This is what class rage feels like

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I did art history at a private expensive undergrad where I was on full scholarship and worked, so I know what the author describes. Eventually though I switched to a more practical career that is less idealistic but pays well. Then I moved to a lower col place to enable me to purchase and accumulate my own wealth. I can’t really relate to op’s rage, although I totally agree the system is rigged. I think the op could take more control of the fiscal reality of her life by compromising her ideals, which aren’t making her as happy as she hoped, and frankly are just rooted in fantasy. Some family wealth people I know are clueless and spend through their trust funds. Others rent u-hauls and move themselves into million dollars houses because they were raised to preserve wealth. Wealth above what op I’m pretty sure she makes doesn’t add much happiness overall according to research. She needs to take ownership and change her circumstances, which she is well qualified to do.

So which is it, pp?

Is the system rigged, or should people just work hard to change their circumstances (you said both in your post…which seems to be in direct conflict)?

What is rigged? Some people start at a different place. Some far different. That is not rigged. Those people are advantaged. So what. As a PP said, live your life.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I would say most Americans get out of life what they put into it. The simple reality is that most Americans are decent middle class people living middle class lives, working their 40 hour week job and living in a modest suburban house. Their lifestyle reflects the efforts they put into life. When I look at my workplaces and those who achieve more senior status it really does make sense why and how.

That is not to say things are completely fair. Life is not and has never been. There are factors like racism or disability or lack of education that have definitely hurt people. And, yes, there are poorer people who work 80 hour weeks and break their backs at physical labor for low wages and dumb rich kids living off trust funds who do nothing at all. But as a whole we are more meritocratic than not. People who complain about entrenched poverty in urban areas or rural towns ignore that for every impoverished person struggling at life there is another person who started out in the same position and moved away and is doing just fine. The real question is why do some people quickly figure out what they need to do to have a decent life and why others do not. It all comes down to the choices we make at the end of the day and quite often making bad choices can snowball into more bad choices and worsen your position over time, but that cannot be blamed on a failure of meritocracy.

The woman in the article in New York made very clear decisions for what to do with her life. It's not a failure of meritocracy that she is struggling. People with the same aptitude, the same intelligence, the same capabilities, and who started out life in the same place, have done much better than she did through making different career and lifestyle decisions.

This

[Anonymous]

Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

Exactly.

I think there’s a bunch of people who failed to do their homework and just assumed life would unfold a certain way.

Parents should do a better job teaching their kids about money and how to avoid debt.

1. Opt for CC then state school unless you get a free ride or someone offers to pay your way.

2. Get a degree that lends itself to a career.

3. Do not incur debt or throw money around. Live in a dumpy group rental with roommates like we did back in the day. Drive a cheap car. Don’t shop like it’s a competitive sport. You aren’t entitled to anything.

4. Shack up with a significant other. Two incomes are better than one.

5. Live below your means. Embrace minimalism. Spend money on experiences instead of things.

6. Don’t live in the city unless you can truly afford it.

7. Find a job with excellent benefits. Healthcare and pensions outweigh a seemingly low salary.

8. Adjust when necessary.

9. No shame in living at home to sock away money.

[Anonymous]

Maybe this woman should have done what I and many people who were on their own did-work her ass off in an area where she was likely to earn enough money for the lifestyle she wanted. Lots of us with no trust funds figured out it wasn’t a good idea to major in folklore or whatever-why didn’t she?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

You’re giving larla too much of a pass. I was essentially like larla (but genuinely poor and with a lt least an iota of common sense.) it would have been incredibly stupid for me to take this path (though I, too, love art history and avocado toast) so instead I majored in something practical and went to professional school while my roommate (also a larla) was running up credit card debt and having a great time.

[Anonymous]

The lady needs to land a job in a lower cost of living area, and then she should be fine.

She will be even better off if she lives with roommates or a significant other.

Sticking it out in nyc with $7 in her checking account is just stupid.

