Author Topic: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care  (Read 45132 times)

r3dt4rget

  • Stubble
  • **
  • Posts: 182
http://www.msn.com/en-us/money/personalfinance/millennial-parents-sink-under-weight-of-low-pay-debt-child-care/ar-BBjGahM

Quote
From the outside, it looks like Katie Fenton has it all.

The marketing manager is married with a five-month-old baby, lives in a spacious home, has a career and is pursuing an advanced degree.

Quote
“My husband works full time and picked up a second job,” Fenton said. “I had to go back to work after only three months of maternity leave.”

With monthly bills that include some $1,200 a month for childcare and $2,500 to pay the mortgage, the Fentons are among the one in five Millennials who are living in poverty, a 40% increase from fifteen years ago, according to a new study from nonprofit Young Invincibles called "Finding Time: Millennial Parents, Poverty and Rising Costs."

Quote
“Millennial parents are falling into the pit of financial instability faster than non-parents, because the economy has not stabilized from the Great Recession,” said Terri Liselle, author of The Millennial Woman (Amazon Digital Services, 2014).

*shakes head*

How can people with college degree's fail to understand basic personal finance? A facepunch goes out to anyone paying $2500/month for a mortgage who claims they live in poverty.

zephyr911

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3619
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Northern Alabama
  • I'm just happy to be here. \m/ ^_^ \m/
    • Pinhook Development LLC
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #1 on: May 12, 2015, 02:24:20 PM »
Because clearly someone put a gun to their head and made them buy a $500K home, or whatever they got for $2500/mo. Good gawd, that rivals the combined debt service on my primary residence, two SFRs, and two duplexes....

dycker1978

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 768
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Regina, Saskatchewan, Canada
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #2 on: May 12, 2015, 02:30:36 PM »
16% of my income to pay for my child per year... wow do their kids have a lot of special needs.  My kids cost no where near that much.  A couple of hundred a month for food and clothes... the rest I would have anyways... and they are teenagers... wow!!!

LalsConstant

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 439
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #3 on: May 12, 2015, 02:32:54 PM »
What a strange article, it starts as this case study and ends with some proposed legislation that wouldn't seem to be relevant to the story in the first part.

Kaspian

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1533
  • Location: Canada
    • My Necronomicon of Badassity
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #4 on: May 12, 2015, 02:38:50 PM »
Absolutely bloody amazing how Quote #1 outlines the exact reasons for the problem, yet Quote #3 is blamed as the problem.  Our fantastic new social endemic--you can have it all and if you can't, it's somebody else's fault.  (Bonus marks if you blame some faceless shadow such as "rich people", "Wall  Street", "politicians", "immigrants", or "the economy".)

MarciaB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 544
  • Age: 62
  • Location: Oregon
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #5 on: May 12, 2015, 02:44:59 PM »
They live in San Diego, which is an insane real estate market.

Actually, let me restate. They choose to live in San Diego, which is an insane real estate market.

zephyr911

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3619
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Northern Alabama
  • I'm just happy to be here. \m/ ^_^ \m/
    • Pinhook Development LLC
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #6 on: May 12, 2015, 02:50:17 PM »
They live in San Diego, which is an insane real estate market.

Actually, let me restate. They choose to live in San Diego, which is an insane real estate market.
Wanna know why I don't live in San Diego? Hint: I don't care how nice the weather is, I don't wanna struggle just to make ends meet and end up with nothing to show for it decades later. I'm losing my tolerance for people's total lack of awareness about the impact of their lifestyle choices.

People in a hot market like that can settle for less, or quit bitching about prices. End of story.

LiveLean

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 886
  • Location: Central Florida
    • ToLiveLean
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #7 on: May 12, 2015, 03:25:00 PM »
Nice tool shed you're living in for $2,500/month. Plus you get to pay among the highest taxes in the U.S.

Reminds me of a friend who moved his young family from the Tampa Bay area to San Diego -- purely lifestyle decision - and pretty much quadrupled his expenses without upgrading the size of his home.

You stay classy, San Diego.

v10viperbox

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 48
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #8 on: May 12, 2015, 03:36:29 PM »
Nice tool shed you're living in for $2,500/month. Plus you get to pay among the highest taxes in the U.S.

Reminds me of a friend who moved his young family from the Tampa Bay area to San Diego -- purely lifestyle decision - and pretty much quadrupled his expenses without upgrading the size of his home.

