Everyone Else Knows Best

I have been working on some life modifications lately. I guess these are more life hacks --- in the sense that I'm taking a machete to things and hacking away at things that aren't working anymore. In preparing for these major changes, I have been talking to friends and family about my plans. I am actively trying to work through a complex financial problem, so I am talking to people I know and trust to feel it out. In my explorations, I have found that everybody has the answer -- everyone, other than me.

When I say I am working through a  complex problem, I mean, I am working through a set of financial realities that I did not adequately anticipate. I did not anticipate that graduate school would fling me into more debt, despite being "funded." I did not anticipate a job market that would lead to one viable hire, 11 months after school. And I did not anticipate that I would get a master's degree and suddenly be worth less than 60% of what I was before my master's degree.

The problem that I am trying to solve is this: On an $1,850/month real income (net income minus core living expenses), I am somehow supposed to eat food, buy gas, have recreation... and here's the problem... also pay student loan payments, pay back-taxes from 2014, in which I took a job that led to a $3,000 tax bill. Oh, and I am somehow also supposed to muster the money to do activities that make me fun, interesting, and social.

That doesn't sound like much, you say -- just take it slow and be patient. Well, let me tell you; I've heard that line a time or two in the last few months. Yeah, I definitely should be patient. Patience is the right thing to do when your $1850/month income is reduced to $0.00 after rent, utilities, phone, gas, and food.

Oh, I'm spending too much! Right. I knew it, you're right. I'm just spending too much. I need to cut back. Because my oatmeal breakfasts, peanut butter sandwitches for lunch, and sweet potato dinners are just too extravagant for my income... I definitely am just spending too much, somehow.

Well, you're all right. I am spending too much. Here's the full breakdown of the core expenses:

$1,850.00/mo Net Income
-475.00 Rent
-140.00 Insurance
-130.00 Storage
-80.00 Utilities (probably average)
-70.00 Phone
-59.00 Credit Card Payment
------------------------------------
$895/mo leftover for everything else.

Given that "everything else" includes groceries ($250/mo), gas ($30/mo just to get to work and back, 3 days per week, and then recreational gas to see family friends -- $150 total), and then recreational gas expenses... I'm actually left with $495/mo for recreation, going out with friends, and paying student loans. But one of those things is not like the other thing....

The $495/month I am left with after core living expenses handles car repairs, unexpected expenses, going out, and student loans. After these things, this number is $0.00.

Given that I am to be left with $0.00 each month, I am not sure how I am to make progress on paying my credit card off? How am I supposed to pay more than my student loan bill? Am I really going to make minimum payments for the next x-years? Am I really supposed to live paycheck to paycheck like this, as a graduate with something like 200 college credits, including graduate work?

But everybody else has the answer. Breathe. Be patient. Get a second job. Cut back on your expenses. Decrease your spending. I've heard so many helpful ideas. But what if the answer is bound by absolute realities that cannot be overcome with these conventional thoughts?

What if my reality is that I owe $3000 in taxes, $1900 in credit card debt, and no way to save a dollar each month? And what if these conventional ideas for solving my problem aren't actually the solutions to my problem?

Well, of course everyone else knows better than I do. After all, I am about to live in an ultralight travel trailer on the street. Like a crazy person. And everybody knows that it's a bad idea.

The problem I am trying to solve here is: How do I flip my financial system for the better, using skills I already have? And how do I pay off these remnants from graduate school and unemployment while also planning to pay student loans?

The answer that I have come up with is to not pay rent and utilities.

Of course this answer isn't popular. It's the answer that shows that I am impatient. It's the answer that shows that I am clearly miscalculating something.

If I move into the lightweight travel trailer, I will eliminate rent, utilities, and much of my commuting cost, which is 20 miles per day, to and from work. The resulting system allows me to save roughly $600 per month, in addition to whatever else I can recoup from the $495 noted above. Which means that I go from having effectively zero buffer to having upwards of $1000/month open for saving, going out, or hell, even just giving me peace of mind that I am okay.

Everyone else knows best, though. My problem is so simple. It's just... or just that... or that I'm... and so on. The reality I face is a totally unsustainable system of financial players and features. Sure, I should just have my parents help me with my student loans --- but should I, really? What is it about what I've done that has led me to not having the ability to pay my costs of existence? I work in the sustainability industry, yet my life system is unsustainable by default of owing too much and making too little.

Of course I will work on cutting down my expenses. Of course I will work on my patience. And of course I will look at a second, third, and/or another job with more hours... but until then, I am operating in disaster mode, and my disaster mode is a lot different than everyone else's. I am working to make my system sustainable.

The Child Support Generation

Millennials are the generation after Gen X. We were born between 1978 and 2000 by most of the definitions I have seen. This generation is whipped, prodded, observed, and criticized in a way that past generations have not been. Born into the age of the internet, television, and information everywhere, we are both products of rapidly available, mass information, and we are the subjects of it.

Studied in every dimension, including our sexual habits, arrested development, and our place among other generations. Born in 1983, I am a Millennial. And I can tell you a think or two about my generation.

My generation is in a very weird place. Some of us were growing up in some of the best economic times, and some of us were born into the worst recession since The Great Depression. The divide in my generation is loud, large, and has created two generations, where most only recognize one.

The Millennial Generation is not one generation. It is two. And the Millennials aren’t just a generation; they are an economic and social class. There’s a contradiction there, but it is for a very good reason.

The way we define generations is kind of stupid, which is okay – most of the things we think are stupid, yet useful in some ways. The way we think about Millennials and generations is a remnant of prior thought processes, which allows for the grouping of people by some common thread. In this case, the date range in which we are born.

The problem with Millennials is more complicated than most people think. The generation is not as homogenous as our idiot academics have framed the discourse about Millennials. I am one of those idiot academics, and perhaps guilty, just by talking about these kids in this way.

But back to the point: The Millennial Generation is a single generation that has two sub-generations within it and the generation actually has its own social and class structure, in part like every other generation, with some unique characteristics.

As I get to know more and more people from my generation, I have come to realize that the oddities and extremes are those who are trying to achieve or are achieving “independence.” Independence used to be a thing; a goal; and a way to identify whether one was successful. It was also not really an option – graduate from high school, get a job or go to college, and wean yourself off the parental cash teat suddenly and by the age of 21.

Back in the day, before the day of the Millennial, this thing called independence was achievable. It wasn’t something that could only happen by 35 or 40, and college was something reserved for only the top students with the most richest parents. And of course there’s myth involved here. Prior generations weren’t perfect, either. So many screw ups have built us up to this point.

Millennials are the generation of parental support. Members of my generation live the lives of the rich and famous on wages that are too small to pay living costs today; drive nicer cars than my parents do; and eat better food at nicer restaurants than I experienced until I was making over $50,000 per year in a professional job.

My generation is the generation of child support – and I don’t just mean the money that daddy pays to mommy after the divorce… I mean the money that mommy and daddy pay little Joey to pay his or her bills and have food on their plate.

And I hate ripping on my generation. But my generation has a class problem that has nothing to do with disparities in education and personal income. My generation has a class problem that stems from the parents of the Millennial Generation.

The class problem in the Millennial Generation is that there are kids who are supported by their parents, indefinitely, and there are kids who are trying to achieve independence, either by force or by choice. Though, let’s be real; Rarely by choice. Who would ever try for independence by choice? It’s miserable.

