Growing Up Means More Money But Less Fun
Our first stab at Grown-Up conversation took place in the summer of 2008, after my boyfriend graduated with his Ph.D from Berkeley. We picked out his first real suit—a terrible, baggy, navy blue thing—and I sent him off to his first job interview, which is a funny thing to do and say about someone who has had facial hair for over a decade.
The unofficial offer came back with flattering speed. Before the call with the official offer came, we spent a few minutes trying to decide what salary he should take—oddly enough, without consulting Google. Because that is the kind of naïve idiots we were. “$80,000?” I asked.
“I’ll ask for $90,000, but settle for $85,” he decided. This was the absolute biggest number we could think of. The kind of people who did the kind of things we did for a living—research and write—toiled in cluttered labs and crowded apartments all over Berkeley and San Francisco for a pittance, waiting to hit it big with a VC or the Nobel Prize. Only old people earned this kind of money! Or, like, Mark Zuckerberg.
So it’s understandable that when the initial offer came back, it blew our tiny little minds. This was the kind of number that applied to the population of Caribbean islands, or the square footage of Angelina Jolie’s French chateau. Not a number that would be on a real check, deposited in a real bank account, that either of us could access at any time.
Within two months, we gleefully packed our U-Haul and trekked to Portland, Oregon, a serene, soggy little city where we set about acquiring all those trappings of maturity—two dogs, a little red house, and a marriage certificate, in that order.
Before I got married, I had this belief (garnered mainly from old country songs and the opening montage of the movie Up) that being married isn’t really that expensive.
After all, you’re operating as a single efficient machine. No paying separate rent (and our mortgage is only $600 a month, anyway). Neither of us watches TV, so we don’t have cable, or even a Hulu Plus account. It’s easier and more efficient to shop and cook for two people when one of them (me) lives mainly off Food for Rabbits (just cook Food for Rabbits and bake a chicken on the side).
Another thing that’s saved us some money is that we’ve found every time one of us wants to buy something from a joint account, there’s someone holding you accountable. The knowledge that someone else would see the line item “galaxy print silk-screened screaming gorilla face T-shirt dress” on our PayPal account was enough to hold me in check. At least, until he came back in from the garage and enthusiastically seconded it.
Making the kind of money we make now, in a two-income household, I would expect that a certain amount of lifestyle creep would become inevitable. Not the Kardashian, Louboutin, half-drunk bottle of warm Cristal kind of creep, but maybe I’d start buying a better brand of facial moisturizer. Or even clothes that weren’t from Goodwill! Instead, I found that while we ourselves didn’t change when we get married, the world and its expectations did.
For example:
1. You’re a different person to the government. My husband deferred his student loans while he was in grad school. When he graduated, they came back with a vengeance, of the extreme, tuchus-chomping variety.
2. No one expects a single 23-year-old, making survival wages in an expensive city, to buy Christmas presents for all thirty of her cousins between the ages of zero and twenty. But a married matron of 27, with a husband who makes a decent salary? Hella payback for all those years and all those $10 Barnes & Noble gift cards. My mom presented me with my Christmas shopping list, practically the day after the wedding. Which was in August. That was thoughtful of her, because it gave me time to make cookies to send to all my grand-uncles and grand-aunts, as well.
3. We looked at real estate listings for over a year, until we settled on a miniscule (1,000 square feet) fixer-upper in a not-so-fashionable part of Portland. It seemed like the jackpot. But in a revelation that is so tired that it is a cliché, I had no idea that even small repairs—putting up a fence; replacing peeling shingles—add up. The inspector didn’t tell us the roof needed to be replaced. Are those carpenter ants, or termites?
4. Travel was the kicker. No one expects a grad student and a freelance writer to travel to exotic locations. But a married couple with a large income? The +1s to destination weddings started rolling in. Where before we organized and paid for our travel separately, now we have to buy two plane tickets instead of one wherever we go.
We’re lucky to both have large, loving families and a network of close, long-time friends, as well as the means to see them. But beyond our social obligations, we are subject to other pressures. Last week, a friend tried repeatedly to persuade us to buy last-minute flights to Colorado to go to a weeklong music festival with him. He seemed puzzled when I said we didn’t have the cash, and might even have to work. How could we not have the cash? Look, I’m pretty sure that even Beyoncé uses Kayak.com occasionally.
