Young Money – Beating “The Man” by Spending Less | Hacker News Reader

Young Money – Beating “The Man” by Spending Less

unfinishedman.com

27 pointscbarnsdale41 comments

Funny coming from unfinishedman.com, which is the blog people go to when they look at The Sharper Image and think "but what do you have that's REALLY frivolous?"

[1] http://www.unfinishedman.com/aviator-wing-desk-inspired-by-w... [2] http://www.unfinishedman.com/electric-hot-tub-boat-for-ultim... [3] http://www.unfinishedman.com/mercedes-benz-c63-amg-edition-5...

Plenty of irony on that site. I liked the ad for a $300 discount card disguised as another article. Promises to let you live like a "founder" by buying high priced crap from Bonobo at a discount. Very well targeted for the ycombinator crowd.

http://www.unfinishedman.com/founderscard-live-like-a-prince...

This is absolutely fair to point out. In many ways we try and act as "cool finders", and we do post a lot of hilariously expensive gear and gadgets, however... I think it's reasonable that people can still appreciate the tech without plunging themselves into debt trying to acquire it. These (admittedly) frivolous things could be an incentive, or something for people to look forward to for working smartly, if that's what makes them happy.

I don't think any student's credit card is going to be able to take a limited edition C63 AMG though, so probably not the same target audience.

> Life is hard, and it’s most certainly unfair… perhaps more so for our generation that any previous.

Absolutely absurd.

You really think you have it worse than somebody born into slavery? Or worse than a medieval serf?

A large fraction of humans alive right now would look on your lifestyle as extremely privileged.

This kind of statement comes across as pitifully ignorant whining. You actually hurt the cause of fixing real injustices when you fly off into hyperbole like this.

I don't think the author is talking in an absolute sense like "our lives suck harder than ever before". More in a relative sense such as "it's harder to get a good job for life and afford a house than it was for our parents generation".

I do think that "perhaps more so for our generation that any previous" is hyperbole though.

You realize the article focuses on debt in regards to students and young people, right? Yeah, there's a bit of hyperbole, but I think my reference to "toughest... generation... evar..." makes sense in the context of "young people have it pretty shitty right now". Clearly you disagree, so fair enough. :)

At the same time, this type of hyperbole makes it way too easy to dismiss arguments like these as whiny and lacking perspective. It's rhetorically unsound, and it doesn't do its side much in the way of favors.

whiny and lacking perspective

Like everything else young people find persuasive? (That was whiny and hyperbolic, too, because young people like irony.)

We are one of the few generations that can expect to live past 50.

According to Historian David McCullough, the functional literacy rate in 1900 was 11%.

Sure, the article focus on students. But, by historical standards, you are extremely lucky TO BE ABLE to be a student into your early 20s.

By historical standards, we are very privileged. This "toughest generation ever" bit is both naive and sad.

> You really think you have it worse than somebody born into slavery?

You really think we have it better than someone who owned a few dozen slaves, living leisurely on a huge plantation? History has treated some well, and some not so well.

Absolutely yes.

Four reasons off the top of my head:

    1. Dentistry
    2. Antibiotics
    3. Indoor plumbing
    4. Central Air

A person who owned a few dozen slaves and a huge plantation was incredibly rich, high in the top 0.1% of the wealth distribution.

Given the choice of being rich during the age of slavery, or being rich today, I'd prefer today.

Right, that's why "You really think you have it worse than somebody born into slavery?" is a ridiculous statement. Would being a slave in the past be any worse than being a slave today?

Would being a slave in the past be any worse than being a slave today?

Historically, slaves could be (and were) raped or killed by their "owner." When you talk about "slaves" today, are you talking about someone with a low wage? That's not slavery.

Unfortunately, there is still slavery in the 21st century, but that has nothing to do with the people discussed in this article.

Yes, it should say "perhaps more so for our generation than the previous"

Not even that. The good old days are selective memory, it was not better 30 years ago. Period. We shouldn't concede to fantasy to make our own struggle seem more epic.