She has a sense of entitlement that is next level bonkers.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Look it's fine if your parents give you money for down payments and fancy vacations and private school/college money for your multiple kids.

But just realize that when your regular middle class friends learn about that stuff, they're probably going to feel weird about. Insecure or lesser than.

It's ok.

And, actually, please also realize: we are going to start looking down on you a little bit, because we thought you were doing it all on your own, like we are, and yet we realize you are actually just a little bit soft, weaker than we thought. Spoiled. Babied. Helped.

And if you had the same financial help offered to you, in the form of a down payment, tuition for yourself, tuition for your children, trust fund, whatever: you would take it in a hot second.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The lady needs to land a job in a lower cost of living area, and then she should be fine.

She will be even better off if she lives with roommates or a significant other.

Sticking it out in nyc with $7 in her checking account is just stupid.

She has a sense of entitlement that is next level bonkers.

I think a lot of readers here think it’s fine for NYC and other known high COL cities to literally only be populated by the .5%. I personally have actual experience with what the author wrote, and lived in NYC, and what the author describes is quite accurate as far as the money dynamics of the educated, erudite, creative class. And it blows. Who wants to live in a city that is run by and for finance only?

[Anonymous]

1 problem is that she chose publishing, which everyone knows is poorly paid.,

2nd problem is that she did not or is not factoring in money when choosing a spouse. Not saying you should marry only for money but there's no reason why it shouldn't be a consideration if you are being realistic and practical about what you want for your life.

If you yourself are poorly paid and you know for sure that you want to buy a place in a VHCOL area and have children, then you NEED to consider finances as a factor when choosing a mate. There is more than one way to skin a cat.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

You’re giving larla too much of a pass. I was essentially like larla (but genuinely poor and with a lt least an iota of common sense.) it would have been incredibly stupid for me to take this path (though I, too, love art history and avocado toast) so instead I majored in something practical and went to professional school while my roommate (also a larla) was running up credit card debt and having a great time.

I am basically Larla. Brooklyn and all. The only difference is I met my husband and his job took us to DC. I absolutely could’ve been this woman at 40. But when DD arrived, I got real fast about money. Got a second masters when she was little in a different field. Now I make a decent 6-figure salary. More than DH. This absolutely could have been me. And for all of the reasons the poster above stated. Nobody in my family coukd advise me about college and career. I was doing what I loved— yeah, I bought that narrative for a while. But also, most of my friends from college were being propped up by family money and I honestly didn’t get that until I was about 30.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Somebody should have counseled this lady before she chose this field in NYC. At least she should have reassessed every 5 years or so before she found herself there at 40. She is thinking too much about other people's money when she could have made better choices for herself. It sounds like she felt entitled to a NYC living. I mean, who does this to themselves for 20 years and then blames other people's money?

Here's how this happens. It's not ultra common, but it does happen, and it's not so simple as "make better choices". Because many of the choices are made before the person has the necessary info, and often they are working on information that is bad or very misleading:

- Larla grows up in rural or remote part of the country. Low cost of living, middle or working class parents who don't struggle a ton to make ends meet because low COL. Larla has pleasant childhood without a lot of class strife thanks to this.

- Larla is very good at school, and opportunities in this area are limited. It's not near a larger city. The area doesn't have a ton of arts, culture, or commerce. Larla very quickly develops interest in leaving area because of these limitations and because they are very successful academically, this starts to feel like a real possibility.

- Larla goes to college far away, a "good school" likely with some or a lot of merit aid. Larla's grades and test scores qualified her for school, but her admission probably has a lot to do with her - background too -- these schools like diversity and being from some remote place stands out.

- Maybe the school is in a big city, but maybe in little college town, but either way, winds up in a student population with people from much more cosmopolitan backgrounds. Some are wealthy, some are UMC, some might be MC or WC but from places with greater diversity (of people and experiences). This means everyone understands a lot more about how the world works than Larla, even the other kids on financial aid and who have to work. Larla is straight up naive.

