Your Twenties: Looking Good But Broke As Hell

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I’m a recent college graduate. I’ve worked a lot of jobs since I started working in my mid teens, typically odd ones to help fund my education or, as I became more independent from my family, rent and groceries. Whether it be making coffee, caring for the elderly, working in a restaurant, gardening, editing articles for an online magazine…you name it; I’ve done it.

Some jobs I’ve enjoyed more than others. Gardening felt like a relief compared to bussing tables at a popular breakfast eatery, and taking care of sweet elderly clients felt like a refresh from making dairy-free lattes for angry Karens early in the morning.

But all the while, no matter what the job, I consistently had the same comforting thought running through my head, getting me through particularly arduous workdays: This won’t be forever. You’ll have a job someday that you‘ll feel like you fit into. This is just temporary stuff.

I didn’t expect to be telling myself these same lines at age twenty-three. Yes, if you’re above the age of thirty, you may chuckle at this. You still have a long way to go, little one! you may be thinking. But if you’re anywhere near my age, I’m sure you’re nodding along in agreement, especially if you find yourself in a similar position to my own, which is this: You’re young, you look great, but you’re broke as hell.

I once imagined that my college degree would land me a decent job, at a decent company, where I could live off a decent living wage. When I say decent, I mean something that fits the talents and gifts I have honed in on throughout my college years, the type of job that I find (for the most part) satisfying and challenging for my own personal goals. While the perfect job doesn’t exist, I truly believed my degree alone would open up a world of possibilities for me.

And yet, this morning I applied to be a seasonal UPS worker. If you had asked my freshman college self where she saw herself at twenty three, she would be unbelievably, absurdly confused when her guess of “salaried office worker” or “writer” or “assistant” was corrected by this reality.

Now, there’s nothing inherently wrong with being a UPS worker. Not at all. I was raised to do any job I happened to find myself in with dignity and respect. Work is work. But as I was applying for the UPS position, I couldn’t help but hear a tiny voice in my head saying: So, this is what you worked so hard for? Four years of good grades and late nights and thousands of dollars paid and even more borrowed, now hanging over your head while you scramble to pay the grocery bill? What was the point?

It’s a bit soul crushing, this thought. If I dwell on it too long, I start to feel it in my chest, an anxiety buried and rooted so deeply within me its hard to shift focus at times. Apparently I’m not alone in this, which I’m not sure makes me feel any better.

According to the American Psychological Association, fifty-two percent of Millennials and forty-eight percent of Gen Xers have lain awake at night in the past month because of stress related to work and finances. This survey was conducted in 2012, so I can only imagine what a pandemic, inflation, and the ridiculous cost of housing and rent has done to us. I guarantee that number is a lot higher today.

But yes, of course! I should be expecting this, shouldn’t I? Young people have to work hard to get where their parents are. Older people didn’t just sit around and wait for opportunity to find them. They went out there and WORKED! This is what I’ve been told, over and over.

To make it clear, my intention here isn’t to grovel and complain. In fact, the issue seems to go a bit beyond my own individual actions these days. I’m willing to take responsibility when it comes to my choices, but it appears the system is nonetheless working against us.

My college degree seems like a trifle to most companies and professionals, something I can put up on the wall and frame like an art piece (I’m actively applying for graduate school, as I discover I need to go into more debt to get a better job). When I go grocery shopping I have to be mindful what goes in my cart, because without meticulously keeping track, my bill will easily breeze over the hundred dollar mark just for a week’s worth of food for two people. I have to keep an eye on how much I drive during the week, because God forbid I fill my gas tank up once every two weeks.

With inflation at a forty-year high, it’s difficult to admit that I’m the only problem here. According to the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, about 23 million low-income renters pay more than half of their income for their housing. Growth in median rents have vastly outgrown the median renter income. Mix this in with high tuition rates, not to mention the overhanging inflation, and you’ve got a recipe for disaster.

It’s easy to feel like there’s never going to be a day where money isn’t a stressor. When I talk to people who are much older than myself about the cost of housing and everyday living, they fondly reminisce about their younger days, when they mostly ate pasta and canned goods because that’s all they could afford. My soul longs for the day I’m looking back on these money-tight days with nostalgia.

I was getting ready for bed the other night and while brushing my teeth, a thought hit me as though I had input from a third person perspective on my situation. I looked at my reflection and saw a smooth-skinned, shiny-haired girl who was fit and healthy. In perhaps a sarcastic tone, I gently reminded myself that while I didn’t really have a cent to my name, at least I looked good.

For now, I suppose that’s all I can really claim, like a lot of twenty-somethings. That, and a lot of stress.

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