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Let’s Mock Millennials’ Stress List
A CBD oil manufacturer ran a survey of what stresses out Millennials. It seems that Gen-Y thinks that 2019 is most stressful time in human history. I think it is important for other generations to mock them and make their own lists. I’ll aggregate responses in the OP.
The Millennial (Gen-Y) stress list:
1. Losing wallet/credit card
2. Arguing with partner
3. Commute/traffic delays
4. Losing phone
5. Arriving late to work
6. Slow WiFi
7. Phone battery dying
8. Forgetting passwords
9. Credit card fraud
10. Forgetting phone charger
11. Losing/misplacing keys
12. Paying bills
13. Job interviews
14. Phone screen breaking
15. Credit card bills
16. Check engine light coming on
17. School loan payments
18. Job security
19. Choosing what to wear
20. Washing dishes
+ Endless war
+ Debt/GDP ratio >1
+ College credential not worth the debt as promised
The Gen-X stress list:
- Nuclear war
- Tornadoes
- Power outage/blizzard
- Starving kids in China
- Cigarettes/secondhand smoke
- Desegregation
- Muggings
- Degree technical obsolescence
- Dot-com bust *and* great recession
The Boomer stress list:
- Polio
- Smallpox
- Nuclear war
- Tornadoes
- Segregation
- Race riots
- Career technical obsolescence
Greatest Generation stress list
- The Great Depression
- 60 million violent deaths between 1939 and 1945
Cuban Missile crisis usually gets more credit.
Ha ha! Ditto (and same ex-profession)
He might be too short to make mac & cheese. (He’s a pipsqueak)
We have found the Christopher Columbus of the internet, everyone!
People of all ages need to hear a LOT more Mike Rowe & a lot less of Tom Friedman or Paul Krugman. Or their idiot high-school guidance counselors.
What many people lose sight of is that the cost of basic living today is WAY cheaper than it was in the 1980s (and by extension, the cost of the 1980s was way lower than it was in the 1960s, 1940s, etc).
@RobLong has talked many times in the past about sitcom plots in the 1970s & 80s vs plots today. Watch some of those Cheers, Cosby or Brady Bunch episodes carefully and you’ll see upper middle class people discussing the prices of commodities like meat, cheese or milk. Because people in that time worried about those things in their day-to-day lives. But watch a modern sitcom like the Big Bang Theory or ‘retro’ comedy like The Goldbergs and the topic never comes up. The concept is unrelateible to the average consumer today – they spend far less of their weekly income on the actual basics.
But I’m not trying to knock Millenials for not worrying about the same things as the generations before them. Thanks to the growth of the free market for few centuries, they don’t have to worry about the real basics of living. Or Nuclear war, either.
So, thanks to prosperity, new things have been slipped in to gobble up that extra income and give them different things to worry about. And in the absence of a real existential threat, Politicians and Professors have created new fake ones to gin up outrage and activism among the youth. So they worry just as much as we did….
Remy’s newest video seems really relevant:
The main critique I have of the modern education system – AND it’s products – is the lack of critical thinking and the religious-like adherence to (popular) expert option. Although that largely mimics the Progressive Fervor of the “Greatest Generation”, so maybe there’s not much new there.
I’ll also note that I’ve seen a significant difference between the city-dwelling, highly educated millenials and the more rural, less educated ones. I’d higher a state school “average” kid in a heartbeat. The uber-credentialed elite-schooled ones that don’t want to do entry-level engineering work are the ones giving a bad name to the bulk of the generation.
Well, you miss 100% of the cheap shots you don’t take.
I’d suggest that the spike that starts around 1963 correlates with the first batch of baby boomers turning 18, and that the spike ends once birth control becomes more widely available after Griswold.
Yeah, Hank. How hard is it to remember to photocopy your SIM card once in awhile?
I should have put some commas in there! I meant that I found the internet via the University of Minnesota.
Food and clothes are cheaper, but what about housing and health care?
12-plus% mortgage rate mean anything to you?
My first house in 1992 I had about a 7% rate – and that was a one-year fixed adjustable rate.
