racism. Or if there's no support from home on how to make it through all 4 years.
Rivster79@reddit
Guidance counselor. The term you are looking for is guidance counselor
brainvheart143@reddit
Oh man, I went to a fabulous high school and our guidance counselors were jokes. Comically useless.
Hossflex@reddit
Agree. My parents hammered this home like crazy. Go to college and get a degree and you will have a good life. Ends up I was lost and didn’t really have a passion for anything at the time. Looking back on it, my mom was a bad example anyways. She got an art degree and became a mechanical engineer. Things were way different when she graduated.
rattytheratrat@reddit
This is so true. I think it’s because so many of our parents didn’t go to college… they had no idea what to tell us…
collins50235@reddit
Grass is always greener on the other side….😕
suchalittlejoiner@reddit
Nah, it’s because a much smaller percentage of people used to go to college - and many of the women went only for an MRS degree. So the college graduates competing for jobs weren’t so numerous, and other jobs had to be filled by high school graduates.
SteveMartinique@reddit
Don’t forget 4.5 Million H1Bs brought here since 1990 to compete for the same jobs we thought we’d have a shot at.
iwanttoquitworking@reddit
That is not the issue at all
hamburgler26@reddit
My parents both went to college, mom was able to stay home and raise the kids but went back to work towards the end of high school. I alone make way more than my dad made back then, but my house costs 10x as much, and I had to pay almost that much for many years in rent before I was able to even swing a house.
It really is just a completely fucked situation for most people.
iwanttoquitworking@reddit
This is my exact story too. And my mom keeps asking why I don’t stay home with my kids. Well mom, shit is so Fing expensive that if I’m making a good 6 figure salary in tech, we simply cannot afford for me not to make that money (even with a lot of money going to daycare), because we’d drown otherwise on one salary. We’d have no education savings for our kids, no retirement, no average house and we’d never vacation. She just doesn’t get it bc my dad’s one salary was enough for her to live in a ritzy suburb and travel multiple times a year and paint for fun.
cmajka8@reddit
I dont remember anyone saying anything was guaranteed. Went to college, got a job, and worked my way up.
thagor5@reddit
Who said there was a guaranteed job? Why would there be? Who takes on immense debt without a plan?
jamesdcreviston@reddit
Did anyone else get the presentation where it showed how much people made based on their degree and basically if you had a Masters or Better you were likely to be a millionaire?
FineIJoinedReddit@reddit
Yes! cries in Master's student loan debt
jamesdcreviston@reddit
Try two Master’s degrees. And now I work as a Mailman.
FineIJoinedReddit@reddit
I have a fancy job title, but I am basically a receptionist. I love my job and where I work but it sure ain't what I was promised or envisioned.
Polymox@reddit
For my wife and I, it worked. We were raised in families without much extra money, and have done quite well for ourselves working in white collar jobs.
throwawaytoday9q@reddit
This was more or less true at the time.
Emergency_Process622@reddit
Yeah for the people graduating college when they were telling us that in elementary school. Didn't work out as well for our generation and younger millennials got it even worse.
throwawaytoday9q@reddit
To be fair, things were good and no one expected we’d regress as far as we’d have.
danbob411@reddit
Economics elective? I think all seniors at my HS took a semester of economics, and a semester of civics. Was a requirement, I believe.
Emergency_Process622@reddit
It wasn't an elective like art or music. It was one of the choices for social studies credit. I forget what the other options were but I know not everyone got into this class.
Western-Corner-431@reddit
I never heard that guarantee.
ccr213@reddit
my financial lessons growing up... don't do whatever my mom did. she (or her boyfriend at the time) stole my credit. $35k+ found out when i was getting to buy my first car.
I made it my life mission to have no debt. have some money in savings and Roth IRA... home is almost paid off. I'm trying to do better for my kids... that's all. so far so good, but definitely not GREAT!
pir8salt@reddit
Starting??? Ship sailed about a decade ago
Si_is_for_Cookie@reddit
Hooked on phonics worked for me?
cranberries87@reddit
Well incidentally, reading instruction got away from phonics for many years and started pushing whole word learning, which is not effective. Now we’re circling back to phonics. So I suppose that was one thing that was actually right!
Allureme@reddit
I don’t remember this message about adults not caring about money. Examples??
shadylady_beepboop@reddit
They were called lies.
CrittyCrit@reddit
And just imagine how today's kids will feel when they've grown up.
GerlockADUS@reddit
While there is some validity to what you said, I feel that you are also outsourcing the consequences of your actions.
99nekat-emanresu@reddit
If anything, this subreddit shows that boomers, like all adults, were just muddling through the best way they knew how. The problem with how we were raised is boomers believed their voice to be the ultimate authority. They could never be wrong, never admit to not knowing what they were doing, or be fallible in anyway. Their ego still won’t let them be in the wrong. We believed them for too long.
jbergman420@reddit
So you want a "quiet, conventional" life with your wife and kids. Just not to quiet or conventional, hence the extra money for a maid/nanny.
59apache01@reddit
Never really paid attention to that theme in movies. but a lot of us were taught life skills by people who went through the Great Depression. That demographic was interesting because some kept their frugality for life while others became quite the opposite once the dire financial situation had passed.
Case in point - my grandparents were notoriously cheap until their dying days. In contrast, my uncle (grandfather's brother) was the complete opposite. He had a camper, a boat, a new truck, and was always taking vacations. While my grandparents had none of that and were driving a battered 1953 Plymouth and a 1961 Chevy truck. Mind you, this was in the mid 1980s. My uncle was the first one I remember thinking "I want to be like him when I grow up!" about. Though I didn't learn until many years later the guy was always deep in hock.
As I got older, I realized why my grandparents were the way they were. In a way, I've incorporated a lot of the same skills I learned from them. I'm still using most of the same stuff I had 20 years ago. Just today I wore a shirt I've had since about 1995. I'm not debt-free, but I've always been cautious about how to spend my money. That's not to say I don't splurge occasionally, but I don't waste it on stuff that's going to do nothing but depreciate in value.
missed_sla@reddit
Those depression era skills and habits are going to come in handy very shortly. Brought to you, as always, by our parents and grandparents choices at the ballot box.
fannyalgerpack@reddit
From what you’ve said, you might enjoy the book Die with Zero. I just finished it. It’s all about enjoying your fruits at the right point in your life. I don’t know if I agree with some of his value formulas regarding getting more value being young vs older, but’s it’s a good read.
Bored_Acolyte_44@reddit
Sounds like a boomer thing. Die with nothing and leave the next gen nothing.
59apache01@reddit
Or leave the next gen a stack of bills to pay off!
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
*With your money. If you die with nothing, the next generation does not have to assume your debts.
(This whole "blame Baby Boomers" thing is really distasteful to me. Younger generations will be saying the same things about us in a few years.)
