NYT Opinion Piece: This Isn’t What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed To Look Like

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$15/hr PT is barely enough money for a teenager to cover extra curriculars and gas, let alone rent and food for a family.

They call it minimum wage for a reason. Who told you you should be able to afford rent and food for a family and non-public education on minimum wage?

Minimum wage is working poor/poverty level and it always has been.

Get some education get some skills.

Why are fast food places & grocery stores open M-F, 8am-4pm then? Shouldn’t they be closed during those hours?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, at least Millennials didn't have to deal with the kind of violent crime that GenX dealt with as young adults. It's like 50% of what it used to be.

Well now we just live in fear that some madman with a gun will shoot up our grocery store, or elementary school, or concert, or or or…

Yeah because we didn't grow up with Son of Sam, the Unabomber, the Oklahoma City bombing, the World Trade Center (hello? 9/11), shall I continue?

I mean, I’m 36 and remember the OKC bombing, definitely remember 9/11, got boned by graduating in 2008, etc. you didn’t have it harder as a Gen X.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$15/hr PT is barely enough money for a teenager to cover extra curriculars and gas, let alone rent and food for a family.

They call it minimum wage for a reason. Who told you you should be able to afford rent and food for a family and non-public education on minimum wage?

Minimum wage is working poor/poverty level and it always has been.

Get some education get some skills.

Regardless of what you think, how you think the world should be, there will always be people not skilled or wealthy enough to get a college or trades degree. The median McDonald’s employee is 29 years old. Note that an unskilled 29 year old would be working at a factory if they’d been alive 60 years ago.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:$15/hr PT is barely enough money for a teenager to cover extra curriculars and gas, let alone rent and food for a family.

They call it minimum wage for a reason. Who told you you should be able to afford rent and food for a family and non-public education on minimum wage?

Minimum wage is working poor/poverty level and it always has been.

Get some education get some skills.

FDR: https://publicpolicy.pepperdine.edu/blog/posts/what-did-fdr-mean-by-a-living-wage.htm

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a GenX I love this : One thing Millennials do have that we in GenX do not: enough numbers for people to write articles like this about them. Where the the thought pieces when we turned 40??

Though we did have This is 40

+1. Gen Xer as well. I cannot decide if the Millennials are fragile, or arrogant, or both. They seem to have so little resilience to life. Life isn't easy, but apparently they got the message that it should be? Whoever sent that message didn't serve them well. It will be interesting to watch them hit 50 and be treated as completely invisible. They will collapse like flan in a cupboard.

Eh, I do think Millennials have had a raw deal with housing. They have had an amazing job market but housing is crazy expensive.

GenX is happier because we aspired to be slackers and always assumed “Reality Bites”, and then when we did put in some effort and things got better, it was “party on, dudes”

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 34 and I am NOT middle aged. F off.

If you go by the median age of death in US you most certainly are

Middle age starts at 36. The average lifespan in the United States is 72 years old. 36 + 36 = 72

You are almost middle aged right now. Wake up.

No, the average life expectancy of an American woman is 80. Add to it the fact that I’m white (it’s unfortunate that race makes a difference but it does), financially secure, and in good health with a good family history, then it’s probably higher. Of course sh happens and I could die tomorrow. Middle age mathematically is at least 40.
But biologically and culturally, middle age is associated with things like menopause and other physical changes. Which is generally not in your 30s. And I have perky breasts and a flat stomach and firm legs so…. Nope, not middle aged.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, at least Millennials didn't have to deal with the kind of violent crime that GenX dealt with as young adults. It's like 50% of what it used to be.

Well now we just live in fear that some madman with a gun will shoot up our grocery store, or elementary school, or concert, or or or…

Because you took the guns from the sane people.

[Anonymous]

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Anonymous wrote:I'm an older millennial or younger Generation X depending on how you divide them and haven't read the article. Also, I took out student loans for law school and have paid them off.

But I do think people now entering middle age with student loans got kind of screwed and it's one of the reasons I support loan forgiveness coupled with totally overhauling how we pay for higher ed, even though it won't benefit me personally.

It just seems crazy that we as a society decided it was okay for 18 year olds to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans with no underlying transferable asset (you can't sell someone your degree) and we think that's normal. I think my loans were different -- I took them out for a graduate degree with more value on the market, I was older when I took them out and I better understood what it would mean to repay them. But student loans for undergraduates, or for these schools with dicy cost-benefit promises (like community college or these for-profit colleges) just seems usurious to me.

I get why someone approaching 40 now who is still paying off those loans while also trying to buy a home and save for their own kids college would be really frustrated by that. People who let their kids take out loans like that without sitting them down and coming up with a plan for repayment first, were bad parents. It's just a really irresponsible thing to let a 17/18 yr old make that choice. It will haunt them for decades. And then schools and lenders profited off it -- the availability of student loans drove up the cost of higher education, and there are a bunch of very unethical businesses that have made a killing off servicing these loans and making it as hard as possible for people to pay them off or discharge them. It's really disturbing. I think people should be mad. They were taken advantage of.

That might explain the interest rate on these loans. They are an extremely risky proposition for banks since there are no assets.

On the other hand, they can't be discharged in bankruptcy and if they are federal they are guaranteed.

Banks are in a position to evaluate that risk and decide if it's worth it to lend. 17/18 year olds are not. It's a clearly imbalanced dynamic that benefits the bank and not the borrower. In most countries on earth, that type of lending would never be legal because it's so obviously designed to incite a young person to sign a contract that will keep them indebted for most of their adult life while enriching the bank, and only in the US do we look at that and think "this is fine!"

