so... in comparison to last summer, i have ample computer access if i am so inclined, but then again, i still hate job searching, i have nothing really to tell my friends about what is happening, and i'm confused. like, super confused. i need to move somewhere, make that next leap, and i just don't know what to do.
i failed that exam. i mean really. a lot. so thats kind of out. i mean, i can study again, but do i want to? i kind of do... i think i'd be pretty good at it... if i ever passed it...
randa and jon joke about me moving to idaho. it sounded pretty ludacris to begin with, but its sounding more appealing. i mean a roommate. no job, but i wasn't goig to have one of those anyway...
whatever, i'm confused. it sucks.
Sunday, July 18, 2004
some healthy liberal stuff from april...
Published on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 by In These Times>>
Cold Turkey>>by Kurt Vonnegut
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America's becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted. Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government. I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it. I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus >said>that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there>was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one. But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who've said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:>>Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it." As long as there is a criminal element, I?m of it.> As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.>>
Doesn?t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public>schools or health insurance for all?>>How about Jesus? Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?>>Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.>>Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.>>Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. >?>>And so on.>>Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or>Dick Cheney stuff.>>For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the>Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten>Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that?s Moses, not>Jesus. I haven?t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the>Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.>>?Blessed are the merciful? in a courtroom? ?Blessed are the peacemakers? in>the Pentagon? Give me a break!>>
-------------------------
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don?t know what>can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.>>But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a>human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy,>lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does ?A.D.? signify? That>commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed>to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious,>they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. >Then>they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest>person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.>>Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?>>No problem. That?s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson,>who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how>Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of >England,>he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.>>Mel Gibson?s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records >will>again be broken.>>One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on>television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
-------------------------
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., >have>to say about the human record so far? He said, ?History is indeed little>more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.?>>The same can be said about this morning?s edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for>Literature in 1957, wrote, ?There is but one truly serious philosophical>problem, and that is suicide.?>>So there?s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an>automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.>>Listen.
All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human>being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and>the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light>Brigade.>>But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in>history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, >except>for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on,>which could make you act crazy, even if you weren?t crazy to begin with.>Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love >and>hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and>girls? basketball.>>
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, >thanks>to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of>human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.>>Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England>generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert >and>Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:>I often think it?s comical> How nature always does contrive> That every boy and every gal> That?s born into the world alive> Is either a little Liberal> Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It?s practically a law of life that you>have to be one or the other? If you aren?t one or the other, you might as>well be a doughnut.>>If some of you still haven?t decided, I?ll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you?re all for murdering>fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give>them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you?re for the poor, you?re a>liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you?re a>conservative.>>What could be simpler?
-------------------------
My government?s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely >abused>and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.>>One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, >and>by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind>a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was >41,>he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop>gargling nose paint.>>Other drunks have seen pink elephants.>>
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented>algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for>nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb?>Try doing long division with Roman numerals.>>We?re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought>Christianity to the Indians, what we now call ?Native Americans.?>> How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.>>So let?s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That?ll teach bin >Laden>a lesson he won?t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.>>
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the>Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say>in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven?t noticed, they?ve>already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and>national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a>perfectly enormous debt that you?ll be asked to repay.>>Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have>disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the >Senate,>the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, >has>forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.>>
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I?ve been a coward about>heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the>edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the>Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn?t seem to do anything to me, >one>way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or>whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple>of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit.>No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things>will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.>>But I?ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine>could match. That was when I got my first driver?s license! Look out, >world,>here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost>all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power>plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs>of all: fossil fuels.>>When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was>already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won?t be>any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn?t like TV news, is it?>>Here?s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a>state of denial, about to face cold turkey.>>And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now>committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we?re hooked >on.
Published on Wednesday, May 12, 2004 by In These Times>>
Cold Turkey>>by Kurt Vonnegut
Many years ago, I was so innocent I still considered it possible that we could become the humane and reasonable America so many members of my generation used to dream of. We dreamed of such an America during the Great Depression, when there were no jobs. And then we fought and often died for that dream during the Second World War, when there was no peace.
But I know now that there is not a chance in hell of America's becoming humane and reasonable. Because power corrupts us, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Human beings are chimpanzees who get crazy drunk on power. By saying that our leaders are power-drunk chimpanzees, am I in danger of wrecking the morale of our soldiers fighting and dying in the Middle East? Their morale, like so many bodies, is already shot to pieces. They are being treated, as I never was, like toys a rich kid got for Christmas.