Cooper_Sharpy@reddit
You’re assuming there is a next generation.. personally I’ll never bring a child into this fucked up world. I’ll 100% die with zero.
fannyalgerpack@reddit
Yah for sure it does. Deeper, it suggests using your money to help others when it has the most impact in their life, usually younger than one thinks. Plus one gets to see them enjoy it now. Hard to share half of nothing, of course so ymmv. Healthcare will want to eat it all up in the end anyway
rathaincalder@reddit
Holy shit, and here I was proud of a 2000-vintage t-shirt I still have in rotation (mamma taught me how to do laundry the right way, and both parents taught me how to take care of things!). Then you show up and put me in my place with you 1995 humblebrag! Smh
59apache01@reddit
Sad thing is, that's not the oldest piece of clothing I have!
Ok-Reflection-6207@reddit
What is deep in hock?
RepresentativeSink29@reddit
In debt up to his eyeballs 👀
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit
Debt.
syclopa@reddit
Hock is another term for debt, usually in the context of having pawned something
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
I did have salt-of-the-earth Depression-kid, WWII vet grandparents. They were really smart with their money and just in general wonderful people. But as a kid you can only copy your grandparents to such a point. I should have gone full Joe Pera, lol
Lucky-Remote-5842@reddit
I wasn't raised with the credit card, follow the trends, keep up with the Joneses mentality. I was born in 78. We weren't a paycheck to paycheck or poor family but I was raised to be pretty frugal. I didn't have some of the cool stuff other kids had, but in a way, I had even cooler things, like a horse.
I didn't care about technology and expensive stereo sets and things like that. I dressed nice and fashionable but didn't want or feel the need to go shopping every weekend. My style has always been a little more timeless than trendy. That goes for my home as well. So when I buy something, I don't usually feel like it's outdated à year from now.
I wasn't raised with new cars. In my 48 years I've only bought one brand new car. I keep them for a long time and drive them. I don't chase the latest and greatest but I'm comfortable.
My kids have what they need but not everything they want. Who could keep up with that? It doesn't make them happy, it just makes them demand even more.
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
Same. I feel like there's a divide here between the Gen Xers and the Millennials. I was raised to be thrifty, and it held me in good stead all these years. Now I can afford nicer things, but it's hard to get over the mental block of not wanting to appear "ostentatious."
Lucky-Remote-5842@reddit
100%
ZookeepergamePrior87@reddit
Every love story in every Disney movie… fall in love with the one at first sight, he’s the perfect guy and live happily ever after…..happened to nobody lol!
BearCat1478@reddit
My parents were of the silent generation. They had two late stage teenagers already before I was born, way too late for their age. 1978 and they were already almost 40. Their generation had the world by the fist and growth and positive expectations were what they knew. They divorced when I was 4 and I watched two entirely different families evolve and my #1 lesson learned was not to bring another child into this. Dad would have paid for college but all I wanted was not to be them. I was top 10% of my class, got accepted to any school I applied to but I decided to just work. I was working over every summer since I was 14 and money coming in was much better than throwing it into something to just hope for better. Dad's money included. Now that he's passed on, I have a full retirement already laid out from inheritance. My brother at 65 used his part in full to finally finish paying his school debt, debt he incurred going back to school a few times to try to change careers as he's gotten older. Loosing a chemistry job at age 60, he's now driving a tractor trailer until retirement. With no inheritance left. He has two degrees in chem and business but no jobs were available for him at the ages he was trying to look when he needed to. The company he first worked for bankrupted at his age of 50. There was nowhere for him to go.
Warrior-Cook@reddit
I've come to understand I was privileged enough to be a dreamer all through my 20s.
Backed by the curse of an optimist, I drank the enchanted kool-aid as a kid and never was pushed to shed it. It was all self fulfilling BS to "make it" but at least I wasn't bored while nothing was happening.
There's worse things than being a try-hard, but damn the start of my 30s were pretty dark. Reality called and I've come to peace with my lot these days.
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
I appreciate that you acknowledge your early privilege. There's so much whining and blaming other people in this thread, and most of you were much more privileged than some of us. I didn't have a choice, growing up, but to internalize penny-pinching money habits.
Asleep_Onion@reddit
What pisses me off is the extremely common 80s-90's movie trope that the dad works too hard and sometimes misses baseball games and school plays, but in the end he learns time with his family is all that matters so he gives his boss the middle finger and quits.
It's caused a whole generation to grow up thinking that fathers who work hard to provide for their family are shitbags.
Okay, so you quit, so you're not gonna miss Billy's baseball games anymore. That's great, but, like... How the fuck are you going to pay the mortgage and feed your family now?
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
Did moviegoers really come away with that message, though? Or did they come away with, "That's just Hollywood; obviously that would never work out in real life"?
Elegant-Astronaut910@reddit
My parents made sure we understood that in real life you can't just quit your job with no plan and that their was an implied huge interest bearing savings account and profitable investments in movie dad's portfolio or a trust fund.
They also made it clear in the real world "Mrs. Doubtfire" would be in jail, be on probation, have a permanent restraining order and supervised visitation.
SteveMartinique@reddit
I think it was overly simplistic. Like My Dad was always working and traveling for work, and while we were upper middle class, that didn’t do much for me in the long run. I think the idea is that, raising your kids is gonna make a bigger difference than a couple Thousand dollars here and there.
RunAwayBeerTruk@reddit
Yes, ever notice like every movie from the 80s and 90s no matter what the problem was could be solved with a house party. Just throw a raging alcohol party and all worries and problems would be solved.
Heavy_Pin7735@reddit
We were raised by the most selfish generation that has pulled up a lot of the ladders on their way up. They refuse to relinquish power and wealth to our generation, and it’s our country and planet.
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
And within 20 years the younger folks will be saying the same thing about us.
It is so short-sighted to blame everything on whatever the old generation happens to be.
70camaro@reddit
I think most of the ideals of the 90s were an outright lie. In general we were given unrealistic expectations about what the world is actually like.
napalmthechild@reddit
I grew up poor and I feel like if I never came across rich dad poor dad at the bookstore I wouldn’t have learned about money myself. Unfortunately that led me down a rabbit hole of self help books that turned me into a black and white thinking type of person. Your finances might be a mess but I bet you were a nicer person than me in my thirties.
Anyway I think all our upbringings are a chance exposure anyway. Same way rich kids lived in a totally different reality than normal kids and most rich kids end up as adults who are detached from the bottom 85%
1_art_please@reddit
What's interesting to me is I currently know someone, Gen X, who grew up upper class with housekeepers and stuff. Not rich rich but pretty well off, him and his brothers were raised to hold good paying jobs (run businesses, become high level administrators, etc).
Didn't turn out that way for him and his youngest brother (they said their mom got back into being career focused and gave up on the youngest two as she was done with child rearing while they grew up). Now they are messed up adults without jobs, living off of inherited money.
Its interesting to see because they STILL are angry about not living up to the values from their upbringing in a world thats changed. They get angry about people having jobs that they see should be 'beneath them' (immigrants, lower middle class people, waitstaff, public servants) having power (over them being hired, being served as they feel should be standard, treated with defference). Whenever they did get a job (which was always low wage because they have few skillsets) they immediately hated their lower class coworkers and bosses, being told by 'lesser people' to do something or correcting them because in their values system all those people should always be in deference to them as per how they were raised.
