I’m reading a really interesting book right now called Generation Debt: How Our Future Was Sold Out For Student Loans, Credit Cards, Bad Jobs, No Benefits, and Tax Cuts for Rich Geezers-and How to Fight Back, by Anya Kamenetz.

The author is in her mid-twenties, a Yale grad and journalist. She started writing this as an assignment when she was freelancing at Village Voice in NYC. The basic idea of the book is how the generation between the ages of 18-35, the “Boomerang Generation,” is in financial trouble. With the average student graduating from college to low-paying jobs with about $20,000 in student loan debt and almost $3,000 in credit card debt it seems like this generation is in for a lot of trouble in the future. It’s called the Boomerang Generation because as soon we graduate from college we have to move back home again because our debt is too high to live independently. I can attest to these numbers, but mine were a lot higher.

After I graduated from college I traveled. I lived in Barcelona and the Caribbean. Then managed to work my way around the world. In all that time, I had student loans, a car payment, and credit card debt, but I found a way. I lived very frugally. Rarely in my travels did I meet other Americans my age traveling. But I met tons of Brits, Kiwis, Australians, South Africans, Germans, well, a little bit of lots of nationalities really. They always said to me, “Where are all the Americans?” “Back home paying off student loans,” I’d guess. If it had not been for working on yachts, I’d be in the same predicament as my friends. I called my best friend Curtis one day to complain about my job. He had been unemployed for a year, working only temp jobs, with a master’s degree in conflict mediation. I’m complaining about the long hours and being far from home on a holiday. He says, “Jerri, what are you looking at right now?” I was on a boat in New York. “The ocean,” I replied. He says, “So stop complaining! I’m looking at a parking lot. I can’t even afford gas to get to work!” Then I realized how lucky I was.

It hasn’t been easy though. In order to avoid paying rent, I’ve lived in rooms the size of small apartment bathrooms, with other people, and no privacy and essentially very little freedom. I even lived in a hotel room above a septic tank that had to be pumped weekly. And the only way they could pump it was backing the truck up to my front door and attaching a hose to a hole under my bed. I can’t even begin to tell you how disgusting that was. But it was free! But extremely gross. Especially when they forgot to put the cover back on the hole in the ground. Anyway, the point of this is, that we have to make sacrifices. If the easy life was handed to us on a silver platter as soon as we graduated from college, we would have nothing to appreciate.

Traveling is expensive, but it can be done. So no more excuses and stop blaming everyone else for the problems our generations faces. Show some initiative, some moxie and just go! Oh, and stop spending all your money trying to keep up with everyone else. You never will catch up! Especially when they’re spending all their money competing with you.