Lee's Challenge Blog: Resisting the Temptation to Get New Shoes

Editor's note: We challenged all of our finalists to write a blog post. "From your own experience, what are the top 3 financial issues facing your generation?"  

Generation Y faces huge challenges for the years to come with how we will manage our money. We are surrounded by a consumerist culture and governed by a financial system that is in an unbelievable amount of debt and, meanwhile, we are searching for work in one of the most difficult economies in recent years. With all of these elements against us, it’s crucial that we understand what our weaknesses are as consumers and where we are vulnerable in all facets of financial stability. Three simple, but major issues come to mind when thinking of the current situation my generation faces.

1. SAVINGS (OR THE LACK THEREOF)

I admit, I was 22 years old when I opened my first savings account. I put a certain amount in it and intended to let it grow until I was ready to start paying my loans back for college. It was 2 months before I needed what I had in that account to pay rent. Why? because I never taught myself to save money! It wasn’t long before I needed all that I had because I was still spending pretty much everything that I made. We all know so many people our age with this same mentality. We could do so much more if we put back a little every time we got our paycheck at the end of the week. We tend to view money as a means to an end, not an asset. By putting back just a percentage of what we have, we not only make life easier now but we can teach ourselves early on the value of saving, not just the discipline of it. Since my attempt at being a saver, I have indeed succeeded and reaped the benefits in huge ways! Just ask my fiancé :) 

2. DEBT

For some of us, spending what we have isn’t enough, so we spend someone else’s money for the time being. Not our parents’ money (), I’m talking about credit. Credit cards can be a good thing. If people my age were more responsible with them then the words “credit card” wouldn’t leave a bad taste in the mouth of the frugal. We can purchase things we need at the moment and pay them off with actual cash as we go. Simple, right? According to hoffmanbrinker.com, Only 54% of Americans pay their full credit card bills each month, which means just over half of the people in our country with credit cards actually make enough money each month to support their spending habits. We are so consumed with the idea of having things instantly that we forget to evaluate what it will cost us in the long-run. Generation Y is a huge part of this problem and if we don’t take debt seriously, then how can we expect different from our officials, our peers and, one day, our kids? Between necessary loans for school, mortgage payments, and so forth, we have enough to worry about without using credit cards to give us the illusion that we have something we truly don’t. Debt is one of the main causes of concern of so many of my friends and it never ceases to surprise me just how negatively it has impacted their lives.

3. TRUE VALUE

At the root of our lack of saving, going in debt, and every financial decisions we make is our understanding of true value. However well we understand what is actually important to us in life, the less we listen when the world tries to make up our minds for us. A capitalistic place like the world we live in has a way taking over the things we care about. One of my favorite quotes is by a professor named Tim Jackson, a professor of Sustainable Development at the University of Surrey. He says about today’s culture: “We spend money we don’t have on things we don’t need to impress people we don’t care about.” We are advertised to hundreds of times a day. In our minds are ingrained images of what is new and what is out of style; what is sexy and what is unappealing; what is wholesome or healthy and what is fattening or filled with sugar; even what is important to us is ingrained in our minds by advertisements, all trying to get us to buy into a particular product. We are quickly letting brands become our friends. We are letting ideals taught to us by commercials become a part of how we think every day. Our spending habits reflect this or companies would have tried something else by now. Gen. Y is right in the thick of this. We have been advertised to and marketed to our whole lives! So, how do we avoid this identity withholding behavior and keep our values our own in our financial lifestyle? by remembering money is not who we are or what we are worth, it is merely a tool that lets us live our lives the way WE choose to. We are Young & Free after all, right? What really matters to us should determine how we use this tool, not what matters to the people asking for it. If we keep what’s important to us important, then our financial worries could be limited greatly.  

We clearly have a lot of issues we are facing as a whole. Let’s face them with OUR interests in mind, and be aware of things ahead. If we keep in mind what matters to us, putting some back each month or resisting the temptation to get new shoes will be a lot easier.

Lee