Reply To: “I’m Angry About My Future Financial Situation”

I’m a little older than you, a middle-of-the-pack millennial. I get it. It often feels like boomers benefited from systems that they then fucked up for the rest of us. Life is really expensive — the cost of education, housing, childcare, etc. are all out of control — and wages haven’t kept up. Many of us listened to the advice of our parents when we were teenagers only to come out the other side with degrees that buried us alive in student loan debt and poor job prospects. Some of the things I’ve heard older folks say about people in my general age range feel beyond out of touch. Some of the advice I’ve gotten about how to find new, better-paying jobs over the years was laughable (e.g., don’t apply for jobs online, print and mail your resume). Anyway, yes, things suck. I can understand why you’d feel so bleak about the future.

But, I think you need to change your mindset a bit. Right now you’re bitter, telling yourself what you’ll never have. And again, I get it, but if you can focus on how you can pivot, you may be happier. Maybe that’s a master’s degree. Maybe that’s looking for a different way or environment to use your current skillset. I don’t know anything about your field so I can’t offer concrete solutions.

I’m someone who went straight from undergrad to grad school. I was making decisions of impact at 21. I hadn’t yet worked full-time, didn’t know much about the “real” world, and if I’m being honest, barely knew myself. I was in large part relying on the advice of others in my decision-making. Things started off shaky in my mid-20s because I had to do what I’m recommending you do — be creative in how I used my background to find a path that felt true to me and paid me enough to live comfortably — but by now, I feel ok about how things have worked out… but I know that if I’d had full-time work and real-world experience before making any kind of post-grad education decisions, I would’ve chosen a different path. I’d have been better equipped to understand realistic employment outcomes. I’d have been better able to research the true ROI of different degree programs now that my blinders off about how universities operate. Now that I am out from under my student loans, I can appreciate why you would want to stay debt-free, but I think with proper research and understanding, some debt to go back to school isn’t the worst thing. (Like yeah, it’d be better if it was very affordable, but that’s not our reality.)