Being married is awesome and we should really let gay people just do it already. My new puppy still makes little nursing sounds when she sleeps, which is the cutest. And I have someone to help me do my taxes, instead of bringing out a shoebox of receipts every March and weeping. There are a lot of great things about growing up.
But the truth is that we live just as frugally as we did when we were making a quarter of what we are now. All that money—that once seemingly limitless number—goes towards home renovations paying off loans, putting away towards retirement heartworm medicine for the dogs, and new contact lenses. I still bike to the grocery store, through a neighborhood that has the occasional drive-by shooting. As I approach 30, I puzzle constantly over how anyone our age could conceivably (pun intended) afford a kid.
There is a certain cachet to being young and dirt poor—maybe a certain kind of young and poor, in a specific place. In San Francisco, I skateboarded to work and defied death by riding on my boyfriend’s bike handlebars on our way to meet people in scuzzy bars in the Mission. We drank beer in cans while playing Halo until 2 a.m. and woke up at 5 a.m. to surf before going to work at nine. It was crazy and it was heaven, mainly because at the time it seemed so fleeting.
Someday we’d be grown up, and this would be gone, and we lived our nostalgia as it was happening. Relative poverty was…awesome. Living off beans and rice for a week ruled. It didn’t matter that so much of life was fraught with anxiety and we ran around the tollbooths to cross the Bay Bridge hunting for dropped quarters so we could pay the fare. The day would come where we wouldn’t have to worry about stupid shit like this, and it was coming way too soon.
And then it happened, and nothing changed but the important part: It stopped being so much fun. That’s the illusion that making a lot of money gives you. It’s a spell—if it buys you nothing else, money will buy you peace of mind. But it is as that revered North American poet Biggie Smalls said: “Mo money, mo problems.” Or maybe the same amount of problems, only they look different once you realize they’re never going away.
Adrienne So lives in Portland, Oregon and writes about beer and gear for money. When not watching YouTube videos of dancing baby pygmy goats, she can usually be found mountain biking or combating slug armies in her garden.
I don’t know – a lot of this seemed right, but some of it was pretty disingenuous. I mean, how can you say that you’re living just as frugally as before if you can afford to attend multiple destination weddings or be generous around the holidays? You aren’t living just as frugally as before – you’re just spending differently and not saving any more than you were before. Complaining that you have new social obligations or pressures just feels a bit like you don’t genuinely recognize the privilege that’s come along with the new salary. :/
@Quinn A@twitter She was pretty clearly talking about her day-to-day expenses when she spoke of living frugally. In fact, her entire point was that while her day-to-day expenses have remained low, her obligatory expenses have become higher. I’m not sure how this makes her disingenuous. This whole website is about the way people experience their money; her experience is that when she and her husband had more money, they didn’t raise their lifestyle to match their income – they simply had more places where they were expected to spend money. Your complaint here seems a lot like, “Well, you shouldn’t feel that way, because of the starving people in the world. Your experience is now invalid.”
@Maeve No, that’s not what I meant at all. I’m saying that she HAS raised her lifestyle to match her income – she couldn’t afford to travel like that or be that generous before, and now she can.
My budget for food/entertainment/clothing/etc isn’t much higher now than it was in college. But it would be disingenous for me to pretend that my lifestyle hasn’t improved – I’m paying twice as much for housing, because I now own a condo in a building with a pool. I’m paying four times as much for transportation, because I now own a brand-new car and pay for insurance on said vehicle.
I’m not trying to invalidate her experience by saying that other people have it worse so stop complaining; I’m saying that it seems a bit silly to say that they’re not having more fun if they’re doing a lot of traveling, or that their lives haven’t improved if they own a home that they presumably like.
@Quinn A@twitter But that’s assuming that traveling for weddings and the like is automatically fun, or at the very least more fun than bumming around with no money and no responsibilities. Which, speaking as someone who swings between extremes fairly frequently, isn’t necessarily the case. I’ve had a miserable time while traveling and spending lots of money, and I’ve had a gorgeous time while not knowing how to pay the rent but staying up late and having good conversations with other friends in the same boat. And vice versa.
