Posted on 12/28/2004 3:03:45 AM PST by Woodworker
Your dad had a job, a wife, a house. You've got loans and fear of commitment. Hello, manhood. December 21st, 2004 11:55 AM.
Owe no man any thing. Romans 13:8
Don't worry about the loans. I'm doing good, Dad, and it's gonna stay that way. Bud Fox [Charlie Sheen] in Oliver Stone's Wall Street.
For me, it was all about easy money.
When I started college, I needed and wanted funds—for an apartment, a car, a girlfriend, alcohol, and of course, tuition. Conveniently, the dorms and lecture halls were strewn with credit card applications, which are as much a part of the university experience as Wednesday-morning hangovers. The plastic loan sharks beckoned with low monthly payments and generous credit lines. It was an offer few of us could refuse.
Naturally, credit cards, with their usurious interest rates, were just the start. Student loans, a fact of life for nearly every red-blooded (as opposed to blue-blooded) American, were a much bigger deal. And the bonus was you could begin paying them back after graduation or, at any rate, in the distant future. It wasn't my problem, I reasoned. It was the problem of some future version of myself. Screw him.
Thus was a Matterhorn of debt created. But as I morphed from a twentysomething into a thirty-nothing, the realization began to dawn: Will the supersized student loans and maxed-out credit cards stay with me until the bitter end? Will I spend the rest of my life barely making rent, forever beholden to myriad creditors? Will I be able to purchase a home? Will I be solvent enough to provide, God help me, for a family? Will, in other words, there be consequences to an early life of profligate borrowing?
Well, yeah. "As a group, young adults underestimate how long it will take to repay the debt," said Jill Norvilitis, an associate professor of psychology at Buffalo State University, who has studied collegiate debt.
For many young men beginning their stroll through adulthood, debilitating indebtedness spawns a problem that goes beyond the figures on a bank statement. It's the growing sense that you won't be able to live the kind of life you hoped, the kind of life you grew up expecting. "It's incredibly depressing," said Paula Langguth Ryan, an author and lecturer on bankruptcy. "It's emasculating. They wonder, 'How did my parents do this? I can't possibly do this. How can I tell my father that I'm so far over my head I can't buy any presents this Christmas?'
"You get onto that roller coaster of paying off the debt, but it still keeps going up," Ryan added. "You're just spinning your wheels and huge frustration mounts. 'How can I tell the person I am dating that I am this far in debt?' "
Eric Heidt, 33, a Manhattan architect, just refinanced his student loans. Now the payments are manageable, but they're also eternal. "It's going to take me a lifetime to take care of it."
Heidt is living out an economic reality that his father might scarcely recognize. "Buying a house is pretty much out of reach," he said. "My parents had a bunch of kids, they bought houses, and here I am living in a 12-by-16 room with a stranger and I'm not saving any money. There's something wrong."
The lives of young adults, male and female, have changed over the past few decades. For one, fewer of us are getting married in our twenties and even thirties. Figures from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey show that, among 30- to 34-year-olds, the marriage rate in 2003 was four times lower than it was in 1970. Among 20- to 24-year-olds, 75 percent of women had never been married—compared to 36 percent in 1970—and 86 percent of men had never been married—compared to 55 percent in 1970. It's just not an essential part of how young men see their post-graduation life these days.
According to a 2002 Rutgers University study, young men are reluctant to marry for several reasons—they think it will require too many changes and compromises; they aren't confronted with social pressures to make the leap; they can just as easily live with a woman as marry her; and, to put it quite simply, they would rather enjoy the single life for as long as humanly possible. "Some of these men have spent a good part of their early adult years living with parents, roommates, or alone," the study's authors wrote. "They have become accustomed to their own space and routines. They enjoy the freedom of not having to be responsible to anyone else."
But the study also cites several financial reasons for putting off the marriage decision. Young men fear divorce and the financial risks it would bring, including child support. And most would like to purchase a house before taking the vows.
It's clear that young people aren't buying homes at the same rate as previous generations. Even though interest rates have plummeted to historic lows in recent years, causing a surge in home ownership across the country, the number of home buyers under 45 has remained steady nationwide since 1980. In New York City, only the lucky few can afford to purchase property. The white picket fence carries an entirely too costly price tag. We are a far more transitory generation, picking up and moving from apartment to apartment, job to job, relationship to relationship, city to city—all while being followed by the black cloud of the financial choices of our late teens and early twenties.
This wasn't what our parents had in mind for us. Many young men grew up hearing their fathers lecture on the importance of financial stability, business success, and home ownership. The thrust of these soliloquies was that if you make the right choices you won't have any problems. If I did it, so can you, son. But there was a caveat: Don't be stupid with your cash. (Also: You'll get none from me.) Implicit in all this was the suggestion that foolishness with money equals weakness. Debt was a moral deficiency. It's not the way a man conducts himself.
