Im in a non legal state and grow in stealth. Its not that hard to do. There's decades of forums of dedicated stealth cab builds. I supply myself with a hidden compartment in an aquarium stand for mother and veg, and a locked deep freezer for flower.
That’s great, but I have a son and a live in mother in law. I’d love to put a grow tent in a closet, but I don’t have a closet to dedicate to that. I go through an eight a month, so buying is the practical choice for me.
Dry herb vape. I get a very nice high from .1 grams of 25-30% flower. An eighth gives me enough flower to last a month and cover the margin of error while weighing it out
I live in WA and it's honestly just not worth it to grow. Within the last couple years the stores in Seattle have gotten cutthroat and 3.5 of good flower is like $20, great flower for $25.
Hard disagree. That's just promoting instant validation.
I spent all my 20s sewing patches into my jeans and using the library to answer emails. Now I have no debt and I'm about to buy a house worth 7 figures.
My wife and I are DINKs, but something I realized yesterday with all of our friends who have teenage children: None of them have a part-time job, not a single one. And none of their pre-teen kids have any unofficial jobs like mowing lawns either.
Not pointing that out to judge, rather my curiosity in understanding if this is an intentional thing and/or what is the cause of the shift. I'm not even trying to state whether it's a good or bad thing, just making an observation with an open mind to the reasons and factors at play.
I've asked the question and apparently its a mixture of:
letting kids be kids and not making them have too much financial responsibility
part time minimum wage not being enough to pay for car insurance or a car like we were able to
college becoming more and more competitive and kids needing more available time to focus on studies and extra curriculum activities to stay competitive
Mmmm ok butttttt we also have a generation of kids with increased social anxieties. I was a shy kid but my part time job forced me to get over that whether I was ready or not. I also had to respect a schedule and couldn't just quit because I wanted off for whatever reason. Either i traded shifts or sucked it up. But work with other teens my age was also fun.
You also have the chaos of scheduling, ie managers who do not care that they are still in high-school and schedule accordingly. Like finals exist, papers and homework exist. I dont know, I want to say that we made it work when we were their age but I don't think the people managing us or scheduling us were as petty as they are today.
The thing is I remember being the person responsible for finding coverage "that's the managers job" was NOT a thing when I was back in high school working my part time job. I remember having to ask my colleagues to swap with me. I also used to work alot of 5-9pm shifts...getting home at 9pm on a school night is crazy when I think about it now. I remember having to cram my homework in the 2 hours I was home before changing and walking to work.
In my case I really did just make it work... having a test was my problem to figure out when to study for... my parents didn't really ask much or knew how I was doing in school as long as I was passing. They didn't have the online portals like we do today.
I worked at a grocery store when I was in HS. Worked from 4-10 4 nights a week and an 8 hour shift on Sunday. I did my homework on the bus and in class. Made a lot of money selling my classmates bottles of awful booze for 3x the shelf price though haha.
I did buy myself a car and didn't have any debt after college, don't think that's possible nowadays.
Graduated in 2003, and I usually ended up cramming my hours into weekend shifts. But that's also because I had shit going on during the week too. Sports, music lessons, and somehow still had time to blow off homework to go hang out with people.
I used to manage a staff of mostly teenagers and part of my job was collecting availability and not scheduling the highschool students for work while they were in school or super late on weeknights (past 10pm). I also put exam weeks and breaks on my calendar so I knew when I'd have to cover shifts and when there'd be a lot of availability.
I thought it was weird that other managers would make people cover their own shifts if something came up. I had the list of everyone's phone numbers, a phone, and I was on the clock. Making phone calls was easier than cleaning or dealing with the public.
When I was a teenager, my boss for my part-time job was also doing that part-time, and her main job was as a school teacher, so she was very understanding of all of us prioritizing school. I didn't realize until later how lucky I was with that kind of arrangement and how fucked over so many people were.
Where we previously lived, it seemed like no teenagers had jobs. Anecdotally, I heard that the types of places we worked in high school didn’t want to hire teenagers and pay them minimum wage (~$20/hr). I don’t know how much it was that or the kids already being way overscheduled and parents just giving them money vs. encouraging them to want to save and earn it themselves.
We’re fortunate to be pretty comfortable, but my daughter was always interested in earning her own money. Where we moved to, it’s common for teens to get jobs,
even the pretty well-off ones. She’s excited to get a job when she can.
I can only speak to where I live, but all the "teenager jobs" are filled by adults right now. Every server and cashier in my town that I've encountered is at least mid-20's, and almost all of them are women. So many of the moms at the elementary school pickup area are women who I recognize as waitresses from around town. I've noticed an increase in older women in these positions, too. Social security not going as far as it used to, I assume. We have a lot of locally owned businesses, which is great, but I've noticed they're staffed by the owners and maybe one or two family members. None of them seem to hire people to work there.