- Larla makes friends, and her friends educate her a bit about the world. The problem is, they are naive too, because they don't even understand what they know. They explain stuff to Larla, but it overemphasizes the fairness of the system. They gloss over stuff like the value of family connections or the fact that they are from families that really, really support and emphasize higher education (something Larla's family probably doesn't value to the same degree because of very different environments and circumstances). Larla starts to think she's figuring things out, but she's only getting a very small part of the picture.

- Larla makes career choices, decides where to move after school, based on her naive assumptions coupled with a pretty incomplete explanation of the world gleaned from young people who are really still just figuring it out. What Larla could really use at this point is a parent or relative who can say "Whoa, wait -- some of these kids have trust funds. Some of them can live in their aunt's apartment while they intern. Some of them have parents who will will do anything to cover the cost of a graduate degree because it's important to them. You need to make different choices based on your specific situation. How about Philly instead of NYC? How about marketing instead of publishing? Maybe what you really want is to write -- get an ed degree, teach high school English, and write! Or pursue an academic degree but get used to living in midwestern college towns, which are at least cheap."

- So instead, Larla figures this out on her own over the course of a decade or so. It's revealed in fits and starts, and often she only learns a key piece of information after it's too late to do much with it (like that an MFA is treated as required in publishing, but has no actual value in terms of earning, something that should actually be a required release of info before anyone enrolls in an MFA program). She also gets deeper into a career and social circle that will simply reinforce her value system, making it harder and harder to pull herself out. She might contemplate moving to Chicago or Portland or Denver, but her NY friends will say "OMG no, I could never" and she's only 28 and her family doesn't understand her anymore either, so she holds onto those values even though they don't serve her.

It's a sucky thing. Yes, she was naive and stupid and made bad choices. But it's also kind of hard to blame her because she's kind of been thrown to the wolves. Her university probably should have offered her some kind of practical economic education, but that would require being honest about their student body and their funding and the value of their degree, so: no. Same with the MFA. Her friends are self-interested in believing that they earned their way (to a degree they may have, in other ways not). Also, Larla doesn't have a stereotypical hard luck upbringing. She's not from poverty, her parents have steady jobs, she had a nice childhood. The fact that it in no way prepared her for the life she is now leading doesn't concern anyone because she is a [almost certainly white] middle class lady with a fancy college degree. It's just that none of those things are really helping her right now and she'd have to go back in time, or totally upend her entire values system, to change it. It's what she should do, but it's understandable that she is struggling.

I feel really bad for people in this situation. This is why it helps to have savvy parents who get how the world works, why you are lucky to find mentors or honest friends who tell it like it is. It can save you. Some people never get that and they get stuck.

You’re giving larla too much of a pass. I was essentially like larla (but genuinely poor and with a lt least an iota of common sense.) it would have been incredibly stupid for me to take this path (though I, too, love art history and avocado toast) so instead I majored in something practical and went to professional school while my roommate (also a larla) was running up credit card debt and having a great time.

DP
Well, that is impressive. Indeed, you must be quite the ambitious self-starter then, because back in the 1990s I was a Larla with hands-off, detached parents who were possessed of a rather charming naïveté. They were focused on college football and recreational eating, certainly not giving me any sort of direction in life. As a scholarship student, I guess I didn’t think in the same practical vein as you. It’s my fault, yes, but the University could have offered far more support as they do now for FGLI students. Plus, the Internet as a priceless resource would have been useful for career exploration and worthwhile advice. C’est la vie.

[Anonymous]

Life is about choices. If you don't want to struggle financially, don't major in fine arts. Don't move to one of the world's most expensive cities.

[Anonymous]

I think I feel a bit on the flip side of this. I didn't grow up wealthy, but I married a high achieving man who vastly out-earns me. It is awkward to talk about money at work. Many of my colleagues are struggling financially, and I am just not. I don't even have to work at all if I don't want to.

Is it better to talk about it and have it out in the open? Or to just be quiet about it and change the subject?