The kids around me are largely parentally funded. Almost every day, I learn of someone new who is making $16 per hour, living in a haughty place, like Denver or San Diego, and is still living the rock ‘n roll lifestyle.

The problem isn’t that Millennials are living well – it’s that they’re living in their parents’ tax bracket, not their own. $16 per hour isn’t enough to afford a $1,100/month apartment, a newer car, insurance, cell phone, and the party life. Just the list above leaves the 40 hour per week bloke with negatives in their account register.

So, what the fuck is going on? Why is the Millennial Generation such a bunch of screw ups? Why are some of us living in RV’s and looking at living in their truck, while others are living in downtown Denver and eating sushi on half the wage?

The reason is that the prior generations have propped my generation with such rickety scaffolding that all we are is a façade of success and economic health. My generation will see more bubbles in short order, and it will come as these perma-child-support kids start to have to achieve independence.

As their rent bills start to become their own responsibility and there is no longer a parental care check that buys the sushi and martini’s, my generation will cause yet another economic collapse. My Millennial Generation is an intensely poor class, as far as wages go, yet an extremely rich class as far as quality of life goes.

Quality of life costs money – a lot of money. And my generation isn’t making it. Many of my engineer friends are doing well – they have good pay that most often pays more than the average household income for the USA. Yet, even some of them struggle with money. Considering that many of them are making over $25/hour, the new minimum wage for independent living appears to rest around $20 per hour for just about anywhere in my area.

The problem with The Millennial Generation isn’t what many of the professional academics appear to think is wrong. The problem is the parents of the Millennial Generation. The parents have created a class divide within the generation that will be very difficult to reconcile as time goes on. New cars, sushi dinners, college tuition bills that total up to the sixth figure, and an indefinite pool of backup cash has shaped my generation.

For those of us who are trying to achieve independence, and particularly those who are doing it; The vision isn’t pretty. Even $25 or $30 an hour is no longer enough to live the rock star lifestyle. After taxes, rent, food, gas, insurance, utilities, and such, even $30 per hour quickly goes away. And it goes away because of the relative value of that amount on the market.

Relative value is what this economic problem is all about. Those who have money provided have bumped up the value of everything else. These supported individuals can buy without having the individual economic value to buy on their own. In other words, one Millennial has the buying power of potentially two professionally successful parents, without any of that success on their own.

Whether this is a problem or not is up to the beholder. Is it a problem when a 28 year old is making $16 per hour and cannot actually afford to live anywhere but the most squalid places, yet is living like that of someone making $30+/hour? If not, cool – seems like a utopia for such individuals. For me, that looks like a $14/hour deficit. Is it you or your parents in this income tax bracket, as Cake says.

I think the Millennial Generation is misunderstood. I think we’re better in some ways than we get credit for and far worse in others. I look at my generation and realize that I’m looking at an awful lot of people who are actually bordering on homelessness, but are propped up by their parents. It must be nice to have the whole world melting down around you, yet be insulated from the bare economic forces. It would just be nice to see more humble attitudes get sold along with those molten-lava-resistant kicks mommy and daddy bought you.

I’m going to continue being independent, but I’m going to continue to do it off grid and off market. Mark my hashtag.

Minimum Wage is Different for College Grads

I figure that you should never go more into student debt than you will make in at your first job, in your first year out of school. In other words, never go more into student debt than your first annual salary will be. Even then, the debt burden is large. And college grads have to make more to account for their debt payments.

The process of paying for school looks very different for those who are burdened with the debt themselves. Student loan payments end up being a 10-25 year commitment that will continually garnish some of our wages. Yes, "garnish."

Thinking of student debt as wage garnishment is a little different. I refer to it this way because it is a mandatory cost to get the wages and jobs that will help us pay these debts. Every month, a bill comes that takes away a percentage of a paycheck, which was a cost to get that paycheck.

If a student graduates with an average starting salary of around $30,000 per year, their likely base living expenses before food, gas, fun, and car, are likely to be around 60-70% of that amount. Just rent, utilities, taxes, and insurance (of all kinds) will consume $18,000-$21,000 of their gross income. That leaves roughly $9,000 per year for food, fun, car, and student loan payments.

For the student who is paying their student loans on their own, they're not left with much. Sure, you could feed a family in Africa for like a decade on the $9,000 per year leftover, but you sure aren't going to be eating much in America on that little money. Especially with car repairs, food, dates, and student loans coming out of the same pot.

The point is that there is a new minimum wage that most don't recognize -- it's the minimum wage for a college graduate. College graduates bearing a student debt burden have to make more out of the gate to compensate for the debt payments.

The college grad minimum wage is the amount it costs to live a healthy life in addition to student loan payments. The thing is, we're all supposed to be saving to buy a houses, too. And our cars are wearing out. And we need new clothes to be professional, too.

Incomes after school have to be higher to compensate for the cost of schooling. And let's be honest -- a college grad shouldn't be eating ramen for years after school while paying off debts. For those who are, college has failed them and left them worse off than if they had skipped it all together.

The creation of this new breed of low-paid, post-graduate that can barely afford to live well with their debt burdens is nasty. We're creating drones to pay student loans -- Student Loan Drones. And it's not good. Someone with a college degree needs extra pay right out of the gate to pay off their loans. I also think we all went to college so we could live better, faster, and for longer -- yet we're burdened with these toxic debts that completely garnish our wages for decades after school. The system is broken.

I Am Counterculture

Culture? Everybody uses this word, but so few have any clue what it means or how it works. Counterculture is a new word born from hipsters and technologists that means an intentional counter-movement to balance the mainstream thought process. It's all a bunch of horseshit. That is, until somebody loses their fucking mind and decides to live in a vehicle.

Listen, something is really wrong with the job market and living expenses. "The Rent Is Too Damn High" is a political party. It's headed by a crazy person, but the sentiment is damn straight. You know what else is too damn high? The price of rent. The price of food. The price of gas. The amount the lower-incomes pay in taxes. The cost of health insurance. The cost of car insurance. And the price of homes.

The list goes on, but one thing is for sure -- we're all fucking screwed.

Not all of us, of course. Those who are insulated from nature and the markets are doing great -- they have no clue that the world is melting down around them. For those who are trying this thing called "independence" and "starting out," the world looks very, very different.

Here's the thing. I just overdrew my bank accounts to buy food and gas. Yes, food and gas. I'm a working professional, living in an RV, making over $30/hour, and I just overdrew my accounts on food, gas, and living expenses. Why?

The reason is that I'm paying too goddamned much in rent, utilities, and living expenses. I can barely even afford to fix my cars. And that's a problem.

I talked to a friend recently who chided me for having student debt -- I told her that I still have undergrad debt and my graduate student debt came directly from buying myself out of my old life and spending 11 months looking for a new job.

So, while I'm sitting here feeling like a retard for racking up $32 in bank over-draw fees, I'm realizing that there's something even more massively wrong with our system than I initially realized.

I am working at a job that pays a great wage, with great benefits, and with great potential for growth. But with student debt, as a college graduate, my wages are garnished so much, there is an absolute minimum that I can afford to make before I am actually doing worse than someone without a degree at all...

Here's the thing: Getting an education is great, but it doesn't pay anymore. The amounts that we think of good wages are no longer good wages. And if a worker has student debt, they have to consider their student debt in their calculation of their success.

