First, I wanted to say thank you all again for all of your wonderful, supportive comments and tweets about my decision to purchase a condo. I feel like a broken record because I say this so much, but it’s so great to be a part of a community that provide positive energy and enthusiasm at just the right moment (you’ll get what I mean in a minute). So thanks again!
One of the reasons it’s so obvious to me that the personal finance community is awesome is because sometimes my real life wolf pack is sort of a let-down, and in this case they’ve sort of been a let-down about me buying a home. Not my very close friends and family – they’re amazingly supportive and encouraging. But my less close friends and acquaintances have been surprisingly lukewarm when I tell them about the condo; I mean, don’t get me wrong, it’s not like I’m expecting people to throw me a parade or anything, but I think a “congratulations!” is in order when someone tells you they just bought their first place. Apparently not everyone agrees, but whatever. I’m not losing sleep over the lack of enthusiasm per se, but I have detected a somewhat disturbing undertone in my peers’ coolness towards my home purchase: childishness.
Yep, childishness. Please don’t misunderstand: I’m definitely not saying that choosing to not buy a home is childish, just like it’s not childish to choose not to get married or have children. These are major life choices that we all have to weigh out carefully; some of us end up on one side of each of these decisions, some of us on the other. No harm, no foul. However, in my opinion, if every path you pick is chosen only because it’s the one that will allow you to avoid as much responsibility as possible, you’ve crossed the line into Professional Child. For example, it’s childish to say stuff like (this is an actual quote), “well, I don’t want to buy a house because I just kind of want to do whatever I want. Like, I don’t want to have to pay my money to a bank, you know?”
No, I don’t know. I don’t know what it’s like to avoid responsibility and accountability at all costs, but it seems like everyone my age is doing just that. But certainly, this isn’t news. The whole, ‘millennials are so irresponsible and entitled and co-dependent’ trope has been discussed at length in blogs, articles, and on early-morning T.V., so I’m not going to re-hash any of that here.
However, it irritates the shit out of me when I’m out at a bar or dinner with friends (and friends of friends) and someone says something like:
“Yeah, I’m just not really trying to find a job. I don’t want to feel like I’m, you know, trapped in one place.”
or
“I’m living with my parents for as long as I can – I’m just not all about paying rent.”
or
“I just don’t want to deal with the hassle of paying all my own bills; it gets in the way of my music.”
I get it: these people are lazy. And entitled. And all those other millennial stereotypes, blah, blah, blah. But what really grinds my gears about this line of reasoning (if it can be called that) is that people who say stuff like this are being, in a somewhat veiled way, condescending. People have all kinds of reasons for choosing to work or not work, for deciding whether to live with their parents or on their own. But please don’t tell me that you just can’t be “tied down” by a job or that you’re “too creative” to do something as pedestrian as paying your bills every month. Because if you say stuff like that, you don’t sound alternative or intellectual or complicated or deep. You sound like a fucking child. And I also resent the implication that because I am setting up my adult life, financially and otherwise, that I’m some kind of sell-out square. I’m not a square (I have tattoos, dammit!). I’m a grown-up, and “the grown-ups” aren’t our parents and aunts and uncles and neighbors anymore. They’re us. We’re the grown-ups.
At least, we’re supposed to be.
