Yep, Being a Young, American Adult Is a Financial Nightmare

[xchrom]

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/11/yep-being-a-young-american-adult-is-a-financial-nightmare/281214/




Poverty is an astonishingly common experience here in the world's richest country. As I wrote this morning, almost 40 percent of American adults experience it for at least a year by age 60.

But you know who poverty is especially common among? Young adults.

Based on the data I shared earlier, which were given to me by Washington University in St. Louis professor Mark Rank, I've pulled together a few more graphs that I think illustrate the difficulty of making ends meet in your twenties and early thirties (particularly if you're not lucky enough to, say, have a college degree). Exhibit a) between the ages of 25 and 34, 41.3% percent of Americans will spend at least a year earning less than 150 percent of the poverty line, which is a technical way of saying "being pretty broke." By age 35, a little more than a quarter will have lived under the actual poverty line, which is the technical way of saying, "really truly broke."

[frazzled]

1. I remember being pretty poor as a young adult

I had a low-paying office job at a non-profit literary organization after college, then my husband and I went to grad school. I think we lived on $4000 a year. He worked as a janitor in a Catholic church (the Jewish sexton!) in his off hours to help pay the rent; I was the department TA and brought in a small amount from a stipend.

Funny, though ... sometimes I remember those times as being some of the happiest and most interesting. You'd invite some friends over and cook up a big pot of spaghetti and have some cheap wine and talk for hours into the night about really interesting things. Before work and children and mowing the lawn took up all your time.

I'm not trying to downplay the current economic situation for young people, but I do think that most of us were "poor" for a year (at least) when we were young. As my dad used to say, "it puts hair on your chest!"

[HappyMe]

2. I remember being poor when I was younger.

Hell, I've been a poor middle ager too.

I didn't think of it as a disaster, I just learned how to deal with it. Economic downturns can happen throughout a person's life.

[Arugula Latte]

9. It was much back easier then to go through lean years and then start climbing the ladder, though.

Now young people are saddled with ridiculous debt from just getting a BA (there are very few "cheap" public college options left) and many struggle even to get a job that pays a bit more than minimum wage. Rent, housing, cars etc. are much more expensive relative to income, too.

[Taitertots]

3. The disgusting part about it is how many elders blame millennials for this

As if it had nothing to do with Conservative policies enacted when millennials were children.

[tabbycat31]

5. Read the comments in the article

It disgusts me.

My generation is the only one to not be better off than their parents, and I wish they would see the world they left to us.

[lumberjack_jeff]

4. Being young is a time of paying dues.

But it is worse today. When I was 20, gas was less than $1.00 per gallon and my share of the rent was $135/month. I could get by on $4.00 per hour.

re: college degree - I'm not sure that it's better to be 22 and looking for a $25,000 a year job with a $80,000 student loan debt looming overhead.

One last thing, I wish they'd have chosen a different photo. That guy is sporting more in tatoo$ than the collective value of my two cars.

[Nye Bevan]

7. Plus, that kitchen is a hell of a lot better than I had at that age (nt)

[Nye Bevan]

6. I was completely broke for a few years when I was young.

Naturally. I didn't have rich parents, I was in an entry-level job, and I hadn't had time to accumulate any savings. Wouldn't this apply to the majority of young people?

[Jesus Malverde]

8. Kick..nt

[Lydia Leftcoast]

10. Tuition, room, and board when I graduated from my private college was $2700

That would be about $11,000 in today's money.

The University of Minnesota, which I briefly attended, cost 300 times the minimum wage for tuition alone. That would be $2250 in today's money. But in fact, the U of M now costs about 1600 times the minimum wage.

That alone creates a lot of hardship.

[hfojvt]

12. 300 times the minimum wage for tuition?

That does not sound right.

I figure that my five years at U of M from 1980-85 cost $25,000, about $10,000 for tuition and $15,000 for room and board. So $2,000 a year for tuition. The minimum wage was $3.25 an hour. So a year of tuition would be 615 hours of minimum wage work, or about 30% of a full time year.

$2,000 in 1983 would be the same as $4,700 today.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

13. But I was earlier than that

In 1968, base tuition at the University of Minnesota was $125 a quarter or $375 a year. Minimum wage was $1.25.

[hfojvt]

11. thank goodness he has enough money

for 17 tatoos.

And 26% of the population using welfare? Really? I get the feeling that, once again, they are counting the EIC (Earned Income Credit) as "welfare".

[ScreamingMeemie]

14. I think EIC is being counted as well.

[aikoaiko]

15. Its the young adults with kids that I feel the worst for.

I'm in my mid-40s with a wife and kid, but I have a secure job and can pay the bills now.

When I was in my 20s, I was a grad student living on 11K a year plus another 6K in loans per year, but I singularly focused on me, my studies, and my research.