Right now, I'm working a half time job that pays more than my first full-time post-bachelor job. That means I am worth fully 100% more today than the day I graduated from my undergrad. And it's not enough. It's not that I'm doing something wrong or different.

The problem is not my income, my wages, or my choices -- the problem is the amounts that are deducted from my paychecks. In prior posts, I explored how much I lose to taxes and such, but it's worse than I ever thought.

I lose 25% of my paychecks to taxes, medicare, medicaid, and all those other mandatory paycheck deductions. I lose another 6% to medical insurance costs. That means that I start my month with 69% of my gross paycheck.

Of that 69%, I spend 35% on other mandatory expenditures, including rent, cell phone, utilities, and heating (spring, winter, and fall only). That means that I am left with 34% of my paycheck after taxes (yielding net income), and living expenses (yielding what I am calling "real income"). Of that 34%, student loans have to come out of it, vehicle repairs, food, gas, fun, and all other expenses that make life go-round.

What I've found is that I now have a fundamental choice: Pay student loans, or pay rent. Did you notice how the choice is "OR," not "AND"? I can pay rent OR student loans.

Congratulations to me -- my education has bankrupted me. Bankrupted. Bankrupted is when your expenses are greater than your income. Mine, though minimal, are now officially greater than my income.

And here's what I'm going to do about it: Fuck society. I'm going to fuck society. I'm going to leave the markets, leave the grid, and hit the road. I'm going to keep working to pay off this awful debt, but I will be doing it as a street-dweller.

Yep. The education bubble is upon us. And I am the new counterculture. It's normal to have student debt, you say? Well, it's also normal to go to prison once or twice in a lifetime, but I'm not going to do that.

Counterculture is a negative, distruptive reaction to the mainstream thought process. I will not live with this debt. I will pay it off and I will do it with grace. I am leaving the system. I am going off market and off grid. The counterculture to student debt and the academic institution have begun.

Poverty Line and Student Loans

The world looks very different to graduated students with student loans. Whether $10,000, $40,000, or $200,000, the post-grad with student debt lives in a different financial system than the student without. In the job market, the student with debt is treated the same as the student without. Regardless of the difference, there is a fundamental lesson for the college graduate that changes the way the post-graduate approaches employment.

Students go to college because it is needed to get a "good job" in today's economy. Or they want to "make a difference." The good job is supposed to come with higher pay, particularly for the long-haul. Making a difference often is an inherent side-effect of the degree, but can also be a core feature of one's employment.

When looking for jobs after graduation, there are a couple of trends I have noticed. The first is that those in the applied sciences (e.g., engineering) are immediately valuable and in demand. The second is that those in the humanities are not in demand for anything but their ability to handle a project and adapt to a variety of duties.

For those in the applied sciences, wages appear to be higher than average, and potentially pay-off quickly. For those outside the applied sciences, the balance between degree and income is far more complex.

Post-graduates with student loan debt need to be especially mindful of their future incomes. Starting incomes are often low and are offered at generalized jobs that do not require much specialization. Which is great -- otherwise, where in the world would someone with a degree in English Literature ever work, other than a bookstore?

Debt creates an economic problem between the degree-seeker, their debt, and the job market. While a college degree prepares a student for a variety of encounters after school, if the jobs they are "qualified" for or are hireable only pay so much, their degree could be for naught.

The degree is for naught when the monthly payment amount on the loan drives the net income of the worker to near, at, or below the amount they would have made without a degree.

When talking about the poverty line, this consideration needs to be taken into account. For instance, if someone took out a $40,000 loan, which will enjoy a payment of roughly $350 per month for ten years, their net income would need to exceed the amount they would have made without the degree.

And the calculation isn't just that simple. Foregone wages have to be taken into account in this calculation. A student doesn't just have $40,000 in student debt, they have that amount in student debt PLUS the foregone wages at the best job they could have gotten for the entire duration of the degree.

Sure, someone without a degree isn't all that valuable on the job market anymore, but would they not become valuable given the same amount of effort of college applied to a workplace or apprenticeship?

The amounts in student debt that my generation is leaving their college career with is crippling. The jobs available are not paying enough in relation to this big debt that some college graduates face. The amount of debt needs to start paying for itself quickly, or else it wasn't worthwhile to begin with.

Poverty line shifts when student loans are involved. Of course some students have their loans or schooling paid for by parents, but that doesn't change the economic reality that college costs money. And college has hidden costs that are rarely or never accounted for.

For those with student loans, the poverty line is shifted because wages are directly curtailed by student debt for a full third of one's career. If student loans cost someone $400 per month for ten years, that is $4,800 in lost wages off the net annual income of the post-graduate.

If money is a motivator, or at least a controller of one's destiny, the presence and amounts of student debt are fundamental determinants of one's success after school. And a post-graduate should calculate their real income with student loans deducted.

I think I just coined a new concept: "Real Income." I consider this word to mean one's net income, including taxes, medical insurance, and student debt payments. The reason being: The amount you actually make is the amount that is left over after the absolutely mandatory deductions are removed from the amount you think you make.

The Landlord Paradox

So rent prices are soaring. That's both good and bad for me. Well, I guess it's good for me and bad for everyone else. Rents in my hometown have increased about 11% in the last year alone, which for a $1000/mo property, is a shiny new lease of $1,110. Great for landlords and horrible for renters.

The rental prices are getting so bad, a new report in my hometown shows that homelessness is increasing with rent prices -- people are basically getting priced out of their hometown and are having to hit the street.

One thing I don't understand about the rent markets right now is how they are working. How are housing prices going up so much that local jobs are not paying enough to live in a house in the town, yet there are people flooding the area with enough money to push others out?

I suppose, after all of my education, a hole has been revealed in my idiotic education. At a fundamental level, I don't understand how there is more money coming into a place to pay rents than is being produced in a place from wages? That is what we are facing, after all.

The rent prices in my hometown are being increased by demand, which means there is a glut of people who are willing to pay, but a shortage of places to house them. With vacancy rates so low, the housing industry should be exploding, yet the price of rent is just increasing. Where is this glut of people coming from and how are they paying these rents?

Clearly, I don't get it. I would love to have it explained. Are there people out there with enough money in the bank to throw it away on rent? Are these newcomers somehow better suited to higher paying jobs, elsewhere than the town itself (commuters)? Are they better at managing money and living slim with high rents and mediocre wages?

My current theory is that there are numerous people moving in with external help. These groups come from families with money, or from other places where wages were very high (e.g., California, Texas, or New York-like places), and living costs were low, relative to income.

Now, another theory is the trust fund. Which is an ugly and dicey subject. Nobody in their right mind would refuse the bounty of a room full of money, like Harry Potter's parents left him. These people can become the layperson's hero, because they have the time, risk-capacity, and privilege to do anything they like without risking food, housing, and health security.

Must be nice, but if the theory is correct, even in a more general form that does not include a trust fund and instead includes bottomless, limitless parental assistance, we still have a problem.

And when I say, "we" have a problem, I mean, those of use without this kind of help. For those without this kind of help, risks can't be taken, shifts in the rental market can become weaponized against our sources of security, and we can get pushed out of our lifetime home spaces.

