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dreesemonkey posted:Well that's loving cooky/depressing. Sorry you had to go through that. No worries, I can either dwell on the fact that I'm still paying for it (financially and emotionally) years later, or I can just laugh at it, move on, and know that at least I learned exactly what not to do with my life and finances. I choose to find it hilarious, especially these moments: -My father bidding $1500 on an electronic drumset that my brother didn't need. It was listed on eBay, brand new, but had a reserve on it, and I don't know what he was thinking, because bidding went much higher than he was willing to pay with the reserve still on it. Was it spite for the other bidders? Did he just really want the band to have an electronic kit?  -My father also worked out a tour - oh wait, no, it was just one show in a city over 1,000 miles away, in the dead of winter. Most of the family drove, but he flew, because of work or something. We were playing with another band on our record label (yes, we were signed, no, we never saw a dime from them, and did a bunch of stuff for the label for free...), and were supposed to meet with the head of the label, as well as our new booking agent, at the show. The band showed, the other two didn't. We get put on the bill last of three bands, and this group of clean-cut all-American boys had no business playing with two metalcore bands, especially in a town where nobody knows us, so almost the entire crowd left during our first song. The show was at a bowling alley  whose owners refused to pay us.-Unspeakable amounts of money thrown at filming music videos, which were shoddily slapped together by local film students who didn't know what they were doing. -$5000 spent on out-of-pocket recording costs (not including manufacturing of discs, packaging and distribution) for an album that sounded horrendous, mostly because most songs went unrehearsed, and my father overestimating how good we actually were as a band. -Being asked for cash by an "executive" from another label we were on so he could pay for our studio time one night. I guess he underestimated how much it would be, or didn't think it'd take as long, but whatever the reason, my father gave him the cash to pay for something that was wholly the label's responsibility. -My father would do web design, development, and database work for the website of whatever label we happened to be on (we got picked up by a lot of scam labels) for absolutely no pay. His rationale was that then the label would work extra hard at promoting us in return. This never happened.  -And, on top of all of this, there was all the gas to get to shows, eating out once we were there, instrument maintenance expenses, van breakdowns, and other wonderfulness that sucked more money out of my father, just to try and get a big label to come and swoop us up (which, as anyone who knows how record labels operate, would put us in even more debt, which we would have to earn back for the label before we saw any paychecks beyond the initial loan we would be given). We were lucky if we made $50 for a show, and hardly ever sold any merchandise. This right here is the tip of the iceberg. I've been considering making an "Ask Me About Growing Up With Stage Parents" thread in A/T, but didn't know if people would find it funny or it would just make them sad and weep for humanity.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:36
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The Banana Pee posted:This right here is the tip of the iceberg. I've been considering making an "Ask Me About Growing Up With Stage Parents" thread in A/T, but didn't know if people would find it funny or it would just make them sad and weep for humanity. If you could write this in the style of like, David Sedaris, you'd probably have a pretty good book.
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Jul 17, 2013 16:56
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You sound like the male version of The Shaggs...
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Jul 17, 2013 17:47
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quote:This right here is the tip of the iceberg. I've been considering making an "Ask Me About Growing Up With Stage Parents" thread in A/T, but didn't know if people would find it funny or it would just make them sad and weep for humanity. Reading the wedding posts from the previous page reminded me of one story. If there are any Polish goons here they might have heard it already, since its heroine, Miya, actually became really famous in our part of the Internet at one point. It got kinda long and I apologize, but trust me, it's only the very essence of bad decisions and general insanity connected to Miya's wedding. On a certain wedding forum Miya started a thread about preparing her wedding approximately three years before it happened. She spent a lot of time posting, mostly about those less important things like main colors, personalized rice, special cookies she wanted to have sent to her by plane from Paris and so on. She never had a break during those three years and posted nearly every day. She was like a child in a toy store, every time she saw something pretty she decided she needed to have it. Her budget was growing and growing. Obviously, people started trying to tell her that she should limit it somehow. Because, you see, Miya was 25 at the time she got married and has never worked a day in her life. She studied journalism for a while, then she took some acting classes, then she started studying law at some lovely private university. Then she dropped out to have more time to prepare her wedding. Her fiance was an unemployed student. They lived off their parents' money and spend a lot of it on silly unnecessary poo poo - they went pretty much everywhere by taxi, for example. Everybody assumed that their parents (who were quite well-off) would pay for the wedding, too. But after some time Miya started telling people that they will mostly pay for the wedding themselves. Some people didn't believe her, some people got curious and somebody did some Internet detectiving and discovered that they're selling the house that her fiance inherited after his grandma died. Yes, they sold the house and used the money for the wedding. A couple of unemployed students with no prospects for a well-paying job in the near future decided that it's the best course of action: spend it on a ridiculously expensive wedding. They also had to sell this house for less money that they hoped to get and Miya had to make some last minute budget cuts. At the moment Miya and her fiance (because a few months before the wedding Zia decided that he doesn't want to get married in church - but it was already too late to do all things necessary to get legally married where she wanted so she settled for a humanist marriage ceremony - which is not legally recognized, at least in Poland. But this is another story...) live in a new flat they got from her parents, I believe. It's so small that they can't fit a dining table there.