You make choices at all ages of young adulthood and old adulthood, I made a decision at 17 that I could not afford the student loan debt I would have to incur to attend a four year college and my parents made it clear (and I knew) they would never be in a position to help, and I don't fault them for this. Instead I worked and attended three years of community college and saved while living at home. Luckily I received some grants to help offset when I transferred to a four year college but I still paid as I went along and worked two, sometimes three pretty crappy jobs (with lots of all nighters) and I made it through, thereby affording me the opportunity late in life to sit at my computer and type with you lovely people in the middle of the day. Accountability has to come into play and it does not matter if you think you're entitled to go to college or to that car or that house, if you can't afford it, make an alternate plan. There are ways, some of them not great and not so fair, but that's life. I am so sick of the whining and bitterness from the millineall generation, GTFU and own your decisions.

Have you considered that some of the millennials who took out loans for college did so at their parents' behest? Because their parents wanted them to go to a certain kind of school and get a certain kind of degree, and the attitude was "this will all be worth it in the end?"

Your parents taught you that debt was dangerous and made it clear they couldn't help. A lot of millennials' parents said things to them like "eh, everyone finances everything these days, why not college" and "I'm sure you'll get a good job to pay for this but if you have a hard time, we'll help" and then renegged on that problem.

A lot of the complaining isn't really about being unhappy with their choices. They are unhappy with the way they were parented. Their parents convinced them that an expensive education from the fanciest possible college was the ticket to approval and success, their parents helped them finance it by cosigning all those loans, and then those people got older and realized they should have done what you did. But unlike you, they did not have practical parents who would have embraced a child who lived at home and attended community college as a cost-effective way to get an education. They would have been ashamed of it and made that known.

+1 to all of this.

YUP. I will never stop being grateful that my parents told me that students loans weren’t an option and that I’d be attending a state school that they could afford.

Welcome to 2023. Google how much “affordable” instate public’s cost.

Yeah, four years of instate tuition is more than the current value of my parents house (they live in rural southern state).

Back when I went to college, four years of in-state tuition was still more than my parent's house. It was a trailer in rural PA.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Well, at least Millennials didn't have to deal with the kind of violent crime that GenX dealt with as young adults. It's like 50% of what it used to be.

Well now we just live in fear that some madman with a gun will shoot up our grocery store, or elementary school, or concert, or or or…

Because you took the guns from the sane people.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:There is something about millennials that went so wrong. Gen Z is better.

The millennials are the first generation to grow up entirely with the internet. I'm gen x and remember long hours of boredom with nothing to read but novels or the newspaper, nothing to watch but Abbott and Costello movies or reruns of I ❤️ Lucy, no way to interact with friends except to knock on their door. Lot's of Gin Rummy and monopoly with my sister, hours by myself drawing, my brother building stuff.

I think what went wrong is they never had enough boredom to level set them to real life or connect with their own insides. It seems like every minute of everyone's life, since the internet connected us all is filled with thoughts and ideas that come from other people. You're reading my thoughts right now, instead of having your own.

It's only going to get more like that. Gen z will be the same.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is something about millennials that went so wrong. Gen Z is better.

The millennials are the first generation to grow up entirely with the internet. I'm gen x and remember long hours of boredom with nothing to read but novels or the newspaper, nothing to watch but Abbott and Costello movies or reruns of I ❤️ Lucy, no way to interact with friends except to knock on their door. Lot's of Gin Rummy and monopoly with my sister, hours by myself drawing, my brother building stuff.

I think what went wrong is they never had enough boredom to level set them to real life or connect with their own insides. It seems like every minute of everyone's life, since the internet connected us all is filled with thoughts and ideas that come from other people. You're reading my thoughts right now, instead of having your own.

It's only going to get more like that. Gen z will be the same.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry I don't pay to read news. It's part of my "adulting"

You've never bought a newspaper? Excellent adulting.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:There is something about millennials that went so wrong. Gen Z is better.

The millennials are the first generation to grow up entirely with the internet. I'm gen x and remember long hours of boredom with nothing to read but novels or the newspaper, nothing to watch but Abbott and Costello movies or reruns of I ❤️ Lucy, no way to interact with friends except to knock on their door. Lot's of Gin Rummy and monopoly with my sister, hours by myself drawing, my brother building stuff.

I think what went wrong is they never had enough boredom to level set them to real life or connect with their own insides. It seems like every minute of everyone's life, since the internet connected us all is filled with thoughts and ideas that come from other people. You're reading my thoughts right now, instead of having your own.

It's only going to get more like that. Gen z will be the same.

+1

Not true for a lot of millennials. For kids around my age (1990) we didn’t really have it until late ES/early MS. And even then, it was dial up so slow and we couldn’t use it long. We had plenty of boredom.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am 34 and I am NOT middle aged. F off.

If you go by the median age of death in US you most certainly are

Middle age starts at 36. The average lifespan in the United States is 72 years old. 36 + 36 = 72

You are almost middle aged right now. Wake up.

Sorry, people in their 30s are not middle aged. You are being a bit myopic and stubborn about this for some weird reason.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What millennial fail to understand is that to get ahead you have to be willing to be uncomfortable, to sacrifice, to curtail a social life, to work long hours for less than perfect pay, to juggle priorities, to SERVE something or someone other than yourself potentially for quite a while. They want it to be easy, comfortable, instant, rewarding, acknowledged, all the things.

Maybe they are right. Maybe we should want this for younger generations. Why do Americans take so much pride in keeping everything so hard? I actually want things to be easier for younger people. I don’t insist that they suffer just because I did. I have never understood that mentality.