When you get to my age, if you get to my age, which is 81, and if you have reproduced, you will find yourself asking your own children, who are themselves middle-aged, what life is all about. I have seven kids, four of them adopted. Many of you reading this are probably the same age as my grandchildren. They, like you, are being royally shafted and lied to by our Baby Boomer corporations and government. I put my big question about life to my biological son Mark. Mark is a pediatrician, and author of a memoir, The Eden Express. It is about his crackup, straightjacket and padded cell stuff, from which he recovered sufficiently to graduate from Harvard Medical School. Dr. Vonnegut said this to his doddering old dad: "Father, we are here to help each other get through this thing, whatever it is."
So I pass that on to you. Write it down, and put it in your computer, so you can forget it. I have to say that's a pretty good sound bite, almost as good as, "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." A lot of people think Jesus >said>that, because it is so much the sort of thing Jesus liked to say. But it was actually said by Confucius, a Chinese philosopher, 500 years before there>was that greatest and most humane of human beings, named Jesus Christ.
The Chinese also gave us, via Marco Polo, pasta and the formula for gunpowder. The Chinese were so dumb they only used gunpowder for fireworks. And everybody was so dumb back then that nobody in either hemisphere even knew that there was another one. But back to people, like Confucius and Jesus and my son the doctor, Mark, who've said how we could behave more humanely, and maybe make the world a less painful place. One of my favorites is Eugene Debs, from Terre Haute in my native state of Indiana. Get a load of this:>>Eugene Debs, who died back in 1926, when I was only 4, ran 5 times as the Socialist Party candidate for president, winning 900,000 votes, 6 percent of the popular vote, in 1912, if you can imagine such a ballot. He had this to say while campaigning: "As long as there is a lower class, I am in it." As long as there is a criminal element, I?m of it.> As long as there is a soul in prison, I am not free.>>
Doesn?t anything socialistic make you want to throw up? Like great public>schools or health insurance for all?>>How about Jesus? Sermon on the Mount, the Beatitudes?>>Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the Earth.>>Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.>>Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God. >?>>And so on.>>Not exactly planks in a Republican platform. Not exactly Donald Rumsfeld or>Dick Cheney stuff.>>For some reason, the most vocal Christians among us never mention the>Beatitudes. But, often with tears in their eyes, they demand that the Ten>Commandments be posted in public buildings. And of course that?s Moses, not>Jesus. I haven?t heard one of them demand that the Sermon on the Mount, the>Beatitudes, be posted anywhere.>>?Blessed are the merciful? in a courtroom? ?Blessed are the peacemakers? in>the Pentagon? Give me a break!>>
-------------------------
There is a tragic flaw in our precious Constitution, and I don?t know what>can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president.>>But, when you stop to think about it, only a nut case would want to be a>human being, if he or she had a choice. Such treacherous, untrustworthy,>lying and greedy animals we are!
I was born a human being in 1922 A.D. What does ?A.D.? signify? That>commemorates an inmate of this lunatic asylum we call Earth who was nailed>to a wooden cross by a bunch of other inmates. With him still conscious,>they hammered spikes through his wrists and insteps, and into the wood. >Then>they set the cross upright, so he dangled up there where even the shortest>person in the crowd could see him writhing this way and that.>>Can you imagine people doing such a thing to a person?>>No problem. That?s entertainment. Ask the devout Roman Catholic Mel Gibson,>who, as an act of piety, has just made a fortune with a movie about how>Jesus was tortured. Never mind what Jesus said.
During the reign of King Henry the Eighth, founder of the Church of >England,>he had a counterfeiter boiled alive in public. Show biz again.>>Mel Gibson?s next movie should be The Counterfeiter. Box office records >will>again be broken.>>One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on>television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
-------------------------
And what did the great British historian Edward Gibbon, 1737-1794 A.D., >have>to say about the human record so far? He said, ?History is indeed little>more than the register of the crimes, follies and misfortunes of mankind.?>>The same can be said about this morning?s edition of the New York Times.
The French-Algerian writer Albert Camus, who won a Nobel Prize for>Literature in 1957, wrote, ?There is but one truly serious philosophical>problem, and that is suicide.?>>So there?s another barrel of laughs from literature. Camus died in an>automobile accident. His dates? 1913-1960 A.D.>>Listen.