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Jul 24, 2013 16:41
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I worked in sales with someone who, by a total fluke of luck, ended up with a $25,000 commission check one quarter. He immediately booked a trip to Vegas, bought ridiculous suits and within a MONTH was back to payday loans and asking friends for $5 for gas money to get home.
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Jul 24, 2013 17:53
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tiananman posted:I worked in sales with someone who, by a total fluke of luck, ended up with a $25,000 commission check one quarter. He immediately booked a trip to Vegas, bought ridiculous suits and within a MONTH was back to payday loans and asking friends for $5 for gas money to get home. I worked with a guy who was in his 40's and had literally never had a bank account or driver's license in his entire life. Any windfall commission he got would be blown immediately on expensive clothes for his kids, even though he was butt-poor. He lived in a sprawling western city with terrible public transportation and only a few poorly-served bus lines. I have no idea how you do that.
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Jul 24, 2013 18:30
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tiananman posted:I worked in sales with someone who, by a total fluke of luck, ended up with a $25,000 commission check one quarter. He immediately booked a trip to Vegas, bought ridiculous suits and within a MONTH was back to payday loans and asking friends for $5 for gas money to get home. This is how most people treat end-of-the-year bonuses at my company. The funny (sad?) thing about windfalls is that they magnify people's poor financial habits.
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Jul 24, 2013 20:03
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Take your year end bonus and put it into your 401k (that's the smart thing to do). That's why so many companies hand them out in January 
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Jul 25, 2013 02:57
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enraged_camel posted:This is how most people treat end-of-the-year bonuses at my company. I'm quite certain this guy could have blown through more money just as quickly. When he got back from Vegas, he was complaining about how it was hard to find a restaurant with really expensive food. He wanted to see more entrees over $100 because he was trying to impress some girls he was out with. I wanted to choke him. I can understand gambling and drug addiction - and how you're not really in control. But when an otherwise normal person has such a bizarrely unhealthy attitude towards their finances... I just don't get it.
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Jul 25, 2013 16:31
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My neighbor got $18,000 for his 18th birthday from some wrongful death lawsuit his mother won in court back when they were kids. He bought a car in June, decked it out with stereo equipment, started going to strip clubs, wrecked the car and was completely broke by the end of the summer.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:16
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I can't remember if it was posted in this thread, but this Chrome extension rules (especially in this thread): https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/dictionary-of-numbers/ahhgdmkmcgahbkcbmlkpmmamemlkajaf?hl=en For instance, to put the previous post into context, the extension puts this text into it: quote:My neighbor got $18,000 [≈ Per capita income - Australia, 2005] for his 18th birthday from some wrongful death lawsuit his mother won in court back when they were kids. He bought a car in June, decked it out with stereo equipment, started going to strip clubs, wrecked the car and was completely broke by the end of the summer.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:24
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tiananman posted:I can understand gambling and drug addiction - and how you're not really in control. But when an otherwise normal person has such a bizarrely unhealthy attitude towards their finances... I just don't get it. Suggest that they do something smarter with their windfalls, and they'll complain that this is the only way they can afford to do anything fun and they deserve it for working so hard and blah blah blah, all while ignoring the dumb poo poo they do that prevents them from doing fun stuff without relying on windfalls. Saving up for things & living within your means is a foreign concept to an alarming number of people, as this thread has shown.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:37
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There are obviously some people good with money, and some people terrible with money, but have there actually been any studies on how big either of these groups are? Like, for financial literacy and/or financial habits. Anecdotally it seems like most people are less-than-good with money, but like Haifisch said, debt/savings load is basically invisible, so it's hard to tell unless you know the person well.
