The rat race

*This is another off-topic, non-FFXI post... those who aren't interested in my ramblings and ranting may want to skip this one*

Here is the life cycle of a "successful" person as per most people's standards in the developed world:

1. Age 1-4: Blissful unaware of surroundings, having fun playing with toys and watching Bob the Builder

2. Age 5-18: K-12 education, finish with high school diploma, preferably with tons of As and AP course credit

3. Age 18-22: Undergrad education at some university. Study to be lawyer, doctor, scientist with the goal of landing a "real job"

4. Age 22-25: Go to grad school and get a Masters, or work your way up through the chain in the rat race. Really smart people may extend grad school all the way to age 30 if they get a Ph.D

5. Age 24-28: Get married, have your first kid, buy a house and get in debt for the next 30 years

6. Age 28-45: Raise your kids, dedicate 18 years of your life working at your job, sending your kid to soccer practice, ballet lessons, summer camps and vacations at Legoland

7. Age 45-55: Mid-life crisis as you realize that you haven't done anything with yourself. Spend lots of money that you've built up

8. Age 55-65: Realize that you've spent all your money during your mid-life crisis and need to save up to "retire"

9. Age 65-death: Retire... which consists of sitting around the house as your money is now being spent on medical bills and you're no longer in any shape to go out and do anything fun since your best years were spent working your butt off to pay for your house and kids

Basically, you spend 18 out of your first 22 years out of your life to prepare to work, have about 2-4 years where you have fun on your own, after which you are expected to get married, buy a house, and have kids. After which you'll spend the next 20ish years to raise the next generation of house-buying consumers. Once you're done with your kids, you'll be just about old enough to retire, maybe, if your kids haven't sucked all the money out of you and the planet doesn't blow up around you.

I don't know... I've been chugging along with this train for a while now, the "grown-up" steps aren't looking that attractive to me... Let's take a look at them one at a time:

Buying a house

Ok, so this is the "American Dream" to be your own homeowner... So you save up every cent you have from the first few years of working to scrape together a down-payment. You then take out a huge loan which will take you between 15-30 years to pay back. If you're doing things "the right way", you'll be spending every cent you make to buy the biggest, most run-down house in a nice neighborhood and live eating ramen and staying at home in order to make your payments since you can't afford to go out to have fun. Oh ya, you'll also be doing all the maintenance in the house, gardening, plumbing, painting, as well as doing lots of upgrades so that you can eventually sell your first house and move up to something bigger for your kids... Oh ya, don't forget a nice school district too!

Of course this is the smart thing to do! Your monthly payments may be larger than paying rent, but at least you're not "pissing your money away" by paying a landlord... I mean, you're building equity! Housing only goes up and never down! Who cares about the property taxes that you have to pay to the government every year... they're tax-deductible! As well as the interest that you pay to the bank and the money you spend on maintaining and upgrading your house. I mean, you have nothing but time to spend on putting in the elbow grease, right? Since you can't afford to go out for fun, may as well spend your time on your house!

Sooo... basically for your early years, you're supposed to work your butt off, eat ramen, sink every cent you make into your house... Oh, and also spend your spare time upgrading the house so that you can move up and upgrade to something else in the future. Don't think too much about going on vacation as you can't afford it.

Personally, I never really understood the draw of owning a house. It comes with too many annoyances and responsibilities. You have to clean the gutters, do all sorts of maintenance work, and depending on where you live, the amount of money spent on maintaining it together with property taxes won't come anywhere near rent. (Average home here costs $634k. This means a down-payment of about $120k to get started, and a $400k loan with a monthly payment of $2,500+ over 30 years. I'm not talking about the $100k homes in the mid-west. Add to that property tax@1.25% = $8k/year, and of course, maintenance costs...)

Getting married/having kids

So... who made it a rule that says that you HAVE to get married and have 2.5 kids? The whole system is set up to benefit those who are married with kids... Property taxes go into schools, government gives you tax breaks for every kid you pop out... taxes are less for those married (in certain cases).

I'm pretty sick of this expectation that any adult needs to be married with kids. Have you seen how annoying kids are with their projectile vomiting, constant crying and whining, and high costs? Plus it's not like you can give them away like a pet... you're stuck with them for 22+ years! And you're supposed to spend all your formerly free time to bring them around to swimming, soccer, music, ballet, math, science, politics, powerpoint and foreign language lessons or else you're a bad parent! Not to mention the huge carbon footprint that having even a single kid means to the poor planet! We really should make all parents pay for carbon credits whenever they have children!

Oh ya... and there's that whole marriage thing where you're basically tying yourself down to a pre-grown kid... that part sucks too :(

School/work

Ok, this is an annoying pet peeve... for the average person, you spend 80% of your life studying, then working your butt off in order to save up for retirement. You get maybe 2-3 weeks of vacation a year... or about 4% of your life during this time for "you" time. The rest of it is spent either sleeping, doing your chores and other various things to keep yourself alive in order for your job to make full use of you.

Am I the only one who want to break the cycle right now and just take it easy and play games?

Plus... if you're one of the privileged ones, you don't even need to participate in this rat-race... For sitting around and twiddling your thumbs, your agents, whether hired staff, or self-maintaining income sources, have probably brought in more money than the average person will make in a lifetime... while 99.99% of the population slaves their entire lives to bring these privileged few their luxuries.

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Mmmm... random annoyances I have with the world as a whole... I'd love for there to be a revolution to turn this stupid rat-race upside down! Maybe in the future I'll do another post with my pet peeves!

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Oh ya... there was some silly FFXI update... not touching any of that... too crowded, too many bugs, and stupid SE broke (censored) and (censored) so I'm nowhere near 100% effective and not really in the mood to play an ugly game. Plus the new content is just stupid fetch quests with an added synth that has a high failure % rate with a high chance of breaking everything you spent the last 4 hours farming against 20 other people anyway!

Ya... apparently ASA sucks even more than the other two expansions... from what I've heard! And there's price gouging on the AH items associated with it... Shihei prices are up thanks to the expansion using items from it. I've done my part and RMT'ed the Nexus Cape, but I don't think I'll be touching expansion content until at least the weekend, or more likely after Thanksgiving. Plus I really don't feel like camping NMs against 50 other people who are going after the same items... even with a 1-2 hour repop time, I hate NM campign with a passion.