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Yoga raves hit Boston area
By adamg on Mon, 08/17/2015 - 8:42am
It's like regular yoga, except with face paint and glow sticks. WBUR reports.
Like most yoga classes, this one ends with everyone in corpse poses - releasing their thoughts and stresses with deep breathing and mediation. But there’s a twist, as glitter confetti drops from above.
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WE PETITION THE OBAMA
WE PETITION THE OBAMA ADMINISTRATION TO:
Award Yogi Berra The Presidential Medal of Freedom for his military service and civil rights and educational activism.
Yogi Berra should be awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom. A man of unimpeachable integrity and respect, he befriended the first black and Latino baseball players in Major League Baseball. He is currently an ambassador for Athlete Ally, which promotes LGBT rights in sports. Berra enlisted in the U. S. Navy during World War Il and served during the D-Day invasion. He continues to be an avid supporter of our armed forces. Berra greatly values education. While with the Yankees, he created a scholarship at Columbia University that is still active 50 years later. His namesake Museum & Learning Center serves 20,000 students annually with character education programs and teaches the values of respect, sportsmanship and inclusion that Berra has demonstrated throughout his life and career.
http://yogiberramuseum.org/vote-for-yogi-for-the-p...
Yogi does yoga raves??? I'M
Yogi does yoga raves??? I'M GOING!
Flucking Aye ,
Flucking Aye ,
"When Yogi turned 18, he put his baseball career on pause and joined the Navy in 1943. Trained as a gunner's mate, Yogi worked on a rocket launching boat and served on D-Day. He said about the invasion that "Being a young guy, you didn‘t think nothing of it until you got in it. And so we went off 300 yards off beach. We protect the troops." For the next twelve days his boat was ordered to shoot down enemy aircraft. They accidentally shot down an American plane, but managed to save the pilot. He went on to serve in a second assault on France for which he received a medal from the French government.''
"Nobody goes to that fancy yoga studio anymore.
It's too crowded."
That's unbearable
To quote Demetri Martin
"The thing about glitter is, if you get it on you, be prepared to have it on you forever because glitter is the herpes of craft supplies."
Question for millennials
As a financial adviser I read a lot of articles about how tough times are on millennials. If they can find a job and move out of mom/dad's, they have to cope with crippling debt and pay 30, 40 or even 50% of their income in rent. In addition to all the taxes all of us have to pay, now they are required to pay at least something toward health insurance. And if they are smart, they are setting aside 10-15% of their income for retirement.
They are getting married later, having kids later and buying homes later - if they ever do any of those things - in part because they can't afford it. I know several people who do live independently in NY - but that is subsidized by their parents.
Yet the bars are packed, entertainment and sports venues as crowded as ever. People seemingly have endless money to drop on yoga studios, cross fit, lots of alcohol and even seem to frequent a "Dry Bar" where they can have someone blow dry their hair.
I get that some people have money to burn. But 1% of the population can't keep all these people in biz. So - serious question - for a generation that is reportedly under such hardship - how do so many of you seemingly afford this lifestyle? Or do you?
The truth is that simply most
The truth is that simply most of these businesses are taking advantage of the rich and connected (both US and foreign) college students. Shortly after that, you get a bunch of people who live high off the hog, but quickly it drops off. That's why most of these businesses are flashes, they'll attract the attention of those that need the "new and cool", which if often those rich elites, but there isn't enough repeat business from the hoy-paloy, so once the wealthy turn their attention to asparagus water, these businesses fold.
So no, Millenials aren't keeping these businesses afloat, the kids driving in Lexus' at 18 are. It's less an age thing and more a class thing.
I'll second everything Alex said
To be clear, yoga classes themselves are moderately expensive-- typically free with a gym membership, or $10-15/class (+/-) with deals available if you buy multiple classes in advance.
But more expensive specialty events like this usually cost more. And there is certainly a scene in almost any fitness discipline-- master classes, expensive clothes, retreats-- that appeals to people with disposable income. If money is no object, I know people can while away a day doing yoga at the pricier, hard-core studios around Boston, and easily spend $100 doing it. I've done yoga off and on most of my life, and can confirm that there is a class division, with some people quite a lot on it. But it's not necessary; I now only take classes through my gym, and my gym membership is covered by my insurance.
Even though NPR just covered this, morning yoga raves have been around for a while, even in Boston. I've never been to one. I know someone who taught at one. She said it was mostly young single professionals and was definitely a pick-up scene-- not affluent, actually, because it wasn't that expensive and no one was drinking, so it was cheaper than a bar. But recent college and graduate school grads, most of whom were going to work afterwords. She said it was excruciatingly awkward.
Yes
1) As college costs/debts rise, a lot of schools have started intentionally recruiting wealthier students whose parents can pay full freight. These students get allowances from Mom and Dad, too.
2) Compared to my friends in other parts of the country, graduate-educated Bostonians do the move in/engaged/married thing a lot younger than their counterparts in other US cities. A couple making $35,000 each and sharing an Allston 1-bed for $1600 have some discretionary spending money, even if they have loans. (And to note, loans payments are on "pause" for graduate students, many of whom are collecting a similar-priced stipend from their universities.)
Endless money?
You need to get a clue. Seriously. And get off MY lawn.
You can have money for beer and yoga and, yet, saving that money will NEVER EVER be enough for a down payment for anything. Do the fucking math.
So, their lives made difficult and miserable by the mismanagement of previous generations, they are supposed to wear hair shirts, too - not because it could ever change the larger economic picture, but because that makes your lame pseudolibertarian ass feel smug and special? Because it supports your pathetic mythology that the Amercian Dream is still in reach and that the tax cuts for rich people that are destroying the middle class are somehow working?