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Jul 25, 2013 17:57
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This thread makes me feel both grateful and extremely angry at the same time. Grateful that I'm not a retard with money, and angry that so many people are loving retarded with their money. I have a sincere question to ask, and perhaps someone can share some insight: Why isn't financial literacy a substantial aspect of the public education curriculum? Hell, I don't think financial literacy is in the public school curriculum at all. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means but what reason can there possibly be for not including financial literacy, and education about money management, saving money, compound interest, debt, retirement accounts, investing, taxes, etc. to the general public from a very young age? I realize that some people are going to be gently caress ups no matter what. Some people suffer from bipolar disorder, alcoholism, drug addiction, stupidity...sure. But imagine how many people are just flat out ignorant about how money works, and their parents are probably even worse off than they are, so who is supposed to teach them? Why do we wait for people to rack up $20k on a couple credit cards before we start debt counseling? Shouldn't we be teaching elementary school aged children how this poo poo works? Is it because money is a taboo subject in polite society? I don't believe that it's impolite to talk about money, and I do it freely and without shame, so gently caress that. I've also heard that "it's the parents job to teach their children about money" but that is also hosed. Surely, it's not due to Rockafeller creating a school system that produces "workers not thinkers", that's just crazy right? So back to my main point, why aren't we teaching financial literacy in school? I'd argue that financial literacy is third only to reading and math in terms of overall life importance (would be difficult to be financially literate if you couldn't read or do arithmetic). ghostwriter80 fucked around with this message at 22:15 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 22:11
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ghostwriter80 posted:Why isn't financial literacy a substantial aspect of the public education curriculum? Hell, I don't think financial literacy is in the public school curriculum at all. I'm not a conspiracy theorist by any means but what reason can there possibly be for not including financial literacy, and education about money management, saving money, compound interest, debt, retirement accounts, investing, taxes, etc. to the general public from a very young age?
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Jul 25, 2013 22:20
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Yeah, from what I understand some states/districts DO require it, but against that semester-long class people have a whole national consumer culture working against them. I agree that our culture of not talking about money (like salaries) works against people, more transparency would work to everyone's advantage. Man, can you imagine if we were like Norway and published everyone's income and wealth online? <All of America>: 
Cicero fucked around with this message at 22:26 on Jul 25, 2013 |
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Jul 25, 2013 22:23
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ghostwriter80 posted:Why isn't financial literacy a substantial aspect of the public education curriculum? I worked as a volunteer for several years teaching financial literacy to high school kids and their families after school. Questions like this were asked often by those who attended, because people a) found the information very useful and b) were stunned that it wasn't part of regular curriculum. Why isn't it part of regular curriculum? The simple answer is that there aren't many teachers who are qualified to teach the subject. Many teachers are themselves terrible with money. They are either up to their eyeballs in debt, or are married to rich husbands and have never had to create a budget for anything in their private lives. If they tried to teach the subject, it would be like the blind leading the blind. Cultural factors also play a big role. A lot of financial literacy advice is frugal in nature: eliminate unnecessary spending and debt, watch out for hidden costs, live within your means, etc. In my experience, American families have huge problems with this, because they have been conditioned from a very early age that money exists to be spent, and the more you spend it in visible ways, the higher your social status becomes. We have had many kids confide in us that they learned something useful in class, shared it with their parents, only to be told that it was nonsense. To make things worse, these kids were almost always from low-income families.
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Jul 25, 2013 22:43
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I wonder what would happen if you just had a high school class read this thread.
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Jul 25, 2013 23:22
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enraged_camel posted:I worked as a volunteer for several years teaching financial literacy to high school kids and their families after school. Questions like this were asked often by those who attended, because people a) found the information very useful and b) were stunned that it wasn't part of regular curriculum. This is a great point. Every teacher I know of is awful with their money. On the other hand, we wouldn't expect a math teacher to teach kids 18th-century literature, or a spanish teacher to teach chemistry, why not have teachers who only teach personal finance and economics? Also, I understand consumer culture and familial perpetuation but perhaps there are some kids who would benefit from learning about personal finance and rise up from their surroundings? I grew up doing the exact opposite of everything my parents did. Even when I was a small child, something inside of me knew that they were doing it all wrong, and I quickly learned "what not to do". Unfortunately my brother and sister did not learn from my parents mistakes and are perpetuating their ignorance quite beautifully. But in their defense they really had no one to tell them otherwise. Thank God for the internet and the fact that I could teach myself things just by looking them up and reading, otherwise I'd probably be slangin drugs somewhere.