You stay classy, San Diego.

Bring them out I make money every time we flip or fix up a home out here. More people coming all the time, the city has no real plan for growth makes for easier pickings on flipping and rentals.

Personal choice and all that jazz. I could be FIRE easy in the Midwest with winter but working a few more years for no snow is a no brainier for me.

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #9 on: May 12, 2015, 03:42:21 PM »
Bottom Line: If you can't afford childcare, or you can't afford to live off one salary, you should be on birth control until your circumstances improve.  Mercy to the children brought into the world by parents who can't afford them the lifestyles they imagined.

chicagomeg

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1196
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #10 on: May 12, 2015, 03:45:41 PM »
Nice tool shed you're living in for $2,500/month. Plus you get to pay among the highest taxes in the U.S.

Reminds me of a friend who moved his young family from the Tampa Bay area to San Diego -- purely lifestyle decision - and pretty much quadrupled his expenses without upgrading the size of his home.

You stay classy, San Diego.

Bring them out I make money every time we flip or fix up a home out here. More people coming all the time, the city has no real plan for growth makes for easier pickings on flipping and rentals.

Personal choice and all that jazz. I could be FIRE easy in the Midwest with winter but working a few more years for no snow is a no brainier for me.

You can make all the personal choices you want, as long as you don't expect me to feel sorry for you when I'm cozy in front of the fire while you're still working. :) Unfortunately, the people in the article just want pity w/o accepting any personal responsibility.

trailrated

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1136
  • Age: 36
  • Location: Bay Area Ca
  • a smooth sea never made a skilled sailor
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #11 on: May 12, 2015, 03:58:02 PM »
How can they be "living in poverty" two of their bills alone are $3,700/month which is $44,400/year. They have to be making significantly more than that. While they are drowning in payments and debt, you cannot describe that income as poverty.

NoraLenderbee

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1254
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #12 on: May 12, 2015, 05:51:39 PM »
How can they be "living in poverty" two of their bills alone are $3,700/month which is $44,400/year. They have to be making significantly more than that. While they are drowning in payments and debt, you cannot describe that income as poverty.

Yup. If you're "in poverty" after you've spent 44K on mortgage and childcare, you don't have a poverty problem. You have an overspending problem.

mizzourah2006

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1063
  • Location: NWA
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #13 on: May 12, 2015, 07:21:47 PM »
How can they be "living in poverty" two of their bills alone are $3,700/month which is $44,400/year. They have to be making significantly more than that. While they are drowning in payments and debt, you cannot describe that income as poverty.

That was exactly what stood out to me. Pretty sure that's not poverty. It may be "living paycheck to paycheck" but that's not poverty.

TheGrimSqueaker

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2604
  • Location: A desert wasteland, where none but the weird survive
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #14 on: May 12, 2015, 11:55:54 PM »
I thought "poverty" meant the absence of income or assets, not the absence of common sense.

minority_finance_mo

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 784
    • Minority Finance
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #15 on: May 13, 2015, 05:44:07 AM »
I thought "poverty" meant the absence of income or assets, not the absence of common sense.

Though the latter seems as common and far more debilitating.

zephyr911

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3619
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Northern Alabama
  • I'm just happy to be here. \m/ ^_^ \m/
    • Pinhook Development LLC
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #16 on: May 13, 2015, 06:39:40 AM »
Bring them out I make money every time we flip or fix up a home out here. More people coming all the time, the city has no real plan for growth makes for easier pickings on flipping and rentals.

Personal choice and all that jazz. I could be FIRE easy in the Midwest with winter but working a few more years for no snow is a no brainier for me.
I get that.
My ultimate destination is either the Pacific Northwest (most family members) or Hawaii (childhood home).
Current strategy is to exploit govt $$ and LCOL in AL to ensure a successful and poverty-free early retirement regardless of which move we make. In the meantime, drawing down our physical footprint both accelerates NW growth and reduces our entry cost for those markets.

golden1

  • Handlebar Stache
  • *****
  • Posts: 1541
  • Location: MA
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #17 on: May 13, 2015, 11:42:23 AM »
This isn't poverty, this is being "house poor".  There are so many of these that I see living in the Boston suburbs.  Everyone has to live in the best suburb so that Jr. can get the best education (or so they think) so they mortgage themselves to the hilt to live in Newton, Lexington or Belmont, paying 40%+ of their incomes to mortgage and then struggling to pay the other bills.  Seriously, they are better off living in more affordable suburbs and either homeschooling, private schooling or getting tutors to supplement the public school education. 

