I'm 19 and my parents are making me pay rent

[btownbuck2012]

In my opinion, asking you to pay rent at 19 years old is a bit much. However, your Dad is right about you needing to have a job if you're not in college. The undertone in your Dad's e-mail is one of love and support. I think at the end of the day, you've got a great set of parents who want you to succeed. I've heard stories about people who the day they turned 18 were told to get the **** out by their parents. At least you're not in that situation.

 

[LiveFreeX]

Forget about college, that's a waste of TIME and money. Go work on the oil rigs for a few years or join the peace corp, teach english abroad, work on a cruise ship. You could also join the military but I wouldn't recommend the Army unless you are joining as a warrant officer with a chopper license. Get a pilots license and then join the Airforce, lots of opportunities for a 19 year old kid if you aren't too stupid. You can buy your own house in America for under 10 grand if you do some research... whats wrong with getting a small van and living out of that for a year or two, I read an awesome article about a dude who did that. Get a security job where you spend all night in your van, sleep there in the day... you could pretty much play xbox games all night long and make money at it. Kids today just want to waste all their money in college. I spend most of my day playing PSP and I still manage to keep my wife and I in a nice apartment.

www.cast-a-way.com

lots of places will put you up.

 

[Epimanes]

I Am 35. I moved out with my wife at 17. I had enough of my welfare single mom and the demands she put on me to take care of my siblings who were 10 and 11 years younger than me. Now that I am a parent with. 9 and 15year old I tell them when they graduate they are welcome to stay home, room and board free so as long as they REMAIN in school. If they decide to not go to school any longer then the only reasonable thing a parent should do is treat their adult child like an adult and ask them for rent. If your not in school your working to pay rent and make a living for yourself either at home or somewhere else for tons more money and costs. Pretty easy I think unless your born into a rich family or win the lottery and money grows on trees for you. Time to man up.

 

[dajinn]

I don't ever think it's right for a parent to charge their kid rent unless said kid had literally like no ambition or plans to do anything other than live at home and try to catch a free ride. Charging your kids rent is about as greedy as you can get. That's what banks do, they make up sh!t to charge people fees, as would parents who "suddenly" can't cope with the cost of supporting a young adult, when it probably cost them exponentially more raising you from birth to your teenage years. I dunno, I just think it's bull. My mom likes to complain about how it's just her, and she doesn't have another man's retirement, and she has to save, blah blah blah. Her house is paid off, which just makes me lel every time she starts with the victimizing crap.

 

[5string]

Forget about college, that's a waste of TIME and money. Go work on the oil rigs for a few years or join the peace corp, teach english abroad, work on a cruise ship. You could also join the military but I wouldn't recommend the Army unless you are joining as a warrant officer with a chopper license. Get a pilots license and then join the Airforce, lots of opportunities for a 19 year old kid if you aren't too stupid. You can buy your own house in America for under 10 grand if you do some research... whats wrong with getting a small van and living out of that for a year or two, I read an awesome article about a dude who did that. Get a security job where you spend all night in your van, sleep there in the day... you could pretty much play xbox games all night long and make money at it. Kids today just want to waste all their money in college. I spend most of my day playing PSP and I still manage to keep my wife and I in a nice apartment.

Sorry to get down on you but this is bad advice. I swear some of you guys just don't fvckin get it.

I wish I had the OP's parents. Oh wait a minute. Guess I did. Made me a better man.

Best of luck young DJ.

www.cast-a-way.com

lots of places will put you up.

Wait a second. Forget about college? An undergraduate degree will open doors for you. Did for me. Live out of a fvckin van? You've got to be kidding! Play xbox in your spare time? WTF is that? That's junior high school sh!t! Security job? Now there is a real future. Sleeping behind a desk making minimum wage till the wee hours of the morning. Way cool.

 

[Jitterbug]

Wait a second. Forget about college? An undergraduate degree will open doors for you. Did for me.

College and an undergrad degree in your generation meant something very different. Now (over 3 decades later) it's just huge debts and a rather worthless piece of paper. Unless this kid is super smart enough to get a scholarship for grad school later on, his presence at college is just to help pay the costs of the scholarship kids. Haven't you seen the huge number of unemployed kids and the poorly paid ones with "prestigious" and expensive undergrad degrees? They got that way following their parents' (and your) view on college and opening doors (to debt and slavery) in life.