All great literature is about what a bummer it is to be a human>being: Moby Dick, Huckleberry Finn, The Red Badge of Courage, the Iliad and>the Odyssey, Crime and Punishment, the Bible and The Charge of the Light>Brigade.>>But I have to say this in defense of humankind: No matter in what era in>history, including the Garden of Eden, everybody just got there. And, >except>for the Garden of Eden, there were already all these crazy games going on,>which could make you act crazy, even if you weren?t crazy to begin with.>Some of the games that were already going on when you got here were love >and>hate, liberalism and conservatism, automobiles and credit cards, golf and>girls? basketball.>>
Even crazier than golf, though, is modern American politics, where, >thanks>to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of>human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.>>Actually, this same sort of thing happened to the people of England>generations ago, and Sir William Gilbert, of the radical team of Gilbert >and>Sullivan, wrote these words for a song about it back then:>I often think it?s comical> How nature always does contrive> That every boy and every gal> That?s born into the world alive> Is either a little Liberal> Or else a little Conservative.
Which one are you in this country? It?s practically a law of life that you>have to be one or the other? If you aren?t one or the other, you might as>well be a doughnut.>>If some of you still haven?t decided, I?ll make it easy for you.
If you want to take my guns away from me, and you?re all for murdering>fetuses, and love it when homosexuals marry each other, and want to give>them kitchen appliances at their showers, and you?re for the poor, you?re a>liberal.
If you are against those perversions and for the rich, you?re a>conservative.>>What could be simpler?
-------------------------
My government?s got a war on drugs. But get this: The two most widely >abused>and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.>>One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, >and>by his own admission, was smashed or tiddley-poo or four sheets to the wind>a good deal of the time from when he was 16 until he was 41. When he was >41,>he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop>gargling nose paint.>>Other drunks have seen pink elephants.>>
And do you know why I think he is so pissed off at Arabs? They invented>algebra. Arabs also invented the numbers we use, including a symbol for>nothing, which nobody else had ever had before. You think Arabs are dumb?>Try doing long division with Roman numerals.>>We?re spreading democracy, are we? Same way European explorers brought>Christianity to the Indians, what we now call ?Native Americans.?>> How ungrateful they were! How ungrateful are the people of Baghdad today.>>So let?s give another big tax cut to the super-rich. That?ll teach bin >Laden>a lesson he won?t soon forget. Hail to the Chief.>>
That chief and his cohorts have as little to do with Democracy as the>Europeans had to do with Christianity. We the people have absolutely no say>in whatever they choose to do next. In case you haven?t noticed, they?ve>already cleaned out the treasury, passing it out to pals in the war and>national security rackets, leaving your generation and the next one with a>perfectly enormous debt that you?ll be asked to repay.>>Nobody let out a peep when they did that to you, because they have>disconnected every burglar alarm in the Constitution: The House, the >Senate,>the Supreme Court, the FBI, the free press (which, having been embedded, >has>forsaken the First Amendment) and We the People.>>
About my own history of foreign substance abuse. I?ve been a coward about>heroin and cocaine and LSD and so on, afraid they might put me over the>edge. I did smoke a joint of marijuana one time with Jerry Garcia and the>Grateful Dead, just to be sociable. It didn?t seem to do anything to me, >one>way or the other, so I never did it again. And by the grace of God, or>whatever, I am not an alcoholic, largely a matter of genes. I take a couple>of drinks now and then, and will do it again tonight. But two is my limit.>No problem.
I am of course notoriously hooked on cigarettes. I keep hoping the things>will kill me. A fire at one end and a fool at the other.>>But I?ll tell you one thing: I once had a high that not even crack cocaine>could match. That was when I got my first driver?s license! Look out, >world,>here comes Kurt Vonnegut.
And my car back then, a Studebaker, as I recall, was powered, as are almost>all means of transportation and other machinery today, and electric power>plants and furnaces, by the most abused and addictive and destructive drugs>of all: fossil fuels.>>When you got here, even when I got here, the industrialized world was>already hopelessly hooked on fossil fuels, and very soon now there won?t be>any more of those. Cold turkey.
Can I tell you the truth? I mean this isn?t like TV news, is it?>>Here?s what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a>state of denial, about to face cold turkey.>>And like so many addicts about to face cold turkey, our leaders are now>committing violent crimes to get what little is left of what we?re hooked >on.
so, my dad emailed me this... didn't really read it till now, but it makes sense. or maybe he just didn't want me to buy that road bike... hmm...
---
Dear recent graduate: Your parents are thrilled that you chose to move back home to "regroup" after graduation. They've truly cherished this precious time with their child, chatting over morning coffee and regaling visitors with your teenage antics that only recently morphed from "painful" to "funny" family memories.