RunHappy

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 560
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #18 on: May 13, 2015, 11:45:46 AM »
Daycare is crazy expensive.  I know several people who pay more for childcare than they do their mortgage. 

Merrie

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 463
  • Location: Midwest
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #19 on: May 13, 2015, 11:57:49 AM »
I think it's weird that this article goes on to talk about changing work schedules and hours. The case study has nothing to do with the article. That part sounds like it belongs on an article about people getting their schedules changed last minute at Starbucks or Home Depot. Those jobs aren't really "career" jobs and people in that position aren't typically "building their career".

As for the actual dilemma... agreed, this is being house-poor due to living in a HCOL area. As a Millennial parent who's also house-poor and drowning in student debt, I feel for these people up to a point... that point is when they waste a ton of money on manicures, dinners out, fancy clothes, new cars, etc. And I acknowledge there are choices we could have made differently to avoid or mitigate our present circumstances, as is probably also the case for these people, but these kinds of articles never discuss how to avoid getting into this predicament in the first place!

“I had to go back to work after only three months of maternity leave.”

This is more of a "shame" for the US government than for the woman in the article; 3 months of maternity leave is unfortunately pretty princely in this country. I too was "lucky" enough to get 3 months of maternity leave, all unpaid; by other countries' standards this is very low.

Syonyk

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 4610
    • Syonyk's Project Blog
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #20 on: May 13, 2015, 02:00:30 PM »
Nice tool shed you're living in for $2,500/month.

Hey.  Tool sheds rent for $800, at least in San Francisco.

http://www.refinery29.com/san-francisco-shed-for-rent

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #21 on: May 13, 2015, 02:16:11 PM »
This is more of a "shame" for the US government than for the woman in the article; 3 months of maternity leave is unfortunately pretty princely in this country. I too was "lucky" enough to get 3 months of maternity leave, all unpaid; by other countries' standards this is very low.

Is there anything wrong with the rule of thumb that if you can not afford 3 months of unpaid leave than you can not afford a baby?  If you can not afford to live off one income or two incomes minus daycare than you can not afford a baby?  Hell Suze Orman recommends keeping an 8 month emergency fund.  Surely your maternity leave replacement can come from that.

Why do we want to be encouraging people so close to the wire that 3 months of no pay is a disaster to bring another mouth to feed in this world?

Zinsch

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 43
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #22 on: May 13, 2015, 03:10:06 PM »
Because we need to face the reality that people will have babys, whether they can afford them or not.
Do you really want mothers going back to work days after giving birth? I think, as a society, we can do better.
« Last Edit: May 13, 2015, 03:11:43 PM by Zinsch »

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #23 on: May 13, 2015, 03:34:48 PM »
Because we need to face the reality that people will have babys, whether they can afford them or not.
Do you really want mothers going back to work days after giving birth? I think, as a society, we can do better.

What I want is subsidized no thought birth control for as many women as possible until they are financially ready to be mothers.  Make it as accepted and expected as vaccinations such that only the weirdos would refuse and be ostracized for it.  Every girl going into high school will have a check the box birth control implant along with their other vaccination records.  For sexual equality, research should be done to offer no thought birth control options for men until they are ready.

Also, people should have enough emergency savings should cover exercising their FMLA rights.


nanu

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 345
  • Age: 35
  • Location: Cambridge, MA
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #24 on: May 13, 2015, 03:36:18 PM »
John Oliver just had this segment a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhKAQX5izw

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #25 on: May 13, 2015, 03:40:46 PM »
John Oliver just had this segment a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhKAQX5izw

If paid maternity/paternity leave is important to you, you should work for a company that offers it.  If you can't get hired at one of those companies, you should save enough money to cover your unpaid FMLA leave or be able to live off your partner's income.  Failing that, take care not to create another human.  Why is that last part so difficult?

TheGrimSqueaker

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2604
  • Location: A desert wasteland, where none but the weird survive
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #26 on: May 13, 2015, 05:40:30 PM »
John Oliver just had this segment a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhKAQX5izw

If paid maternity/paternity leave is important to you, you should work for a company that offers it.  If you can't get hired at one of those companies, you should save enough money to cover your unpaid FMLA leave or be able to live off your partner's income.  Failing that, take care not to create another human.  Why is that last part so difficult?

Because most birth control doesn't work reliably even when used correctly.