Not sure about security job, but every young bloke should start thinking about other options and paths in life that's not college / uni.

 

[( . )( . )]

You must spread some Reputation around before giving it to Jitterbug again.

 

[user43770]

College and an undergrad degree in your generation meant something very different. Now (over 3 decades later) it's just huge debts and a rather worthless piece of paper. Unless this kid is super smart enough to get a scholarship for grad school later on, his presence at college is just to help pay the costs of the scholarship kids. Haven't you seen the huge number of unemployed kids and the poorly paid ones with "prestigious" and expensive undergrad degrees? They got that way following their parents' (and your) view on college and opening doors (to debt and slavery) in life.

Not sure about security job, but every young bloke should start thinking about other options and paths in life that's not college / uni.

Yep. What I said earlier in the thread.

 

[Jitterbug]

Cheers fellas.

Just to clarify a little more, if a young bloke is really smart that he's sure he will be in the top 3% in his STEM major, then he definitely should go to college / uni. Those people are headhunted while they're still studying. The rest are just making up numbers: bums on seats and dollars in the uni's coffer. Used to be able to get away with not being absolutely brilliant, but now not even doing a STEM degree will get you employed well.

I work in a STEM field myself and I've done a fair bit of hiring as team leader. In a way, it's very similar to the dating world: the top few % never have to apply for jobs and are actively courted to branch swing, the next few % down get most of the jobs they apply for, the rest fight over sh1t kicking jobs, and the few bottom % never get anything.

Meanwhile there are niche markets even within STEM where you may get 100 applicants for a job but only 2-3 out of those even have the relevant skills (competition is therefore minimal) which can be acquired via self study and no uni degree is necessary. And there are other markets where with some street smarts, you can carve out your own niche, using what would be college debts for business investments.

 

[dajinn]

I would not disagree and say that it is not possible for people to acquire skills relevant to jobs outside of university and on their own time, but there is a lot of cognitive bias being displayed in this thread. I simply don't find it to be a realistic choice for most people to just sit at home and acquire skills. The only realms I could even see this working in anyway would be programming/coding, web developing(design and applet programming), and some fields of science and math. And I mean those are all pretty niche fields, and unless you have some pretty significant "at home"(as opposed to on the job projects)projects that aren't just the usual "babby's first sudoko in C" you're going to be competing with individuals who have a more formal and professional history developing larger scale projects and working on teams in classes in university(and at their previous job(s)), and overcoming the challenges of working with other people, have a degree, and things like that.

You can't even simply expect to be a worthy/hirable candidate if you just go out and get your CCNA/other Cisco certifications if all you did was study the book and take the test. There are tons of IT Pro forums all over the web that have hiring managers/network admins who hire IT personnel stating that the Cisco certs are worthless if you don't have actual on the job experience. I just think that the major shift that's happened today that people still seem to completely miss out on is that most undergrads, if they didn't get any slick internships or are just average students will have to drudge it out in lower tier jobs and then move their way up, developing and gaining skills and experiences. Getting a degree WILL open up a lot of these lower end opportunities. With general advice like what I just said in my last sentence, I think getting ANY kind of 4 year degree puts you in a pool of candidates that has a higher probability of being selected for interviews, hired, called back, etc. than those who simply do not have a degree at all.

I guess the most obvious advice about college degrees, and the point that people seem to be missing out on the most is, you don't need to go to overly prestigious schools that will break you and your parents bank to get a decent education. Live within your families means and have reasonable and practical expectations about your college of choice. Go to a 2 year junior college, get your 60 core general ed hours for a transfer dirt cheap, then transfer to a university. Academia is a great place and one of the more practical ways for the typical populace to get their feet wet and in class projects/experiences offer great talking points during interviews when asked about skills, , gives them an opportunity to talk about working with others on a major project as part of a group, challenges, etc and it is also a great way for people to prove their weight in gold, because they the credibility of the university or college behind what they did, not just "I learned the skills from the internet".