It doesn’t seem like she’s trying to say life hasn’t improved, is my point. She’s saying that she expected it to be all fun and games, and it turns out it isn’t, it’s the same highs and lows as not having money, just for different reasons. And this was surprising to her, because she had thought getting married would somehow be easier, moneywise.
@Maeve Well, an experience might not turn out to be as good (or as bad) as you expected. But if you have the opportunity to go to Paris or Hawaii or wherever your loved one is getting married, and you think “hey, that sounds like more fun than buying better moisturizer or more expensive clothes” and so you do it…how is that still living frugally? How is that life not being easier, moneywise? How is that not “all fun and games”, really? Yes, you might get miserably sick while in Hawaii or something, but…dude, you got to go to Hawaii.
As a person who has had to refuse to travel for two weddings, I can tell you: they are not actually obligations! They are a choice. And yes, you may feel guilty about not making that choice, but they’re still a choice. The author isn’t recognizing that in the article, and that’s why it struck me as disingenuous.
@Quinn A@twitter I do see your point, I was just surprised by the level of upset in the reaction overall. I agree that it is a choice to acquiesce to those obligations, but her point here seems to be more that there’s pressure on you to spend money when everyone knows you HAVE money. We all know that people can be assholes about guilting you even when you absolutely can’t afford it, and they can be even worse assholes when they think you can afford it (whether or not you actually can).
I understand your objection to her claim that she’s still living frugally when she can spend on travel and the like, but again, I thought it was pretty clear in the context of the article that she’s talking about the everyday. Like, they’re spending the same amount on food and clothes, that kind of thing. So she’s saying that while her everyday expenses are the same, she’s surprised that their income seems to get sucked up by all these other obligations.
To your “Hawaii is fun, hush up about any inconvenience you may have experienced” note – I mean, it’s a bit like telling your friend that she should be grateful to have marital problems because at least she’s married. (Or, you know, insert Thing You Actually Desire here.) Just because she’s more fortunate in one area doesn’t mean there are no unhappy moments, or that those unhappy moments aren’t valid.
Would have liked to see more discussion of how poverty is something that many people, due to lack of access to education among many other factors, are forced to live with forever. They can’t grow out of it like you and your husband. There’s just something about “living off of beans and rice for a week ruled” that’s incredibly irritating when you consider how many people live, and will live, forever like that.
I won’t disagree that you can have the time of your life while broke. But this article seemed really flip, like poverty is a wacky thing you do for a while but then when you (necessarily
) get rich, you miss it. Man I’m so bummed out right now.
@EvelynGarcia I don’t think it’s really meant to be flip – actually as I read it, I remembered my own childhood. My parents were immigrants and we were poor when I was a kid (I think at the time – the three of us were living on about $15,000 a year, maybe). But even now my parents and I talk about it sometimes with rose-colored glasses and a LOT of nostalgia – like the times when my parents would decide to “splurge” and we’d go out to a restaurant – a buffet – for the first time in months and just gorge ourselves. Or when my mom, who worked as a waitress, would bring home leftovers and it’d be like Christmas. (Why are all my fond memories food-related?).
Anyway, would we go back? I don’t think so, for every fun memory, there are (repressed) dozens more of stress about money, not having enough, not having anything. But do we miss it sometimes? Definitely.
Jeez, you guys. Not every article on this website needs to talk in-depth about economic issues on a global scale. It’s about how people experience their money, and just because their experience is not your experience doesn’t mean you should flip out because they’re not in your shoes.
She’s describing what changed, and saying that sometimes she does feel nostalgic for the times she had no money but also few obligations, and what on earth is wrong with that?
Don’t be mad at someone for being in a different place than you are and trying to describe it to you. If you want your perspective told, then tell it – don’t get mad at her for not telling it for you. I’m sure the Billfold takes submissions.
@Maeve It’s not about addressing “issues on a global scale.” Rather, recognizing privilege. That doesn’t mean that the article isn’t relatable, but just because you identify with it doesn’t mean a) it’s not insensitive, and b) that commenters were “mad at” her for being in a difference place. It’s not the location, it’s the awareness of where that location is in relation to others. The whole point of the BIllfold is not to take tall tales at their face, and the “you’ll grow out of poverty” myth is applicable only to a small segment of society. That bears noting in any article.
