Random Worst Advice Millennials Have Heard From Baby Boomers (21 items)

• (#1) Put Your College Tuition On A Credit Card

  From _Missy_Chrissy_:

  "Putting my college tuition on a credit card instead of taking out a subsidized loan.

  "My mother is a baby boomer and is also terrible with finance. She constantly lectures me on how to handle my finances because she 'has been around the block' and 'knows what she's doing.' Right now, the ongoing argument with her is over the fact that I need to take out a couple thousand in student loans to cover my final semester of college. I am taking out a subsidized loan like most people do and is really the best option available with the lowest rates. (6.25%) My mom's advice: put it on a credit card.

  "She puts everything on new credit cards that have '0% for 18 months' (She is now paying one of these off after she went to Vegas). I've tried to explain to her that subsidized loans are essentially 0% interest for 18 months because the government pays your interest while you're in school. I've also tried explaining to her that having 25 credit cards is a bad idea and that they have triple the interest rate of the loan I am taking out. This logic is lost on her though. But she knows better because she's old and I couldn't possibly know more even though I'm an accounting/finance major."
• (#2) You Don't Need Money To Support Kids

  From NotReallyMaeWest:

  "'Babies just need love, not money.'

  "Sorry, mom, no grandkids until I have a job with a decent paycheck and less student debt."
• (#3) Save Money From Your Minimum Wage Job And Buy A Brand New Car

  From ripestpeach:

  "My aunt told me to never buy a used car or have a car loan. We live in California and public transportation is a joke so having a car is important if you want to be a full-time student and hold a part-time job.

  "When I asked how I should buy a car without a loan or a used one, she said to save up enough money to buy a brand new car and pay in full at the time of the purchase. I was 22 and making $10-an-hour at a 20/hr per week job and taking five classes a semester, driving a junker she hated an hour each way to school.

  "I decided she was beyond stupid after this advice."
• (#4) Interracial Dating Is Wrong

  From GingerHiro:

  "Dad told me when I was young that interracial relationships would never work. He said that 'there's a reason the black birds are with black birds and the red birds are with the red birds. Its just nature.' I've been with my ethnically different girlfriend for a long time now. Probably the best person I've ever met."
• (#5) Computer Scientists Don't Make Good Money

  From: DrMonkeyLove:

  "I guess I'm on the old side of the millennials, but I had numerous people tell me not to go into computer science and instead go into some other engineering field because computer scientists didn't make good money, wasn't a good job, not a good fit, etc. Glad I didn't listen to any of them as I make a really good salary now. Why the heck would I take advice on entering a high-tech field from people who can barely use a computer?"
• (#6) Just Put Your Rent On A Payment Plan

  From sonofaresiii:

  "'You're having trouble making your rent? Just call up the owner and ask if they can reduce it for a little while or put you on a payment plan.'

  "Mom, no. Maybe that works for some people somewhere, but my owner is a huge company out of state. They don't cut me a break out of the kindness of their heart. If I'm late they charge a fee, and if I'm still late a month later they sue me."
• (#7) Go To The Most Expensive School Possible

  From WickedGingah:

  "'Drop out of local community college and RUN, don't walk to most expensive state school in the country. A degree from a community college isn't worth anything.'

  "Naturally this exchange occurred while I was working so I hid my 'f*ck-off-and-die' face behind a polite smile and said I would consider it."
• (#8) Avocados Are Holding You Back From Home Ownership

  From ReginaRainbowTits:

  "Housing prices wouldn't be such an issue if I'd just stop eating smashed avocado."
• (#9) Participation Trophy Logic Fail

  From ImAClubProHere:

  "Talking to my dad recently, he was going on about 'participation trophies.' When I pointed out that we wouldn't have received said participation trophies had his generation not invented them, his response was: 'Yep, that's another problem with your generation. Always blaming your faults on other people.'"
• (#10) Become A Stripper Because Grandma Said So

  From AlwaysDisposable:

  "I think my grandmother just barely falls into the baby boomer category. She has told me all kinds of god awful advice, such as...