But let's be honest: They want you out. Mom and dad have endured enough -- from dirty diapers to public tantrums to piercings, missed curfews and fender benders. I'm sure you're aware of the huge debt burden they took on to send you to the college of your choice. Those tears in the student union parking lot weren't simply about their baby leaving home. As you slept through Biology 101-403 and skipped three and a half weeks of classes to follow Phish, your parents put off replacing the gutters and an Alaskan cruise; they started buying generic just so you'd get an education that would enable your future tattooed, eye-rolling child to go to college someday.
We all recognize that after four years (not counting those six months overseas with your ex), you have now begun the next phase of life. Over the next decade, you're going to buy cars, pay taxes, receive a regular salary, manage home mortgages, decipher insurance policies, and suffer through countless drudging staff meetings. When you're 35, do you really want to be "that guy" -- you know, the guy still sleeping on the twin bed in his childhood bedroom in what is now the cat's/exercise equipment storage room. That's what I thought. So get on with it already.
1. Live like a poor college student for as long as you can stand it. You might not be a starving student anymore, but don't stop acting like it for as long as you can stand it. Even after you get your first 9-to-5 job, keep the roommates and the beater car. Eat cereal for dinner (but don't tell your mom). Take a bartending job or a part-time gig at a bookstore to make ends meet. Do whatever you need to do while you can still get by on four hours of sleep a night.
2. Debt happens. Don't let it happen too much. We know you need stuff -- Tevas are not appropriate office footwear -- when you transition into the working world. When you do reach for your wallet, please do so responsibly. (We could go on and on about this topic.) Still, there's no bigger buzz-kill than credit card debt. Unfortunately, it seems to be a rite of passage in America. You probably got a credit card (or four) in college. (If not, then you're one of the 8% of coeds who aren't packing plastic.) Now you'll be offered an increased line of credit and lots of perks that are designed to help you spend all of it. Don't do it. Only buy what you immediately need on your credit cards and cut costs whenever possible. Buy cheap beer; don't bother picking up the coolest mountain bike. Live within your means. That's what Phish would do.
3. Say "no" to The Man. Without finals to cram for, you have a lot more time for important stuff, like watching TV. For those too lazy to TiVo, you'll be inundated with countless pitches for shiny new items that you really don't need. Here's an opportunity to make your accounting professor proud. Remember that insufferable lesson about "depreciating assets"? Most of what you see parading across the boob tube falls into this category: stuff that loses value over time. Don't acquiesce to The Man. You have willpower: Identify all the stuff you're going to buy that will lose its value over time -- cars, bicycles, and stereo equipment. Then plan to spend as little money as possible on them. Doing so will keep your debt down and your studio apartment feeling roomy.
4. Don't pimp out your ride. Speaking of depreciating assets, this one's a biggie. The moment you drive a new car off the dealership lot, it loses a big chunk of its value. In fact, on average, new cars and trucks lose more than 20% of their value in just their first year. If you bought a sleek convertible last year for $20,000, today it's worth less than $16,000. Yes, even with that monster stereo you recently installed. Besides, fussy cars make you look desperate to the opposite sex.
5. You've got it. Flaunt it. What you've got that the rest of us want is time. (And gravity, but that's another issue.) You're young, nimble, and probably run circles around the rest of us on the office softball team. You can also kick butt when it comes to savings. A 25-year-old investing $200 each month for just 10 years will have $402,797 in her retirement kitty by age 65 (assuming an annual 8% return). If a 35-year-old were to invest $200 each month until age 65 -- that's two decades longer than the 25-year-old in the next cubicle -- she ends up with a little more than $300,000. When you get a job, ask your HR person how you can sign up for the company's 401(k) (or other work retirement plan). Fill out the paperwork and brag about your brilliance at happy hour. Better yet, open your own brokerage account and start picking stocks for yourself. It is true that you have been both a source of much joy (and more than a few gray hairs) to your mother and father. Trust me when I say that your parents had your best interest at heart when they arrived on this page after Googling "getting your grown child to move out of the house." But enough is enough. Comb your hair and get your own place to mess up. On behalf of your parents, I wish you all the best, Dayana Yochim
The Motley Fool/www.Fool.com Dayana Yochim spent four months under her parents' roof "transitioning" into the working world after college. The Fool has a disclosure policy that many parents may wish to modify for their live-at-home adult.
