Don’t buy the idea that you don’t really need money. You MAY get by w/o it, but life is full of disaster stories where something bad came up and those w/o resources had a hard time. It really changes how you see life to have that security financially. If a customer doesn’t pay me now, I don’t get too upset. But when I was struggling, you had better bet I did. It’s nice knowing you have money if you need it. I live fairly frugally but I’m not wasting my valuable years left making my own laundry detergent and other time wasters like that.

Money matters. So try to find a job you love or at least can stand, that also pays well. Don’t be a bum like Jules in Pulp Fiction was going to be and just wander the earth(“no job, no legal tender, you’re just a bum] : )

I appreciate the theme of this blog but it’s taken too far. Everything in moderation.

And if you want a job you HATE that also pays badly, try working at a freaking gas station. Scary, annoying, boring, and dangerous. WTF?

I completely agree that if you have the resources (ie mom and dad to fall back on should things go wrong). Then you should take the chance because you really have nothing to lose– almost like an extended college practicum in real life.

In my experience, minimum wage jobs are optimal for the kind of life where you are experimenting and learning new because it does not tie you down in the same way that a contract higher paying job would. In pursuing dreams, that kind of freedom to change your plans is really essential.

On the other hand, if you’re not in a financially secure situation and you’re on your own, then you should secire that first before you try anything with a high financial risk.

I am living by myself but still have my parents to turn to in an emergency, so I will take advantage of this privilege and pursue a career in illustration. And I will slowly pay off my debts and live frugally. I’ll see if it can be done…

That’s not to say that it’s always a bad idea. I’ve lodged in people’s houses, myself, and it’s worked out well. But I’ve always had enough money that I could move out quickly (forfeiting my security deposit, leaving some stuff behind if I had to, and taking a new place with a higher rent if that’s all that was available on short notice).

I wouldn’t advise anyone to voluntarily enter a situation where they don’t have enough income to be somewhat picky about where they live or enough of an emergency fund to get out of a bad living situation.

A month or two ago, Trent talked about all the precautions one should take in renting out a room in one’s house: Choose the tenant carefully, draw up a legal agreement, and have an emergency fund in case the tenant turns out not to be a reasonable and responsible person. Here, he advises young people to rent rooms in other people’s houses without mentioning the need to take any precautions at all. This gives me the impression that while the earlier post was serious advice, this one is not.

But what I cannot understand is why Trent is so against the idea of money in all these posts lately.

Money is not inherently bad. It only provides choices.

By having all your posts assume that people cannot make smart and fulfulling decisions regarding their money, you come accross as assuming we’re all idiots who need to be instructed every step of the way.

I think this is VERY irresponsible advice to be giving out. Sure, it seems awesome to tell people just to graduate college and basically be bums for a couple years. But what you don’t realize is that somehwere down the line, those actions are going to have consequences.

How about down the line the person decides they would like to date and get married? What future mate wants to date a person who got a college degree and basically did nothing after that? So one person works their butt off after college to build up a financial cushion – they are just supposed to start supporting the person who “chased their dreams?”

What about when these “dream chasers” finally decide to try and enter the real world? Hiring managers are going to see a person that lacks motivation and direction, not exactly a prize recruit.

Sure, this may seem like an ideal lifestyle, but the fact is, it is not realistic for you to be telling people to try and live like this.

The US is in bad enough shape due to an already lazy attitude. There need to be some more people in this country step up and be willing to actually work. The US was founded on hard work – not some lazy idealistic dreamer with their head in the clouds, walking around in a daze, hoping for their ship to come in.

What a lot of people don’t get is that in many fields, education is a *luxury*–just because it’s a university and not a five-star hotel does not change that. If you’re going to spend $100,000 to study Latin poetry or neo-platonist philosophy, you’d better have the means. It’s the same $100,000 whether you spend it on that or an exotic sports car.

Otherwise, treat this interest the way you would any other luxury you’d like but can’t afford. Either adapt the dream to fit your situation (we may not be able to stay in five-star hotels in Hawaii for months on end, but anyone can go to the beach more often), or else *earn* the money to be able to enjoy such luxuries. Philosophy can be studied for free at the library.

That said, Trent, I have to ask– how will working a minimum-wage job help him reach his passions any better than a good-paying one? (if the idea is to do his passionate work on the job, I think that’s unlikely; most minimum-wage jobs are labor-intensive)

But there’s a more fundamental point: The opportunity cost of an extended adolescence is immense. This is not just about wasting a few years, which is how someone put it. It’s about wasting the rest of your life, and here’s why.
The only positions worth having require consistent achievement as a hiring credential. Blow a couple years and here are a few careers you NEVER will have: physician in private practice; elite investment banker; lawyer in prestigious, large law firm; Fortune 500 corporate executive. I’m sure I could think of others.

Deciding very early on a career that pays well AND ALSO fuels passion is what works. Of course, brains and ambition are necessary, too.

It is never too late to pursue your dreams, but sometimes it is too early. Especially when you’re not really sure what your dreams are and you don’t have a realistic picture of them.

You are MUCH better off getting that philosophy degree when you have a million in the bank and don’t need employment to pay for your expenses. To become a philosophy professor someone literally has to die for a position to become available. It is among the worst of the humanities. There are a lot of people with higher degrees in philosophy working at Starbucks.

Starbucks, btw, is a much better position than gas station attendant. Not only do they provide benefits, but gas station attendant is listed in the top ten jobs with the highest mortality by the CDC.

Minimum wage jobs in general are pretty horrible. Employers will often do illegal things to minimum wage workers that they wouldn’t dream of doing to higher wage workers. There’s a posh popcorn shop in Chicago that hires all of its workers as contractors so the owner doesn’t have to pay workers comp or unemployment. We have a relative who just got fired for telling the teenage daughter of her supervisor to work instead of talking on the phone– then they refused to give her a paycheck for the weeks she’d work until she complained to the government… and even then they didn’t compensate her for all the hours she had worked. Minimum wage jobs can be way more draining than jobs that pay better.

A lot of famous writers had dayjobs as lawyers until their writing took off. Economic security makes it a lot easier to follow your dreams. DH and I are comfortably taking the year off in our early 30s and it has been great. Much better than being starving graduate students with no money. If you don’t know what you really want to do, put money in the bank while you’re figuring it out because it will make it a whole lot easier to actualize once you’ve experienced enough life to know what you want to do.