And the price of the house was?
Isn’t that cheaper than 12%?
We got lucky in house hunting in march of 2009. Signed April 4. Got a $300k valued house on foreclosure for $180k. That was the cheapest house we could find in a modest and safe neighborhood.
It was fascinating, really. My expectations weren’t that high. A place my kids could play in the neighborhood and one that reflected how much we were paying for it. There were houses for $250k that were smaller than the house my parents payed $80k for in 1992. If I was paying that much more, I insisted on it looking better than that house. We got the cheapest dollar per square footage that we could find.
Orlando, FL ranks about average nationally for cost of living, so the housing market here reflects the national average.
I’ve no idea how one could even compare health care across decades – there is so much more of it as the years go on.
Out of curiosity, what does $180k get you?
Not even a Senator these days.
Very true, and that’s clearly a benefit to living in this day and age. But when weighing the overall cost of living, a responsible person today should have health insurance, and that’s not cheap, especially if it also covers a wife and children.
A surprisingly good deal, lol.
Three year old, 2 story, 3* / 2.5 with a yard. Cheap construction (drywall behind bathroom tile) and carpet/tile, but good bones. Rural, recently turned suburban, ungated subdivision with a 5 year old elementary school in the backyard.
Was missing appliances, doors, and a bathroom mirror when we moved in…
It had to beat the 3/2 single story with yard + pool to get my approval.
*technically a 4, but only bed that fits in there is a crib.
Hmm – and you may quote me on that.
The question was about housing costs in the 80s. 12% was early 80s. Trending slowly downward, but even by early 90s they were still in the 7% range for adjustables.
https://www.realtor.com/realestateandhomes-search/Oak-Creek_WI/price-150000-180000
It was $69,000. For a beat-to-hell one bedroom house with a barely functional kitchen (literally a sink, two non-standard size cabinets, a refrigerator and an electric range. Oh, and badly stained purple carpeting. I really wish I had taken pictures before I gutted it), non-functioning hot water heater, bad roof and inadequate electrical. It had sat empty for a year or more before I bought it (the hot-water heat also didn’t work, but I made the seller put in a new boiler as part of the pre-purchase deal). I bought it from a guy who inherited it from his uncle after he (the uncle) hung himself in the basement. When I pulled the almost-black wood paneling off the living room wall I found several large holes punched in the plaster wall behind it, like there had been a major fight or something.
I loved that house – it was awesome for a single guy. I dumped about $25k into in the two and a half years I owned it.
For the entertainment of you young ‘uns, interest rates were 17% (!) in 1981, when Mrs. Tabby and I got married and went to buy our first house. But (at least in California) – a buyer of an existing house could assume the mortgage from the seller. So, it was cheaper for us then to buy a $140,000 one story 3 bedroom 2 bath 1550 sq ft 25 year old house with an existing 13% mortgage plus a short-term secondary loan from the seller than it would have been to buy a new $110,000 2 bedroom 2 bath 1000 sq ft condo with a new 17% mortgage. We put all of Mrs. Tabby’s salary ($13,000 per year) for the first 3 years of our marriage into a special savings account to pay off the secondary loan from the seller, and lived on my $25,000 per year salary.
Man… CA has always been high, hasn’t it?
But damn we sure made you expert whiners.
Did I miss it, or is absolutely no one stressed about the climate change that is going to bring about the end of the world within 10 years?
I notice that 5 out of 20 Millennial stressors relate to having their phone unavailable for a short time. That’s 25% for you Millennials who can’t do math without your phones.
Yes, the legalization of marijuana was just a formality, really.
I don’t know how much children cost (hoping to find out soon), but I have had a couple of dogs. I can’t understand why anyone would compare the two, cost-wise. If you spend so much on pets that they keep you from having enough to provide for a child, then I really don’t think the pet is the problem you’re having.
A few weeks ago, I gave a cashier something like 20.77 for a 20.62 bill, and they actually pulled out their phone to help them with the math.
Children don’t have to be nearly as expensive as the Baby Industrial Complex might lead you to believe.