#oleary

While it is not my last name, my family is in the O’Leary family tree. Quite prominently if I recall, and I grew up in a suburb outside of Chicago. I don’t know how many of you are familiar with The Great Chicago Fire, but one of the popular stories explaining it was that Catherine O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern into a pile of hay and started the fire. This is prominent enough that there is a song 

           “ Late one night, when we were all in bed,              Old Mother Leary left a lantern in the shed;              And when the cow kicked it over, she winked her eye and said,              There'll be a hot time in the old town, tonight. “

Each year we would learn more about The Great Chicago Fire, and ever year I had to endure harassment that if my family had not been in Chicago, it never would have burned down, and that all those people wouldn’t have had to die. None of these claims were ever made by a teacher, simply my peers, but no teacher intervened more than telling people to “cut that out” and moving on.

It grew worse as we learned more and more about how terrible the fire was. After the years I would stop talking about being Irish because it only caused me more grief about being hot-headed and causing a major disaster in the city where I grew up. 

First: Go to hell you bourgeois. Sorry I get a little annoyed at the same tired advice from rich people that never look at their situation or millennials with any context and seem to think they have a magic bullet that will fix everything stemming from their knowledge at their brilliant success while never recognizing the heaping amounts of luck and privilege not granted to most peasants -- err, I mean common folk, ummmm, people.

Youe highnesses, may I present a rebuttle of your vastly oversimplified idealistic veiw of exactly what you did right and what millenials are just too stupid to realize?

Coffee: Let's go with the average of $92 a month. That's $3.06 a day.

Shoes: First, you realize that when it comes to dress shoes certain things have to match right? But I digress, the article states the average person owns 12 pairs. Your claim that women may own more shoes -- have you considered that they have to match what the person wears? You go to work in shoes that don't match the rest of your outfit and see the looks you get.

Besides that however, do you realize people generally don't buy 12 shoes a year every year? They might OWN 12 pairs, but it's not a continuous recurring cost every single year.

I buy tennis shoes usually two pairs at a time. I have three pairs of "dress" shoes, one black, one brown, one of those a recent purchase, about a year old. The other is oh, three years old when I was going too see Wicked and realized I didn't actually own any dress shoes. Lastly one pair of marching band shoes I've owned for, oh, 16 years, mostly for things needing slightly better shoes than sneakers, but not that dressed up.

In addition, I have a two pairs of running shoes, and three pairs of tennis shoes. I also own a pair of hiking boots that are nearly a decade old, and a four year old pair of snow boots.

Know why? Those tennis shoes I bought on sale, and if I alternate shoes by week they don't wear out as fast, meaning I dont have to buy shoes again when they might not be discounted.

Jeans: for years I only owned, oh, three pairs of jeans. I spent the last two years adding more to my wardrobe. I've maybe 8 pairs of jeans, ranging from work clothing, to casual. I've 8 pairs of pants from Swiss Tech I picked up over the course of a year when they went on sale. They tend to make up a large portion of what I wear to class. Two pairs of dress pants. Some of those are 6 years old. Some are 1. Thing is, when you can alternate clothing, you can put off doing laundry until you have a full load. Saving you money in the long run in terms of detergent, water, electricity, and wear and tear on your clothes from use/washing -- meaning you don't have to replace them for ages. I'll wear those clothing for an average of about 8-10 years each. A pair of my black jeans are nearly a decade old and apart from a rip at the knee when I fell off a stage and busted by knee last year they are in great shape. Screw you.

Your seven percent a year profit from investing is screwy as hell you know that? That's an average over decades. Between 1926 and 2014, returns were in that “average” band of 8% to 12% only six times. The rest of the time they were much lower or much higher. It also doesn't account for luck. Those gains only materialized if you happen to have owned stocks on the best performing days.

According to JP Morgan if you missed the best ten days from Jan. 01, 1999 to Dec. 31, 2018, your overall return of 7% becomes oh, about 3.5%. Average inflation for that time period was 2.18% total accumulative inflation was 50.72%

Take the average inflation away from the overall return, and if you missed just the 10 best days of the market over a 20 year period (or you know, for my generation happened to be like 10 at the start of 1999) your return is a paltry little over 1%.

It takes money to invest and have a decent, diversified portfolio, assuming you invest only in mutual funds so you dont have to buy one share of Amazon at oh nearly $2,000, even if you are only investing via an app like Acorns.

And about that coffee: I'm a barista. I spent 4 years saving my tips and putting them towards 15k in student loans at 7% interest. Along with a $100 month payment. I also got lucky, I helped take care of my COPD stricken aunt. I lived rent free, and could afford to put an extremely large amount of my income towards those debts. I also would turn around and put the tax deduction savings from the interest payments towards paying off debt.

My customers went a long way towards me paying off my loans. A married couple for example tipped me a dollar each. They got a large coffee each. That's $6 total from their family budget. It was also about $520 in tips to me a year. Did that $6/day mean a lot to them? Probably not. Did the coffee before work? Definitely. Did the $520 a year mean a lot to me? Absolutely.

Acorns lists Americans spending an average of $92/month on coffee. $3 a day. Does it mean a lot to them? The cost probably not. Does the experience enrich their soul? Help them survive at work? Keep them from quiting or setting fire to their boss? Absolutely. Does this save them money in the long run? Probably.

So maybe the next time you are giving advice, consider that not everyone happend to found a learning software company in the late 80's that got lucky and was sold to Mattel making you multimillionaire. Or happened to be sent to an expensive boarding school for your education. (While I don't know what it cost your parents, it's current tuition is listed as $53,000 /year).

Or attended a school that only cost only about $2,500 a year, (that's $15,808.15 in today's dollars) as opposed to the $52k it is today.