So few people must have this kind of assistance, but I wonder what it does to rental markets; Are there enough people out there with financial assistance that rent markets could be artificially ballooned in relation to local income potentials?

Whether trust-funders, parental-supporters, or just a different kind of earner, the rental markets in my home area are so screwed up, even as a landlord, I cannot reconcile the disparities. How am I supposed to offer fair and reasonable rents when my personal income is no longer big enough to even rent my own house?

There's an interesting thought: A landlord who leases a property that the landlord can no longer afford to rent. I am that landlord. And it boggles my mind. The housing system appears to be in a state of volatility that isn't sustainable.

"Sustainable" is an interesting word to use in this context. I'm talking about a market where the median income can afford the median house. I'm talking about the median job paying a median income to buy the median house. When we're at the point where rent is higher than jobs are paying, we're talking about a market that is no longer in harmony.

Cats and the End of my Family Lineage

I recently decided that I will not be having kids. That decision might change, but right now, I am solidly convinced that I definitely do not want kids. This decision comes with an interesting consequence: It is the end of my family line. 

When biologists talk about extinction, they're not talking about an individual organism or families. The individual and the family of that organism aren't all that important in the grand scheme of the species. When something goes extinct, it has to be an entire branch of the tree of life.

I think the biologists are wrong. With every branch of their phylogenetic tree (aka. the tree of life), there are tiny capillaries that further refine and blur what that species is. My living family members are one of these imaginary capillaries coming off the human branch of this tree.

My decision to not have kids comes with an interesting consequence. The decision ends my family line, entirely.

None of the kids in my generation are procreating. We have just stopped. I am the one, only, and last male on both my mom and dad's side of the family who might procreate. There are no males on my dad's side in my generation and my one male cousin on the other side isn't interested, either.

I have one cousin who had a kid, but befell harsh judgment for having a kid at the age of 14. Hindsight, was this such a bad decision? She's the only person in the family in my generation to have a kid. Biologically speaking, she's the only successful one in the entire family. The rest of us are terminal points on the tree.

And what a bummer this is. We are all educated, upstanding citizens. And we are going extinct.

The choice of extinction for the family line is an interesting one. My master's degree taught me to plan more tightly, to not take on more than I can handle, and to foresee the future in a more accurate and complete way. And that power of foresight is what has led me directly to the choice to not procreate.

When I adopted my first cat about eight years ago, I was driven to do so by the norms of society and the need to have a pet. I even got a second one to keep him company, which doubled my feelings of hatred for the idea of reproduction. What this little cat, who has turned into a wonderful, but unwelcome friend, has taught me is that I will make a terrible father.

Yeah, a terrible father. Not only do I have two of the best cats I've ever met -- they're smart, energetic, personable, and aren't total assholes. Yet I can't stand them. The chain of having to take care of them, the damage they do to my living space, and the inability to bring anything into my house without it getting fucked up is exactly what has shown me that I shouldn't have kids.

I can't handle the constant maintenance cats bring to my life. Cat hair on everything, nothing remains untouched, and bodily messes are unending. It's not that I don't love puke, shit, and piss. And it's not that I don't love cat hair on everything, having everything knocked on the floor, and being totally excluded from having anything nice. It's really just that I'm not cut out for the commitment. The thought of having to take care of these things for another 10 years makes my skin crawl.

My cats didn't cause my decision, per se. Women were the primary cause. But the cats showed me that I'm not interested in the constant maintenance involved in keeping dependent beings alive. They're more like canaries in the coal mine -- indicators of trouble to come. I can't stand the thought of another ten years of piss, shit, puke, and fur-impregnated-everything, so the thought of the lifetime commitment of children becomes deeply repugnant.

Something went wrong in my family. An entire generation has chosen to not reproduce, which has led to the extinction of our capillary of the family tree. My decision to not have kids comes with an especially odd consequence. The Y-chromosome remains unchanged across generations and is passed from father to father -- I am the last Y-chromosome-carrying individual on both sides of the family -- and I have chosen to not even try to pass it along. Basically an organism in itself, this Y-lineage is now gone.

And it's because of cats. Well, and women. But cats. Cats have taught me that I'm so disinterested in keeping things that require so much maintenance and care that I am willing to just live out my days and not bother with the bullshit of reproduction. How strange. And liberating. I guess I just don't find this consciousness experiment compelling enough to bother helping it to continue. It just isn't worth it.

Debt is a Prison

From the day I was born, I was destined to go into debt. Part of America's middle class, I was born into a mortgaged home, a bank-loaned car, and a household with student debt. The debt system made my American existence possible. As I come of age and graduate from my student  years into what is supposed to be adulthood, I look back and realize that my current state in life was made possible by debt, and that I never had a chance or a choice to escape debt.

Debt has allowed me to buy things I didn't have the money for yet. It has acted as a guarantee that I would remain productive to repay the resources that I received ahead of actually earning them. Debt allowed me to buy an education, a house, and my vehicles. The vehicles were small peanuts and quickly repayable. The house and education, on the other hand, have sealed the fate of my existence.

The concept of debt is pretty novel. Buy something you haven't yet earned the resources to trade for, then continue working to pay it off, bit by bit. Live now, pay later. Pretty trusting, really -- how in the world do we know that the resources will be continually available for the duration of our debts and in the amount of our debts?

Borrowed money makes my skin crawl. And I know exactly why. Growing up, I never had money like many of my peers did. Where I would mow the house lawn for $3, my friends would often mow much smaller lawns for $10 or $20. My sense of money was shaped by this disparity. I had to pinch more pennies to try to keep up with my peers. As a 10 year old, I was an unwitting participant and victim of capitalism (ok, and beneficiary; I also happened to have a roof over my head and food in my belly by the very same system).

When I think of things that bother me and make my entire existence hurt, debt is pretty much number one. Debt is a deal with the devil where you sign away your soul for the following weeks, months, years, or even decades, in exchange for something. This deal, which allows you to live now, chains you to that desk, that cash register, and that office life.

Upon signing the papers or sliding the plastic card, you are now saying that you're pretty darn sure that you will earn x-dollars over x-time period and will be able to pay x-amount back. And to do so, the lender will only charge you a small percentage in the form of interest. How simple? How novel?

Well, that decision is a dangerous one. You can lose a job, you can accidentally procreate, or you can need to buy a car. Or hell, an economic recession could hit, gasoline could go up to $4 per gallon, and you could decide to go to grad school and be simultaneously poor as shit -and- go into debt, simultaneously.

When I was born, I was born into a system where education would cost more than I would be able to save by the time I started taking on student debt, I would need objects to survive in our socioeconomic system that were unreachable without money, and I would be part of a class that cannot afford the roofs over our heads until a lifetime of work was complete to pay back the debt of a home.

The debts we take on have many names: credit card, student loan, mortgage, car loan, and so on. But all of these are the same thing; borrowed money to buy something that we do not yet have the money for. As a person born into the class that has no money, no right to money, and an acculturated need to participate in the American economic machine, I was born into the debt class.

When I turned 18, I had no option to take on student debt or not. Not with living expenses, vehicles, and the ever-present-and-ominous demand to be interesting and fun to entertain the opposite sex. These things are expensive, so debt was essential. College is essential in my caste. And because college is essential, it is both expensive, and a source of debt.