Anyway. Its super interesting to see how people react to worlds that have changed, not just the rage of the disappearing middle class, but also people who were higher than middle class that also ' fell down the ranks'.
EducationalFerret849@reddit
What I've come to realize is that the system wasn’t built to teach practical life skills like personal finance or long-term planning. It definitely wasn't designed to encourage any kind of spiritual life of conventional values. It was by design. The system is still designed that way.
A disaffected and disconnected populace and a financially unstable electorate is easier to control. I know, tinfoil hat here. But that seems to be the real explanation.
worlds_okayest_skier@reddit
I was an honors student, straight A’s, graduated near the top of my class, and nobody ever thought me how to qualify for a mortgage if not for the one shop class I took with all the D students.
Exciting-Argument-67@reddit
Every high school needs that one teacher who casually goes off script and imparts practical life knowledge. For me it was my American History teacher.
DiligentDaughter@reddit
I recently had a conversation about this, with a mother of one of my kiddo's friends. I lamented that school's don't seem to put enough emphasis on learning how to learn and think critically and problem solve, but more focus on being able to attend, listen to and follow instructions, and conform. She commented that when we first began public schooling, it was to do exactly that, because the people going to them would be those affected by family farms no longer being prevalent, that they'd need those skills to function as a clerk, or office worker etc. Getting them to read, write, and attend was what they needed.
Matshelge@reddit
There is a conflict among people on this. It's called critical thinking vs. rote memorization.
But what is a problem is that critical thinking does not work unless you have a foundation of facts to critically think about. So it a great way for the smart kids who like to do stuff on their own, but horrible for those who don't.
YVRkeeper@reddit
We learned cursive but not taxes.
Guess which one I haven’t used since high school?
Late-External3249@reddit
My high school (upstate NY) had a required class called Government and Economics. A good chunk of the class was about retirement accounts (IRA, 401k), compounding interest, mutual funds, stocks etc. Alas, I think a good portion of the students hated that class and didn't pay any attention in it.
Willing_Actuary_4198@reddit
I always said public school is just practice for the camps. The only thing you are really taught is blind obedience to authority
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
You might be right. But, to me, it seems like there was a lot of experimental thinking when we were being raised. This is not a partisan critique, nor am I alleging malice. On both the right and left, there were parenting ideas that seemed to be driven a lot by theory and ideology. Our parents’ generation thought they were creating a new world. You are totally right, though, about the lack of practical life skills. I was thinking about this while playing with my youngest son at the park. All that stuff about “find yourself” and so on, bullshit. For most people, nothing will be more important than having a good marriage. I say this as somebody who was a mess and a single dad for many years, and then I got incredibly lucky to meet a woman who was able and willing to show me what a healthy family can be like. Conventional American values — moderate, forgiving, disciplined — had a lot of positive upside.
The_best_is_yet@reddit
A lot of people had the conventionional ‘american dream’ and they realized it wasn’t actually good for them. I’m glad getting there has been good for you, but I think our parents generation dreamt of more for us. I cannot fault them for that.
External-Flight-4680@reddit
You, my friend, need to read John Taylor Gatto's essay The Seven Lesson Schoolteacher. It was a speech he gave for winning Teacher of the Year in 1991, but it's as horrifyingly relevant today.
Gryrok@reddit
Are there any other messages you picked up on you didn't like? Did the messages come from movies and TV, or any other sources?
I too saw the finance message in movies. I also saw the message that "Happiness in romance comes when you fall in love with someone you barely know, and will need to pursue them and only them by doing absurd things." Which is WILDLY different than the advice I'd give my 12 year old send (something like "meet and talk to lots of different people, have short romantic relationships with lots of them while you learn more about yourself and what you like. Then, when you know who you are and what you're looking for, you can start looking for someone to be your wife.)
HOWEVER - the message about money I got my from parents was very different than the one in the movies. And I wish they had talked to be about romance instead of just throwing me to the wolves.
pizza-regret@reddit
You ever try to talk to your folks about how they raised you? Prepare for some denial, tears, and more denial, and yelling.
Redeyebandit87@reddit
Tbh most ppl don’t want what you want either. I would die of boredom if I had a quiet, spiritual, sober and conventional life.
Fr4nzJosef@reddit
That if you do what you love for work, it will never be work. Yeah, tried that, all that happened was something I enjoyed slowly morphed into something I hated and I didn't make all that great $ at it. Now? I have a job I can tolerate, the work itself is not great, but not terrible, but the pay and benefits are outstanding. This allows me to do fun stuff in my free time.
Also, pretty much no financial education from anyone in my family and then being scolded for not having a clue. Figured it out but had to go to the most expensive school (experience).
MaraScout@reddit
Starting? I learned that lesson after the crash of '08
We were sold lie after lie, then left to survive on our own.
hdorsettcase@reddit
I was 100% raised with the idea that success or failure was all up to me, that my future would be determined by how hard I worked, how smart I worked, and how well I sized every opportunity. I was not taught how to deal with assholes who made decisions that were fundamentally bad for all parties involved, especially when they were in positions of power. I've had teachers abd supervisors fuck both me, the larger group, and themselves over for the most petty and sometimes literal insane reasons. I've had to learn on my own to ID them and when I do have to engage with them, document document document everything.
HugeTheWall@reddit
Same here. I was told to always do what is right and be honest, work as hard as you can and people will recognize it and you'll have a good life.
All this got me was years of being taken advantage of, stolen from, lied to, people taking credit for my work or endlessly giving me more and more work.
Only at like age 40 did I realize that being a good person doesn't mean being honest. That you will never ever move up in any job by being a great worker, and that I have been digging my own burnout grave all these years.
I wish in school someone had taught us how to deal with liars and cheats and protect ourselves. They kept pushing the same lies.
1_art_please@reddit
I was told the same and dealt with the same burnout as you. The obedience and hard work i was ordered to put in as a kid and received praise from from teachers, my parents and other authority figures (along with 'you're a kid you dont have problems, figure it out yourself and ' children are meant to be seen and not heard') put a nice big target on my back as an adult saying, " Do what you want to her, she exists to be your verbal punching bag without consequences!"
Hiw have you dealt with it as an adult?
Routine_Ask_7272@reddit
Agree. I've learned the important of saying "No" or "Not right now" or "I've got too many other things to do".
It's important to double-check everything, especially anything financial. Companies can (and do) make mistakes.
It's also important to make time for yourself. A few weeks ago, I had a conversation with my Dad about learning to be a little "selfish" at times. Otherwise people will take advantage of your time, money, or other resources. You'll get burned-out, because your never doing anything for yourself.
DrenAss@reddit
Everything I've learned about relationships, personal finance, college, and climbing the career ladder I've had to figure out for myself. I've known since before my 20s that I can't sit around and complain about not being taught the right lessons. I wanted to have a good life, happy marriage, and not be poor, so I've had to look for information on all those things.
prof_cunninglinguist@reddit
The concept that hard work pays off. Sure, if you own a farm. In my decades of work, hard work has always gotten me pigeon holed in a role. The "rockstar" that no manager wants to promote and lose.