I think one of the core issues is that our society is less neighborly than it was. Mowing the neighbor's lawn means talking to the neighbor, and broadly speaking that is a thing people don't do anymore. We're becoming individualist to an isolationist degree, so teenagers no longer have that community support to hold weird teenager jobs.
A lot of the teenager-specific jobs are also being automated away. Oregon for many years maintained the "no self-serve gas" laws purely because it created a job that highschoolers could do, but that's gone now. There are simply less possible jobs for them to work, and that's a lot of it.
Then factor in how hard the job market is right now, and a lot of jobs that would traditionally go to teenagers have people in their 40s working them because they need the money, and so the opportunities just aren't there.
inflation is a real bitch. 20 years from now you're going to think that the power of the dollar was amazing today too. again, inflation is a bitch. buy the stock index, set it and forget it, it is your only chance.
Ehh I don't trust the stock market these days. Good way to lose a LOT of money with very little control or foresight over it. I prefer "invest in your home & your necessities so you have less to replace & put $$$ out for in the future".
you need to look at the long term trend of equities in general, then compare the amount of $1 invested to alternatives. like i said, it is your best chance.
you need to look at the long term trend of equities in general
Unless it somehow turns out that AI isn't a thing that impacts markets, I don't think past trends are worth considering in the same way.
For one, the long-term trend of the market was rooted in a postwar order that lent itself to increasing wealth in US markets. First, the US was the only manufacturing base left after WWII, and the only source of reliable credit in the entire world. By the time the world's manufacturing base shifted away from the US, the service economy benefitted Americans disproportionately and the digital revolution began in earnest.
Now, as we see the fruits of the digital revolution come to bear with the rise of AI (arguably the endpoint of the digital revolution), life will shift as fundamentally as it did when markets shifted from agrarian/merchant based economies into the industrial/capitalist world that followed.
I'm not qualified to speak as an authority on any of this (I'm still contributing to my 401k, fwiw), so take it all with a grain of salt, but people REALLY need to consider that we might be living through an epoch similar to other revolutionary times in human history.
so in consideration of the potential that we might be living through an epoch similar to other revolutionary times in human history.................you continue to contribute to your 401k, which is aligned to my recommendation.
I used to upload things on request in a private forum and one time a guy offered to tip me some bitcoins. I turned him down because it was "worthless." Woops.
It's insane how the buying power I had between 16-18 I want able to match again until I was in my 30s. I made pizza part time until I was 18, then I delivered them. On paper my pay always increased but the dollar just kept getting weaker and weaker and weaker. Right now I make almost three times as much as both my parents combined when I was 16 and I'm barely living better than they were.
Back when we were kids we didn’t really have the option or resources to put money into a retirement fund. I worked at Walgreens and they offered a profit share program that was really a 401k but you had to be 21 at the time. I was 20 when they lowered it to 18. Not sure how it is these days.
Telling my kids to at least put in the company match if they’re able to. After that, let them be kids and blow their money on stupid shit. Let them have fun.
It’s funny, I am past the statue of limitations but I worked for a company starting at 19. I put what little I could from My paycheck, maybe 3% at the time into the 401k.
Well turns out you are suppose to be 20 1/2 to contribute to the 401k……. No one did the math and for over a year the company matched it - and now it’s too late for them to go back and sort it out. And honestly it wouldn’t be worth their time and money.
EXHAUSTED but also wish I was smarter with my teenage money instead of blowing it on weed, accessories for my car, and name brand clothing.
I feel the opposite, ironically.
Now that we're approaching the ending of whatever period of time we were unlucky enough to be born right at the end of, I wish I had stopped caring so much about the future. It's clear the next 20-40+ years are going to be pretty bad.
If I had known my teenage years were taking place in the last semblance of sanity and stability this world had left, I would have acted accordingly.
Companies don't want to hire teens because they don't want to deal with labor laws. Since 2008 fucked the job market, there's plenty of adults that need the old jobs the teens worked.
You were a teenager. Not a 35-year-old with thoughts of a 401k. I am happy you spent teenager money on teenager things. Also, a lot of teens these days have a point? Cost of living is obscene and we have a government in charge who is making massive money off of the people (us) that they are supposed to be working for.
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u/LostinParadise4748 9h ago
EXHAUSTED but also wish I was smarter with my teenage money instead of blowing it on weed, accessories for my car, and name brand clothing.
The power of the dollar back then was amazing, I don't see half as many teens working bc what they make "isn't worth it" or something these days