General Discussion

I'm comparing apples to apples. Her job today pays what my job (with a college degree) adjusted for inflation paid when I was her age. I had no car payments because I drove a 10-year old car which I bought used and had paid off several years earlier. Housing costs were equivalent, adjusted for inflation. Even without adjusting for inflation, my insurance costs were higher than hers - and benefits lower.

Take a job at Starbucks. 25 hours a week is considered full time and gets you college tuition, health insurance for a pittance (the $3500 is premiums + deductible + her share of costs until she hits her out-of-pocket maximum for the year. It takes her all of 1 month to get there, because her costs are so enormous. Absent a chronic, expensive disease your costs will be much lower), stock, and matching contributions to 401K.

Take a job at Amazon - health insurance starts on day 1, and is about the same price as at Starbucks. Depending on your pickiness about shifts - you can earn $35-$40/hour for at least part of the week.

Not glamorous - but they pay the bills, provide health insurance, access to a 401(k) and - in some instances - provide for college.

Go to community college for the first two years (as my spouse did to save money). Build an online degree through EdX (now 2U). I've taken courses there - and some were the equivalent of courses I paid big bucks for at a fancy private college.

I get that you're angry and you think you have lost opportunitie that your parents have - but the opportunties just come in different forms now.

And I don't think you're looking at the bigger picture of lifestyle choices which characterize different generations. Most middle class in my generation chose not to live as lavishly as my daughter's generation are choosingto live. My cell phone bill (currently) is $15/month. I haven't watched TV in years (aside from a brief respite with Locast), because paying for cable isn't an expense I can justify - and the analog to digital conversion wiped out my ability to watch over-the-air TV. I'm driving a 2004 car. The newest car in our household is a 2008 car. Our home is fully paid off - even with an unexpected 60% income cut in our early years, and even with rolling the tuition for my third degree in, because we bought well below our means. A generation earlier, my parents borrowed money to buy farmland - but not much else. They (and I) still pay off credit cards in full every month. My grandparents (close to the depression) did not buy anything on credit.

While I'm proud of my daughter's choices to work where there are jobs, to work shifts which pay more money, and to always take into account her need for health insurance when she shifts jobs, her spending habits are typical of her generation. She got into credit card debt (and in the last 2 years has paid off 60% of that debt, without accumulating more.) She has a decent amount of retirement $$ saved up for her age - only because we hammered in the concept of free money - so she has always contributed as much to a 401(k) plan as her employer would match. But I worry about in later life - not because opportunities aren't here for her now - but because, despite my best efforts, she has picked up the consumption driven habits of her peers - buying costly brands largely for the name, spending far more on her phone than is necessary just so she always has the internet at her fingertips, and is not saving intentionally saving beyond her contributions to the 401(K).

I'm sure it is not universally true but - on average - people in her generation choose to have far more expensive things whereas people in my generation (and my parents or grandparents) chose the delayed gratification of ensuring that retirement came before stuff we didn't need.

That's not to say we don't need to increase pay, lower college costs, and provide better access to health issues (and tend to the environment). It is to say that most generations believe their parents had it better - when often it is just that they had it different, but also made different choices about what to prioritize.