@Not social, media.@twitter Exactly. She is entitled to her experience but there is a difference between describing how expenses can often rise to meet your current income and saying that things are rough now that family sends a litany of Christmas demands (???)
@Not social, media.@twitter @EvelynGarcia I think where I’m seeing a disconnect here is simply that I don’t find her saying oh-how-horrible life is now that she has money. She’s saying she expected to have more income to play with, and for her standard of living to be higher on a day to day basis, and that wasn’t what happened, because of these other things she didn’t factor in.
Disregarding the Christmas demands and the wedding expenses and so on isn’t fair, is my point. A good friend of mine recently had four weddings to attend in a month, the kind of weddings you don’t turn down – her father, two close friends, and her godmother. She wound up spending over $10,000 in plane tickets, travel expenses, and any obligatory clothes (she was a bridesmaid in some of them). I think we can all agree that $10,000 is nothing to scoff at even if your income is in the nice comfortable zone.
Christmas is a similar problem. It’s all very well to scoff at that when you’re only expected to do a token gift or a card, but when you reach a certain income level, suddenly your aunts and uncles start wondering why they don’t give a present, and since these are adults, you need to get adult-level presents, and those are going to run you $100 or so apiece (at the least). This is not an insignificant expense, and pooh-poohing it because it’s not something that’s expected of you currently seems unkind.
I’m also not certain where you’re getting this whole “you’ll grow out of poverty” thing. She did; she’s not saying you will. This is what happened to her. Seeing is as “since it happened to me, it’ll happen to everyone” is reading things into this article that simply aren’t there.
I’m not meaning to get this up in arms about it, it just seemed like a lot of vitriol for a woman who doesn’t seem like she’s gloating about her wealth or even taking it for granted – just surprised that her expectations of marriage/money and the reality didn’t match up.
@Maeve Agreed, this was an anecdotal story – this happened to her, these were expectations, that was the mismatch. If we caveated everything we wrote so that it was politically correct and no one would get hurt over it – well, that’d be a really long piece.
Is she looking at her “poverty” stage through rose colored glasses? Of course. Is she a little glib about the rice and beans? Certainly. But this is just one article, out of many, and certainly doesn’t speak for the voice of the world or even of the Billfold.
@lalaland Exactly. This may be what I find most sad – that she’s essentially saying that she dreamed everything would be easy when she finally did have money, and now that she does, she’s realizing that fantasy was a fantasy. And everyone who is still in that not-making-much-money stage is seeming to say, “Shut up, I don’t want to hear it, of course life is better when you have money, that’s my fantasy and stop saying it’s not true.”
@Maeve I think it’s completely legitimate to give a reality check that money isn’t a way out of every situation; that your expenses often rise commensurate with your income, and that social obligations and pressures changes as you’re making more money. But at the same time, I think the writer has conflated poverty with youth/carefreeness a bit, and created a cause/effect that isn’t there: “Living off beans and rice for a week ruled. It didn’t matter that so much of life was fraught with anxiety and we ran around the tollbooths to cross the Bay Bridge hunting for dropped quarters so we could pay the fare.”
I’m willing to bet that what ruled was more being young, feeling that it didn’t matter, not having the responsibilities of a mortgage payment or a marriage or a dog or a 401(k). Plenty of people get the added pressures and responsibilities without the vastly increased salary, and I’m sure they view their youth through rose-colored glasses, too.
And if her husband was making six figures in 2008 — and it sounds like they rode out the recession more or less unscathed — they are doing very, very well. Not acknowledging your relative good fortune in a piece like this is at best oblivious, if not tone-deaf. I for one would rather she more explicitly framed it as “when we were young and eating rice and beans we thought more money would make us carefree, when what we didn’t realize was that we were carefree already.”
Because when you’re actually hunting for quarters to buy lunch/pay the tolls? It sucks. Only in retrospect is it a Hilarious Adventure, because you know it turned out OK.
@Maeve Stop making assumptions about people’s economic status based off your projections. I happen to be squarely in my “making-much-money” stage. I’m not telling the author to “shut up” and it has nothing to do with whether life is better or not when you start making money. Again, it has to do with addressing privilege, which apparently is “too politically correct” for some people to recognize as important. This is why economic issues in our country are so deeply fucked up.