The debt machine that grabs us before we are old enough to make rational economic decisions is troubling. When I took on my student loans, starting at 18 years old, I was taking on a debt that would take ten years to pay off upon graduation. For someone to make such a decision to take on such a burden is interesting; at the age of 18, a ten-year loan duration is over 50% of one's entire lifespan. A ten year debt to an 18 year old is basically an eternity.

Student debt is particularly troubling to me today. It wears like a ball and chain that weighs down time and potential. It is a burden that feels as though it has damaged my entire future, even though I have less than the average student with my level of education. Ten years from now, I will be 42 years old.

The reason for my obsession with debt is that it bothers me, and it was destined to bother me. As a kid who never had money or the money of my peers, I quickly learned the pain of debts -- the damage it can cause, and the pain of working to pay something back that you already have. I also do not do well with imaginary commitments that extend into a future that doesn't exist.

Debt is a novel system, but it is a shackle that dictates what the next x-years of your life will look like. You will work. You will earn a certain amount of money. You will pay this money back. And you will be punished if you do not. Fair enough. But this sounds an awful lot like a sentenced term in prison.

The process of imprisonment and debt are one in the same. In both cases, one makes a decision that involves risk, desire, passion, necessity, or impulse, which results in a consequence that requires a term served to someone else to pay off. The choice to steal that stereo out of that car might provide you with the utility of that new stereo, but you will serve a term in jail, where your punishment is equivalent to repaying society for a debt that you created. When you decide to go to college, because you have to, you basically decide to steal it and serve a term to pay it back.

Of course I can make this argument better. I can beef it up, and not take a single stab at it without edits, but the central point here is that debt is a prison for some of us. And, like any prisoner, some of us will go to extreme lengths to escape our terms and find our freedom again.

Dollars Per Square Inch

I recently discovered that there is an absolute minimum price of a square inch of space in this world. Your existence, no matter how slim, has a cost. And your presence in a place comes at a price. That price has a floor, then a secret basement level. The floor is conventional living and the secret basement is where the crazy people live -- the homeless, van dwellers, and extreme co-habitators.

I once rented a storage unit that someone had been living in. A storage unit. As in, a cement-floored, steel box that people rent to put their meaningless shit in. This person was extreme, because they were doing this in one of the coldest places in the country. They lived without plumbing and likely without heat. If they tried to heat the place, they would have been better off just renting because their fuel costs would have been more than an apartment for about nine months a year.

The financial floor I have discovered is the absolute minimum price of an existence in a place, just shy of homelessness. In this system, homelessness actually relies on stealing that space, rather than being part of the system.

When calculating one's living expenses, everything has to be included. Rent, storage units, utilities, car insurance, car, and gasoline. Utilities are a function of the quality of the dwelling and one's consistency of climate. A vehicle becomes a core living expense if the vehicle is necessary for getting to work every day. Renting a storage unit is just another part of rent; whether you live with your stuff or away from it.

But at the heart of this calculation, the price of a dwelling versus the price of an alternative living situation end up revealing the floor in the cost of living --- the absolute minimum one can pay to live in a place without going into the basement. The basement is the space that shall not be acknowledged or spoken of, and some even work feverishly to eliminate these basement spaces.

My RV experiment has been great -- I love living in the RV for the simplicity and cosiness. But in the city I live in, RV spaces aren't exactly cheap. They're half the price of the cheapest single-bedroom and studio apartments. All of my living expenses combined are less than the cheapest one-bedroom apartment I have found. Though, an RV space is roughly a 400 square foot dirt parking space with basic utility hook-ups.

The space I rent, including the footprint of my vehicles on site is about 600 square feet in total -- which, stupidly, includes my parking spaces. Yet I pay just less than $500 per month. That's just over $2 per square foot for my RV alone and $0.79 per square foot including my parking area and lot space.

Numbers, numbers... I just called storage units in town, so I can move my junk from my free space at Grandma's house to a real storage unit. The absolute cheapest unit in town will be $130 per month for 200 square feet. Well, now I have 400 square feet of interior space for the cost of just over $600 per month. For just $400 more per month, I can be a real boy and live in a real house.

These costs reveal that there is a minimum that one can live, just shy of living in a van on the street without rent and utilities. That cost, in the city I work and live, is about $1.30 per square foot for non-cohabitated spaces, about $1.25 per square foot for cohabitated spaces (having roommates), and $2.37 per square foot for living in crazy-town in an RV.

So, what did I just discover? Sure, my total costs per month are low, but so is my available space and sense of normalcy. My RV, not including the cost of the RV itself, is $2.37 per square foot of finished home space.

This colossally stupid realization has me headed for the crazy basement. Because I don't want and will not afford an apartment in this city. No, Sir. Adding insult to injury, let's look at my living expenses, all-inclusive:

The Financial Backside

$475 Rent
$129 Storage Unit Rent
$70 Utils (average, including water, sewer, trash, electricy, and internet)
$90 Phone
$140 Insurance (for my army of garbage)
$25 Propane (average over year)
------------------------------------------
$929 per month for core living expenses
+$350 Student loans
--------------------------------------------------------------------
$1279 per month for core living expenses + student loan payments

Houston, we definitely have a problem. The problem is that my core expenses are out of control. And I am paying less than anyone I know in my living costs where I live. Everybody has a cell phone. Everybody pays about what I do in insurance, except those without cars and renter's insurance. Everybody pays rent.

Should I get a roommate? Should I just stay put and enjoy my below-normal living costs? Should I just enter the realm of utter poverty and rent an apartment near work, sell all of my vehicles, and drop my cell phone plan?

Or should I move into the financial basement and live where no one else will (or can)?

Can I eliminate rent? Can I eliminate utilities? What if I could? And, most terrifyingly, what if I have to?

The numbers tell a story of what has to happen and most won't like the answer. I'm fine with it and looking forward to it. But they spell a change coming. Given this cold reality, I have to sell the RV and eliminate rent. The next phase will be ultimately freeing and will give me the extreme edge I am looking for to achieve my goals. I do not fear what will happen if I do; I fear what will happen if I don't.

The system we live in is completely screwed and I will have no part in maintaining its conventions.

The Educated Poor

There's a new kid on the block. This new kid is "the educated poor." S/he is someone with a higher degree, whether bachelor's or master's level, but makes a smaller income and has student debt. In combination with his/her education, the new kid is only employable in certain geographies and economies because his/her education is only useful in these specific places and economies. Adding to the mix, the specific habitats that the educated poor inhabit are so expensive that even good wages are quickly consumed to leave the person with little to nothing.

The cryptic intro aside, there is a new phenomenon that I am paying close attention to, which is the rise of the college-educated and the fall of wages and achieving success. The so-called Millennial Generation appears to be flopping around like a bunch of beached sardines, with no ability to save or achieve secure housing. And I think I know why.

I now live in the 39th most expensive city on Planet Earth to live. The city of about 160,000 people now rents a 1-bedroom apartment for around $1,100 per month. If we follow the financial breadcrumb trail of what that means, the picture isn't pretty for even the most educated, who are just starting off and are "independent"  (non-trust-funded, non-parentally-supported, and paying their own bills with money earned on their clock).

Following financial literacy standards, base rent or mortgage should never exceed 30% of one's income. To live a more comfortable existence, rent should never exceed 25%. Given $1,100 per month base rent costs, a person's net (post-tax) income needs to be around $3,300 per month, or $39,000 per year. If we count an approximately 20% payroll deduction for tax and medical benefits, this person needs to make $50,000 per year.