  "'You should become a stripper. Those women are so empowered.'

  "'If you don't lose weight nobody will ever love you.'

  "'Just get married. You can always get divorced later and it's cheap.'

  "'You should have kids because I like babies.'"
• (#11) Just Go Get A Job With A Good Pension Somehow

  From paleo2002:

  "The lab tech at one of the schools I teach at is a retired old fella. Comes in maybe two hours a day, real early in the morning to set up labs for the day. Basically has the 'job' for his own entertainment.

  "One morning he caught me in the hall and somehow got into telling me how I really ought to find a job with a good pension. Apparently he worked for some commercial chemistry research lab and retired early once he qualified for their pension program. Then, he and some buddies took some of their early retirement money and bought a big parcel of land. They arranged to have it incorporated into a town that they ran, then sold off pieces of it for housing developments.

  "So, he's going through this little history lesson in how the economy used to work and I just stand there and nod. In the back of my head, it dawns on me: he thinks I'm an adjunct by choice. He thinks I teach part-time at three different schools with no advancement potential and minimal benefits because I like it.

  "Hey Boomers, the reason why us god d*mmed Millenials aren't doing things the way you used to is that those things don't exist anymore. There's no career track jobs in science with just a MS. There's no more salary for life company pensions. I can't just go 'buy me some land' and flip it for a profit."
• (#12) Love Inevitably Dies

  From DarkNFullOfSpoilers:

  "Oh boy. Every baby boomer I talk to about my relationship gives me really depressing advice. For example, they'll start complaining about their divorced husband, then ask me if I'm in a relationship.

  "Me: Yeah, my husband and I are about to celebrate our third anniversary.

  "Them: Oh, well, just you wait. Things will go south eventually. That's what happened to me.

  "Me: I dunno, we were dating for seven years before we got married.

  "Them: Well, the fire eventually dies. Just you wait. You don't have as much experience as I do."
• (#13) Random Luck Apparently Counts As A Life Plan

  From dreamqueen9103:

  "I was getting my master's degree and we had a guest lecturer come in. He had been CEO of a small company for many years. He basically told us that he stumbled into the job right out of college because he didn't know what to do and gave it a shot. They gave him the assistant CEO position because he had been the assistant manager at a movie theater for a summer. And then tw years later he became the CEO.

  "He was basically telling this entire glass of people getting their advance degrees in the hopes to get his position that he got his job on a whim 30 years ago."
• (#14) Don't Work During College

  From T271:

  "College professor told me he thought it was a mistake that I got a job that would take time away from school. When I brought up the cost he said that education is an investment and that I should focus on that. Hard to invest when you don't have any money to invest with."
• (#15) Ignore The Market And Buy A House

  From craickiller:

  "Around '06 my dad was always telling me to stop renting and buy a house. I pointed out the prices (where I live anyway) were rising significantly and it didn't appear to be sustainable. He dismissed what I said. My sister and her husband purchased a house at around £180000 that same year. After the crash it was valued at 95k ... could never bring myself to say I told you so!"
• (#16) Get A Master's Degree For No Reason

  From [deleted]:

  "Get at least a master's degree so you can be successful. Sure, a degree helps, but coming out of school with a massive amount of debt is not the greatest thing to do. My parents owned a home when they were 25 and 23. They didn't have to worry about having 40k in student loans.

  "The kicker? I work for my parents and they decide my salary. They know d*mn well I can barely afford rent, much less a house. Also, my degree has nothing to do with my job, but I had to have it."
• (#17) Don't Have Compassion For Others

  From [deleted]:

  "I've been told countless times by my grandparents to only worry about myself. Whenever I bring up a social issue or subject I'm passionate about I'm immediatley told that I only need to be looking out for me. That I care too much about other people.