 

[5string]

College and an undergrad degree in your generation meant something very different. Now (over 3 decades later) it's just huge debts and a rather worthless piece of paper. Unless this kid is super smart enough to get a scholarship for grad school later on, his presence at college is just to help pay the costs of the scholarship kids. Haven't you seen the huge number of unemployed kids and the poorly paid ones with "prestigious" and expensive undergrad degrees? They got that way following their parents' (and your) view on college and opening doors (to debt and slavery) in life.

Not sure about security job, but every young bloke should start thinking about other options and paths in life that's not college / uni.

Gotta disagree Mr.Jitter.

I still believe an undergraduate degree at the least will give a guy an advantage in seeking employment. Now more than ever. You have to set yourself apart from those who are willing to take a security job or live out of a van.

The OP needs to get it done. For both his personal enhancement and his ablility to obtain worthwhile employment that actually has some potential financially. Once you obtain it, nobody can take that degree away from you. Getting same instills confidence which will bleed over into the workplace.

 

[user43770]

That's the thing, an undergraduate degree doesn't set you apart anymore. Do some research on the number of recent graduates who can't find work or are underemployed. I bet they're glad they racked up 10s of thousands of dollars in debt.

 

[LiveFreeX]

Gotta disagree Mr.Jitter.

I still believe an undergraduate degree at the least will give a guy an advantage in seeking employment. Now more than ever. You have to set yourself apart from those who are willing to take a security job or live out of a van.

The OP needs to get it done. For both his personal enhancement and his ablility to obtain worthwhile employment that actually has some potential financially. Once you obtain it, nobody can take that degree away from you. Getting same instills confidence which will bleed over into the workplace.

J.O.B. = JUST OVER BROKE

For every 1 guy that gets hired with a degree there are 100 others who don't. You think corporations give a sh1t about hiring american labor? There are 100,000's of grads from China/India/Phillipines coming out every year that will work on the cheap and instead you are promoting this young man get an expensive education with very little prospect of the future... everyone and their mother has a degree today, whilst almost no one has a TRADE. Most of those degree holders are working at dunkin donuts or sitting around unemployed and living off the system.

50,000 dollars spent and 4 years wasted (not earning income) for what? A trade will get you a job right away, an apprenticeship will pay you money. A house will give you a bit of rental income. There are more avenues to earning money than settling for college. First and foremost you should learn to manage your money and make small investments to get small returns.... you can do that even working at McDonalds if you lower your cost of living. My nick is LiveFree for a reason, I know how to live free of debt/montly costs. I'm at a point in my life where I can retire FOREVER with what I have in the bank. I have next to no stress in my life and I live very well in a country club just outside of the #1. richest city in China. I didn't get here because of college.

A few things I've learned about College:

1. University kids have terrible money management skills.

2. When they do get a job, they tend to blow all their money and then some by the end of the month. We have a ton of fresh uni kids here who are dropping thousands of dollars per month... on what? Luxury products, Starbucks coffees, the best housing, running A/C day/night.

3. They have a TERRIBLE work ethic and very little motivation to succeed and do what it takes to get by. I have run into tons of kids who refuse to take 'labour intensive' jobs at home because they feel it is 'below their station' and instead opt for Starbucks or some bs $10/hr academia research job.

4. 99% of people in the world refuse to travel or change their venue to obtain better employment.

If you know how to manage your money, you can become a landlord while working a minimum wage job. If you are smart, you won't go into debt to get education, wait till you have money in the bank and then use that to go to school with.


Let him live out of a car or a van for a year or two and simplify his life. He can bank a ton of money in 4 years and learn a lot more by himself than college will ever teach him. A college education? Pffft, unless he takes engineering, there isn't much of a future for him and even then the competition is fierce. If he converts a van into a 1 bedroom studio apartment he saves on rent every month and learns to live without luxury. Later when he gets a house of his own, he won't go bananas with his money. Lots of people do it, check out: Stealth Van Dwellers.

You guys and your college degrees... fvck man, at home the guys working on the oil rigs with next to no education are getting paid huge bucks... IF you know how to manage your money, you can goto work on an oil rig for a few years, buy a small house and retire for the rest of your life while all these other tools spend their next 20 years with stress, debt and a 9 to 5.

Americans though, you guys only know how to spend money.

