The Secret Reason Millennials Buy Homes?

Alright, so it's been a hell of a week between me and my shrink. We had to put my emotional unavailability, my fear of intimacy, and my suspicion that he has been subtweeting me on the back burner. (I found his Twitter and he was tweeting about narcissists being stupid and it's like, how do I bring that up that I've been keeping track of his social media casually?) Why's that? The other day, he had to explain to me how to economy works. And he was like, "Millie, these are basic concepts. How do you not know this?"

Let me clear this up: I absolutely understand some economic concepts in an academic sense. I have read works by Karl Marx, Adam Smith, and Something-Something Polyani. In fact, I actually enjoyed reading Smith and Polyani (Marx was a dick). I understand how the economy and society are related to each other and how one influences the other. I saw The Big Short, and while I was more of paying attention to the fact that Steve Carrell was using the same accent in the movie that he did for Prison Mike on The Office, I actually understood it. 

However, my Jesuit college thought it was more important to teach me about Jesus than it was to teach me about taxes, stocks, and home-buying. What a waste of my time and my parents' money. Teach me about how to write a check or how to buy shares from the stock market. Also, please unblock me on Twitter, Fordham. It was laugh out loud funny when I tweeted at you that our president Father McShane should change his name to "Daddy McSheezy."

What's not so funny? How my education has failed me. But I'm not alone. Why's that? According to the Wall Street Journal, most millennials don't understand the economy, or how to be an adult. You know, since we only buy homes to take cute selfies in.

Please ignore my amazing background. It takes an advanced sense of humor. I don't expect everybody to understand. 

I gotta say though, WSJ may know how the economy works, but they're way off base.

First of all, who uses Facebook anymore? Probably the out of touch, geriatric jabronis of the Wall Street Journal. 

Fine, our generation has a social media addiction. Sure, we may be narcissistic, thin skinned, and desperate for validation, or at the very least attention, but we are also very, very resourceful when it comes to our social media presence. Resourceful enough NOT to buy a house. Buying a house is for people who are settling down, getting married, and having kids. No millennial gets married before 30 these days, and if they do, it's because they're buttoned down and boring or making a huge mistake. 

But buying a house for social media content is stupid. No one lives like they do on social media. It is all complete bullshit. I don't need to lecture you on that. But what WSJ doesn't seem to grasp here is that we are enterprising when it comes to manufacturing our "brand," and diabolically so. Why would a millennial with a mortgage-sized student loan buy a house when they can rent an AirBnB that looks infinitely more luxurious and chic? Why would they spend that money when they can spend it on renting designer items from Rent the Runway to make themselves look more glam than they are? Why would they deign to move to the suburbs to begin with? 

WSJ needs to take notes from millennials because we are much more intelligent than they think. For example, when my shrink was using the Kardashians to illustrate how the economy works, he mentioned that Kim started out as a closet organizer for Paris. "How did you know this?" I asked. "You told me," he responded. 

So yeah, I like to think I taught him some lessons too. He also bitched at me, saying, "Millie, you seem to know a lot more about the financial situations of celebrities than you do about your own. Or the difference between a trust fund and an inheritance. Or basic knowledge about the economy in general."

So TL;DR Millennials are much more scrappy, resourceful, and knowledgeable than WSJ thinks with this "Oh millennials buy homes for their Facebook" BS. Suck it, WSJ.

[Photo via @shelbyyy_jean_]