I know too many people who have gotten knocked up using Depo-Provera, the Pill, a diaphragm, condoms, and sometimes two or three different methods at once. Even when used correctly, those things have a failure rate. The IUD is the most reliable of all, but many insurance companies won't cover it. When it comes to female reproductive health, therefore doctors frequently refuse to give you access to anything not covered by insurance, even if you pay out of your own pocket.

(This is routine with many medicines relevant to women: if your particular insurance policy won't cover a treatment, or if most policies don't, women's health clinics generally refuse to provide medicine or tests for female related problems at all, even if you are a cash customer. For whatever reason, the same standard never seems to apply for elective surgeries like face lifts or boob jobs... just the things that are related to our reproductive organs. If you don't believe me, call around trying to get a Gardasil vaccine for a 30-year-old female who doesn't want cervical cancer.)

The much-touted "abstinence" concept, so well beloved by reactionaries, has a failure rate too. You see, it's possible to get Mickey Finned, outnumbered, attacked from behind, or just plain overpowered. Females don't always get to decide whether they have sex. Sometimes, when a woman is in a relationship, if she wants to have a place to sleep at night she simply has to put out regardless of whether she wants to. This is a fact of life: sometimes you have to go along to get along. Hopefully the birth control doesn't fail... but sometimes it does. Chemical birth control, in particular, is an inexact science.

There are further consequences when birth control fails, at least in the United States. Abortions are being restricted more and more aggressively by all levels of government, and morning-after drugs are becoming difficult or even impossible to come by. In fact, women who are suffering miscarriages are often unable to fill their prescriptions at pharmacies: pharmacists now have a religious entitlement to deny these women service, because the medicine that helps speed up a miscarriage and avoid sepsis is sometimes used to help induce an early abortion. In a small town with a lot of religious people feeling a yen to go into pharmacy, sepsis is pretty much mandatory. If your child is stillborn and you can't get to a hospital in time, you run the risk of being charged with, and convicted of, some combination of feticide, murder, or child abuse.

In a perfect world, a person could get driven to the hospital, or cared for, by a partner. But there isn't always one in the picture. Just because you're pregnant doesn't mean that the person who put you in that condition can necessarily be persuaded to help pay for an abortion, much less child care. Sometimes they can't even be found or picked out of a lineup, which is probably just as well: if you carry the child to term, the father has rights regardless of how the child was conceived or whether the father was tried, convicted, and incarcerated for it. In fact, if you succumb to social pressure to carry the child to term and keep it, you may have just given an abuser or rapist a lifelong invitation into your life.

Only a complete imbecile would want to be pregnant, or risk pregnancy, unless she actually wanted children.

Having noticed which way the country was going, I paid through the nose for a tubal ligation when I was 24. Two of my friends talked doctors into performing hysterectomies on them at about the same age. But that kind of surgery is out of reach for many women. It's not just for financial reasons: doctors routinely refuse to perform sterilization surgery on women who aren't already married and burdened with children. Vasectomies are available to single, child-free men who want them, but there's a double standard when it comes to tubal ligations for women of the same age, marital status, and reproductive status. It's because of a pervasive myth that women are too stupid to understand whether they want to give birth. This means that, for most women in the USA, pregnancy is pretty much inevitable sooner or later.

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #27 on: May 13, 2015, 05:59:18 PM »
Indeed we need more subsidies for long term birth control.  If you're too poor for birth control, you're too poor for a child, and sexual activity is one of the few pleasures poor people can engage in nearly as easily as the well off.  Finding a way to take care of the males would cut the failure rate as well.

There's got to be more going on here.  Do we need more poor people?  I think we don't, but unless policies and incentives are aligned to keep the poors from making more poors then someone thinks they are a necessary resource.  Can we as a society do without an exploitative low wage labor supply?

Abortion is controversial, and in my opinion although safe and legal, not rare enough.  Preventing unwanted pregnancies through a vast wide birth control campaign would do a lot to make abortion more rare, and would be more compassionate than current piecemeal legislative restrictions going on now.

So, why should this country mandate paid parental leave, in effect subsidizing childbirth for those who can not normally afford it?  Should we not instead encourage the rich to have more children and the poor have less?

nanu

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 345
  • Age: 35
  • Location: Cambridge, MA
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #28 on: May 13, 2015, 06:05:55 PM »
Last I checked, your taxes also pay for public schools and other services only (or mostly) "the poors" make use of.
Should we stop funding those to further discourage "the poors" from "making more poors"?