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Jul 26, 2013 00:26
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We had economics in high school, and we covered financial literacy (That and labor law, and a smattering of micro and macro economics). I haven't kept in touch with a representative sample of my classmates, so I don't know how effective it was. I don't remember a whole lot of it, just the part where they explained when you should use a line of credit, a term sale and a plain old credit card. (The credit card was "Never, unless you can pay it off by the next month", I can't recall the other two exactly.) The most important part of the curriculum was the part that covered labor law, in my opinion, but then most of my classmates had lovely McJobs so "You can't be forced to work off the clock" and "Unions aren't actually evil" was some pretty relevant stuff.
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Jul 26, 2013 01:05
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If we have to teach people "financial literacy" we can safely do away with the notion that people are the best judges of what's best for them and that the market is merely bending to their will.
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Jul 26, 2013 01:11
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That's already explained away by saying that people as a group subconsciously know what's best for them or something.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:02
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Persona non grata posted:If we have to teach people "financial literacy" we can safely do away with the notion that people are the best judges of what's best for them and that the market is merely bending to their will. We need to do no such thing. Providing financial literacy as part of the basic curriculum no more implies that people aren't the best judges of what's best for them than needing to teach about nutrition implies people aren't qualified to decide what they eat.
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Jul 26, 2013 04:42
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If everyone came out of high school financially literate you'd destroy the financial literacy industry, putting thousands of
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Jul 26, 2013 05:06
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Lacertine posted:This is a great point. Every teacher I know of is awful with their money. Agreed with the parents thing. My parents were dirt poor until I was a teenager. Even then, they were never wealthy, just less poor. They divorced when I was really young and each ended up living in mobile homes. I grew up around poverty and experienced it for years. My sister did too. Now, I'm one of the most frugal/responsible money people you could imagine and she goes around wasting money on DVDs and drinking at bars. The main difference between me and her, growing up, was that I worked for an allowance and she didn't give a gently caress. She also didn't have a job until after high school. These 2 factors probably played a big role in me learning financial responsibility and her not caring.
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Jul 26, 2013 05:14
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ghostwriter80 posted:So back to my main point, why aren't we teaching financial literacy in school? I'd argue that financial literacy is third only to reading and math in terms of overall life importance (would be difficult to be financially literate if you couldn't read or do arithmetic). I honestly wonder if the reason it isn't taught in many countries is because if it was common knowledge, more people would realise that the minimum wage in their area is incapable of supporting an individual and would agitate for change. Just look at that 'budget' made for McDonald's staff that's been in the news lately - it's impossible to live debt-free unless you live somewhere incredibly cheap, or if you did you probably would not enjoy your lifestyle for very long. You often hear stories (particularly in America) of how 'back in the day' somebody's dad/uncle/local politician made $3 an hour and was able to live comfortably on it, but what they completely forget to mention is that $3 then would be about $12 now, and a lot of the credit problems people are experiencing now has a lot to do with wages not keeping up with productivity. froglet fucked around with this message at 07:17 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 07:09
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Cicero posted:There are obviously some people good with money, and some people terrible with money, but have there actually been any studies on how big either of these groups are? Like, for financial literacy and/or financial habits. Anecdotally it seems like most people are less-than-good with money, but like Haifisch said, debt/savings load is basically invisible, so it's hard to tell unless you know the person well. There's a saying that rich people understand interest, and poor people pay it. I mean, I consider myself financially literate and responsible, but my interest payments have vastly outweighed my interest income at this point. What does "being good with money" mean though? If it means living within your means and saving a significant portion of your income, I'd guess that less than 1/3 of Americans are good with money. If it means not going into debt - and actually benefiting from compound interest instead of paying it, I'd guess that less than a tenth of Americans are good with money. Debt is such an ingrained part of most people's financial lives that they'd never even consider an alternative. I mean, I have a 30 year mortgage (only 29 years left!) so I'm definitely in the debtor group. As to the question of why aren't we teaching financial literacy, I'm guessing it's because there's a real dearth of people even capable of teaching it - maybe especially in the teaching community. The people who can teach it are mostly wealthy, and so not usually in a position to be a teacher. For most people, saving money is like a foreign language that you can only learn by forgetting to speak your native tongue.