I have a simple 'associates degree' that is very work specific and in no way pertains to my current employment, only cost me 10 years and 45,000 dollars of debt to find out that I could have had my present lifestyle a few years ago with money management skills and a good work ethic. I did NOT learn to manage money in College. 90% of what I learned came out of the financial section in my local library. The Millionaire Mind Book and Cardset will do more for you than a College degree ever will ($29.95 on Amazon)

 

[dajinn]

lol, if your associate's degree cost you 45,000 dollars I feel sorry for you. your ideals are almost bordering on the delusional, it's insane. fields like oil/gas are so saturated by people who want to get into the profession because that's exactly what they hear from people like you "oh yeah man just go work on the rigs, you'll make close to 100k easy with no skills/degree/experience". Seriously? That's not how it works. These people go apply and they never hear sh!t because they're not qualified, they don't have experience, and they don't even at least have some sort of education and a degree validating it to show that they could be trainable for the hazardous job.

Again, why am I saying these things matter if you and a bunch of other people in this thread are saying degrees are worthless sh!t? Because other people who are applying or are employed in these fields already have at least one or more of them. Additionally, the oil/gas industry is also heavily saturated from people being marketed into the 2 year trade programs at community colleges for these kinds of specific positions, most likely because, let's think about it, because they couldn't find work, not even the lowest tier of work, in the fields and needed to get SOME experience/skills/education related to the field on the cheap since no one would hire them because they didn't have any of it.

Most people who literally don't have any of the aforementioned usually got the position because they knew someone(big key in today's job market) or because when the job market didn't have enough people to fill positions they took who they could train and moved them up. It's pretty much the opposite right now. Don't take my disagreement as necessarily a total defense of degrees, I'm not at all saying degrees are a good one size fits all to solve people's security for their life, living, and well being. I'm saying, join the rest of us in reality, if you didn't mind.

 

[Jitterbug]

I'd debate further, but it appears our young OP has completely lost interest, so it'd be rather useless.

 

[LiveFreeX]

http://www.moneynews.com/Archives/T...onomy/2012/11/06/id/462985?PROMO_CODE=103FC-1

 

[Kailex]

I think my parents brought me into this world and they oughta do their best to deal with the consequences.

I think they ARE doing their best to deal with the consequences, seeing as how you've been living off of them for more than 18 years.

I started living on my own when I was 16 and that was by choice.

I hate to say it, but you sound VERY bitter about this.
This scenario sounds like the exact same scenario that would prepare you for the real world. Because guess what... in the real world you have to pay rent. You have to buy groceries. You have to pay utilities.

I got through college and at one point had three jobs at the same time. Did I get very little sleep sometimes? Yes, but I had enough money to pay for my schooling and to live and trust me... these weren't awesome jobs. One was at a supermarket as a bagger, the other was at Taco Bell and the third was as a bartender working very late nights.

I've learned that you can either do something with your life to make things happen or sit back and whine about how they aren't happening for you.

I think we all know which one you are doing.

 

[5string]

Say what you want fellas. I went to college and paid back my loans. I make 6 digits and have for quite sometime. Results speak for themselves as far as I'm concerned.

45K for an associates degree? That diploma must be gold plated.

Work on your oil rigs. Be a crippled up old man by the time you are 40.

And get this. What would a really hot gal wish for? Some guy who comes home all dirty and has to take a shower, or a guy who pours her a glass of wine and bends her over the counter?

Sorry, but men have to set themselves apart from other men to obtain what they desire whether it's women, wealth, etc.

Kailex get's it.

I don't think I'll be shopping for a van or an xbox anytime soon.

 

[dajinn]

Results speak for themselves as far as I'm concerned.

I don't doubt your success but that is both sociopathic and anecdotal :crackup:

 

[5string]

I don't doubt your success but that is both sociopathic and anecdotal :crackup:

Now you have me laughing! :crackup:

Listen, I'm not trying to get down on anyone. Do what you think is best for yourself.

What I am seeing in this thread is fvcking excuses why one cannot improve himself whether it be via a college degree, trade school or other sh!t like that.

I'll agree that times are tougher for the younger generations. Given that, I'd say that you young DJ's, now more than ever, need to make it happen for yourselves. Maybe it will take more effort than I had to put forth but that's just the way it is. You'll probably have to work harder but, you can do it.

Adapt, improvise and overcome.