I recently had a conversation with a banker about my financial plan for retirement, and what came up has changed the way I view my generation, retirement, death, tacos and sex.
I go to the bank to order a new credit card. Mine recently broke while ordering True Detective season I on Amazon. I give the banker my account number and she looks me up on the machine. She peruses my accounts.
“So I see last time you were here you inquired about a savings account for retirement. I’d suggest a Roth IRA to add you your retirement plan. Do you have plans for retirement? The sooner you start saving the better. How old are you?” she said.
I adjusted in my chair. Cleared my throat. Right now my retirement plan looks bleak I told her. “My plan is to work until I can’t anymore, and then I’ll take what I call the “Hemingway exit.” There was a pause. This seemed to disturb her. Her face seemed to recoil. I half said this to spite her, of course. I mean, she asked. Plus, I was grumpy that day. I was out the night before and there was an overdraft protection email waiting for me that morning. Seems I had overdrawn my checking account…again. Eek. Also, as I gimped to the bank a homeless man and a Planned Parenthood activist had solicited me – all wanting my attention, my money. This banker was the same. No, I wasn't there to open an account that she would yield a percentage from. I just wanted to order this card and get out. When I’m ready to give the banker, the activist, the homeless man my money, they’ll be the first to know.
Still, there was some truth to what I said. I really have no plan for retirement. The only real plan I have at the moment is paying off debt. How can one think about retiring, i.e. not working, when there is so much debt to pay for? Not to mention hopes to buy a home, maybe a motorcycle, a boat, travel, take time off to write a book, start a goat farm, make a mumblecore movie… etcetera. Meditations on one’s eventual end are natural of course, but when it’s blanketed by a bleak financial future it becomes another matter; a Thanatos arising with insufficient funds coldly blinking from ATM machines and overdraft protection emails is a monster that could push the overwhelmed, the desperate Millennial past the precipice. Of course it could also inspire one to rise to occasion, pay it off, save a little nugget and move to Sayulita and spend a large chunk of your thirties surfing and writing, riding Shiva’s wave of chance, joy, sex and tacos. Work later and enjoy the honeymoon of ones’ life.
As a Millennial, I know many of my peers carry student loan debt. There is also the credit card and the personal lines of credit many of us carry.
According to a Wallstreet Journal article from October of 2015, about two-thirds of Millennials (those aged 23-35 in 2012) have at least one source of long-term debt outstanding (student loans, car payments, home mortgages) and 30percent have more than one. An astounding 81 pecent of the college educated have at least one source of long-term debt.
“Not only do Millennials carry debt, but they struggle with it,” wrote WSJ. “A majority report having too much debt, difficulty in making payments, and worries about it. Specifically, the ability to pay off student loans troubles more than half of Millennial who have such loans.”
In addition, they report that 54 percent of Millennials who are over age 30 and have student loans are stressed about repayment. Furthermore, Millennial also carry credit cards balances i.e. short-term debt. WSJ found that more than half of Millennials credit-card users say they carried over balances.
My friend, a bartender, told me to just not pay it back. Walk away. Blast off. And I admit the option has crossed my mind.
“If you don't mind 6 a.m. phone calls from debt collectors and ruining your credit score, I say why not? You can’t afford a house anyway, Shane, and you’re ugly. Then just save up for a year and move to Thailand or Nicaragua. Get land down there. Start a hostel. A bar. Die later. That’s what I would do – just saying. Oh, you’ve got a booger in your nose, Shane,” says my friend.
He’s mostly right, I mean at least about buying a house; my income to debt ratio tops out at “denied.”
And it’s easy for him to say; He has no debt and is not working. Right now he’s writing a book. He doesn’t think about the implications of co-signers, the problems with family that would come from the Big Ditch. Sure, dump off the load on Grandma. No. “Thanks Al, you’ve been a loving Stepfather, but here you go, I’m moving to Panama. Peace out.”