  "Umm isn't the lack of compassion for other people and animals how we f*cked the world?"
• (#18) Find Jobs In The Newspaper Want Ads Even If They Don't Advertise Anything You're Qualified For

  From Onefortheisland:

  "I graduated in 2007 and had an extremely difficult time finding a job. I was juggling two unpaid internships and a part-time job at a movie theater while applying to anything I could find. I spent my spare time interviewing at staffing companies that never called me back and trying not to slash my wrists.

  "My mother would toss the newspaper at me and said, 'You know, I've never been unemployed, but I still read the WantAds every day.'

  "Thanks, Mom, that's super helpful! You know what kind of jobs they advertise in the newspaper? Mostly construction jobs that I am completely unqualified for because I a) have no training and b) am built like a toothpick.

  "She refused to acknowledge that I was actively searching for a job and kept insisting that I was lazy."
• (#19) Apply For Jobs Eight Months In Advance

  From buffalolove:

  "This is pretty specific to my career but when I was in graduate school to become a teacher, my mom knew this woman who was a teacher who was like in her 40s. It was a year-long program where I would graduate in May. My mom kept telling me to ask this woman for advice on getting a job. I hardly knew her as she only really knew my mom, but I did eventually reach out to her in like December.

  "She asked me how many job applications had I filled out already and I said none, thinking it was ridiculously early to start applying. She proceeded to tell me I had already most likely blown my chance at landing a job for the upcoming year because most schools start hiring in January and want people to apply early. She said there is maybe a slim chance that schools will look at applications during early spring but that would be extremely lucky. She later talks to my mom and says the same thing, and then my mom is all upset and yelling at me over the phone about 'why didn't you start applying sooner? How are you going to start paying your loans next year without a job?'

  "This seems like weird advice to me so I asked my program professors and advisor (who have all spent their lives teaching kids) and they were all like 'that's ridiculous. Most schools won't even post any openings until at least April, and the vast majority of openings and hiring will occur in July and August.' Everybody told me I had plenty of time to apply for jobs and that anyway, it didn't make sense to apply this early because we were still developing our resumes and hadn't graduated.

  "I did the majority of my applications in May and early June, got hired at the end of June. I hope I don't talk to that woman again anytime soon."
• (#20) Bad Customers Build Character

  From shikitohno:

  "At my first retail job, any time I complained about customers or coworkers to my father I would get, 'You just have to suck it up. It builds character, and you'll always have something you don't like about your job or coworkers.' A few years ago, he lost his help desk job, and nobody wanted to hire him on for an IT position when he's just a couple years shy of retirement age and doesn't have a degree. After a couple years of being unemployed, he realized the gig was up, and took a part time job working in a grocery store across the street from the one I had in high school.

  "Now, whenever I go to visit him, I always hear something like, 'Can you believe this b*tch? I just finished building a godd*mn corn pyramid, has to be seven feet tall, and she wants one from the center on the bottom, because she says she can tell those are the freshest. Can you believe it?' No, dad, not a clue at all what you're talking about, but you're character sure seems to be growing."
• (#21) Keep Your Terrible Job, You'll Get A Raise

  From Wolfendesign:

  "'Keep working your job, you'll get a huge raise and make the same with less hours.'

  "I was 19 and had a job in mold remediation. I was working full-time during the day and was also a full-time community college student taking night classes. Sleep was sh*t, information went in one ear and out the other, and half of what I did has much more work than what had been in the job description. One time I spent the day carrying 60,000 pounds of boxed kitchen tile from a company van to a client's home. I got it done in an hour. Without using a dolly.

  "This was for $8.50 and hour, and seven months in, I asked for a raise, and they bumped it up a whopping $8.75 an hour. I left about a week after I spent another week working a job in an apartment basement literally cleaning out sh*t. I removed toilets filled to the brim with human sh*t after wrapping them in trash bags. For 8.50 an hour.

  "I left the job a few months ago, have not seen employment since, and it has been the best d*mn thing I've ever done. Only 20 now, so I've still got plenty of time to get hit by a bus or find a better job."

New Random Displays    Display All By Ranking