---
Dear recent graduate: Your parents are thrilled that you chose to move back home to "regroup" after graduation. They've truly cherished this precious time with their child, chatting over morning coffee and regaling visitors with your teenage antics that only recently morphed from "painful" to "funny" family memories.
But let's be honest: They want you out. Mom and dad have endured enough -- from dirty diapers to public tantrums to piercings, missed curfews and fender benders. I'm sure you're aware of the huge debt burden they took on to send you to the college of your choice. Those tears in the student union parking lot weren't simply about their baby leaving home. As you slept through Biology 101-403 and skipped three and a half weeks of classes to follow Phish, your parents put off replacing the gutters and an Alaskan cruise; they started buying generic just so you'd get an education that would enable your future tattooed, eye-rolling child to go to college someday.
We all recognize that after four years (not counting those six months overseas with your ex), you have now begun the next phase of life. Over the next decade, you're going to buy cars, pay taxes, receive a regular salary, manage home mortgages, decipher insurance policies, and suffer through countless drudging staff meetings. When you're 35, do you really want to be "that guy" -- you know, the guy still sleeping on the twin bed in his childhood bedroom in what is now the cat's/exercise equipment storage room. That's what I thought. So get on with it already.
1. Live like a poor college student for as long as you can stand it. You might not be a starving student anymore, but don't stop acting like it for as long as you can stand it. Even after you get your first 9-to-5 job, keep the roommates and the beater car. Eat cereal for dinner (but don't tell your mom). Take a bartending job or a part-time gig at a bookstore to make ends meet. Do whatever you need to do while you can still get by on four hours of sleep a night.
2. Debt happens. Don't let it happen too much. We know you need stuff -- Tevas are not appropriate office footwear -- when you transition into the working world. When you do reach for your wallet, please do so responsibly. (We could go on and on about this topic.) Still, there's no bigger buzz-kill than credit card debt. Unfortunately, it seems to be a rite of passage in America. You probably got a credit card (or four) in college. (If not, then you're one of the 8% of coeds who aren't packing plastic.) Now you'll be offered an increased line of credit and lots of perks that are designed to help you spend all of it. Don't do it. Only buy what you immediately need on your credit cards and cut costs whenever possible. Buy cheap beer; don't bother picking up the coolest mountain bike. Live within your means. That's what Phish would do.
3. Say "no" to The Man. Without finals to cram for, you have a lot more time for important stuff, like watching TV. For those too lazy to TiVo, you'll be inundated with countless pitches for shiny new items that you really don't need. Here's an opportunity to make your accounting professor proud. Remember that insufferable lesson about "depreciating assets"? Most of what you see parading across the boob tube falls into this category: stuff that loses value over time. Don't acquiesce to The Man. You have willpower: Identify all the stuff you're going to buy that will lose its value over time -- cars, bicycles, and stereo equipment. Then plan to spend as little money as possible on them. Doing so will keep your debt down and your studio apartment feeling roomy.
4. Don't pimp out your ride. Speaking of depreciating assets, this one's a biggie. The moment you drive a new car off the dealership lot, it loses a big chunk of its value. In fact, on average, new cars and trucks lose more than 20% of their value in just their first year. If you bought a sleek convertible last year for $20,000, today it's worth less than $16,000. Yes, even with that monster stereo you recently installed. Besides, fussy cars make you look desperate to the opposite sex.
5. You've got it. Flaunt it. What you've got that the rest of us want is time. (And gravity, but that's another issue.) You're young, nimble, and probably run circles around the rest of us on the office softball team. You can also kick butt when it comes to savings. A 25-year-old investing $200 each month for just 10 years will have $402,797 in her retirement kitty by age 65 (assuming an annual 8% return). If a 35-year-old were to invest $200 each month until age 65 -- that's two decades longer than the 25-year-old in the next cubicle -- she ends up with a little more than $300,000. When you get a job, ask your HR person how you can sign up for the company's 401(k) (or other work retirement plan). Fill out the paperwork and brag about your brilliance at happy hour. Better yet, open your own brokerage account and start picking stocks for yourself. It is true that you have been both a source of much joy (and more than a few gray hairs) to your mother and father. Trust me when I say that your parents had your best interest at heart when they arrived on this page after Googling "getting your grown child to move out of the house." But enough is enough. Comb your hair and get your own place to mess up. On behalf of your parents, I wish you all the best, Dayana Yochim
The Motley Fool/www.Fool.com Dayana Yochim spent four months under her parents' roof "transitioning" into the working world after college. The Fool has a disclosure policy that many parents may wish to modify for their live-at-home adult.
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