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Comment by burnoutgal | Hacker News Reader

A remarkable thing about these stories is that many artists end up enjoying lavish lifestyles while they're popular, but having no money (and going on the dole) when their success wanes. The record industry absolutely encourages this boom and bust lifestyle by advancing money and then withholding royalties until an artist is "recouped", which almost never happens thanks to some fun accounting tricks. The result is young people who come from modest means, are showered with cash, and recieved no financial planning advice. They're also a magnet for people trying to get a cut of the money - people who will encourage them to pursue a lifestyle of excess.

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One can draw a very similar arc for lottery winners too. Most of them are broke and vagrant after ~2 years of luxury. There's no planning for tomorrow.

The people most drawn to lotteries (and perhaps those drawn to the limelight too) are those that have the worst life and money skills. I think we all know people who live the feast or famine lifestyle of cruises and new TVs when the tax refund comes followed by 11 months of scraping by and complaining about their money situation.

Source?

From what I see, is that 70% spend their money after 5 years, but don't just become 'homeless' / destitute. This seems some kind of overblown myth.

The other study I found:

"Statistically, 1% of lottery winners in the Florida study went bankrupt annually (Source: https://www.creditdonkey.com/lottery-winner-statistics.html)"

My recollection is the NFL requires financial education for football players because most pro football careers are short-lived and it's the most money most of them will ever make, but they are young and tend to want to behave like this is their starting salary for their career and it will surely go up from here.

See also actors, perhaps especially TV actors, etc. They're young. They're in an environment of people spending money lavishly. And, as you say, they really want to believe that they'll be the statistical anomaly who will have a long lucrative career.

It's also hard because some of those "lavish" expenses are a necessity if you are famous and make your money from things like looks. Very famous people may need security in various forms that ordinary people do not need (bullet proof limo, security guard, housing with security). Oprah has said if she wears the same outfit twice in two months on her show, people have a fit about it and many stars have to pay for personal trainers, expensive haircuts, etc just to keep their "job."

> The result is young people who come from modest means, are showered with cash, and recieved no financial planning advice.

You can say the same thing, although toned down a bit, about the college loan situation in the United States.

Well, not really. Are college students taking their student loans and blowing it on "lavish lifestyles"? Or are they just trying to scrape by? My guess is that after non-discretionary expenses (eg. tuition and rent), there isn't much left, unlike for pop stars.

Not on the same scale as rock stars and athletes but pretty much every college town is now packed to the gills with "luxury" apartments selling a lavish lifestyle. For many students, their college years will be the peak of quality of life when it comes to their living situation. Compare this to the residence halls of old with one shared bathroom per floor and multiple students sleeping in the same small room.

In the 1980s, the State of Alabama was sued by prisoners who claimed their prison cells constituted cruel and unusual punishment. One of the defenses the state used was that the student dorms at Auburn University were not only more bare than the prison cells, and lacking in basic amenities like air condition that the prisoners were demanding, the students had to pay to live there (the state won). Apartment complexes in Auburn and other college towns now are in wars with each other over the most attractive amenity packages for their residents. Because so many students take the largest loan amounts offered instead of just what is needed, a huge industry has popped up to convert that loan money into the type of experiences that appeal to those in their teens and early 20s. The lifestyle experience of the contemporary university student is nothing like those of the era pre-easy money loans (that is, when the government start guaranteeing and later issuing loans directly).

College life in the US is a massive sink for those who aren't financially disciplined. Getting loans is easy for most who attended, including stipend loans for "living expenses" such as binge drinking on at least a weekly basis.

The lifestyle certainly isn't lavish in the sense that pop star lifestyle is, but taking out many tens of thousands of dollars in an attempt to become a librarian (one friend of mine did just that) is just stupid, financially speaking. Short of having family bail you out or marrying a high income earner, you're a prisoner to loans that's cannot be discharged via bankruptcy.

> but taking out many tens of thousands of dollars in an attempt to become a librarian (one friend of mine did just that) is just stupid, financially speaking

The problem is, society needs librarians and other "non-STEM" science - we're right now, for example in Germany [1], seeing with the cluelessness of politicians on Russia how utterly ignorant it was to cut funding for Eastern European studies back in 2005. And mind ya that's Europe where "student loans" aren't really a thing because we don't have absurd tuitions because the government pays for universities.

We haven't found a way to incentivize people to take up these studies, and we absolutely need to, otherwise we are going to lose so much knowledge over the next decades. My s/o for example has a brilliant master's degree in art history, but funding for positions that match her experience is scarce to say the least, and covid didn't exactly help. She's currently working for the government to help fight the pandemic, but it's a sad waste of potential how many people like her are simply left behind.

[1] https://www.pnn.de/wissenschaft/slawisten-kaempfen-fuer-ihre...

It's not a question of if societies needs to have librarians, it's a question of how many librarians society is willing to support and if that's greater than or equal to the supply of librarians being created. Defenders of humanities degrees often imply that those outside of the humanities don't understand the need for it instead of debating the wisdom of using a 'spray and pray' approach to producing the number of people in those areas that society needs and is willing to support. It's not a situation where we have to choose between having no librarians and society supporting an unlimited number of librarians even though some try to present it that way.

I don't disagree that society needs librarians.

I am saying that librarian studies is, economically speaking, a luxury good when a librarians pay doesn't cover the interest on the loans it took to get the job- mind you that in the US, most librarian jobs require a master's degree, so you could easily be paying for 7 years of higher education to get it, and that's assuming that there are even any jobs available that require the degree in the first place.

> Are college students taking their student loans and blowing it on "lavish lifestyles"?

Colleges certainly do. There is no market economy in giving out loans but yet there are no price and quality controls on the receiving end of the money.

> Well, not really. Are college students taking their student loans and blowing it on "lavish lifestyles"? Or are they just trying to scrape by?

I live in Boulder, and it's really all over the place.

There a lot of kids just scraping by.

But there are also a lot of kids who don't work, but rent >$2k a month apartments and drive Audis and BMWs.

Obviously their parents are funding them, but I'm pretty sure they take out a lot of loans, too.

>The record industry absolutely encourages this boom and bust lifestyle

It's part of the overall appeal, and that says something about human nature. We like to see the reckless brilliant star careening into the stratosphere, knowing full well that it is unsustainable. It's the human embodiment of life and overabundant success.

Gotta spend the money and ball out because it’s part of the look and the “brand”.

You often see this in a different manner with pro athletes, sadly.

I mean, I agree with you, but is it really surprising that rock stars aren't that interested in retirement planning? That is, the type of person that craves the spotlight and succeeds is also the type that is unlikely to max out their IRA contributions.

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