

Millennials Who Are Thriving Financially Have One Thing in Common: Rich Parents - minikites
http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/millennials-with-rich-parents/398501/?single_page=true

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nostrademons
I'd wager that if you look at Millenials who are thriving financially, you'd
find a bigger correlation: those who majored in STEM and ended up with jobs in
technical professions. Take a look at the math in the article:

"Imagine an individual who earns $50,000 and is shopping for a $200,000 home
(the median U.S. income and house price). This person would like to put 20
percent down. If he or she follows the popular financial advice to save 10
percent of his or her annual pay, it’ll take him or her about eight years to
have that down payment ready to go. If that same person has $26,000 of student
debt, which means monthly payments of $280 based on a 10-year repayment plan,
it’ll take this person closer to nine years."

Now imagine that the individual makes $80K instead of $50K, a not unreasonable
technical wage even outside of SF or NYC. Even after taxes, he can save the
down payment in _2 years_.

The financial outcomes of my friends & acquaintances have largely followed
their facility with technology. The best hackers are now billionaires; the
good ones made a million or two, even if they took the safe path of working at
a big company. Even ones who just know how to use Facebook, Word, and Excel do
fine in digital marketing specialties. The English majors are struggling hard,
often in service jobs.

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angersock
_The best hackers are now billionaires_

[citation needed]

This is a lie. Hell, even Torvalds is worth less than half a billion. Stallman
is basically broke. Carmack is worth less than a hundred million.

Meanwhile, sociopaths and kids with Ivy connections seem to be the ones raking
in the money you mention.

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nostrademons
Drew Houston and a couple early Googlers. I was talking personal acquaintances
in the post, not the people generally lionized by the hacker community.
There's this phenomena with a lot of hackers where once you make a lot of
money, you're no longer cool, mainly _because_ you've made a lot of money.
Your day job also tends to shift to managing people, but I can assure you that
many of the founders of the big unicorns today are wicked smart technically in
addition to being savvy businesspeople.

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rndmind
If you make millions by selling out against the hacker ethics or selling out
your users, that would be pretty selfish and uncool.

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nostrademons
There's a degree of Hacker Ethic in-between Stallman and Zuckerburg (who, BTW,
is quite a skilled hacker even if he does take advantage of basically everyone
he comes in contact with). Most people don't believe it's unethical to get
paid for the fruits of your labor, nor to enter into deals with mutually-
consenting adults. If you do, that's fine, but realize that's not going to
stop other people from doing it, and if you live by that, _somebody else_ will
get paid for the fruits of your labor. The thread is about how to be
financially successful as a Millenial: the best way to be financially
successful, in any generation, is to work hard at things that other people
value and insist that you're compensated appropriately for that.

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Beached
I dont get their definition of rich. My parents helped me with college, yet I
still graduated with the average debt of $29,000 from school, I make less then
40,000, yet I was able to pay off all my loans and debt, while saving more
then 30% income towards retirement every year, AND save 8k for a future down
payment. However my parents certainly are not rich, unless you define under
70k(pretax)/year combined in income with 2 kids rich..

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wmil
Where do you live? You can't be paying much rent.

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Beached
in Michigan, I pay about $950/m for rent and all utilities.

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madcaptenor
Is this any different than it used to be?

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wmil
Wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years (inflation adjusted), but
education and housing costs have been skyrocketing.

Rent control laws are set up to benefit long term residents, so new workers or
people who move to a new city get screwed.

So it's much worse than it used to be. Depending on how far back you go with
"used to be".

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dummy7953
The system works!!