@Emma Peel See, this I would completely agree with. I’m not trying to defend the author’s equating poverty with fun/youthful times, I was just surprised at all the vitriol surrounding the notion that you might actually still have money problems even when you have money.
I think you’re right regarding the tone, too. My interpretation is more that she sees how rose-colored those memories are, but you’re right, the way she wrote it can definitely come off as flip and insensitive, and that might be the reason there’s such a negative reaction about it.
@Emma Peel Or to put it a lot more harshly, as Gawker did (brilliantly):
“Money pays for the costs of life. That is what money does. You can’t fucking argue that, hey, your money doesn’t go that far after you’ve already spent it. You used it! Paying taxes and paying bills and paying the mortgage and putting money in a retirement fund and going out to dinner are the things that money gets you. You asshole. Just because you didn’t blow it all on jewelry, caviar, and cocaine doesn’t mean you didn’t get anything out of it. This argument is like a man eating a hearty meal, licking his plate clean, then turning to a starving person and saying, “Look, we’re in the same boat. My plate is empty too!”"
@Not social, media.@twitter Sigh. I wasn’t trying to imply that everyone who disagreed with this article was in a certain economic bracket, and I apologize if it came off that way. I’m only objecting to the notion that it’s inherently wrong/disingenous/rude/whatever to not constantly apologize for one’s privileged status in an article about one’s experience of one’s own life, and that any observations one might have on that life are therefore invalid.
@Emma Peel Hee! Yes. Very true. I suppose I’m feeling more empathetic toward the author because she’s making choices that seem reasonable to expect, like paying a mortgage or bending to family obligations, rather than the above hookers-and-blow. But you’re right! It’s all choices, and the fact that you don’t like the consequences of your choices isn’t an inherent problem with society.
And with that, I may have come full circle on my opinion of this article. Logical arguments may actually change minds. I need . . . I need to sit down.
@Emma Peel Thank you. This article brilliantly states what goes through my head every fucking time I hear someone whine about how they thought they’d feel richer by the time they made [insert X figure that is multiple times higher than median household income here].
@all Good thread. Here’s how I saw this piece: Suddenly having a lot of money doesn’t mean you suddenly gain skills to manage it or even talk about it sensitively. It’s interesting that that’s kind of the big lesson of the Billfold every day, whether intentionally or not — we collectively lack a vocabulary to talk about our money without offending others or getting defensive. (Except Mike Dang.)
@Maeve what I got out of the article is that the author thought the additional income would all be no-strings-attached discretionary income. And yes, while it is absolutely a choice to attend weddings and give generously, the cost of choosing alternatively may be very very expensive. When I graduated from school (and got a FT job), my relatives expected that my generosity should match my newfound status as an adult. Not one person considered that I was completely economically self-sufficient single person (I had to – one parent had just died, the other was newly downsized) while no one else in the entire group was financially self-sufficient at that age or income level. When I attempted to have the frank talk about money, it was met with: ‘sucks to be you – we never had to pay rent/food/car at your age/income’. It was a very tough lesson to learn how many “family” relationships were dependent on a tradition of gift-giving.
I am totally in this place, right now. In graduate school I dreamed of the high life I would be living if I made $25k a year. Now just a few years out, I make much more than that, but I feel like my day-to-day spending is still pretty much the same as in graduate school. That’s because of a mortgage, house repairs, emergency funds, student loan payments, etc. It’s not as fun as I thought it would be when dreaming about no longer being a poor student just 3 years ago!
“… I had this belief … that being married isn’t really that expensive.”
Being married, or rather having one’s marriage recognized by the federal government, saves a lot of people a whole lot of money over the course of their lifetimes, probably including the author.
I don’t think you’re necessarily saying this with your line about not being able to conceive how people can afford kids, but it stuck with a friend of mine as we discussed this article. Her words: ” I HATE the idea that anyone thinks you need to be rich to think of having a kid. It further entrenchs the general shift in society that basically says only the wealthy are capable of being good parents, and everyone else is neglectful by way of finances. I mean, yes, you have to have some money but the idea that people making over $100000 a year think that children are out of reach is horrifying.” Thoughts? I want to have kids, and I don’t want to be irresponsible, but if I waited until I was a millionaire to have kids, it would never. Ever. Happen.