As always, it depends on what groups and measurements you want to go by. In the United States, median income has been stagnant for 30 years. Young people have been dealing with an awful job market since the recession in 2008.

Seems like advice for a straw man. Author bases the whole diatribe on people he doesn't know around his college town. He presumes that everyone around him carrying gadgetry and nice clothes must be destroying themselves financially to do so, and can barely afford to eat.

While no doubt these people actually do exist, IMO author is really reaching here. This reads like "I'm starter than all these idiots".

While you're correct about not generalizing, the number of students who are in debt is enormous[1]. Everyone wants to be amazingly educated with all the latest awesome gadgets, and unfortunately, it really is causing a lot of problems for society. The author really is doing a good job for himself if he is saving up some money and getting out of debt.

We'll see how it goes...

[1] http://www.asa.org/policy/resources/stats/default.aspx

I wonder if taking out a student loan puts people in a mindset where they are more willing to take on debt?

If you're already borrowing some thousands of $ for an education on the basis that you will "make it back when I graduate" what's a few more hundred $ for an iphone?

That was my mindset when, after college, I got my first credit cards. What's another thousand bucks on top of 30k?

"Life is hard, and it’s most certainly unfair… perhaps more so for our generation than any previous."

Uhm, have you ever heard of World War II? I'm pretty sure the MacBook-toting hipsters you describe have a slightly easier life than those people had to serve in Vietnam or World War II.

I considered pointing this out, and the great depression too. I can't say (and didn't say) that our generation is definitely harder off (I wasn't born during the previously stated time periods), however... from everything I've seen, youth today are in for a really, really shitty time. Perhaps saying "worse than its been in a long, long time" would have been more balanced.

Easy access to debt isn't really a harbinger of a really, really shitty time.

If anything, the fact that the debt 'crisis' is global will end up making student loans easy(er) to repay (because inflation).

It's less the easy access to debt that's the problem, but the requirement of going into debt for a chance to not be in debt. For a very significant portion of people, they only chance at a decent job is college - there really aren't that many decent jobs available for the "no degree" people. Of course the degree isn't a guarantee of a job, just a prerequisite. And of course most people can't just up and pay for college, so the debt load is a becomes part of that prerequisite.

So the requirement of debt for a chance, is probably a harbinger of a really, really shitty time.

(NOTE: please... no "but I am different in w.r.t. that stuff" posts... the terms "many", "significant portion", and "most" mean some aren't in that category, but that doesn't change the statistics).

Yes, college is a poor, expensive employability filter.

Still, it hardly takes a $50,000 psychology degree (people just looking for a credential should be fine with a state school) to get a job in a high tech factory, a $10,000 or $15,000 technology certificate is a lot more sensible.

And I don't mean to argue that these choices are easy or that it is great that people face them, but going $150,000 into debt is not the only path out there.

At least if you died during WWII you were done. Now you can volunteer to rack up $200k+ in debt that will take you 10-20 (or more) years to pay off. It's not slavery in that it never ends but many students end up being very nearly indentured servants for a long time. Which is worse, death or debt "slavery?"

What's the criteria for downvoting? I don't get it.

I hadn't downvoted you (yet), but you seem to be suggesting an equivalence between:

i) Dying while fighting in trench warfare

ii) Paying back money loaned to you for your education (presumably, while living in a comparably safe and climate controlled apartment)

It's fine to say things people disagree with, but this is just non-sense.

If I'd been a soldier soldier deployed in battle, or if I'd lost a family member in battle, I would find your comment one of the more offensive things I've ever seen on HN.

WWII wasn't trench warfare, that was WWI.

I guess what I meant was "at least it was over quick" meaning that you died and that was the end of it. I'm not saying that paying back a loan is definitely equivalent to dying, but there are plenty of people killing themselves over debt that they cannot escape.

The problem in my mind is not that it was loaned to people to pursue their education (that's good!) but that it was loaned to them with no regard for their ability to pay it back. $200k for a finance degree or engineering or something like that with a reasonable chance of paying it off is good. But $200k loaned to someone to get a bachelors in sociology is not a good bet since they have little prospect of paying it off. And no recourse once they find out how stupid they've been.