$50,000 per year is easy for some. Engineers, doctors, architects, and business professionals find these wages pretty easily. If you're a nurse, a teacher, or some kind of general professional, wages are almost never this high until years into a career. Given these ballpark wages, there is another problem brewing in the numbers above.

In a town where a dumpy 1-bedroom apartment away from city amenities is now $1,100 per month, a $50,000 per year income is needed. Given the rising rarity of $50,000 per year incomes for anyone but those in the more specialized and in-demand disciplines, yet the rise in $1,100 per month apartments, we now have a situation where even educated professionals cannot afford quality, personal, or non-cohabitated spaces to live in.

If the above isn't believable or not understandable, let's break down the finances of a person making, say, $32,000 per year (the average wage of a college graduate after school).

Snapshot of an Annual Salary
+ $32,000  -  Gross Income
- $5,440  -  17% income tax/payroll deduction
- $960  -  3% medical benefit cost
- $13,200  -  $1,100/mo rent cost
- $1,200  -  $100/mo utility costs (water, sewer, trash, electricity, and heating/cooling)
- $1,200  -  $100/mo insurance costs (renters and car insurance)
- $1,680  -  $140/mo communication cost (cell phone + internet only)
------------------------------------------
$8,320 for vehicle, food, fun, and recreation leftover = $690 per month leftover for everything else

"$690?! That's plenty!!!" you say? Subtract a payment on a used car. Then subtract gasoline. Then subtract the occasional annual repairs needed on a car. THEN... subtract a student loan payment.

The average college student is leaving school with around $50,000 in debt. We asked colleges to start behaving more like businesses and they obliged. This amount leads to a $420 per month payment every month for ten years.

So, let's take that $690 luxury money leftover and get a more realistic look.

Accounting for the Real Expenses
+ $690 per month leftover after core expenses
- $420 per month for a $50,000 student loan payment
- $250 per month for a car payment on a used car
- $120 per month for gasoline (1,000 miles @ 25 MPG and $3/gallon)
- $200 per month for food (assuming $6.66 per day for all meals)
------------------------------------------
 -$300 per month... uh.... in debt.

So, Houston... we have a problem. On a $32,000 per year gross income, in a town where a 600 square foot, junk-ass one-bedroom apartment is $1,100 per month, the person making $32,000 per year is now $300 per month (plus or minus) over-budget. They are not making enough to save money, go out, or really... even have what they think they have. This person's finances do not allow for the purchase of new clothes, vehicle repairs, recreation, or fun -- it's all work and a highly-disciplined core existence.

The answer could be that these people in these places can no longer afford a car. It may mean they need to change their phone over to a pay-as-you-go plan. Or maybe all of the above. Even when we cut out the $250 per month car payment, the cost of gasoline, and the $90 per month smart-phone plan, the person making $32,000 per year is still only left with $720 per month after student loans are deducted.

Are we really to a point where we expect college graduates to not own cars, have the luxuries that are almost a necessity in today's world for connectivity for professional and personal lives, and to live on $200 per month for food? Are we really at a place where the college graduate of my generation can't make enough money to save for a house, or move out of co-habitation with peers? Are we really living in an economy where our most educated are now living entirely in-debt for a lifestyle that was once considered the poster-child of a mediocre and failed existence?

The numbers here can be adjusted to look better. I do all of my own car maintenance, so don't endure many unnecessary expenses. I live in an RV for less than half the price of a 1-bedroom apartment. I live on an oatmeal, bran, beans, and potatoes diet. I rarely buy alcohol and don't go on dates.

Given that I have cut out meat, women, and all of the other expensive domestic luxuries that are unnecessary, I live pretty well in this environment. But by most people's definition, I also live in a third-world country; I live in a vehicle.

The educated poor is part of my idea of "The Education Bubble." We are entering a new economic system where the non-educated are even poorer because the educated are now the poor. At the point where a college graduate, exempting the valued disciplines, cannot afford to own a car or live on their own, is a bad place to be. It is no longer true that if you get a good education, you get a good job. It now appears that you have to get a good education... just to survive.

Extreme Budgeting

I am coining a new form of financial thought: "Extreme Budgeting." For many years, I have made models of my finances to guide my financial decisions. My models have told me how much things will cost in the long-term, how much money I will have at the end of each month, and what my debt:income ratios are. I am now trying to change my financial position rapidly with minimal income. And the scene isn't pretty.

I'm finally making more per hour than I was before grad school. That's a huge feat, but there are two significant problems. First, my net salary is tiny after taxes and insurance are deducted. And, second, I now have more debt than I have ever had thanks to the terrible decision to go to grad school.

The predicament I am in is this: In my current situation, I can only save about $1,800 per year after taxes, rent, utilities, insurance, food, debt payments, and such. If I get rid of my trusty old Nissan Sentra, I will only be able to save $700 per year. The thought of shedding a car and losing money is almost preposterous, but the car is so fuel efficient and reliable, it's a fundamental truth.

I don't know about everybody else, but it's pretty pitiful when someone with such a high hourly wage can only save $700 per year. Thanks to student loans from almost a decade's worth of classes and degrees, that's my reality. What it means is that, in my current location, if I wasn't living in an RV, I would not actually be able to afford a single-bedroom apartment.

Enter "Extreme Budgeting." My parent's generation won't understand this. Most don't understand the predicament that my generation is in. My generation can't save money, we can't get jobs that pay well enough to own homes, and education no longer means what it used to on the job market. Sure, there are engineers, computer programmers, and other highly-valued vocations that are doing well. But I'm not an engineer -- I'm an idiot that studied things that are worthless.

Given that I'm an idiot, but a tough idiot, I am going to have to find a way around this predicament. And I have to do it with skills I have that set me apart from others. The economy we live in is built very similarly to the natural world; Those who can find a niche and exploit it win.

My niche is the ability to live very minimally in very harsh conditions. And the difference it could make in my finances is almost too fantastic to be real.

In my financial model, I accounted for all the core living expenses; rent, utilities, phone, etc. But I also accounted for gasoline consumption, groceries, and fun money. On a yearly basis, given all of my expenses, including student loans and a storage unit, I will... never... be able to buy a house. Or even rent an apartment in the city I work in.

My answer is to eliminate everything I possibly can from my budget, including rent. As soon as my student loans start coming due, I will have so little money each month, I will not even be able to afford doctor visits.

The next item I want to eliminate from my finances includes the following: Rent and utilities. Hold onto your butts.

The way I plan to do this is to move into my truck. Full time. And it's the only way. I have the numbers in front of me. There is no other way to get ahead. Without a miraculous promotion, my financial progress is frozen and my freedom completely garnished. I am the only person I have ever met who can pull this off and pull it off well.

The RV will be sold. The car sent to the scrap yard. And the truck improved. I am ready for it and it is the only way to achieve my goals. Patience? Yeah. Because at 32 with a dual-masters degree and 10 years of professional experience, I should be patient to the tune of being able to save $700 per year. Nope. Sorry. No thanks. Life is too expensive. The rent is too damn high. And there are too many mouths to feed.