Easy for them to say, we thought. They didn't grow up in the age of easy credit. The credit card is just 40 years old, and it wasn't until the 1980s that a young person could get one without a signature from a parent. They didn't have to struggle to pay for an education. College is now hugely expensive—and a required step on the pathway of American citizenship. Avoid the university, we are told, and you'll wind up as a telemarketer. (You probably will anyway.) They didn't have to carry debt. We do. It's part of our life today.
"You have to remember, in the past, credit wasn't in common use," said Ryan. "You didn't have people slipping a credit application into the books you are buying at the college bookstore. Back then, nobody borrowed on credit. Bankruptcy carried a huge stigma. You would literally sell everything you had of value to repay your debts. You often knew your creditor—it was the butcher or the plumber. Now creditors are faceless."
The average man doesn't think about the problems of debt until the first bad credit report prevents him from buying a car or obtaining a mortgage (both of which, of course, would grant him the luxury of more debt). That's when he feels the sting. That's when his life begins to feel ill-considered and wasteful. He curses himself for taking that trip to Jim Morrison's grave on collegiate plastic. He kicks himself for enrolling in two semesters of Hungarian instruction, a beautiful language no doubt, but about as useful to him today as a hole in the cranium. Indeed, at times like these his entire college education looks like a waste of money.
"It's painful," said Barry Glassman, a certified financial planner who counsels law students. "If you don't make those monthly interest payments, you get a horrible credit rating and it goes on your permanent record. It's part of that anchor that is dragging you down. I see it with law students who I think would be great in the public sector. But they can't afford it. As a financial planner I can't see the numbers working. It forces people to take jobs they wouldn't normally take.
"It's tough to think long-term when there are so many pressing issues month to month," he said. "You cannot fathom buying a house when you are trying to make a $400 payment every month."
The problem is heightened if you have trouble finding a job in this time of fewer opportunities. "It's especially hard on people who are trying to get established, trying to get their foot in the door," said Gregory Kuhlman, director of the personal counseling program at Brooklyn College. "If you already have a decent job, you might be nervous, but it doesn't hit you like it does if you are pounding the pavement for six months."
At this point in the saga, the typical young person might feel a little resentment, particularly when he reviews his parents' history and decides that they had it easy. They had no trouble finding decent work and buying that first home. The system then in place was designed to give them a good chance to achieve a chunk of the American dream, however they defined it. The system now in place rewards those wise folks among us who at age 19 had the foresight to worry about how their financial statement would look at age 30. All 10 of them.
The solution is to begin chipping away at your debt burden. "The only way to empower yourself and take the power away from the debt is to face up to it," said Ryan. And quit charging—anything. Chuck your cards out the window, she suggested. Detach yourself from a way of living that depends on the "drug" of easy credit, said Ryan.
In my experience, I saw that things have a way of improving over time. I slowly dug myself out of the hole. I was aided by the fact that I wasn't able to accumulate more debt, even if I wanted to. Incremental increases in my salary enabled me to pay off my early-college credit cards. I made peace with the banks that issued my student loans and began paying restitution to them. In short, I figured out a way to manage my debt, which is, after all, the most any of us can hope for in the worker's paradise of 21st-century America. Like Michael Jordan on the basketball court, the average American's debt cannot be stopped; it can only, with luck and fortitude, be contained.
As long as you stay out of graduate school.
Sorry. We never coddled our kids. And yes, I am bitter and YES they do deserve it. They wanted for nothing but they were made to earn what they got, they weren't handed cars, etc. He decided that alcohol and drugs were more important than anything else, unfortunately, and now he is paying that price.
We let him move back home to "staighten" out his life. Once it became apparent this was not going to happen, he is going out the door.
I wish to god I did know "how it happened". I think we were pretty good parents. We taught our kids values and they LIVED them with seeing us. Along about 17 or so they started to ride the drug and alcohol train, dropped out of school no matter what we tried, and dug themselves holes they are still in. All of their friends are losers, because THEY are. When you have trashed your life generally your friends have, too. They are both intelligent, good looking young men, although my oldest is 24 and he is starting to look 30 or 35 already. I seriously think it is too late for him although I pray not. I do know we are through trying to help. Nothing helps and we cannot do it any longer. I am in ill health and we are both getting older. I wish I had a nickel for every tear shed about this, but sometimes you just have to say "it's enough". I know several people in this same boat and believe me, they were good people and kind parents. All I can do is turn them over to God.