Beneficial_Run9511@reddit
I’m not sure we should be taking life advice from movies
ScarlettWilkes@reddit
I guess it really depends on your parents. My parents were always teaching us about money. I grew up knowing that money was important to a comfortable life. I was told to major in finance, and I did. Because of that, along with hard work, I don't really worry about money now. Now I'm the parent and I'm teaching my daughter about money. She's 10 and has a stock account (in addition to the college savings account we put money in for her). Good finances make life a lot less stressful.
hombre_bu@reddit
“Just work hard and you’ll be successful”
Into-the-stream@reddit
And it’s sisters: “every generation is better off than the last”, and “a bachelors degree means a guaranteed job where you are set for life. Don’t worry about those student loans”
cmajka8@reddit
I think this is disingenuous. Nobody said anything was guaranteed. And certainly nobody told me not to worry about the student loans. It was always understood that I would have to get a job after college and pay off my own loans.
Payinchange@reddit
The American dream
catsandkittens1308@reddit
I'll always be incredibly fortunate to have had a dad that understood both money and people. My lessons were things like how to squeeze every last dime from your health insurance company, investing, retirement, how debt and credit cards, student loans work, how mortgages work - and what diligent, hard work looks like. And then the soft people stuff, about prioritizing the relationships in your life, but not allowing people's opinions of you to control your life. That you get one shot and "if you wouldn't want it printed on in tomorrow's papers, you probably shouldn't be doing it." And much much more.
The world may have been giving poor advice, but you're very lucky if you had a parent or other adults around that taught you better. I did, and it mattered a lot.
pureprurient@reddit
"some" is an understatement imo/e
Dickrubin14094@reddit
Once again this group has posts with follow up comments that are completely opposite of what I and my friends experienced growing up, and opposite of what I see with my wife and her friends. Sheesh.
Parents, teachers, counselors etc. we’re right about college being a path to a good career. My wife and I, and our friends & family wouldn’t be where we are had we not gone to college. Those good jobs aka helped us each pay off our student loans in less than the 10 year maximum length.
At least for me I remember financial literacy being taught in schools as early as junior high. Side note, when did it change to being called middle school? Definitely by high school we had an economics class in junior year and a government class in senior year.
That was just school. My parents always stressed saving money. Probably because they were often struggling themselves from prior bad spending decisions. We didn’t have a lot when I was growing up, and I vividly remember being picked on because of it.
When I first got a job as a teenager I was told by my parents to put half of my paycheck into a savings account. I was free to spend the other half however I wanted. Most of the time that was more than I needed.
Like I said, the experiences I grew up with often are outside of whatever I see in this group.
Let the down voting commence
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
No, you’re helping to prove my point! It sounds obvious that you didn’t grow up with parents or a school district caught up any of the big fads of the day. Did you grow up in Massachusetts? LOL, it’s one of the few places that I have always been under the impression has actually good schools. Spread the word on how it can do done.
Dickrubin14094@reddit
No, lol, grew up in Rochester, NY. I’m often floored at what so many here consider a normal experience that seems foreign to me
Usual-Role-9084@reddit
Late ‘82 here. We grew up on Fuck Around. We live in Find Out.
yikesonbikes1230@reddit
This is the answer!
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Great phrase!
EidolonRook@reddit
It’s almost like the more salable ideas and products are the ones wanted in the moment and never satisfy for long.
We’re a product of incredibly good marketing, which we listened to far more readily than education.
Psychological_Tea674@reddit
As a professional financial aid counselor and money management enthusiast, the problem is the goal post keeps moving, social security is insolvent and they keep raising the retirement age. My grandfather taught me about finances, invested 3k for my 16th birthday that is a pretty fat account now that I skim off the top occasionally. He also spent nothing on fun except occasionally food treats. My parents were similarly miserly except for their overblown house they built in the 80s. It’s beautiful but lots of wasted space. I was deprived as a kid. Not dirt poor deprived but literally my daily lunch was PB on bread (no jelly) and a banana or a box of raisins. I had very few toys or clothes that were not handed down by my brother. So maybe it’s dumb but as my mom slices off my inheritance to me in pieces, im grateful. I put some in Roth but I have several hobbies and I do splurge on the regular while I can. Someday when capitalism collapses for regular folks I hope I have what I need to sustain my interests and live a pleasant life, and I’ll cut way back on discretionary spending. One thing I don’t really do is spend money on travel. Working in college financial aid, I’m seeing the other families making a LOT more than I am at the same age. But at least I was able to go through college with just 10k in debt. Many of my students will be borrowing 40-50k per year for the same school. I’d rather be Xennial than GenZ.
trainwreckhappening@reddit
46m, 1979 here. My parents/family is extremely tardy to everything. I'm talking hours late. My wife went to a family Christmas party without me (I had to work)and showed up an hour late on purpose. She was there two full hours before anyone else showed up. I was late for school every single day unless I walked with one of my friends (because they were never late). Even my mom's friend gave me rides to early morning classes and was late every day to the point that I just skipped the early class and got there on time for the regular classes to start. As an adult that has caused so much frustration I can't even describe it.
I was also raised on the same bad financial advice. Which is funny because my mom had a degree in accounting and entrepreneurial business management, and owned a business.
It was my wife (1984) who taught me to be on time, and good finances. I'm still a mess about them both, but I understand what I am supposed to be doing and am constantly trying to achieve something better that I was raised to do.
thagor5@reddit
So are you in your 70s now?
TheBrownCouchOfJoy@reddit
I have mixed feelings about this. I’m from a quite wealthy area, though my family is not. I also lacked this kind of financial direction and smart advice, but I blame the people, not their pop culture consumption. My high school classmates financially have done much better than me, and their parents were watching the same movies, etc.
Now when it comes to building a life that brings me joy in other, arguably more important ways, I’m doing quite well. My parents are both miserable in their own ways, but I’m headed in a very different direction. Still, it would have been nice to have a fat bank account and oodles of assets behind that happiness.
gir6@reddit
Yes, to the “just go to college and you’ll be fine and automatically get a job” messaging. I was the first person in my family to go to college. I did not have a good academic advisor, and nobody in my family had good advice either. I got a degree in Environmental Science, graduated in 2003.
Turns out there aren’t jobs just out there when you get out of college. I bitterly worked as a waitress and a barista with my useless degree for a few years, fell into the medical field working as a lab tech, got cancer, didn’t die, decided to go back to school for nursing (a wise decision), did an ABSN program, and now I do have a job wherever I go.
My husband is a college professor, and he is an excellent academic advisor, in part because of me and my story. He uses me as an example when he is talking to kids about what they want to do with their lives. You can choose a major because you love it, but you need to seriously think about the jobs that are available and what you’re going to do for the rest of your life before you major in something.
FoppyRETURNS@reddit
The main idea that didn't pan out was "keep your head down and work hard" when failing upwards is more of a thing than it was 30 years ago.
However, most of the old school ideas are still good ideas. If we knew "money isn't everything" and did not strive to possess what the rich and famous possess we'd be mentally healthier, fiscally more responsoble, and collectively much happier.