For the record, I have my own issues with people bringing children into this world when they are unprepared to care for them (financially and otherwise).
But paid parental leave is also created to make the job market more equal and fair to women, as they tend to be the ones that give birth...

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #29 on: May 13, 2015, 06:41:48 PM »
Last I checked, your taxes also pay for public schools and other services only (or mostly) "the poors" make use of.
Should we stop funding those to further discourage "the poors" from "making more poors"?

For the record, I have my own issues with people bringing children into this world when they are unprepared to care for them (financially and otherwise).
But paid parental leave is also created to make the job market more equal and fair to women, as they tend to be the ones that give birth...

Eliminate public schools?  Perish the thought but I am a product of public schools.  As education and introduction to citizenship is necessary for the prosperity of every citizen, it should be funded with public money.  Other services the poors make use of should be expanded such as nutrition assistance.  It is too popular to rail against the SNAP program by focusing on the relatively low level of abuse in its administration.  One way to make SNAP more popular is to give it to everyone rich or poor.  Give everyone a basic allowance for nutrition funded through taxes and it will lessen the stigma of those who really need it making less than optimal choices because it is an expected benefit of citizenship.  If we start with the proposition that everyone is entitled to a minimum nutrition allowance above what we currently have and we will fund it through taxation if need be, then perhaps we can engineer a world where either such allowance is cheerily paid for or no longer needed.

As it stands right now, paid parental leave is an employment perk and not a mandated right.  I'm not sure that it's in the same league as making sure our citizens don't starve.  We already have too many hungry people. No need to encourage creating more.

ReadyToStash

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 28
  • Age: 2019
  • Location: United States
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #30 on: May 13, 2015, 06:54:01 PM »
"Required" birth control for women sounds fantastic...unless you're a woman. Every method of birth control has it's drawbacks. Imo too many young women are prescribed bc without really understanding what it does to their bodies. You can't just force someone to take a pill, implant, injection, etc without regard to how that actually alters their physiology. Not to mention the mere idea of that is a gross mis-step of government power.

I don't have the answers on how to stop the wrong people from becoming parents at the wrong time, but you're barking up the wrong tree.

QueenAlice

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 277
  • Age: 37
  • QueenAlice, PhD
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #31 on: May 13, 2015, 08:52:58 PM »
Waaay off topic... ReadyToStash, is it your birthday? Why is there a piece of cake next to your age? I've never noticed that before...


cerebus

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 509
  • Age: 46
  • Location: South Africa
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #32 on: May 14, 2015, 01:26:34 AM »
Poverty:



ozzage

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 65
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #34 on: May 14, 2015, 05:36:33 AM »
Do we need more poor people?  I think we don't, but unless policies and incentives are aligned to keep the poors from making more poors then someone thinks they are a necessary resource.  Can we as a society do without an exploitative low wage labor supply?

Holy. shit.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23048
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #35 on: May 14, 2015, 07:06:13 AM »
Do we need more poor people?  I think we don't, but unless policies and incentives are aligned to keep the poors from making more poors then someone thinks they are a necessary resource.  Can we as a society do without an exploitative low wage labor supply?

Holy. shit.

Reminds me of this quote from the West Wing:


Donna : "Why are you a Republican?"
Cliff : "Because I hate poor people. I hate them, Donna. They're all so poor, and many of 'em talk funny, and don't have proper table manners... my father slaved away at the Fortune 500 company he inherited so that I could go to Choate, Brown and Harvard and see that this country isn't overrun by poor people and lesbians."

(He goes on to indicate that he was joking.)

ReadyToStash

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 28
  • Age: 2019
  • Location: United States
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #36 on: May 14, 2015, 09:24:25 AM »
Waaay off topic... ReadyToStash, is it your birthday? Why is there a piece of cake next to your age? I've never noticed that before...



Yes it was my birthday yesterday! At first I thought you meant my comment was off topic. Which I guess it was, since it was referring to the above conversation that was also kind of off-topic...

mm1970

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 10859
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #37 on: May 14, 2015, 11:13:48 AM »
John Oliver just had this segment a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhKAQX5izw

If paid maternity/paternity leave is important to you, you should work for a company that offers it.  If you can't get hired at one of those companies, you should save enough money to cover your unpaid FMLA leave or be able to live off your partner's income.  Failing that, take care not to create another human.  Why is that last part so difficult?
Well, we will have to agree to disagree.  I would prefer that the country go the way of California and other states, who provide paid family leave through paycheck withdrawals (aka taxes), like SDI.