@gidge I don’t think I’ve encountered the perception that “only the wealthy are capable of being good parents.” It’s more that the price of childcare and other necessities (and later, college tuition) is an enormous and unavoidable financial burden for many people. http://www.businessinsider.com/how-much-it-costs-to-raise-a-family-in-the-us-2012-6
@elysian fields yeah, I definitely think that sensibly considering the costs of having a child is an important step in the family planning process. And it is hella expensive. But what is an “okay” amount to have a kid? What kind of lifestyle do you need to build for your kid, and how much does that have to do with what you can afford to give them? I think my friend’s point was more that people often talk about poor (and young) parents almost automatically being bad parents, which maybe they are, maybe they aren’t – there’s no amount of money that necessarily needs to be the benchmark for “Go – It’s Baby Time!”
@gidge My parents raised six kids and we were always had what we needed even if we didn’t always have what we wanted. I asked my dad once if they ever planned to have so many kids versus money and he said, It’ll never be the right time and you’ll never have enough money. Period. I figure if they make it work, so can I, even if I’m not pulling in six figures a year.
@KPeeps The funny thing is this writer’s husband makes six figures, their mortgage is only $600, and they don’t even have cable — she could save the full average cost of raising a kid ($250k? Something like that) in five financially humbling years.
@gidge Well, I do see your point that no, parenthood should not be reserved for rich people only, but I get pretty annoyed when people give me the ol’ “You’ll never be ready! You’ll never have enough money! Have a baby whenever! Cowabunga!” song and dance. To me, it’s like saying, “Hey, man! You don’t need money to go on vacation. You can hitchhike, and live by your wits.” It may be factually true, but it is pretty inappropriate advice for a lot of people in this time and place. I don’t think most people who are deferring having kids for financial reasons are doing it so they can scrape up enough money for polo ponies and infant violin lessons. They are doing it because of stuff like loss of income from unpaid leave, childcare expenses, and wanting to have a somewhat less fragile living situation if they’re going to make some baby be a part of it. I’ve been in a stage of painfully wanting kids for a couple of years now, and yeah, it may “never” be the right time, but that doesn’t actually mean that it’s always the right time.
Maybe I’m just a misanthrope, but I have literally never been invited to a destination wedding? And don’t know anyone who would even have one? Also, I think that when people plan those destination weddings it’s with the expectation that many guests simply won’t be able to afford it.
I guess I don’t really understand the attitude of “well, I’ve been invited to a wedding that will cost me thousands of dollars for one day of celebrating, but I don’t have a choice! Have to go!” If it’s your mother’s wedding, sure. But friends from college? Pretty sure they’ll 100% understand if you graciously decline and send a nice (but still way less expensive than plane tickets/hotel) gift.
@Sarah H. Got invited to destination wedding – had to turn it down, as it would cost >7% of our gross household income. They haven’t contacted us since, as far as I know.
Wait, we’re supposed to buy presents and shit for the grownups now? Holy smokes, no wonder my husband’s extended family thinks I’m weird. We still act like clueless youngs.
Awkward…
@AnnieNilsson My extended family subscribes to the “only buying gifts for immediate family” rule, so the only people I need to worry about at the holidays are my sister, my father, and my mother. I also buy small gifts for close friends, but the rest of the family doesn’t exchange. And I’m thankful for that.
So what the author is saying is “my salary isn’t really that much once I spend it.” I have the same problem!
Anyway, what the author is describing is actually a familiar phenomenon – most people inflate their living expenses when their income increases, so they never really get to “feel” like they have more money because they’re spending it on “obligatory” purchases like new roofs. Of course, the author does have more money now than she did in her youth, and if she had chosen to rent rather than buy or said no to the ludicrous expectation that she attend destination weddings or purchase more extravagant Christmas gifts, she might feel that way. She’s experiencing that lifestyle creep – it’s just not the one she envisioned for herself. Basically: choices.
And if I hear one more person talk about how “miniscule” 1000 square feet is I’m going to scream.
@MuffyStJohn This. Yes. And I think we’ve probably all done that thing where we wake up one morning and think, “I made choices to get me to this point, but I couldn’t have made other choices, could I? Maybe I could? Fuck it, life is just really hard and it has nothing to do with my choices and man, I need a beer.”
