Renters, fasten your seatbelts. Cheapies, wear your (un)labels with pride.

Housing news is bad - less people buying, prices dropping – which is good for landlords, but bad for renters. We rent. So that one day, we can buy. In a place we want to settle. (Not the Bay Area, despite its pleasant climate.) San Jose (CA) rent has gone up over 11% this year. Yowza. I’m glad we found a place with thin walls and asbestos in the ceiling.

What kind of sacrifice would you make for cheaper rent? I’ve been thinking about this lately. Maybe downsize apartments (from a 1-bedroom to a studio), which would mean less entertaining of friends (not that we do a whole lot of that now…cheap 1-bedrooms aren’t really known for their expansive living area). But would the monthly savings be enough that we could afford to splurge on the occasional dinner out with friends, rather than cooking a lasagna at home and crowding into the diner booth in our kitchen?

Right now, we are the “cheap” friends. We always ask about the price fo the restaurant before we go, and most of our eating out is done on nights when we know we can get 1/2 price entrees or some other deal.

Once you get over the initial (mildly embarrassing, in a money=status based part of the world) cheapie labelling, it’s not so bad. And after a while, it becomes almost comforting being the Cheapies. It helps to weed out any acquaintances who are mainly impressed by things instead of thoughts.
My youngest sister went through a phase where she wrote favourite quotes on her bedroom walls (I wrote my teenage favourite quotes on notebook covers–easier to paint over), and my favourite of her wall tattoos was:

“Those who matter, won’t care. Those who care, don’t matter.”

I could have the syntax mixed up, but the main point remains the same.People who are worth it should not care if you want to

• eat somewhere cheaper,
• buy something non-namebrand,
• buy something secondhand,
• buy nothing and fix the holes,
• stay home and rent a flick instead of dropping a Hamilton (or a Macdonald, if you are in Canada) on the newest Jennifer Aniston movie at the multi-plex
• share or trade what you have,

and so on.

Sure, maybe this is easy to say, now that I’m out of middle/high school (where people kept tabs on what you wore, and knew if you wore the same outfit twice in one week), and no longer working an intern job that was a whole lot like the previews for that Devil Wears Prada movie (still in theatres, so I have not seen it).

T-shirt and jeans is an acceptable uniform for online student, photographer and webpage coder, so I can afford to be a Cheapie. Right now, at least. And knowing that the downpayment savings account grows a little bit every time i *don’t* buy something that will wear out and/or go out of style helps me sleep soundly, despite the overhead asbestos* ceiling.

****Update**** Krissy has the wording for the wall quote:

“People who mind don’t matter and people who matter don’t mind.”

Thanks K.

*Don’t worry, I haven’t drilled any holes in it, and I have read the risks. And I know asbestos risks are not a laughing matter. But they are good for keeping rent low.

Do what you love, the money will follow*

* Title attributed to the late, great BC sensation, Jazzberry Ram

I just finished reading (skimming, more honestly) an article about Canadian lower education employment wages growing at a faster rate than higher education employment wages. Yes, a lot of this job growth can be attributed to high growth sectors such as construction and mining, but still… it’s a little disheartening for the average recent college graduate.

Are we educating ourselves out of jobs? Or are we just pursuing educations that are not necessarily career ended?

(In good uni-educated fashion, I will define my terms: By “We” I mean many of my peers, aged 21-35ish who have spent 3+ years in a college/university bachelor-type program).

Most of the We’s I know have university degrees. A large number of these We’s are not working in their chosen field, or underemployed in their chosen field. Most of those Not-Working-In-Chosen-Fielders have some type of liberal arts degree. (Self included – Bachelor of Fine Arts, class of 2004). So why the apparent glut of fine art / philosophy / english majors?

Let’s take look at Case Study #1 as an example.

Case Study #1: Me. (I mentioned in a previous post that I was a solipsist.)

Growing up, I was encouraged to follow my dreams, do what I want with my life, never settle for some boring job when I can do whatever I want. Me Me Me!!

Whereas my mother, born 27 years before me, had 2 or 3 choices in her higher educated career path: nurse, teacher, and eventually (and/or in combination with) homemaker.

These days, with the independence-bug bred into us, family-making before 30 is strongly discouraged. So we spend the greater part of our early and mid-20s accruing degrees, life experiences, and debt.

It is not unusual for my husband (on the higher end of his mid-20s, and one of the rarities among my peers who has a degree (non-art, of course) that actually landed him his job), to interview a 30 year old who has never stepped foot inside the door of the Workforce. And it shows.

So if all this excess of book learnin’, and degree earnin’ isn’t helping prepare us for the Workforce, why are we doing it?

Yes, going to university is fun (and hard work, I assure you), but is the price too high for what we end up with? With an average of $17,600 in student loan debt, and employers shaking there heads at how Not Ready recent grads are for the Workforce, it seems like our education investment (or accrued future debt load) is not really earning it’s keep. If it were a roommate, we would have already had a House meeting to present an ultimatum—shape up, or ship out.