Instead, the system got gamed into 8 year car loans for gigantic SUVs, doubling the price of every house every 15 years, college and healthcare doubling the rate of inflation, and addicting us to "cheap stuff" to cop us a fix and keep us materialist consumers.
NPC261939@reddit
You're probably on the right track. I mean, GenX and Xennials alike grew up being mislead and lied to probably more than any other generation.
Autismothot83@reddit
The " self-esteem " movement lol.
Carmypug@reddit
Born in 82. I just feel like I was lead to believe life would be more fulfilling and exciting.
Top-Wolverine-8684@reddit
My parents didn't talk about money. At all. It was completely taboo and considered crass. I didn't know the difference between $4,000 and $40,000 and had no idea what to expect when I moved out. To this day, my parents still think any conversation about money whatsoever, in any sense, is inappropriate.
some_body_else@reddit
Same, but I did know the difference in money. Home finances were a secret. I was an open book with my kids, showed them my paystubs and went over my bank statements. They got to see rent, utilities, food, and all other expenditures and do the math. Hopefully they saw what not to do lol and learn from it.
ThunderSnow-@reddit
Very similar experience. Even now, it's rude to ask about or discuss personal financials in my family.
kategrant4@reddit
My parents too!!! No talk about important things like money, sex, debt, health. Really detrimental to raising well adjusted kids.
Royal_Quantity_2462@reddit
Same upbringing about money it’s really bizarre and foolish thinking
mgoman@reddit
I was misled, but in the other direction. I suffered a bad burn injury that made me miss almost all of the 2nd grade, laid up in the hospital, and then basically a mummy for 6 months, half my body wrapped in bandages and yellow medication that stank to high heaven. Did this therapy where I'd sit in a heated whirlpool tank and a doctor would pick little pieces of skin and flesh off my chest and waist, a little more each week. It was pretty gross, but it looks normal now, just slight patches of discoloration on the skin.
Anyways when I was finally done with the therapy I asked my dad how much it cost and he showed me the invoices of the initial surgery + all the therapy sessions, without telling me about this thing called insurance (parents had good insurance, they just conveniently left that part out for me to learn about on my own). Those invoice numbers were huge; I was like damn I'm gonna need to make alot of money huh, much more than ninja turtle action figure and magic the gathering card money
willows_edge@reddit
Better-Eggplant9822@reddit
If you are a young woman this actually WILL happen. You can roll into a party or club with zero dollars in hand, and leave high and drunk as a lord, consistently.
beeercunt@reddit
Those things you really want? Those are all absolutely achievable. A spiritual life has nothing to do with how much debt you are in, how successful you are, or, most importantly, at least to what you're saying here, what you were taught growing up. Every single one of us was ill prepared for life, because you can't really prepare for it, not really. My parents were ill prepared. Their parents were ill prepared. The journey of awakening is about doing the hard work of looking deep within yourself and at your actions, identifying core dysfunctional beliefs, repairing damage to yourself and others, and emerging on the other side with an entirely new way of seeing things. One in which I no longer have to wring every little drop of 'satisfaction' I can from a life that is not mine to begin with. It's amazing that any of us are here in the first place. It's a fucking miracle really. Life's too fucking short for all this middle aged, existential dread I keep seeing on this sub. Life is for you. It always has been.
elenchusis@reddit
some?
Disastrous_Basis3474@reddit
mhaukom@reddit
I think about this all the time. It's hard to get and stay moviared when I do.
rarepinkhippo@reddit
It does really seem like our generation was told that going to college guaranteed you a well-paying job and set you up for a perfectly workable life. Which had been true for the boomers who raised us, back when fewer people were going to college. By the time it got to us, it seems like a large enough share of the population was going to college, plus college costs and student loans were becoming much more onerous, and meanwhile a lot of jobs were being outsourced to other countries.
Funkopedia@reddit
We're also the 'stranger danger' and 'drugs are bad' kids
Nitetigrezz@reddit
Every generation feels like a guessing game though. Parents try to help kids learn from their own mistakes, at times overcorrecting. It's possible your parents were probably taught to be so careful or miserly with their money or to work themselves so hard that they never felt like they enjoyed life. In fact, chances are they were taught to do those exact things by their parents. So the answer to that for them was to teach you to not obsess over work or money and they overcompensated to the point of doing harm.
My own parents stressed that I was special and could go anything I put my mind to. My ma was also the oldest of 4 kids and my dad felt like he was always good at things but never great with parents that were pretty damn critical, so they were most likely projecting what they wished their parents told them when they were young.
wiserTyou@reddit
I think a lot of what we were taught made sense through the 90 but didn't carry over for a variety of reasons.
I definitely agree there should have been more life prep. One hour with a banker discussing my messed up credit when I was trying to buy a car at 20yrs old has served me better than most of what I learned in high school.
Schools can only do so much though. Judging by all the posts about taxing the rich shows most people don't understand capital gains.
The trades are much better paying than they used to be. I know several people who started businesses fresh out of high school and they're all doing very well.
The whole landscape of our country has changed in ways few could've predicted.
Working5daysaWeek@reddit
Schools could have, and should have, taught us some kind of financial management course. I would have gotten a hella lot more out of that over woodworking or home economics.
aaronin@reddit
Woodworking? Home economics? I could have got way more out of those than journalism, mass communication (watching movies), or AP government (thinly veiled snark there). But seriously, school seemed in denial about the skills that adults actually needed to have.
Practical-Plenty907@reddit
Agree with you, OP.
So much worse for women too. Our gen’s women were raised with the idea that love and money have nothing to do with each other. That true love is out there waiting for us if we give the poor/ugly/old guy a chance. Our ‘diamond in the rough’. We were taught that women must earn and prove their love constantly by what they are willing to endure and sacrifice. Our media was full of these ideas.
Now in my late 40’s, I believe none of this.
Many men fell into this too. They didn’t need to strive for more because the ‘right’ woman will love them as they are. This served to keep us humble and happy with mediocrity and survival.
Our gen’s women were taught we “can have it all”, meaning a job/career and kids. No one asked us if we wanted “it all”. It was simply assumed. We ended up with two jobs, having to prove we were capable of being the breadwinner, and willing to prove our love to our men, in part by not expecting much from him.
I’m so glad many younger women are opting out of the husband and kids and focusing on their own education, friend relationships, career goals, mental health, personal growth, financial well-being, spirituality, and travel.
I hope young men do this as well. It wasn’t easy for many young men to be fathers and providers young either.
We surely could have used mentors and more life skills, skills that would have helped us thrive, instead of just survive, but, we were fending for ourselves pretty young. Why would we expect any different? Our whole lives have been one “figure it out” after another.
DrankTooMuchMead@reddit
Yeah. Im 1983 and for the longest time I was pursuing careers based on personal interest. Focusing on money seemed materialistic and contrary to my moral and spiritual beliefs.
Now I realize its all about the middle way; we need money to take care of ourselves and the ones we care about. This doesnt make us greedy. But money can put us in a slippery slope where we lose our path. For example, spending so many hours at work you ignore your kids, or becoming so successful you fire people without empathy.
mattcmoore@reddit
I can't blame them for not anticipating how shitty everything would get or how much the world changed. Nobody expected that.
mistegirl@reddit
Am I the only one who was told from the get go that social security would not be around when I get old, so save or work till I die?
supiesonic42@reddit
Raised in the rural South, by great-grandparents; they married in 1933 at 18 and had a baby that year, then another the next year.