And that's why I vote!

cerebus

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 509
  • Age: 46
  • Location: South Africa
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #38 on: May 14, 2015, 11:27:04 AM »
John Oliver just had this segment a few days ago:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIhKAQX5izw

If paid maternity/paternity leave is important to you, you should work for a company that offers it.  If you can't get hired at one of those companies, you should save enough money to cover your unpaid FMLA leave or be able to live off your partner's income.  Failing that, take care not to create another human.  Why is that last part so difficult?
Well, we will have to agree to disagree.  I would prefer that the country go the way of California and other states, who provide paid family leave through paycheck withdrawals (aka taxes), like SDI.

And that's why I vote!

+1. The US standard of maternity leave is pathetic, bordering on inhuman.

CoreyTheMan

  • 5 O'Clock Shadow
  • *
  • Posts: 40
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #39 on: May 14, 2015, 12:46:20 PM »
hmmmmmm.....I am not sure how I feel about this issue...on one hand I do think that women do deserve more rights when it comes to maternity issues and equality in the workplace but on the other hand who will pay the new added bill? The company? the state government aka state taxes? federal government aka federal taxes? and is it fair to charge everyone taxes when some people never have kids?

vivophoenix

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 429
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #40 on: May 14, 2015, 12:48:29 PM »
hmmmmmm.....I am not sure how I feel about this issue...on one hand I do think that women do deserve more rights when it comes to maternity issues and equality in the workplace but on the other hand who will pay the new added bill? The company? the state government aka state taxes? federal government aka federal taxes? and is it fair to charge everyone taxes when some people never have kids?

you mean like they charge everyone for roads, and public school and social security. taxes arent about being fair. its about whats going to over all improve society.

people fail to realize that leaving women behind in the work place burdens everyone. thats 50% of the population who arent allowed to flourish

MgoSam

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3684
  • Location: Minnesota
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #41 on: May 14, 2015, 12:52:18 PM »
hmmmmmm.....I am not sure how I feel about this issue...on one hand I do think that women do deserve more rights when it comes to maternity issues and equality in the workplace but on the other hand who will pay the new added bill? The company? the state government aka state taxes? federal government aka federal taxes? and is it fair to charge everyone taxes when some people never have kids?

you mean like they charge everyone for roads, and public school and social security. taxes arent about being fair. its about whats going to over all improve society.

people fail to realize that leaving women behind in the work place burdens everyone. thats 50% of the population who arent allowed to flourish

Yeah, I haven't seen Oliver's segment yet, but I think that maternity leave would be an overall net benefit for society and the economy. I don't have any numbers to justify this, but I will do some googling later.

cerebus

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 509
  • Age: 46
  • Location: South Africa
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #42 on: May 14, 2015, 01:03:09 PM »
hmmmmmm.....I am not sure how I feel about this issue...on one hand I do think that women do deserve more rights when it comes to maternity issues and equality in the workplace but on the other hand who will pay the new added bill? The company? the state government aka state taxes? federal government aka federal taxes? and is it fair to charge everyone taxes when some people never have kids?

Watch the Youtube segment, it's very enlightening. All these arguments were made in the past, and in practice the effect of allowing women maternity leave is negligible on companies and creates a more stable work environment where as someone said, women can flourish.

Giro

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 629
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #43 on: May 14, 2015, 01:19:18 PM »
I just love when people blame housing costs for their ridiculous spending.  I have a cousin who lives in San Diego.  He bought a very modest home for $180K.  He showed me the real estate market and he could have spent $480K for the exact same size house 12 miles from where he bought.  Oh and by the way, the taxes were also 3.5 times more than his taxes.  And the public school system in his district is still rated excellent.  I just cannot understand people.  I guess they don't like to drive 12 miles to the beach because that's just ridiculous.