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Jul 26, 2013 14:56
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enraged_camel posted:Cultural factors also play a big role. A lot of financial literacy advice is frugal in nature: eliminate unnecessary spending and debt, watch out for hidden costs, live within your means, etc. In my experience, American families have huge problems with this, because they have been conditioned from a very early age that money exists to be spent, and the more you spend it in visible ways, the higher your social status becomes. We have had many kids confide in us that they learned something useful in class, shared it with their parents, only to be told that it was nonsense. To make things worse, these kids were almost always from low-income families. This. One of our neighbors has a kid about the same age as our daughter. They cannot possibly be making tons of money, but their lifestyle is much more lavish than ours. Their kids have a buttload of toys, piles of clothes, new furniture, shiny new SUVs, a bounce house rented for a family gathering, etc. Oh, and they rent while we're almost done paying off our mortgage. They'd like to own "someday", you know, years from now. But meanwhile, the wife really likes to live nice and it's clearly not even on their radar to cut back.
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Jul 26, 2013 15:03
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I'd say a lot of it is human nature in itself. The marshmallow experiment shows us time and time again that some people just cannot delay gratification.
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Jul 26, 2013 15:12
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Nocheez posted:I'd say a lot of it is human nature in itself. The marshmallow experiment shows us time and time again that some people just cannot delay gratification. There's actually been follow up studies that suggest that a child's ability to delay gratification may be largely a product of their upbringing. At least one has found that children from low-income or 'unreliable' backgrounds won't delay gratification simply because their learned experience is to take what you get as soon as you can because there's no guarantees it's going to be around later. researchers posted:Consider the mindset of a 4-year-old living in a crowded shelter, surrounded by older children with little adult supervision. For a child accustomed to stolen possessions and broken promises, the only guaranteed treats are the ones you have already swallowed. At the other extreme, consider the mindset of an only-child in a stable home whose parents reliably promise and deliver small motivational treats for good behavior. From this child’s perspective, the rare injustice of a stolen object or broken promise may be so startlingly unfamiliar that it prompts an outburst of tears. One book I've been reading lately is Battlers and Billionaires: The Story of Inequality in Australia. It's a pretty interesting read and while I'm only a few chapters in it does mention issues such as how living in poverty can seriously affect your decision-making abilities. The book mentions one study where a group that artificially had a vastly reduced income in comparison to the control group were more likely to take out high-interest loans. TL;DR The point I'm trying to make is that I sincerely doubt there's any 'human nature' that means a particular person is destined to be terrible with money. froglet fucked around with this message at 15:46 on Jul 26, 2013 |
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Jul 26, 2013 15:22
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I thought I had read somewhere recently that financial literacy classes do not seem to have any positive effect, and that what does help people is making people better at math.
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Jul 26, 2013 15:47
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I don't see how any financial literacy class wouldn't delve into math though.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:30
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tiananman posted:As to the question of why aren't we teaching financial literacy, I'm guessing it's because there's a real dearth of people even capable of teaching it - maybe especially in the teaching community. The people who can teach it are mostly wealthy, and so not usually in a position to be a teacher. You don't need to be a published author to teach literature, so you don't need to be a financier to teach finance. School subjects are taught from books, not the life experience of the teachers.
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Jul 26, 2013 16:48
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DwemerCog posted:You don't need to be a published author to teach literature, so you don't need to be a financier to teach finance. School subjects are taught from books, not the life experience of the teachers. Yep. That's why the creepy fat gym teacher can force you to run laps when he has trouble walking up a staircase. gvibes posted:I thought I had read somewhere recently that financial literacy classes do not seem to have any positive effect, and that what does help people is making people better at math. And I remember learning some nonsense in high school about how if you put $50/month into a mutual fund beginning at age 18, you'll have ONE MILLION DOLLARS in 40 years and could retire like a king! (no you won't, and no you couldn't). At least it's encouraging the right behavior (saving and investing)  The first time I heard about 401(k) or IRA was flipping through a copy of Money magazine in a public library. I was 20 years old.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:01
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gvibes posted:I thought I had read somewhere recently that financial literacy classes do not seem to have any positive effect, and that what does help people is making people better at math. It wouldn't surprise me. When the "budgeting" consists of fake money all written down on paper, it really doesn't mean much to me at least. What you need is real-world experience of "forgot about this birthday present for YYY, a wedding gift for ZZZ, and I'm going camping later this month so I need a tent and and and". I'd imagine a high school budgeting class would be like most people's written budgets. Simplified and unrealistic. If you're not living it, it's not going to sink in. I think with the right teacher putting the effort in and taking real-world "gotchas" to throw at the kids each day/week and watch them try to find room in their budgets it may work, but until you're living it, it's like a video game "welp ran out of money lol".