By 1980, when they got me, age, illness, and the long slide from being active and employed people meant that I got emotional neglect, parentification via being forced into a caregiver role, and little actual concern or discussion about life after 18. Besides every other relative being determined I should disappear. Lest someone accidentally leave me something they wanted.
I'm JUST now coming to terms with all this and with the weight of my own choices, which were mostly made by a child booted into the world without a clue.
AnyPalpitation5632@reddit
Sounds pretty similar to my childhood. Parents barely knew each other, met, and mom got knocked up in 1982. They dumped me at my grandparents and by 1989, after my sister was born I barely saw anyone anymore, including my own parents. Then dad left and I was forced to parent my mom, who didn't get out of bed, and my sister. I'm 43, and only recently learned to manage life. I often feel like a duck out of water.
sevnthcrow@reddit
The amount of times I’ve said “holy fuck, no wonder people call this predatory” as a slightly financially literate person… I practically got a second degree making sure the student loans I took for law school would be dischargeable via the public service loan forgiveness program (lots of shiny looking short term details on the private loans, like lower interest rate). I made sure I was paying them back in the right manner for payments to count for ten years, and even then I lost payments “counting” towards forgiveness because of processing time over holidays and being put in deferment without notice while the government was switching servicers. I did a shitton of legwork for employment verification, because the employers had little to no guidance. When forgiveness time came, I had to get my government reps involved for the paperwork to finally go through.
When we bought a house, the bank was willing to hand over an absurdly large mortgage loan. We went with something like half of the amount, something we thought we could swing on one salary for a time if necessary. We still got hosed on PMI, because the lender just talked about it not being needed once we owned 20% of the house. Well apparently it’s permanent over the life of the loan if you did an FHA loan with only the minimum put down, and that went into effect only a month or so prior to our closing. I couldn’t even tell you if our loan officer or attorney knew that themselves with the timing.
Even when you try to be skeptical and on top of your shit, they’re not making it easy out there.
DBPanterA@reddit
I will leave this here:
While this particular video does not specifically address OP’s thoughts, this YouTube creator focuses specifically on the Xennial experience.
OP is right, and that’s the problem… we were raised on beliefs and ideologies that worked for the boomers, but the world changed beneath our feet and we are trying to use those childhood thoughts and beliefs that were beaten into us for a world that no longer exists today.
https://youtu.be/10cngCfSAf8?si=KeEpefH71uJytWB0
Substantial-Art-482@reddit
Thank you thank you thank you for sharing this 💜 holy shit that hits so hard and explains so much 😭
DBPanterA@reddit
Check out the other videos in the series.
I love this sub. I love the topics and the conversation. Love the OP asking this question, because it is very important. But that YouTube channel is spot on with so many things…
Substantial-Art-482@reddit
I definitely will, just with my spouse so im not sobbing alone lol 💜
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Just on the title alone — perfect video.
Capital_Barber_9219@reddit
I was raised Mormon, bro. Everything I was taught was warped
Background-Action-19@reddit
"There are billions of people in the world, and soon the world will be too overpopulated, so don't have kids. Also Jesus is coming soon so none of this really matters anyway."
ChickenArise@reddit
Sparta was also a bad idea
AlaskanPotatoSlap@reddit
*Starting*???
stitchbitchstitch@reddit
There was little way to plan for the systemic disassembly of the framework we thought we had and the economics that resulted. My parents and stepparents worked the same place from their 20s to retirement. They had stability. They thought we would so we learned what worked for them. It mostly hasn't worked for us. Unless you started quite wealthy. We're just gaslight into believing society level problems are our own fault.
Eclectic_Paradox@reddit
This. And the goal posts keep moving further away. I'm finally making six figures, but it sure doesn't feel like it.
Starboard_Pete@reddit
As a woman with a late stage ADD diagnosis because “girls don’t get ADD,” I feel like a few adults back in the day could have spent a bit more time examining why that statement might be wrong, with so many examples amongst them. It would have save me a lot of trouble in understanding why I’m like this and explaining myself to people.
JasJoeGo@reddit
Every generation raises kids the way they wish they were raised. If, like me, you were raised by hippies, they wished they had been allowed not to care about money and just be free. Result, we don’t have a good situation for personal finances or a culture of talking about money. Our parents wished they could have spent the summer making art instead of pumping gas and mowing lawns, so that’s what we got to do. They rejected conformity, without realizing they were doing it with incredible economic stability behind them.
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Exactly right. I think most hippies made terrible parents, but they had a theory of what they were doing. I think a lot the reality of hippies is misaligned to the expectation. For example, most hippie commune communities have very sexist cultures. My parents were hippie adjacent. I was raised in a pretty unconventional way and my adult life has been a series of encountering normal things that were supposedly boring, like buying a house in the suburbs, and being like “this is actually awesome!”
Harpy_Feather@reddit
Yes agreed, so sexist! I was raised by Christian hippies (they were raised in religion and idealistically wanted to keep both their faith and the opportunity to party and live in communes lol). I experienced so much cognitive dissonance between 'live free and follow your dreams' and 'we need you to cook and clean.' I'm pretty boring but it sure is nice having stability.
theeewizzard@reddit
Yep. Didn't have a steady, good paying job until I was 40. My first thought was, this makes life so much easier! I spent my 20s playing in bands and working in bars "chasing my dream" Went back to school at 30 cause I'd always been taught the only way to get a good job is with a degree. Went to grad school. Ended up joining the fire department at 40 and have never been happier. Parents were also hippy/ hippy adjacent. Had a therapist tell me not all good people make good parents. Felt that one pretty deep.
PapaTua@reddit
I feel like our parents were trust fund kids, who raised us to be trust fund kids too, except they didn't transfer the trusts to us.
Fickle_Wrangler_7439@reddit
No, but that's because I barely listened to a single thing my dad ever said.
Several relatives have told me something along the lines of "you knew who you were the day you were born."
I've always followed my own compass. I'm not perfect, but I've never made the mistake of doing something because others said I should.
JTynanious@reddit
Finance or financial management wasn't thought well in Canada either. Or at all. I got my financial wits because my parents just scraped by financially while working hard. Life lessons through PTSD OP!
becky_leigh@reddit
All I remember was the big push on AIDs , swear everyone was going to die of it. Hardly knew of cancer and I thought for the longest time it was a “new” disease…and now everyone dies of it and I know no one with AIDS
der_innkeeper@reddit
"I see in the fight club the strongest and smartest men who've ever lived. I see all this potential and I see squandering. God damn it, an entire generation pumping gas, waiting tables, slaves with white collars, advertising has us chasing cars and clothes, working jobs we hate so we can buy shit we don't need. We're the middle children of the history man, no purpose or place, we have no Great war, no Great depression, our great war is a spiritual war, our great depression is our lives, we've been all raised by television to believe that one day we'd all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars, but we won't and we're slowly learning that fact. and we're very very pissed off."