No, no. That would never do. One needs to own ones debt. It’s my debt. It's the Milton Freidman way. This is America, damn it. One needs to live in the economic prison laid out by Horatio Alger. That glorious American Dream. In that dream lives the false hope in the symbol of a big house, a new car, trips to Vegas, and the crown of it all: that blind belief of the high paying job to come after all the tuition, after all the books, the fees; the idea that a degree ensures a salary that would more than satisfy the implications of a corporate capitalist side of education: high tuition, loans, payments, the annual percentage rates, the “college credit card” carrying a balance, accruing. Other countries offer school for free. Doesn't America want to invest in their future? The students today are the workers and innovators of tomorrow. Not only that but they are citizens. A populous. What can they offer if they are weighted down with debt? Another point is where does their buying power go if all their income goes to paying off debt? I'd say its in the best interest of Nike, Apple, Under Armor, Ford, Rolex, Sony and Taylor Swift to ensure their consumers can continue to buy, consume the high volume of goods and not spend all their money on education debt. Jeez this is the American bubble machine in action. Profits count on it. Where’s Donald Trump when you need him? He understands profits, right? Huge profits. And bubbles. At least that’s what I’m hearing.
In my collegiate time, the general attitude was to take the loan, don’t think about it and worry about it later. While sleeping in the library, reading Henry Miller in the mezzanine, pretending to be a fraternity rush potential in order to drink the free beer, chasing coeds in the dorms, I never thought about what might come next. I worried about it later. Well, now later sucks. At 30 I’m looking down the long barrel of my future and seeing the grim disillusion of potentially getting married, later having kids, struggling to support them and unable to secure a loan for a house. I never travel. I never write the books. There’s no sailboat. The laughing heart fades off. I start to drink too much. No exercise. The tunnel gets darker. There’s the divorce. Darker. The mundane jobs. Even darker. I turn 67. Get sick. I die.
Damn, well…that sucks. Enough of that. I refuse to accept that. The Great Existential Leap is out there. Take it. It’s time to go surfing, which means earmarking one quarter of my income for the next 20 months. It can be done. I will need to live like a monk – an American version of one at least, one that’s desperate and on the lamb. A William Bonnie of sorts: beans and rice. This is probably how Paul Gaugaun felt before his return to Tahiti. France was over. The marriage was over. There were few ways out. One needs to make the moves for themselves. Live the laughing heart.
To understand just how widespread this debt-virus has permeated the Millennial populous, the Ballard News-Tribune surveyed Millennials out on the town last Saturday night, and oh joy there were a lot of them, sweating and stomping and weaving, some belligerent, some in drunk primal ecstasy, some atavistically chasing each other’s tails – all of them in the honeymoons of their lives on Ballard Avenue.
A Ballard News-Tribune intern named Lurch surveyed 10 of these ecstatic beings. They ranged in ages 25 to 32. They were asked if they have student loan debt, if they carried a monthly credit card balance, if they have trouble making payments to their debt and if they generally feel they’ve been ripped off.
Overwhelmingly, the responses were yes, yes, yes, and YES. Of the ten surveyed, seven answered yes to all the questions.
Our brave intern asked one more question: What do you spend on average during a weekend night on the town? Six of the 10 said they spend at least $100 on food and bar tabs on a typical Saturday night. Some said $100 on Friday night, too, and then, maybe another $50 for mimosas during Sunday brunch or for beers and blast-o wings while watching the game.
“It’s like why worry about it now? You’re going to die anyway, you might as well like live it up while you can,” said a woman after she was surveyed. She followed up her statement with, “YOLO!” which is an acronym for You Only Live Once.
After Lurch was safety left on a bus destine for Capital Hill amid a frenetic volley of swooping Pokemon freaks staring intently at their cellphone windows to their avatar worlds, I was feeling a bit gonzo. I wanted in; I wanted my part in the revelry. I went to Kings; I went to Hatties; I went to Hotel Albatross: I went to meet my generation head on: Millennials living their lives, celebrating, fornicating, and having a bloody good time despite heavy financial constraints. The night was long and good, but sometime around 1:27 a.m. I stumbled into a moment of clarity: surrounded by a Ballard Bacchanalia, I realized I was still working – sort of – just as the bartender placed a beer before me.
“Do you have a retirement plan?” I asked the 20-something-year-old bartender.
“No, just like everyone else I know. What!? Why? That’s $8 for the beer, guy. ”
I gave her my credit card.
“By the way,” she said, “ you have a booger in your nose.”