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Jul 26, 2013 17:02
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I'm pretty sure finance classes (in the places that have them) don't really work because they're a 1 semester or maybe 1 year thing. Think about the other classes like that - government and health, for example. Did anything stick with you from those? Because personally all I remember is the now-outdated food pyramid. The only reason the average person still remembers how to divide is because they had math classes probably every year. Maybe if financial courses were literally taught from second grade on... Anyway, we did have a class like that at my school. I recall them showing us fake budget so we could get an idea of where an adult paycheck went. Except it was comically out of date, and didn't include any kind of insurance or savings or "other" (i.e. entertainment or whatever, and while I understand not alloting money for this if you're broke because my entertainment "budget" is set at $0 right now, this was meant to be an average adult), and basically entailed that person spending most of their paycheck every month. I don't know what the point of that was besides saying "YOU'RE GOING TO SPEND SO MUCH MONEY". Honestly the best financial advice I ever got in high school came from my biology teacher who said "don't have kids" and told us how much money she spent on childcare and kid-related expenses per month. It was basically exactly as much money as she made and doubled as more effective sex ed than pictures of herpes.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:22
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tiananman posted:There's a saying that rich people understand interest, and poor people pay it. To be fair, debt isn't bad per se. The problem is having more debt than you can safely handle, and in going into debt from things that aren't necessary or aren't helpful. For example, if you finance a lovely car to get to/from a job that isn't near a bus stop, that's potentially helping you earn more money. Similarly, getting a mortgage on a house is typically better than renting (not always), even though you're technically in debt up to your eyeballs. Just because you're in debt doesn't mean that you're bad with money, it just means that you didn't turn 18 with $1M chilling in your bank account.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:40
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dreesemonkey posted:It wouldn't surprise me. When the "budgeting" consists of fake money all written down on paper, it really doesn't mean much to me at least. What you need is real-world experience of "forgot about this birthday present for YYY, a wedding gift for ZZZ, and I'm going camping later this month so I need a tent and and and". I agree, in high school it doesn't seem real. A 70K a year annual salary seems like millions of dollars to a 16 year old kid. My parents never really talked to us about finances, there was just always enough money. I wish my parents would have gone over what it takes to earn that money, and the responsible use of credit and financing. I'm 32 now and have just recently got my financial poo poo together in the last few years. I'm going to do better with my kids.
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Jul 26, 2013 17:51
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dreesemonkey posted:It wouldn't surprise me. When the "budgeting" consists of fake money all written down on paper, it really doesn't mean much to me at least. What you need is real-world experience of "forgot about this birthday present for YYY, a wedding gift for ZZZ, and I'm going camping later this month so I need a tent and and and". I agree. I think this is the real problem behind these classes. I taught a financial literacy class to freshmen a few years ago, and you could tell that none of it seemed "real" to them. Adulthood seems so far away at that age that you could tell it wasn't sinking in. The only kids who really cared were the small smattering of juniors and seniors I had in the class. They had jobs and were about to head off to college and be independent for the first time. They were the ones who actually paid attention, asked questions, and came to me after school for advice. Financial literacy would work much better as a year-long class for seniors.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:00
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| # ? Apr 25, 2024 18:48 |
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The biggest obstacle to me was thinking that my undergraduate degree was a free ticket to a "real job". "Well, once I'm out of college, I'll have a job and can start budgeting and saving." This may have been somewhat true, before, but the big financial crash happened during my last semester of college. I remember on that morning suddenly realizing that "real life" was right around the corner for me and that this crash was going to change things significantly. Even when I was in the middle of college, I had always heard about various bubbles/crashes/"economy is bad" stories and thought, "Well, I'll have a degree and a job... so..." It's very easy to assume you will come out okay because you're doing the thing that you're supposed to do. Having part-time jobs and other fake jobs throughout college, you tend to see how little money it actually is and assume that you might as well not even bother trying to save any money when you can't afford to live. The "real job" around the corner is going to eventually come and save you. People get huge loans for "useless" undergrad degrees for the same reason: They don't think they are going to make any real money without the degree and they think that the job around the corner will take care of the debt. Obviously it would be cool if there were another path where you could opt out of the "get a degree, get a job" fallacy and instead just start learning a practical skill late in high school. There is more or less no push for this; most students think they need to go get a degree no matter what it takes unless they want to work minimum wage forever. I think people post-crash at least are realizing that they need to do a lot of internships during undergrad and have an extremely clear plan post-graduation if they want any hope of getting a job right out of college.
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Jul 26, 2013 18:43
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