The difference in the model shows that I can save $1,700 per year by keeping the car up and running. Or I can save $8,300 per year by living in the truck. How is that even possible? Here's the equation:

Savings = (Income - (Rent + Utilities + Phone + Insurance + Student Loans + Food + Gas + Fun))*12

It's a painful equation because it accounts for everything (except car repairs). And when I add the approximately $7,500 I will retrieve from the sale of the RV, I can either have $9,200 or $15,800 in the bank by the end of the year.

My only goal is to buy another property by February. Selling the RV and living in my truck is the only way to that goal. Welcome to a new era of extreme budgeting. Only the extreme will survive.

The World Is My Oyster

The world was looking pretty odd there for a while. It turns out that going to grad school is pretty awesome fun, but it comes with some uncertainty and costs afterward. The 11 months following grad school were irritating, uncertain, and anxiety-inducing. I was only able to find jobs that paid almost half of what I made before grad school. Considering the prior two years were some of the most fun, fulfilling, and engaging of my life, it is difficult to be critical of my decision to attend grad school. But right now, everything is finally looking great.

Even though I would rather be on the road with enough money in the bank to travel for a year or two, the job I ended up landing and the security I am now inline for feels like a worthy substitute. The unpopularity of my backup plan to finding a good job stalled and destroyed my potential to go see the world and find the intellectual space to develop my own path.

The chance of eventual failure of said plan was higher than I would like to admit, but the chances for success were also quite high. I needed to either find a job or find the space to carve my own path entirely.

Since I was robbed of carving my own path and creating that space for myself, I am now stuck with what I have been given: An amazing job with great pay, smack-dab in my field, with incredible potential for growth. Not bad a bad place to be, considering this is exactly where I hoped not to be.

My desire for something else came from my realization that the working world is a shit show. It’s a donkey punch to the gut. It’s a system of raping and pillaging the mind, body, and soul. I had a unique window to experience something else for a while, to see new things, and to live life a little differently. And while I blew it, there is still a chance that I will still make that opportunity for myself.

The place I am now looks safe, intentional, and successful. And it is. For a while there, I was worried that grad school actually decreased my market value. And by certain viewpoints, it has. But my per hour value, after 11 months of fighting vigorously to not lose ground, has gone up. I finally found a job that actually pays more than before grad school, and the job is great.

The thing that those around me who bit, scratched, fought, and drug me down to prevent me from doing as an alternative don’t realize is that they paved the way for an absolutely wicked midlife crisis. I can feel and predict it. As odd as it sounds, I never really had a teenaged and 20-something youth, like many of my fellow Millennial’s have been privileged to. I have little snippets and moments, but never prolonged periods of safe, unadulterated youth. I have always been worried about bills, responsibilities, and following that straight and narrow pathway to conventional success.

So, while I am in a safe place and have found that success that I had before, I have instead endangered my future and my desire to domesticate. While I am satisfied for the moment, successful, and have found that winning job again, I can already feel the steel of the shackles wearing into my skin, once again. And for a still-kind-of-young male, in a world where men are more shamed, more directionless, and more anxious than in any prior generation, that is a very dangerous seed to plant.

I predict that the stunting of my path to finding new and different spaces will backfire in the future. I was already unsure if kids were going to be in my future, if the domestic life was at all for me, but now that I am trapped behind a desk and the crushing weight of domestic debts and conventions, I am afraid I may perpetually long for freedom from the prison I have been put in. Or at least seek evidence that there is something else out there. Since I am not here voluntarily, no matter how good it is, I may never be able to buy in. On the surface I will be satisfied and successful, but in the depths of my psyche, I will be constantly planning and plotting my exit from the prison of domesticity, stationarity, and conventionality that I have been stuffed and chained into.

The world is my oyster, once again.

The Value of Things

I’ve been doing some spring cleaning. I am so sick of clutter and crap, I’m junking everything I possibly can. I’m ruthlessly cutting anything out of my life that isn’t a necessary tool or a thing associated with a distinct and powerful memory. Everything heavy, clunky, tiresome, unused, redundant, useless, ugly, worn out, stained, and/or scratched must go. All this crap that I have accumulated over the years has to leave via trash, recycle, donation, or by sale. The first three are pretty easy to navigate. The latter is the difficult game.

While going through all of my shit, I have been trying to figure out why I have it. Why do I have three cookie sheets? How did I get 200 DVDs? What do I do with stuff that seems useful, but doesn’t have any resale value? How do I know what to sell and what to trash?

Well, it appears that most of the shit I have wasted time and money accumulating has little to no discernible value. Nobody wants a used pasta spoon. Nobody will pay money for one or four of my laundry baskets. There aren’t many buyers out there for old plastic, toy starships from Star Trek. And certainly, nobody gives a flying shit about my old bed sheets for my old twin sized bed from high school. Especially in the age of bed bugs (never had ‘em, but strangers don’t know that. Plus, who would buy used bed sheets, anyway?)

In trying to sort and discard, I have learned quickly how toxic and meaningless the habits of the American consumer are. I have typically been pretty minimalist in my shopping approaches. I typically buy things that I need to make something. I probably ended up with three cookie sheets because I was making a big batch of cookies or got some insanely good deal and got three in a set. Still, the process of determining value has been an anthropological study of… myself.

I wish I could say that the things I own are valuable, but the truth is: Almost none of it is. As I have learned, the only things that hold value are recent technology, name-brand tools, and a very select number of collectibles. The rest of it is just the modern equivalent of debitage. It’s just crap that says, “Yep, I’m here, I’m a modern American, and I have mastered living day-to-day."

When I go through all my old crap, I realize that I was living well. But when I contrast my old ways with the new ways I’ve learned to live, the way I used to live seems preposterous. The things I spent money on are now just money lost. It’s redundancy on top of redundancy; meaningless gadget begetting meaningless gadget; and high-dollar impulse purchase made instantly valueless by the end of a return policy grace period.

Things that hold their value are brand-name tools, Star Wars DVD’s, and professional-grade camera gear. Interestingly, these are also the things that I will not be getting rid of. Well, perhaps except the Star Wars DVD’s that I paid $19.99 for three years ago and sold on eBay for $95. What a wonderful accident?

Of all the crap I am getting rid of, my biggest regret is that I didn’t spend my money differently in the past. Instead of mortgage interest, whisks, pie serving knives, and drawer organizers, I wish I had spent the money on gasoline, tires, and photographs. Sure, I did that, too – it’s probably why I’m broke. But as I dump things by the wheel-barrow load that is not resellable, I realize that the American mode of having a little tool for every this-and-that is unnecessary.

I can make sushi on the tailgate of a pickup truck with a Swiss Army Knife, a Coleman camp stove, one pot, some wax paper, and a placemat. I don’t need hand mixers, waffle irons, four frying pans, six copper-bottomed pots, and three Pyrex mixing bowls. Nope. I don’t need much, at all. I don’t even remember the meals I made with all this valueless crap anymore. I don’t have pictures of the food I once made. And I certainly do not feel as though I have lost anything by going minimalist in the RV.

My old lifestyle looks wasteful. It looks like gobs of money out for things that lost their value moments after purchase. It looks like a life spent buying things out of social norm, domestic anxiety, and a lack of creativity to just make due with that I already had. There are things that hold value, but I will cling to those things with my last breath. My Makita ½” drill will be mine until the day it breaks. My truck will be with me until the last day of gasoline or until it throws a rod through the cylinder wall of the engine. My photographs and hard drives are the things I will take with me at the start of any apocalypse. My outdoor gear is my habit – I will care for it like it is the only barrier between me and death. These are the things I value; my tent, camera, time spent with friends and family, and the wheels that connect the dots.