Fitting.
BrieBelle00@reddit
I was raised to believe if I worked hard I would be able to buy a nice home on a piece of land.
Now I'm grown, i worked hard, and the new message is "tiny homes are sooo cool!"
I was promised a house - not a camper with fancy siding that still costs 6 figures
ExistentialDreadness@reddit
Yeah. My parents seem to hate me for whatever reason.
InteractionSoggy5695@reddit
1981 here. Parents were an artist and stay at home mom, and I literally wasn’t taught a single life skill, maybe other than cooking. Don’t get me wrong, I def absorbed values that I’m grateful for, hard work and resilience being some of them (artists need a lot of odd jobs to survive.) BUT! Parenting my 16 and 18 year old, I realize how many conversations we are having about how things work that I only figured out in the last ten years. Banks, money, bills, hair care, health, future planning etc. I feel like my experience isn’t that different than many of my peers where we weren’t actively parented beyond a roof and food, and were pretty much on our own by around 11-14 years old. I moved out at 17, to a different city with an older boyfriend, which a lot of people around me were also doing. I also turned out ok, but man my teens and 20’s were so messy and chaotic. Also fun. But just figuring out every single life skill through the consequences…
OrthodoxAnarchoMom@reddit
Starting? No. Lol
Daylight-Silence@reddit
Personal finance would have definitely been a more useful thing to teach in schools than a lot of things they actually taught.
I've yet to encounter the situation in life where I've had to build a spice rack or make a banana cream pie
Working5daysaWeek@reddit
Banana split in my case!
Eziekiel23_20@reddit
The ‘college=success’ narrative hit me hard after deciding not to go to law school. Turns out philosophy isn’t appreciated much!
That’s really the only thing I was ‘told’. The thing that irks me more are the things I WASNT told. A little guidance woulda been nice. I understand sometimes mistakes must be made but goddamn it woulda saved me a lot of heartache, time, and money had my parents passed just a little wisdom about critical adult choices such as marriage, finances, and home buying…
Working5daysaWeek@reddit
This! I had absolutely no money management education when I was turned out on my own!
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Just follow your heart, dude.
burnafter3ading@reddit
Same age. I remember how "self esteem" was a huge issue. Also, food pyramids with massive carb dumps.
It really amuses me that the 20-somethings today are being saddled with the obligation to have several children, either to offset declining birthrates or some weird racial patriotism angle. You can be debt-free, but you just need to accept smaller dreams.
kronik419@reddit
My two most important male role models were Homer Simpson and Al Bundy. I have lived my life accordingly. No impulse control, no regard for the future or memory of the past(except my awesome high school sports stories)...and MOST importantly...never give a woman sex when she wants it. Praise Jebus.
NoSleep_Momma@reddit
Ouch 😣This hit hard.
Sensitive_Stock_2766@reddit
Yeah, other end here, successful, and lost it...i dont care anymore. 44 now....i try and enjoy good days and learn from shitty ones.
chaminah@reddit
My parents raised me with the economic advice that worked for them. They had a very easy path to good paying jobs and owned multiple homes (both of them - divorced parents) by the time they were 35. Their advice does NOT work anymore.
tomahawk66mtb@reddit
I was lucky, in a way. My folks lived paycheck to paycheck and used credit cards to help us through lean months.
They were always pinned up on the noticeboard above the kitchen table and I'd read everything.
So I grew up asking questions about our electricity bill, what "interest" meant and the difference between minimum payments and the full balance etc.
Once I started making money I saved quite a lot and always vowed never to pay a credit card company any interest at all.
I also was raised by a man who left a struggling area of our country to move to London to increase his opportunities, so I did the same - whilst class mates were fighting for internships in London I moved to China to start my career.
espressocycle@reddit
Yeah we got the tail end of a lot of hippie bullshit. It worked out for the boomers because everything did but we had to hustle.
ApplesBananasRhinoc@reddit
I got my first bank savings account when i was like 10 years old around ‘88 and i remember the interest rate was 10%!!! 10%!! Nothing panned out like they said, nothing!
J-Mosc@reddit
I was a bit Micheal J Fox fan when I was a kid, so I may have taken The Secret of My Success to heart because I thought I could just walk in to a big company one day and be a suit.
BelliBlast35@reddit
No….working UNION built my family for future success…was able to Educate my kids
lost_horizons@reddit
“*What do I really want? A quiet, conventional life with my wife and kids. Moderation. Sobriety. Stability. Humility. Safety. Friendly relationships with my neighbors and community. A spiritual life. Extra money for childcare and help keeping up the house. Zero debt.*”
So basically normal human desires. All of which should be attainable but for a system set up to reverse-Robin Hood our economy.
Now most of that is attainable at any income level of course but it seems to come down to, you want to be “fine”. That sweet spot between rich, and struggling. Space to breathe and express all of your humanity, not just constantly scrambling to get by and exhausted by it.
I won’t get political here but it’s just asking for a fair shake that no one seems intent on allowing us. I am with you, and think it is possible. We outnumber the lords 100 to 1.
But yes learning the financial stuff has been a long hard slog for me as well. Getting there though.
AshDogBucket@reddit
Stability, extra money, zero debt, and safety aren't attainable for people of every income level.
lost_horizons@reddit
Right. I didn’t say ALL did I? I was thinking the quiet conventional life with wife and kids. Sobriety, moderation. Humility, safety (could be wrong on that one), spiritual life, friendly with neighbors.
AshDogBucket@reddit
Yeah, not sure those are attainable when you're homeless but sure whatever you say 👍 😆
lost_horizons@reddit
You’re just being argumentative. And I’m of the opinion no one should be allowed to be so bad off their homeless. Not in a wealthy country, certainly. 👍🏼😆
AshDogBucket@reddit
I'm not. You're just being naive. It's ok though.
Ladypeace_82@reddit
Yes
HighSeasArchivist@reddit
Depends on the advice. I was told early one to work with my mind, not my back. Went to college, straight out into the IT field right at the boom in '98, and have been running and gunning since then. People that weren't as motivated had much less success, but that could be said about anything.
EnvironmentalDot127@reddit
Well, our parents had pensions to look forward to and that changed for many of them as well.
Most of our grandparents had pensions. Most people barely lived beyond the social security benefit years.
Individual Investments in stocks weren't available until way later.
Lots changed.
ThumpinGlassDrops@reddit
The message that 'college is the best time of your life' was complete BS (luckily), and the expectations that partying to excess is normal and good... i wish i had spent that time better. Also, watching way too much TV. I wish i had discovered sobriety and healthy hobbies much earlier.
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Me too!
Coco_Cokie_Cookie@reddit
College was the answer to all the future problems. Lol. Waste of time/money. Should have been working non stop full time and saving for a home starting at 16. No one prepared us for the housing market and inflated cost of everything.
Voronthered@reddit
Born 84 labour was all education education etc grew up with go to uni you will get a good job at the end, did that had a blast at uni really good times.
But the world had changed the 2008 crash ment the jobs that had been availble for uni leavers just weren't there anymore or for the ones that got work before 08 the company downsized. We weren't lied to the game changed while we played with the old rules.
