A thought about Millennials

The second post of what will be my weekly lunchtime blogs. I do not have time to edit, sorry for the errors.

A thought on Millennials

Millennials is a term used to define people of my generation. By some estimates it can range from people born in the late 1970s to those born in the early 2000s and while this is a wide gap, there are significant similarities for all.

I don't want to delve into what a Millennial is however as much as I want to point out two things I noticed in a news article I read earlier this lunch.

The article was about an out of work recent law school grad with a quarter million dollar debt who works odd jobs and really doesn't even bother trying to pay all his bills and it made me think a little.

First, to many of our generation, at least those of us that went to college, debt is a way of life. Most kids I knew growing up had parents with second, third and fourth mortgages and those kids without great GPAs went to college on loans with the idea we'd get jobs. And most of us did find jobs.... but instead of paying 35,000 to 40,000 out of the gate we were making 20,000 to 25,000.

Second, we shouldn't have bothered in the first place, but we have huge egos. Millennials weren't without parents and other older folk warning us about loans. Most of those who went into dying fields (journalism anyone) or fields with undergrad degrees bereft of marketability (art, history, psychology) ended up for the most part with no decent paying job option just as they were warned. A handful of course always make it.

But that's the great and terrible thing about our generation. We believe that we will be the one who makes it. I had a teacher in high school tell me as kindly as she could that newspapers weren't likely to be paying much when I graduated college. I thanked her and said "Yeah but they haven't met me."

What hubris.

We all have our own personal stake of blame for our situations if we're not doing well, but some of our attitudes and ego issues go back a generation. It was the later end of the Millennial generation that started getting trophies just for showing up. Our parents often struggled for loving support from their more reasonable parents, so with the best of intentions they told us to chase our dreams. Look where that got us, eh?

So if we had all moved back in with our folks and not gotten married, then in about 15 years from graduation we could probably start our lives, but Millennials wanted more than that and so we didn't wait.

What that does now is leave most of us in a world of debt. I read that 65.4 percent of students from 1999-2000 borrowed money for school (http://www.inthesetimes.com/article/2619/) and while I don't have data handy, I bet that number has gone up.

And without the well paying jobs we expected, we're broke. Broke, broke, broke, broke, brooooooke.

Like the law student I mentioned earlier, many have turned to simply ignoring creditors. I pay my student loan faithfully because a family member was kind enough to co-sign and I don't want to mess up their credit, but old hospital bills and other creditors trying to find me, If I don't have the money, I don't answer the phone.

It's not a lack of responsibility either that leads folks like me and the law student to this point. If I could afford it, I'd pay every debt I owe right now. But it is more important to keep the rent payment up to date, to keep car insurance and pay for gas so I can get to work to at least pay for those things.

I don't know what the answer is. Allowing grads to declare bankruptcy on their student loans would be disastrous for the loan companies so that will never happen.

All I know for certain is that I made mistakes in how I chose to finance college and in the major I went in to. On top of that the economy went bad and I was raised with slightly unrealistic expectations. Put it all together and it means things suck right now.

But I mentioned millennials have a high self confidence and I fall squarely into that generation.

I'll figure it out eventually. I'm sure most of you will too.