Going Broke

Is Generation Y going broke?

And yet stats indicate our generation's financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match. Only 52% of high school seniors passed a recent national financial literacy test, meaning adults entering the work force do not know enough about basic budgeting, interest rates or taxes to make sound decisions for their own lives. Quiz: Will you end up in your parents' basement?

As a group, we have failed to get a grip on fiscal reality:

• The median credit-card debt of low- and middle-income people aged 18 to 34 is $8,200.
• The average college debt for recent grads is more than $20,000 and rising.
• People between the ages of 25 and 34 make up 22.7% of all U.S. bankruptcies (but just 14% of the population at large), according to a recent report.

While I was growing up, I did not get a whole lot of financial training, and what I did get was from my parents. Where I really learned about money was working a part time job at the local super market. There's nothing like having to earn that spending money to teach you to respect it.

"We're in a generation that was kind of shielded from a lot of financial responsibilities," says Wong. "Twenty years ago, when you were in college you didn't have a credit card, and (now) all of a sudden we had to take on debt to go to college. Then we get out of college and we have to have that handbag and an iPod," she says. "It is so easy to take on debt."

Now this is something I simply do not understand. "And we have to have that handbag?" No, you don't. You don't have to take on debt to buy that hand bag or iPod. Life is not going to end because you don't have a new iPod Touch. Does no one in this generation have the fortitude to withstand the consumerism and live within their means? It's quite simple - each month you spend less than you make. The excess goes into savings. Of couse, you have to have an idea of what you make and what you spend, which seems to be the problem.

"This generation feels that somehow or another they're going to figure out some technological advancement that's going to get them out of their financial troubles and outsmart the market," says Manning, who served as adviser to the forthcoming documentary "In Debt We Trust." The documentary paints a picture of national financial crisis stemming from the personal-debt burden.

This is something else I don't understand. Apparently personal accountability is out the door along with control. Depending on technology to save you from financial troubles? What, they'll find a better way to counterfeit money? The financial crisis I can certainly believe. When the country with the world's largest GDP is actually spending more than it makes you've got problems.

The fix? "There is hope for straightening (young people) out if they get an education," Siebert says.

Across the country, states are starting to mandate financial education in public schools, and Congress has passed a number of bills to encourage financial literacy.

Evidently the solution is more regulation, another issue I have problems understanding.  School is a good start, but practice is a better teacher.  I think the part time job taught me more than a class room ever could, and is a good plan for any kid's education.

via the Instapundit

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Change

I can't say it any better than this.

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The Segway's Successor?

Check out this thing.

Be sure and watch the video.  How it can move is just freaky.

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Prepping the Shuttle

Here is an absolutely stunning photo series of NASA prepping the Space Shuttle.  Well worth the time to scroll through.

Via the Corner.

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USS Monitor

Shorpy is a photo blog that specializes in very old pictures, from the start of photography through the early 20th century.  Today they have a classic picture of the USS Monitor, after its battle with the CSS Virginia.

You can clearly see the scars of battle on the turrett, especially just to the left of the empty gun port.  During battle, the turret was rotated by steam power, so the two guns could always be brought to bear on the enemy.  Also notice the thickness of the armor on the turrett, best seen in the empty gun port.  The technology did not exist to cast a single iron plate of that thickness, so overlapping plates were used.  Forward of the turrett (farther away in the picture), you can see the sloping sides of the pilot house.  The captain was stuck in this tiny, armored space so that he could see out and drive the ship.  It had to be mighty lonely up there with guns firing at you.  In the distance past the pilot house is a typical sailing ship of the day.  Above the turrett is a shaded area. The awning would be taken down and stowed prior to battle.  You can also get a feel for how low in the water the monitors set.  They only had about a foot of freeboard (distance from the waterline to the deck).  This proved the Monitor's undoing, as it sank in rough waters off the Eastern coast.

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'If' only

This post at Powerline talks about the relevancy of Kipling to the modern world. I have not read a lot of his work, and less of his poetry, but this poem certainly seems relevant to me. It is his poem, 'If'.

IF you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you,
But make allowance for their doubting too;
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don't deal in lies,
Or being hated, don't give way to hating,
And yet don't look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream - and not make dreams your master;
If you can think - and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build 'em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breathe a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: 'Hold on!'

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,'
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
if neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!

The poem certainly demands a higher standard to be called a Man than you normally hear these days.  I don't detect a hint of victimhood anywhere in it.  If... the male half of humanity would take some of this to heart, then I think we would be better off as a race.  I think that as soon as my son is old enough we will be memorizing this one together.

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So, when do we move in?

Virgin and Google team up to colonize Mars.

An invitation.

Earth has issues, and it's time humanity got started on a Plan B. So, starting in 2014, Virgin founder Richard Branson and Google co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin will be leading hundreds of users on one of the grandest adventures in human history: Project Virgle, the first permanent human colony on Mars.

I'm sure my wife wouldn't mind having a pair of Martians running around the house. That's so much cooler than regular old Earth children.

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Kid Proofing the Home Theater

Here's some good ideas from the guys at Wired.

I need to work on a few of these myself.  I'm afraid to say that right now my Sony SXRD TV and all my gear is inhabiting an old coffee table I painted black - not the most kid proof of furniture.  Of course, I take the approach that it is better to house-proof the kids than kid-proof the house, but 1 and 4 year olds are mighty curious.  The worst part is that the TV is upstairs where they also spend a lot of time playing.  And as they grow older and can play by themselves, the possibility of something bad happening to the electronics and kids will go up.  So, looks like I'll have to get off my duff and fix this.  Thanks to Wired, now I have a good idea what to do.

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