My wife is a clinical social worker. She deals with these issues every day. Believe it or not, her advice to parents usually is to cut off all financial support, including freebies from home, love them and continue to teach them how to get help for themselves and how to live a decent life, but to never take their childrens lives as their own failures. Good parents do have children that go bad, but there is still only so much a parent can do. Enabling a child to continue bad behavior only feeds the problem. Let the child have the opportunity to save face and let them know they are loved and welcome back when they get their act together, but, until then, they actions are not welcome. You may lose the child but you don't lose your own life.
I've watched some of her cases go real bad where elderly mom is living in a field with her druggy son who takes all her money. Or, the parents have given to treatment programs for their child so much that they face losing their home at the age of 70. Or, the son has taken so much from his parents for so many years that once they do decide to cut him off it is too late. The son gets violent or simply just robs them. He feels entitled to his behavior and their money.
I guess you answered my question: Friends. Peer influence plays as much a role as parenting. It is soooo important that parents ask questions of where their child is going, with whom, and what they will be doing. Parental influence needs to trump peer influence, but so many parents fail to supervise the peer influence factor, not that you did. In some places friends are just too influential that it is hard to stop and it can happen so quick.
The golden rule of helping: One cannot help another if in a weak position. Keep yourself strong, and if he will accept your help then you can be there. Until then, don't let him bleed you dry.
Them! Heck where can I apply, LOL
Amen to that.
Exactly. You can be great parents and still your kids might not turn out right, unfortunately.
I didn't say the entire generation but the vast majority of them.
Yes my kids wanted for nothing. We worked our butts off to make sure they didn't. When I say that, I mean they had a decent home, clothes, food, toys, health care, etc. You make that sound as if it is a bad thing that your kids aren't on welfare.
I am just sick to death of watchng people charge themselves into oblivion and then whine about it.
If you are referring to me, I can assure you my kids weren't coddled growing up. They were made to be responsible and in fact, where a site MORE responsible at 14 or 15 than they are now in their 20's. When I said my kids wanted for nothing, I meant things kids SHOULD have, like a roof over their heads, food, doctors, clothes, etc, things that my husband and I didn't have a lot of the time. We decided that we would not have children if we could not afford to give them at least a decent living. I doubt that means they were spoiled.
I have every faith that they will grow up, even though they might need to spend some time living under a bridge to get it.
He was always adventuresome and not a shy child. But no, he and his brother were BOTH more responsible when they were in the 7th grade than now. They went the drugs/alcohol route, unfortunately, and made some really stupid mistakes that they are still paying for. Some of them because it appears they might need to have the bricks fall on their heads possibly four times instead of once. Another trait of today's generation I've noticed. Their hard headedness seems to be a lot more pronounced than ours was in many cases!
We are trying. It is so hard, no one wants to see their children living on the streets, but we have done this before and allowed them home, when they seemed to straighten up, only to have the same behavior repeated. This time, I don't believe they will have that option.
I am as well. What is a guest book?
They never found out about the other side of things - when the time came to pay the bill. The times when mom and dad had to debate which bill to pay and which one to let go.
Don't beat yourself up over it. The best of parents can't control what their kids ultimately choose to do.
I feel you, I really do. All the love and money in the world and nothing seems to work.
My best friend is a great guy and so are two of his sisters. His third sister is just plain mean and a drunk. Since being a small child, she has always had a mean streak. I dated her and she was a tiger by the tail. No reason, just plain mean.
One day I heard on the news that a woman was held for three days, naked, and repeatedly raped. She escaped when the guy went into the woods to dig her grave. Yes, it came that close. Naked, and beaten, she ran to a neighbor's house.
That was ten years ago. Today, she isn't so mean, and stays to herself. All the love in the world by her family never did a thing for her, but that near death experience did. Not that I think your son needs such an experience, I just wanted to point out that sometimes only the wierdest events make the change.
The punch line is that she actually still thinks the guy is a "nice guy". I guess reality just doesn't get through to some people. Thank God the courts see reality and the guy will never get out of prison.
What do you think of Cary Elwes? I watched "The Princess Bride" then "Twister" yesterday...I'm still amazed that it was the same person.
I think the hardest thing in the world is a parent watching their kids destroying their lives.
She thinks the guy who almost murdered her and buried her is a "nice guy"? I think I know this girl's problem. She is obviously mentally ill, she would have to be.
Booze will do that to a person. These people want to see the best in a person as they always seem to see the worst. Unfortunately, their self-preseration mechanisms are faulty.
Yes I was referring to you, and I'm sorry I misread your intent with the phrase "wanted for nothing." I would agree with others that have observed that drugs and alcohol are potent enough sabotage anyone's best efforts at parenting. It sounds like you're doing the right things for them and hopefully they will choose a different path soon.
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