It took years for some of us to recover our group are on average well behind the curve in our job roles.
Also let's be honest in my case i have chronic long term health conditions since my 20s meaning i often just find my feet in a job and then boom flare up.
InfamousCantaloupe38@reddit
I was just saying the other day that elder xennials were raised during the Cold War period and its end, so we got about 10 years of nuclear threats towards a mutually assured destruction. We were also latchkey kids so we weren't shielded from that but our parent's generation, they had their whole lives up to that point and it turned many into shitty (or non-existent) planners. A lot of parents from that period didn't teach a lot of things they probably should have.
My dad jokes he's on the "freedom 85 plan" (the age in which he'll be able to stop working, d'oh).
drewbaccaAWD@reddit
I never had kids so it's really not fair to pass judgement, but I was definitely a free-range kid that needed better boundaries and discipline when I was young and presumably moldable. But, easy for me to say... since I don't have kids, you know? The question is, if my parents were a bit more stringent, would I have actually turned out any differently? There's a nature vs nurture argument here.
It could also just be that I have ADHD which wasn't being diagnosed when I was a child so I didn't learn methods to adapt to that when I was younger and it would have been more helpful since I could have built on useful habits instead of endlessly increasing the mental junk I was dragging behind me into adulthood. I was high-functioning so it didn't really catch up to me until college and then I fell apart. But if the problem is a lack of an early ADHD diagnosis, then that's more of a medical handicap than it is being raised on some idea that didn't pan out.
It's probably a combination of things. Severe anxiety, being a child of an alcoholic certainly didn't pan out either and that in of itself was multi-generational damage.
goodhobbies@reddit (OP)
Hang in there brother. I suspect we had a similar reaction to “the college experience.”
drewbaccaAWD@reddit
Thanks! My response to that was to embrace the other extreme and join the military for six years. Which, probably just piled on the anxiety and stress, lol.
KayBeeToys@reddit
I closed on our first and only house on July 31 2008.
powderbubba@reddit
Sufficient_Turn_9209@reddit
My parents were/are (still have mom, but dad passed in 2023) late silent gen, and I guess I'm fortunate. I was raised in the model of what you say you really want, and was taught and guided the whole way through getting here.
FeistyNobody07@reddit
Well, in the USA, the wealth gap has been growing insanely since most of us were born. I'm 1981 and the fact that the economy for normal people has only gotten worse over the course of my entire life and the idea of a "middle class" is pretty much a joke just blow my mind. I knew things were not panning out how I had imagined and that my parents had had some tough circumstances when I was a kid besides some bad decisions, but their current situation makes a lot more sense when understanding that the economy has been shaped to serve only the ultra-wealthy since they were in their 20s. I didn't know the stark reality until I read "Democracy Awakening" by HCR. Reagan wasn't the good guy my dad wants to believe he was.
jackfaire@reddit
The message I got was that adults shouldn't care about money to the exclusion of all else in life. Not that they shouldn't care at all.
My dad was a great example of what not to do. He was absent for much of my childhood. When I was in high school we lived in a large house, multiple cars and he'd dragged us from poverty to comfortably middle class. He was miserable.
I've spent much of my adult life living paycheck to paycheck but I have a great relationship with my kid and while I'd like to be doing much better than I have been I'm also not miserable.
Ok-Reflection-6207@reddit
Look at the Powell memo and then look at our history again, this was all according to plan. 😓
Megadum@reddit
Billionaire class stealing our futures from the day we were born. Trickle down baby
Weird_Squirrel_8382@reddit
I remember in our family we'd watch all those "who needs money, follow your dreams" movies and have a big loud cynical Black person cackle about it. Whatever our dreams were they could only be considered after putting in our 40 hours someplace.
If anything we were raised to believe that steady jobs existed, acting respectably would get us in the door, and getting educated would lift us through the ranks. Our elders believed we would do this and be comfortable into our elder years.
My grandparents were the first generation of our family to get a workplace pension, and my mom's generation looks to be the last.
sweetassassin@reddit
We were born into and raised up in trickle economics. Women were finally allowed to get a credit card without a male co-signer, credit lines were GINORMOUS (therefore debts) and the norm, and Robin Leech was completely downloading the message that being poor made you a bad; poorness was a moral failing. I completely bought into the capitalist progressive is more is not enough, and keeping up with Jones essentially fueled/s my mom’s workaholicism, typical boomer.
If you’re finances today aren’t where you “idealized” them to be in your mind pre-9/11, give yourself a break.
danksince98@reddit
proly shoulda had closed borders starting in the 50s...foreigners have stolen ur jobs, housing and the american dream
bedublam@reddit
‘82 here as well and I’ve already gone through one bankruptcy. There’s no shame in it, but I always remembered being told it was to be avoided at all costs and that you were kind of a failure if you had to go through one. So, yeah, I definitely agree with you OP - good personal finance education needs to start early.
SteveMartinique@reddit
I remember growing up, the messaging was date/marry because of “who” you are and not how much you make or how successful you are. And that’s partly true I guess, but being successful is a good way to meet another successful high performing person and if you both set high standards for each other you’ll be better off. It also gives you more options so you don’t get stuck dating people who are not a good fit.
Regardless yeah having a mentor or really successful Male in my life would have been helpful.
brittanytobiason@reddit
Totally. Our generation was massively miseducated. There's a real sense in which our time was wasted (and our potential with it) by everything we did that was dutiful.
Spare_Perspective972@reddit
My mom was convinced that people are not judgmental, don’t care about clothes quality, and that you should be open about embarrassing problems bc people appreciate being authentic.
She was married to an Excon who went to jail for manslaughter and would just share this upon meeting people.
jessek@reddit
“No one will make fun of you because of the clothes you wear, that’s silly.” -My mom to junior high me.
AshDogBucket@reddit
My mom didn't teach me that no one would make fun of me, but she did successfully teach me that the opinions of those people making fun of me don't matter.
timthemajestic@reddit
I mean, it's not just Millenial generation. It's all been a lie. The "American Dream" is basically a facade that was drilled into our heads as a basically assured promise, and it never has really paid off. 🎵This is America.🎶
InnerAd3454@reddit
Our parents promised us the rewards of systems they were helping destroy.
AshDogBucket@reddit
Oof, yes. "Cares too much about the money" was definitely a villainous trait.
A big one for me was the belief that basically we are all destined for greatness/to change the world.
No-Relation4226@reddit
My parents didn’t go to college (my mom went to beauty school) and truly didn’t have any idea what it would take financially for me to go. So I didn’t go immediately.
They fought so much about money and I bet that was a big factor in why they got divorced (no one will give me a solid answer as to the official reason). Each of their households were simply trying to survive. There was no room for HYSAs, stocks, tax shelters, etc. There was no knowledge to pass down other than credit cards are evil, retirement is going to be scary, and anything you want to buy is ridiculous and a waste of money.
Immediate-Breath-809@reddit
I have a very similar take. I agree with alot of this. We were also misled in alot of ways.
cordelaine@reddit
Neoliberalism…
FreshStartFeelsGood@reddit
Not really, no.