Save Generations Y and Z

In life everything is cyclic. The stock market goes up, then goes down; society becomes obsessed with “get me some for me and mine,” then with compassion and charity; politics swing between conservatism and liberalism; and so on. What intrigued me about cycles is a story I heard on the radio, where the so-called “experts” were touting Generation Y as the first generation in modern history to do worse than the previous generation. Supposedly, Generation Y youngsters will grow up to have a lower standard of living.

This started me thinking. I have Generation Y children and have witnessed their general attitudes toward work, responsibility, and respect, and I have concluded that the “experts” have a valid point. Then I did some basic research on the subject and, frankly, it scared the holy you-know-what out of me as a parent. For instance, are you aware of the following facts?

• 1,625,208 people filed for personal bankruptcy in the year 2003—a 567% increase from the year 1983 (and the trend is steadily climbing).
• Americans on average work three hours of every eight-hour work day to pay taxes. Will it be four hours per eight-hour work day for Generation Y?
• More college graduates than ever before move back home after graduation.
• The average credit card debt is $8,400 per household. The average interest rate on that debt is over 18 percent annually. If the debtor makes minimum payments of $130 per month, it will take approximately twenty years to pay off this debt and cost in total over $22,000.
• Since 1985 the U.S. prison population has doubled.
• Teenagers (ages 16–20) make up 7 percent of all licensed drivers and 14 percent of the people killed in auto fatalities. Moreover, they are involved in 20 percent of all reported accidents. If your teenager is killed, God forbid, there is a 40-percent chance that death will occur from a motor vehicle crash. 50,000 Americans die EACH YEAR in automobile-related crashes. In comparison, 58,148 Americans died in the entire six-year Vietnam War.
• The number-one issue that married couples fight about is money. It is a leading cause in many divorces. Although the divorce rate is down from a peak in the 1980s, well over 40 percent of all marriages end in divorce.
• The cost of raising a child up to the age of seventeen years old, depending on your location and income level, ranges from $120,000 to $250,000 (excluding college costs).

“My heavens”, I thought. If any of this happens to any of my children, it could substantially hamper them for many years of their adult lives. And I certainly don’t want them moving back home after college. What is going on? What has changed in our society? What can I do to SAVE my children from becoming national statistics? What are you going to do to save your children? Not that money is the most important thing in life, but if I am making a $200,000 investment to raise each child, are they getting the knowledge they need? I don’t have a money tree growing in my yard to help them out of any financial hole they dig. I don’t foresee a book of knowledge suddenly falling from the sky just in time to save them from making a poor decision.