Personal Finance (Not Investing) • How to teach your 20 year old to be Frugal?

The exception seems to be the kids pursuing the trades. One boy I know is training to be an auto mechanic and details cars for a living. He nets a cool $75K/year which makes this "doable". However, he still lives at home, pays a small amount as rent, and splits 1/5th of the groceries + utilities, drives his mother's car around and pays 1/2 her insurance and all the gas. I think it's a sweet deal for him (and for his folks) and in 5 years, he'll be ahead of the "college grad" peers as his income takes off.

I doubt he will be ahead of his college peers for long, if they pick any halfway sensible degree they will make more than he does when they graduate with lots of room for income growth and promotion. Not to mention the fact that they will have desk jobs that won't leave them disabled by the time they retire.

I politely disagree. The way I see it, desk jobs can also be "outsourced" with more ease than the trades, including car mechanics. Google recently outsourced it's entire Python team to India and Mexico, so yeah, so I don't think "desk jobs" are safer than the trades.

And the thing I've noticed with tradespeople is that if they have challenges making a living with one trade, they can jump to another. It may take a couple of years to make the transition, but they probably have the money to support themselves through the transition. This boy nets 75K *now*, at age 19.

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All this to say that while I agree with your opinion that kids should be expected to shoulder some of their expenses themselves, I don't agree that college educated folks make more than tradesmen or are "better off" in the long run than tradesmen.

Statistics: Posted by MoreTaxes — Tue Jun 04, 2024 1:08 am — Replies 90 — Views 5495