He said:
This article will most likely offend people who properly budget, manage and control the ebb and flow of their money. I also will assume that these same people are not in college. Nor have they ever played a game of bar golf. (Bar golf, to clarify, is a game in which 18 bars are selected in one night, and players must hit all of these bars in order to beat the game or score a hole in one or whatever. Also, they must be dressed as though they are about to play golf. This doesn't mean you have to like golf to play bar golf because if you like golf that must mean that baseball is too exciting and falling asleep standing up feels like NASCAR.)
Bar golf is a perfect example of an event where a college student's money can suddenly disappear. Their locations -- bars -- are one of the standard college spending vices. These money suck-holes are part of an appetite unique to the college student. If they weren't here then you would just have -- well, school. Imagine a world in which all that was bought was tuition, housing and food? College would be just, well, real life. Definitely not college. The subjects of the stories that would perpetuate after the weekend would have exciting details mostly about a fun new spinach fondue you bought or what book club you liked best during the weekend book club marathon. It's true -- we would probably get a lot more done, such as reading something other than the books for class or maybe even building something not made solely of beer cans. But how could we have fun?
Bars are the first real temptation in what could be called adult spending, the red Jack-Daniels-filled apple that will have you wearing a leaf and talking to God by the end of the night. It is something that adults will still spend money on once the more atypical types of college spending fade away. Whatever do I mean by atypical types of college spending? Consider: Halloween, when you were standing in the middle of Kids 'R Us staring at a children's baby tiger costume trying to decide if maybe you wore it bib style with jeans and a T-shirt underneath it, would it be perfect for you? Or the hours spent with your roommates at Home Depot trying to figure out the recipe for the ultimate beer pong table. These are the type of things that will disappear when words such as "mortgage" replace "golf pros and tennis hoes."
When you go into a bar there is always a face to mark the experience for you. This face will cost you money. Most of the time, it is the bartender. Depending on how the both of you are feeling on a particular day, this refined peddler of the PBRs will either treat you as a leper who is easily banished by cycles of booze or come at you like a shark in a steakhouse. These people are trained in draining money and can do it simply by striking up a conversation with you. "How are you doing today?" can become "I'll probably get $15 out of this Seth Rogen wannabe." A bartender may be able to help you burn through your money, but only a woman can sit there and smoke it for you.
Behold women, the other expense in a male's life. Women, in one way or another, will always be taking up some source of a guy's income. If you're friends with a girl, this is slight. Maybe they forget some cash here or there and require some spotting. Be chivalrous and tell her she'd have better luck ice skating on a liquor luge then ever forcing money out of your regulating pocket. That money is reserved for girls you meet in bars. To put it into the perspective of what guys are going up against, some girls walk into a bar with the mindset of a personal fundraiser who only accepts liquid donations. These walking gala events can be a nice quid pro quo for a guy's ego; he may even get a smile and a compliment before his money gets sucked down another dead-end, brightly-lipsticked black hole. He might also get a show when she unexpectedly displays the full extent of her earnings all over the table after going past what she projected (pun) she'd earn that night.
Spending for guys is something that is only skewed by the activities of college. Long after the auto industry implodes and we all end up using our cars for little more than extra space as a four-wheeled external hard drive, the beer industry will still be there to nurture and lubricate the fresh-thinking minds who will find out how to make our cars run off of dreams and smiles. The fact that the alcohol industry will never taste sour defeat unless college kids figure out that brewing your own beer is cheaper, means that college spending will always be a little irregular compared to other ways in which the ages and sexes choose to spend their dough.
She said:
I hate that cliche -- you know, the one that generalizes women as just pampered, money-hungry lap cats who voraciously eat up several dozen credit cards like catnip (and leave their man to pay back their accumulating debt), only to treat themselves to shoes, clothes, cosmetics, eating at fancy restaurants with the girlfriends and, oh, more shoes.
But what I hate about that cliche the most is that it's considerably true.
Cue gasping from the feminist chorus. I know, my Vera Bradley-esque wallet aches to admit it.
We're like material prostitutes -- women will do a lot of things for money and the lavish gifts which stem from it.
Want a life of luxury with all that you could possibly desire at your perfectly French-manicured fingertips? Then marry someone the age of your grandfather and deal with his wrinkly-smelly-creepy-old-people-skin-that-feels-like-death (or what you hope is death so that he'll finally just kick the bucket and leave you the entirety of his estate) caressing you awkwardly in the middle of the night as you pretend to be asleep under your cashmere comforter. In return, you'll boast the highly coveted bff status with friends such as Coco Chanel, Christian Dior, Michael Kors, Jimmy Choo, Marc Jacobs and Donna Karen.
And it's not like this doesn't happen all the time -- I mean, aren't cliches just an annoyingly repetitive form of a generalized truth? Young women shack up with geezers all the time just for the sake of a more-than-comfortable lifestyle and access to his credit card numbers and Swiss bank accounts. It's totally -- and quite unfortunately -- nothing new.
But when it comes to our own budgets outside of the glamorous world of celebrity privilege and scandal, we young collegiate ladies tend to be more judicious of our money, but no less subject to our flights of financial fancy.
There are certain pitfalls that threaten to throw us into our ever growing, student-loan induced debt.
One of the worst things to happen to any humble working girl's bank account is to stumble upon the makeup mecca of the aesthetic religious practice: Sephora. As we followed the bright lights welcoming us into the heaven that is this plastic, colorful cosmetic cosmos, we were greeted by what I believed to be an overly effeminate Saint Peter sporting black cat-eye liquid eyeliner and a touch of gloss on his lips. (Gay men are the metaphorical pastors or preachers of this religion who often redeem your makeup mistakes and bring you to redemption with the right shade of foundation.) As blissful as the store is, $14 for a single tube of Sephora mascara will definitely set you back in your budget -- trust me, I know.
The desire to buy even more makeup than what you might have in your bag may be one difficult hurdle to jump, but many of us who live off campus have to endure another sort of temptation: We have to resist the urge to buy even more decorations for our cozy Blacksburg abode.
Do we really need to spend our hard-earned money on that tropical fish soap dispenser just to add to the theme of the bathroom? Or what about that set of waxed fruit from Pier 1 that complements the decor of your kitchen but doesn't leave you with any money in reserve? Totally unnecessary items take away from our wallets and find themselves sprinkled with dust a few months after purchase.
Thinking about it, I believe that we ladies have an unhealthy obsession with the word "cute." We want to look cute, so we keep Sephora in business even in this economic climate. We want our homes to look cute, so we buy dozens of knick-knacks in an effort to nurture a welcoming environment in our places of residence.
Maybe we should take the money that we waste so superficially and spend it on more important things, like tuition, books, gifts for friends or maybe even -- dare I say it -- save our money.
Who knows, when you're old and gray but rolling in the dough that you've managed to tuck away for years, maybe some young handsome thing will make you his sugar momma.
Cashmere comforters, in that case, won't be the only things to keep you warm at night.