Today’s Impoverished Yuppies
After reading Bill Sing’s article (Feb. 14), “Few Cash In on Image of Affluence,” my husband and I wanted The Times to know that our check for “Food for Yuppies Project” would not be in the next mail.
If, at age 31, my husband earned the equivalent of $32,000, I would be embarrassed to complain about anything.
Sing reported about Bill Mitchell’s plight: “After paying rent on his Hermosa Beach apartment and other expenses, he and his wife have little money left . . . They have little left to invest in stocks and bonds--and, what he really wants, a house.”
I can guarantee Mr. Yuppie that if he continues to live in the high rent district by the sea, he will never own a home and never have any money left over unless somebody gives it to him. Why does he live in Hermosa Beach? Why can’t his wife get a part-time job? It would do her good to get out and the kids would benefit. He can move inland and commute like the rest of us “proles.”
His father’s house payment might be $150 right now, but I would wager that 25 years ago it was three times that much. I would also wager that his father didn’t spend big bucks to live in an apartment by the sea and pay the equivalent of $260 a month car payments, a house full of new furniture and designer clothes for the toddlers and the parents.
If his father started out like millions of us during the ‘50s ‘40s and ‘30s, he was lucky if he could afford rent anywhere, much less in a view-apartment by the sea. Even today I would love to live by the sea, but I am afraid the closest I will ever get to it is a drive by on a Sunday afternoon!
Yuppies, I call them Guppies--greedy, upwardly mobile--have no priorities. They live from paycheck to paycheck, or shall I say, credit card to credit card. They use the excuse that there may not be a tomorrow, which is hogwash. When we were getting started, the era of splitting the atom threatened our existence, but we didn’t run down and buy whatever our greedy hearts desired! Interest rates are high because Yuppies are the banks’ targets. They know they can count on this greedy generation to buy everything they see. Their toddler children wear designer clothes and they themselves wear only designer fashions.
If Yuppies are being “squeezed,” as your article states, “by multiple economic forces,” it contradicts Bill Mitchell’s own admission that he has “a good and stable job with potential for upward mobility;” it is not the market--it is the Yuppies themselves. They don’t really have to have everything they see. In terms of supply and demand, they drive the prices of everything to extreme with their demands. See what they buy at the supermarket: prepared foods that are expensive and not nutritious--in fact possibly deleterious with all the additives. Most of it is junk. Young people don’t cook. “Who has time?” Time is money! I work and I cook. I plan meals and shopping lists and yes, I cut coupons.
If the Yuppies feel squeezed and trapped, it is their own fault. They don’t need $10,000 weddings, a house full of expensive new furniture and a designer wardrobe. If Yuppies can’t make it on $32,000, they won’t make it on $50,000 or $100,000 either. It is not what you earn, it is what you spend and most important, what you save.
It is a shame that we, their parents, didn’t teach our children to prioritize, and to have some character.
HELEN J. MARRS
El Monte