In WWII people made tremendous sacrifices for the good of the country and quite possibly freedom world-wide. That's incredibly noble. The leaders who had to make tough choices did so knowing that they would be sending many people to their deaths and (hopefully) took that responsibility seriously.

I doubt many private university presidents really truly care how many lives they're ruining by allowing totally egregious interest rates.

EDIT: debt driven suicide on google pulls a lot of hits: http://www.google.com/search?q=debt+driven+suicide&oq=de...

EDIT2: Thanks for at least telling me why you think I'm an insensitive clod. I appreciate it.

Take the children of the great depression. Born in poverty then conscripted into the military for ww2. Those still alive raise their children in the shadow of imminent nuclear annihilation. Then have their children conscripted for Vietnam.

Oh and if they managed to avoid ww2 they get to spent a few years in Korea.

I wanted to input that I as a student am basically the opposite of what this article is talking about. I'm from West-Europe so maybe that's a huge factor.

I spend less than €100 a month. I live with my parents, and currently doing a Masters in the best uni of my country, which costs around €550 for a year. I take the train to class everyday which is about 1 hour, but a train subscription costs me €80 for 3 months. A car is a luxury here and in my opinion, useless if you live in a city.

I don't have any debt whatsoever and have never seen why I should go into debt. I almost never spend on anything not necessary. heck sometimes I wonder WHY I don't buy more things. My computer is 5+ years old and still in good shape, so are most of my clothes, although I do buy new stuff every year.

If I do buy a gadget like my smartphone, I save for it first, I don't even have a credit card. I have never bought things and paid them after. Interest rates are the devil. Own your assets, not the other way around.

Stop spending so much.

Western europeans don't all have it this good. For example in London the train fare for an hour journey each way might be more like 700 pounds per quarter (roughly 15 times your own). There are some student discounts but they don't nearly make up that difference.

But if people stop buying crap won't the crap making and marketing companies stop hiring so many of these college grads and instead of buying iphones they can't afford they now have to buy food they can't afford?

You gotta love that argument eh? It's kind of like borrowing money from a bank so that you can hire yourself to do useless work until you collapse under the increasingly large interest payments.

You have to right? Because if you don't borrow money to pay yourself to do useless stuff, well then you can't afford to eat... At least this way you're buying some time to figure out a way to get someone else to borrow money and pay you.

"But if people stop throwing rocks to break windows, how will the window makers make a living?"

In this case the window makers are probably web startups. If college kids weren't buying all these iphones what would be the value of geolocated picture dating services or whatever?

It's interesting to hear what people consider window breaking and window making. Even in the canonical example of lawyers (who only "split the pie"), some provide a social good by defending innocent people against what some people consider a corrupt body of laws.

I recently finished reading John Brunner's "Shockwave Rider" and found the taxation proposal near the end intriguing, if a bit alien. Tax rates are adjusted based on scoring of profession on three axes: training/talent, drawbacks (like unpredictable hours and dirty working conditions), and social indispensability. On all three axes, advertisers would score a zero, thereby qualifying for a 90% tax rate. I wonder where people would score people who work in a lot of these startups? I suppose it would depend heavily on what the startup was doing.

If you start following the consequences of the existence of any profession or product to the logical conclusion you can come up with some surprising things. Which is probably why such a tax scheme would be fairly unworkable in practice and would incentivise industries to introduce unnecessary training or overcomplicate their work.

In the case of web startups you can go from "college students all have smartphones so let's build a social network for them to share their most banal thoughts" to "almost everyone in the US will have a smartphone within 5 years and a social networking profile, how can we use this information to provide more efficient public services?". So frivolous spending can accidently create opportunity for much more valuable work.

The article hardly offers any new insight. Its just a rant on how the author perceives most young people are spending their money on 'useless crap' and exhorts them not to do so.

Move on people.

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