Choices people.  There are affordable homes just about everywhere but you have to make a few sacrifices....like Starbucks isn't within walking distance.  I hear it all the time about how you just cannot find a house for less than 1/2 mil in certain parts of the country.  Well, you CAN you just don't want to. 


vivophoenix

  • Bristles
  • ***
  • Posts: 429
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #44 on: May 14, 2015, 01:19:27 PM »
 thing is, if you assume for every brilliant or very able man, there is an equally brilliant woman, wouldn't it stand to reason you would want that woman to have all the resources to be brilliant. also that would mean a society could double its available brain power

a woman being forced to choose between giving birth or work for what ever reason( be it childcare, maternity leave, or even having time available to parent) doesnt benefit us as a whole.

as a society you want people to be born and you want smart people to be smart

Helvegen

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 569
  • Location: PNW
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #45 on: May 14, 2015, 01:23:18 PM »
I'm a first or second year millennial who had an unplanned baby with zero in the bank. I had the luck of living in a country with pretty much free universal healthcare and I stayed home with the baby for the first year on a mix of non-income and income dependent social subsidies and my husband worked and went to school. We lived in a very small  apartment. The baby's room was what was supposed to be the dining room. We got almost everything for the baby second-hand from relatives. We lived on an extremely strict budget because not only were we piss poor, I had to send back money to the US for student loans. Thank you universe for the very favorable exchange rate, but still, it was at least 120 euro a month.

After the first year, I moved with our kid back to the US to get a job because it wasn't going to happen in that country. I had to live with my mother again to get established and wait for my husband's PR to come through. I got a job, got laid off from that job, husband got his PR, I got another job, moved out of my mother's house, husband couldn't get a job because he lacked good US work experience and the economy tanked, husband started volunteering in his field and eventually went back to school and got a part-time job. I then got laid off from my third job and took a part-time job to tide me over till I found a full-time one. That never happened, not in that state anyway. We decided to move back in with my mother for about 9-10 months to save money for a move cross-country. My husband would have much better employment prospects there. We saved up, he got laid off from his part-time job two months after graduation. We decided then it was time to get out of Dodge. We moved out here with, I think $6-7k and whatever UI he was eligible for. We only ended up using one week of it because we got FT job offers like crazy after moving here. We couldn't do that for the life of us where we came from.

Life is really good now, financially, in particular. We are bringing home amounts of money now, I would have just laughed myself to death if I had been told this was going to be our future before. We are saving 40% of our gross income. We can afford to go on vacation and the occasional dinner out. But those times a few years ago were really hard. We never had to get on food stamps or childcare assistance or Section 8 or whatever. We always had enough money for those things, but we didn't eat all that great and our daughter was taken care of by very good, but mostly unlicensed providers because that was all we could afford. Husband and I didn't always have health insurance, but our daughter was on CHIP, so at least that was taken care of. We didn't own a house (still don't), we drove duct taped cars (we still drive older, paid for cars), pretty much all of our clothes came from Goodwill (I'd say still 50%), our cell phones were ancient with the cheapest plan (well, we upgraded here a little), most household items came from IKEA or Craigslist (still true). Going out to eat? Ha, yeah right. But we made a serious commitment to live within to even below our means, even when it hurt. No credit card debt. No car debt. No (new) student loan debt. Most of all, no more children! So when I read sob stories of spoiled brats like in the article, I want to punch the monitor.

GuitarStv

  • Senior Mustachian
  • ********
  • Posts: 23048
  • Age: 42
  • Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #46 on: May 14, 2015, 02:51:10 PM »
thing is, if you assume for every brilliant or very able man, there is an equally brilliant woman, wouldn't it stand to reason you would want that woman to have all the resources to be brilliant. also that would mean a society could double its available brain power

a woman being forced to choose between giving birth or work for what ever reason( be it childcare, maternity leave, or even having time available to parent) doesnt benefit us as a whole.

as a society you want people to be born and you want smart people to be smart

No!  There's enough competition from foreigners as it is, now you want to flood the market with women?  As an overpaid white male worker this thought is terrifying to me.  Also, something about too many taxes and so forth.

zephyr911

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 3619
  • Age: 45
  • Location: Northern Alabama
  • I'm just happy to be here. \m/ ^_^ \m/
    • Pinhook Development LLC
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #47 on: May 14, 2015, 03:10:49 PM »
No!  There's enough competition from foreigners as it is, now you want to flood the market with women?  As an overpaid white male worker this thought is terrifying to me.  Also, something about too many taxes and so forth.
<3

RFAAOATB

  • Pencil Stache
  • ****
  • Posts: 654
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #48 on: May 14, 2015, 04:24:56 PM »
No!  There's enough competition from foreigners as it is, now you want to flood the market with women?  As an overpaid white male worker this thought is terrifying to me.  Also, something about too many taxes and so forth.