@MuffyStJohn Exactly. I thought the purpose of this article was to identify, or recognize, the prevalence of lifestyle inflation. Almost everyone, regardless of your income, ends up spending most of it. As your income goes up, your money gets spent on other/more things.
Also, budgets feel the most squeezed when you’re starting out. Most people have student debts, maybe some credit card debt from their student days, and are paying the highest amounts on their mortgages. (By highest amounts, I mean your payments are going almost exclusively to interest and not to principal.) So, even if you’ve started making the most money ever with your first “real” job, it feels like you’re still broke.
@Maeve I kind of want to get drunk and then get your comment tattooed on my hip, but I’m sure that would open some sort of wormhole or something
@MuffyStJohn While I agree 100% that expectation of extravagant gifts and wedding attendance is ludicrous, the consequence of not giving into such demands may be incredibly expensive if you value familial harmony.
Geez, I never realized how…awesome…relative poverty could be…?
I just thought this was kind of boring. “life is different now that I’m older, but I’m going to equate it with having more money” I mean, you can still do those things that you did when you were poor. It’s not poverty that’s making you boring, it’s age, and well, you. Perhaps that’s what getting married relatively early does.
I feel like it shouldn’t be so expensive to maintain relationships with friends and family! I don’t mean to be judgy mcjudgy but this is how people with high incomes end up in debt/broke. Just because you have the means doesn’t mean you should. I know what my parents and sister make per year, yet I don’t “expect” that their gifts reflect that income level. To be honest, I don’t expect much in terms of gifts anyway because I can buy what I want with my own money. It really is the thought that counts. I would be happy with just a card even if said person was a millionaire. I mean, why should I expect that person to spend their money on me? I don’t know, I am cranky this afternoon and this really irks me.
@Darkest_of_Dawn Or what’s wrong with sending a note in your card that says you made a donation to some charity in honor of all your loved ones this year, love us, happy holidays? I don’t expect Stuff from my extended family, that’s absurd.
This was awesome. Articles like this make me love the fucking internet.
@DON I guess now that I read all these comments I should add that I really enjoyed this article because of something my dad said to me when I was 17. I was working two jobs and making maybe 200 dollars a week while in high school. He said “This is the richest you’re ever going to be. Enjoy it.” And as I sit here now, in a cubicle where I make a decent salary, but am faced with Adult Expenses, I know he was right, and I’m very nostalgic of the trips 3 towns north with my friends to a watering hole with a cliff to jump off of. That was a big deal back then because we needed to put 15 dollars worth of gas in the car and buy pot for a joint. With my two jobs I could do that and still save money for college. Now I eat rice and beans because it’s my best friends birthday next week and I want to be able to have some drinks with him on the big day.
This is interesting to me, because I guess I had exactly the opposite experience when I went from being flat broke to having a grown-up job. (It sounds like my grown-up job pays a lot less than Adrienne’s husband’s, though, which may be part of the difference.) It’s true that I’m still living pretty frugally, but I have experienced a massive improvement in my quality of life. It has to do with not facing constant, nagging worry about money. It’s true that a lot of my salary goes to my emergency fund, but that means that I have an emergency fund, and therefore I don’t stay up nights fretting about what will happen if there’s an emergency. Having a measure of security is a huge relief. It’s much more important to me than not having to check my bank balance before I buy a new shower curtain.
On the other hand, I had some responsibilities before, and I still don’t earn the kind of income that would allow me to go to destination weddings, get Christmas presents for hundreds of relatives, or buy a 1000 square foot fixer-upper. So maybe I’m just comparing apples to oranges.
First world problems are the worst, right?
It is hard to find a balance. My life is definitely easier now than it was when I graduated 17 years ago, but there’s no way I could have my current job and keep the same expenses I had then.