Should we be looking at higher education as an investment rather than a necessary life experience? Would that help dissuade the Liberal Arts Glut? (LAGs, because I like coining terms, and one day, one of them will catch on.). I’ll save a more in-depth discussion of The Usefulness of Art School for another post.

Summing up, in question form, as a nod to my first year philosophy professor, Jeffrey Reid, who taught me all about Socratic Method:

Are our (Gen XYs) degree pursuits simply a way of delaying the inevitability of real life? And are our very very expensive brains ever going to produce a satisfactory return on investment?

I was told there would be no math on this exam. -Troy Dyer, Reality Bites

(To confirm my 21-35ish age bracket, because affirmation of belongance (along with makeingupwordance) is how I roll, I googled that Reality Bites quote, and found two Myspace links – both posters in their mid-20s…)

Debate Fodder

If humans really were intrinsically good, would we need incentives?

Make sure you ask yourself this question next time someone offers you something for nothing.

Post on pro-crastination – *tomorrow…

Better three hours too soon than a minute too late.

Quote of the day from Freedictionary.com

*joking…I’m not really writing any posts on procrastination. Unfortunately, robyn thinks that if she finds it funny, everyone else will. See solipsism for more.

Gross Margins and Generalizations

I was born (no…not on a pirate ship) on the fence between Generation X and the recently coined (debatably) Generation Y, and can thus relate to both groups on many issues.

Gen X ->

• Music (Dinosaur Jr, Joy Division, Pixies, Elvis Costello, Pavement, and on and on),
• Movies/TV (Reality Bites, Before Sunset, Clerks (and not much in K. Smith’s repertoire thereafter), Singles, Cosby Show, Night Court, ALF),
• Pop culture (looking at my retired plaid and Doc Marten’s this topic is too widespread to list)

Gen Y ->

• Adaptation and proficiency with new technologies
• The trend of adopting previous generations pop culture (bell bottoms, Mr. T, Jem (princess of power), Scooby Doo, mullets & ironic moustaches, Starsky & Hutch, crafty/nerdy being the new ‘cool’, and various other adoptrends)
• Actually, looking at the previous bullet-point…I don’t really relate to Gen Y much on that issue. I don’t celebrate, I scorn.

Along with the pros, there are also some fundamental-philosophy cons in both groups that I reject.

Gen X –>

• disapproving of our parents’ way of life (marrying and baby making at a young age, getting an education that lends itself to a practical career)

Gen Y ->

• getting accustomed to (not to mention mooching off of) our parents’ way of life, disregarding all the years of hard work that it took to get there.

(Ed. Note: My pros & cons list are a good example of the False Consensus Effect in action. Note the use of “our” when I should be saying “my generation’s”)

Our (oops, I mean, “My generation’s”) mainly boomer parents rarely talk about money, (theirs or ours), and this seems like a legacy the Xers & Yers are happy to propagate. When the issue of money comes up, (at parties, and yes, it does occasionally come up), the general consensus seems to be a feeling of inadequacy, naiveté, in-over-our-headedness, call it what you will.

We have already accepted that social security (US) or social insurance (CAN) won’t be much help to us if we ever get old enough to claim it. But as for other retirement plans…Well, we know 401(k)s, or the Canadian (better than) equivalent RRSPs are good, but with all the hassle involved in investing it, saving it in our chequeing account seems to be the most-attractive (the lowest hassle) option.

The Dot com crash coincided with many of our university graduation ceremonies, and as such, the stock market is without-a-doubt risky, damnit. Besides, what is the point in investing when we have 10-20 years of student loan payments looming on the horizon? Our new (leased) car and our high rent eats up a good portion of our paycheques, and our expenses (the occasional dinner out, and daily caffeine/social exposure fix) are visa-charged, because (we tell ourselves) we like getting the cash-back reward at the end of the year.

The more fortunate of our peers without school debt (who sacrificed four years of university fun in trade for four years of living at home and watching Survivor with their parents in the family room), still have high credit card balances, but at least the student loan center leaves them alone.

And those of us with student loans have figured out the way to keep the center at bay…Master’s degree, and thus, more loans. Hell, maybe even a PhD. In Philosophy. That will pay for itself, won’t it?

We’ll save that discussion for next week – Do What You Love, The Money Will Follow.

Funniest internet people EVER!

Working on an article (working title: Gross Margins and Generalizations. Yep, it’s a doozy.) Watch for it on Monday.

I just came across this, (I would recommend turning down your speakers if you are “working” in a “cubicle” near other “people”), and it made me laugh so hard, my eyes got all watery and toothpaste came out my nose. (Yes, I was brushing my teeth and internet browsing). How appropriate that it was made by the creator of toothpaste for dinner. His wife made this. She was right.

They are bo th awesome. Send them money (or just buy some of their t-shirts).

And if you blog, link to his blog, from my blog, even. It’s blogfectious!

Plus, one time toothpaste for dinner Drew sent me a recipe for a boozy drink made with basil. It involved muddling. So extra blogpoints (bloints?) for that.