No need to be sexist about it.  There's nothing stopping a highly successful woman from convincing her male companion to be a stay at home.  The fact is there are too many jobs with too low wages.  If there were less jobs with higher wages, everyone would be happier.  The only thing I can't figure out is a sexually neutral way to distribute jobs so you don't end up with two assertively mated high achievers taking two jobs leaving a couple of slightly less competitive people with no jobs.

I think we need to make having a stay at home spouse the new status symbol instead of a fancy car or a fancy watch.

TheGrimSqueaker

  • Magnum Stache
  • ******
  • Posts: 2604
  • Location: A desert wasteland, where none but the weird survive
Re: Millennial parents sink under weight of low pay, debt, child care
« Reply #49 on: May 14, 2015, 10:41:51 PM »
No!  There's enough competition from foreigners as it is, now you want to flood the market with women?  As an overpaid white male worker this thought is terrifying to me.  Also, something about too many taxes and so forth.

No need to be sexist about it.  There's nothing stopping a highly successful woman from convincing her male companion to be a stay at home.  The fact is there are too many jobs with too low wages.  If there were less jobs with higher wages, everyone would be happier.  The only thing I can't figure out is a sexually neutral way to distribute jobs so you don't end up with two assertively mated high achievers taking two jobs leaving a couple of slightly less competitive people with no jobs.

I think we need to make having a stay at home spouse the new status symbol instead of a fancy car or a fancy watch.

He was making a joke, I think.

There have been a few historians who have focused on what life was like for women in the more distant past. Olwen Hufton is one who comes to mind.

Interestingly, a stay at home spouse was a status symbol in the late 1700's and afterwards. It was a big deal to be able to support a family on only one income, and to actually have a nuclear family instead of multiple generations living together in one household. Not everybody got married or even attempted to reproduce.

Prior to the Industrial Revolution, the members of the ruling and financial elite (male and female) really didn't work at all. You had peasants, who were mostly out in the fields or becoming servants and working in a wealthier person's home, and you had landowners who were mostly living it up. In the middle was the craft and trade class, where both men and women worked, but ironically it was generally the man who stayed in the "home", since that's where the shop was, and he was the highly qualified and experienced craftsman who was able to supervise the apprentices. The fisherman, for example, had to be out fishing, but someone else had to sell the fish. Someone had to go to the market with the goods, or work the front counter and manage the money while the master craftsman did what only he could do. That ended up being the women and girls in the household: there weren't enough pairs of hands otherwise. (Interestingly, that made household money management primarily a female sport in the skilled trade class). There were some nomadic individuals and professions, and the women did tend to stay closer to the tents and property instead of wandering around with a herd, however that's frequently because they were the ones engaged in making trade goods. That whole hunter/gatherer thing... it's impossible to be a "gatherer" if you stay inside the cave.

After the Industrial Revolution consolidated the textile and manufacturing industries into centralized factories (instead of things people did by themselves at home), the working-class norm was for both men and women to work, and for child care to be performed by elderly family members. The working class gradually replaced the peasants as farms got more mechanized and it became increasingly impractical and unhealthy to be a peasant.

The "bourgeoisie", and I mean this in the original context, not the Marxist context, was a class of people who gradually became the dominant middle class. They were small town or city people, typically small business owners or professionals. In those families, the women were sometimes co-owners of the business, or sometimes they had a side business separate from their husband's profession. If you read the novel "Madame Bovary", you'll see what the norm was like in the mid-1800's: every woman except the novel's airheaded heroine has a job. They either rent out rooms and keep boarders, or raise hens for eggs, or take in washing, or work as servants in someone else's households. Besides the extremely wealthy elite, only the most successful professionals could afford to keep an unemployed, stay-at-home spouse. Some regions of industrial countries were able to have this as an ideal to aspire to in the early 1900's, but it was very much a status symbol (and probably not much fun to actually do).

The 1950's, historically speaking, were a flash in the pan. With the only industrial economy left standing after WWII, no significant infrastructure damage, and very few personnel losses, the USA was in a unique position. Everyone needed manufactured goods in order to rebuild, and so if you were reasonably well educated, white, male, and in the right city, lucrative work was available. That's the only time in human history it's ever been possible for large numbers of people to support a stay-at-home spouse, with kids, on one income. For whatever reason, people decided that this kind of economic structure was somehow "traditional" and normal. In reality, it's the exception to the vast majority of human experience throughout recorded history.