Mostly it’s wardrobe and personal-care related. When I dispatched tow trucks on the night shift in Los Angeles jeans and a t-shirt were fine. Now I work for an uber-corporate tech giant, and while I’m in engineering and I don’t need to wear suits or pantyhose, I still need to dress a lot better than I did then if I want to be respected/promoted within the company. I travel quite a bit internationally for work now as well, and I was floored by what it cost to outfit myself for those trips the first time I took them. I live near San Francisco – mild weather, rain is rare. Week in Moscow in early April? Had to buy a parka, rain boots, a couple of heavy sweaters, wool socks, scarf, gloves. Got home, and turned around for a week in India at the end of May. 100+ degrees, insane humidity, and mosquitoes from hell. My warm weather clothes for CA are not culturally appropriate. Women in India bare midriff and arms, but not legs, cleavage, or shoulders, and even in very westernized hotels and conference centers the AC often doesn’t drop below 80 because of infrastructure issues. I’m there repping my company, I won’t be sent back if I don’t look professional and appropriate. In December this year, I’ll very likely be going directly from Beijing (brrr) to Sao Paolo (summer) in the same trip.
First world problems? Definitely. Realities of living my life and having my job? Yup. Would this all be cheaper and easier to navigate if I was male? YUP. Am I complaining? No. But it does cost more to maintain this level of income, regardless of what my house/car/entertainment bills look like.
And nobody has gotten a christmas present from me in 15 years, (nor have I received any, my family has an agreement, instigated by me) and I’ve never been to a destination wedding. I did fly to Florida to be maid of honor in my sister’s wedding a few years ago, but she lives there. Does that count?
Destination weddings – when did they become the opposite of “We’re having this far away, please don’t come” to “I want all my family and friends to go into debt to please me!” You go far away to get married to escape your family (and friends, I don’t know your life). It is is shitty to expect people to travel for you.
/feelings
my only beef is the idea that making a good wage is related to being “an adult.” There is a scary implication there… the implication that everyone has the opportunity to make a good wage, or even a living wage, and that not being able to make ends meet is an exercise in immaturity. Not only is this simply not true, but rings of a lot of dangerous ideas that have floated around in our society for time immemorial.
@E. Is the American Dream that dangerous an idea?
@DON In the sense that everyone can expect to achieve it, sure it is.
If anyone knows about the American Dream, it’s Don Draper.
I hear ya. The thing about being a couple is that expenses, especially travel, may look fine for a single person but double them and it’s a major ouch.
Example: I just ran the numbers for an extended round-the-world trip. $20k for one doesn’t sound so bad. $40k for two? Downright intimidating.
@eemusings@twitter Well, it won’t be $40 000 for two. Yes, you’ll still have twice the transportation/food/entertainment costs, but if you’re travelling as a couple you are presumably sharing a room and cutting your accommodations expenses in half. Even if that only cuts your expenses down to, say, $37 000, each of you will be getting the experience for $18 500 instead of $20 000. And that’s out of your combined income, which goes further because you share the costs of – all the things I pay/paid for myself as a single person. A house. Furniture. Appliances. Various utilities. A car, maybe.
Plus, there’s nothing that says you HAVE to bring your partner along on a trip. I had a boyfriend flat out tell me I was not invited on an extended trip to Europe, though I had the money to pay for myself. I’ve gone on three trips without partners who didn’t have the time/money/inclination to go (though admittedly I didn’t live with any of them).
To quote JK Rowling: “Only fools romanticize poverty”. The article was enjoyable until the last paragraph.
I’m sorry, but re: adulthood, you may be doing it wrong. I live as part of a late-20s, married two-income household in Portland, and together we make (apparently) less than the husband in this post. We don’t have student loans, but our mortgage is $1,200 for a small old house that we love and constantly put money into improving.
Day to day, I am so incredibly grateful for how amazing and fun our life is. We work reasonable schedules; we travel (to Europe, sometimes!); we cook delicious, simple food at home; we eat delicious, more complex food at restaurants; we drink masterfully made cocktails, liquors, wines, and beers; we hang out on our patio with a fire and friends and stare at the stars and moon (when we can see them). And we still save money.
We’re lucky that we and our family members are all pretty healthy. We’re lucky that we don’t have many responsibilities except to our work and each other. For people like us (and, I think, the poster), adulthood is what we make of it. If you aren’t having fun, start doing something different.
@raptor41d created an account just to like this comment.
@oh! valencia Thanks. I created an account to make it. :-)
Wow that really sucks about the whole making a jackpot salary in a city with massive unemployment that happens to also be endlessly affordable and having to travel for all those destination weddings and having to pay back your student loans and EVERYTHING.