I am no different from anyone else. I have stuff. I have too much stuff. But with this unique disjoint I chose to install in my life a couple years ago, I get to look back on myself through the eyes of someone different. I now feel that my RV is too much. All I want is a tent and an endless tank of gasoline. The things I have spent so much time and money on throughout my past now haunt and puzzle me. The only things that matter are the things that keep me safe, keep my creativity possible and flowing; that keep my things in good repair; that allow me to build new things, and that give me a pathway to experience and mobility that I live for. The rest of it is just dead weight. It is time to shed the dead weight and live better for the things that actually matter.

My generation is a waste of biomass, but one thing we are doing right is to seek experience over materialism. I can finally see that and I hope to live in a way that feels right from here on. The value of things lies in the ability of the thing to hold its value or to tremendously contribute regular utility to one’s life. The value of things, most importantly, is in where it takes you and the memories it allows you to make. Piles of junk are the antithesis of experience. 

One ship, one life, and less stuff

When all of your fictional heroes are wandering, womanless hobos who move from place to place in a modest ship they call home, a troublesome identity is born. You know the characters; the Han Solo, Malcolm Reynolds, and William Adama's of the fictional world. They're all just guys living in flying Winnebago's, living from job to job, and moving on when a place doesn't suit them anymore. 

When I started to free myself from the preposterous domestic life a couple years ago, I didn't realize the full mass of the beast I awakened. I felt as though I was tearing away the chains that I mistakenly locked myself in. What I didn't realize is that I wouldn't stop tearing away those chains. 

Today, I find myself wanting less and less. I no longer want heavy things, things with lots of bags, boxes, and subscriptions. I want simplicity, experience, and labor. I don't want additional tax paperwork and monthly costs of ownership. And I most certainly don't want baggage and expensive dinners for two. 

The thing is, some of these costs are important. It's great having a truck. But do I need a motorcycle and a car and an RV and a house, too? What if I actually only need the truck? 

It's a strange thought, but I feel like the chains started coming off and I just don't want to stop. My education completely fucked my brain to the point that the only thing I want to do is wander. I no longer want to have stuff. I want to live out my short life in creative spaces on my own terms, not instrumental spaces on someone else's terms. 

Stuff helps make memories, but there comes a point when stuff becomes such a weight that experiences take a backseat to stuff. 

I now look back and wonder how I got all this stuff? I wonder why I still have it? Then I wonder how to get rid of it? 

Strangely, all of the fictional characters I identify with aren't attached to many things, other than that which they depend on. I no longer feel the need to have stuff -- instead, I want to see, feel, experience, and think. Instead of things to take up space, I want space... just space. And the few things I need to experience and be in these spaces on my own terms. 

All I need is my one ship. And enough to keep it flying.

The Higher Education Bubble: The Reckoning

A reckoning is coming. The housing market crashed sometime in 2008, but the path to the crash was set in motion long before the actual crash happened. The overvaluation of homes, the ballooning of home loan debt, the borrowing of material things against imaginary home equity, and then the inability to pay those loans triggered the biggest depression since The Great Depression. The crash of the housing market led to negative effects on the job market, the price of gas skyrocketed, and the price of food even went up. But the housing market is back, the stock market is back, and the price of gas is under $3 per gallon. Life is good. Except that there is another bubble that has yet to burst and has yet to be realized. It soon will be.

The bubble that has yet to burst is what I call the “education bubble.” The education bubble is more pernicious than the housing bubble and more dynamic. This bubble isn’t just about student loan debt; it’s about the other problems that arise from an educated public that can’t find equivalent work. Student loan debt is a known problem – there are people getting useless humanities degrees and are leaving school with $50,000 or more in debt. That’s preposterous.

Student loan debt is certainly one major dimension of the education bubble. Not only is student loan debt a major debt source in the U.S., perhaps greater than any form of consumer credit, it is also the kind that sticks with you. Student loan debt can’t be eliminated through bankruptcy and most of us won’t have our loans paid by a trust fund or a rich uncle. The amounts that each individual is carrying in student loan debt for college is unsustainable. It is a burden that makes college not worth it. Students walking out with $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000 for a four year degree in worthless topics, like Philosophy, English, or Environmental Studies is so wrong, it should be impossible to rack up such numbers.

It’s not that these degrees aren’t worthwhile – they make better people. But in making better people, do we really need to spend five digits to get there? Should better people be saddled with unsustainable amounts of debt? What is the purpose of making better people when they can’t get jobs that will pay enough to live in adequate housing, own an adequate car, eat food, and pay off their student debt? The average job for the non-engineer appears to be $28,000-$40,000 per year. That’s great, but at that wage, deduct almost 20% for taxes, then take another 10% for retirement and medical coverage. After student loan payments, rent, food, gas, and necessary entertainment, there's nothing left.

But the education bubble isn’t about student debt – that’s a known issue and one that will haunt my generation for many more years. The education bubble lies in the production of too many big brains and not enough places to put them. Sure, big brains are great in all positions – whether working on cars, engineering the next bridge, or even serving beer at the local pub. But for those who aren’t engineering the next bridge or technology, the jobs out there are hard to get and don’t pay well. There aren’t enough of these jobs to serve all of the English Literature, Environmental Studies, Evolutionary Biology, and Germanic Language degrees that are coming out of the institution.

Instead, we tell children and teens to “go to college so you can get a good job.” What’s a good job, anyway? Is it one where you make enough to pay back your student debt? Is it one that matches your degree and line of study? Or is it one that you could have gotten without going through all that schooling, anyway? I think a “good job” is one that matches one’s training in a degree path, or at least utilizes one’s critical thinking skills gained from a degree path. I think it’s a job that pays well enough to justify the educational investment. Which isn’t most of the jobs out there today.

The cost of education is effectively a business investment. It is the cost to buy in. And it is an opportunity cost. For $20,000, $50,000, or even $100,000, what else could be done to build better people and better lives? For those working retail jobs after college, jobs that do not require any college education, was the opportunity cost of college worthwhile? Or did it become a burden; a failed investment?

The reckoning is coming. The education bubble is upon us. There will be a backlash toward institutions and the promise of higher ed in the near future. Mark my idiotic words. The education bubble isn’t just about ballooning student loan debt; It’s about the psychological harm that comes from spending time and money on an education for the promise of a “good job,” only to find that there are too many well-educated and not enough “good jobs.” Or that the education being offered no longer fits the markets that graduates enter after school. The education bubble is the high cost and debt to potential income ratio that we all face upon graduation. And the education bubble is the over-production of big thinkers, leaders, and the lack of places to put them. It is the creation of too many queens and not enough soldiers. We need soldiers. Finally, it is the fundamentally twisted way in which we define what a “good job” is and the inequitable process it takes to get a good job – the way we determine someone’s value and earning ability by proximity, pedigree, and luck. We have created a new class; the educated poor. We are also creating entirely new forms of social justice issues in our education system that have yet to be realized.

Higher ed is headed for a reckoning. It is already here. And it is about to burst. Hold onto your butts.