Relax into your glitter rave
Relax into your glitter rave position and repeat the Millennial Mantra: "it's never my responsibility, always someone else's, it's never my responsibility, always someone else's"
Same as it ever was.
--Socrates, attributed by Plato
When you guys are done bitching about the lazy millenials and the generation of entitlement, I'll drive you to the shuffleboard court. Better make it snappy, so we'll be back in time for Murder She Wrote.
Not criticizing
Curious
My job is helping people retire - on time and comfortably - meaning you don't have to downsize your lifestyle at 65 or 67 or whenever. At a minimum that means you need to save about 10% of your income and probably own your home. then you have to invest wisely, keep your financial fees low, diversify and do a number of other things right (a very rare few will get lucky and find the next Apple, etc. - but that's a small number willing to take that kind of risk - AND it can backfire very easily).
As Swirly says - do the math - I do. Every day - it's what I do for a living. Take someone making $75k - take out social security/medicare, 15-20% in income tax, $1500 a month rent, basic groceries of say $100-$150 a month, utilities, health care etc. - and there's not much left. Add in some savings for retirement or other things - car, house, wedding, vacation etc after you have all the latest electronic gizmos, yoga rage whatever and there's no room left for debt to get a mortgage or even just pay off student loans.
I'm not criticizing or saying everyone has to live like a monk - I'm concerned that even more people are living for today, never thinking about tomorrow and that when tomorrow comes, as it does for all of us, it won't be there for a generation or more.
(interesting aside - spoke with a relative who works for a financial institution in NJ. they called in a bunch of people recently and said - "It costs $200k to put an ass in a seat in the US. An equivalent ass in Mumbai costs $20k - here's a note on where to file for unemployment and there's the door". Not sure how we grow wages with corporations doing things like that - nor do I have any good ideas about how to stop it - we seem to be relatively immune for now around Boston - but when you have people happy to have jobs for 90% less than we make - not sure how we compete)
Sorry, Steve
Sorry, Steve, I didn't mean to sound like I was snarking at you--I was responding to a later poster who was being lazy and disingenuous.
Unemployment and underemployment are rampant among recent graduates, and I would not want to be 22 and looking for my first job today with a degree in something that wasn't STEM. White-collar jobs don't exist in the same quantities they did 50 or even 25 years ago, in part because of exactly what you said: it's much cheaper to outsource it to Mumbai, and free trade encourages companies to do exactly that. Those costs come due later on, of course (I'm a software engineer who does not much fear the outsourcing trend, because I've seen what happens when you try to maintain code written by $2/hour coders in India), but all the performance metrics are based on year-over-year numbers, so bean-counters are incentivized to torpedo their long-term prospects in favor of short-term results.
Boston is probably not a representative sample of the rest of the country, both because of entrenched wealth and because there's so much high-tech industry and so many high-powered universities here that the number of 22-year-olds living with their parents is lower than it would be most other places. That said, even if it's 10% of them in horrible living situations earning terrible money with no upward mobility, rather than the 25% everywhere else, you don't see the 10% of them in bars because (by definition) they can't afford to go out where you would otherwise see them. And 90% of the population looks a lot like 100% of the population, when it's standing-room-only at the Burren on a Friday night.
No offense taken Erik
Again - not trying to criticize - people can spend your money on whatever they want - but as someone who looks at budgets and savings and investing every day - I know that it's hard to afford simple luxuries at surprisingly high salaries when you take out taxes, food, shelter, clothing insurance - not to mention kids if that's part of the equation.
My concern is that these simple luxuries come at the expense of savings - which are going to be increasingly important for younger generations who don't have a pension to supplement social security (or have a pension that's going to crash). I have seen several young investors recently that have no idea how far behind the curve they are. Talked with a newly minted NYC teacher yesterday - and said based on an upstate teacher I know - it would take 1.5 - $2 million in savings to replace their pension (granted - no social security and no COL increase), so to think twice if s/he ever considered changing jobs.
Adjustments
I'd like to make some adjustments to your equation, and then you tell me how the prospects look. I'm a millennial (barely - right on the cusp), so I have some real numbers. If you're talking about people with masters degrees, then that sounds like a reasonable salary, but for a bachelor's degree, most entry-level jobs start around 40k a year (except in certain tech and financing jobs, who will pay a whole lot more in exchange for working crazy hours, so those are some of the young millenials you see throwing cash around). I had about 50k in loans from said bachelor's degree, so that's about $400-$500 a month in loan payments. $100 is way too low for groceries. To eat healthy - and I don't mean Whole Foods healthy, but even just good proteins and veggies from Market Basket healthy - you're going to spend more like $300-$400 a month on groceries. You added in student loans at the end there like it's something you pay extra once you make all your other ends meet, but that's not how it works. You have to factor them into your budget up front. If you don't have student loans, then you either got very lucky with amazing scholarships or you come from money and your parents paid for your education. Those millennials are also the ones you're talking about. Their parents will probably bail them out if they spend too much at the bar and can't make their rent. So, where do those adjustments leave you with money to save for a down payment on a house in the greater Boston area? Maybe you can buy one when you're 50?
In short, the young people you work with who blow all this extra money have probably been supported through education and unpaid internships by their family, and will probably have some family money coming to them some day, maybe even in the form of a home down payment, as some of my wealthier friends have had the luxury of receiving. Some of them are also people who got crazy good paying jobs with crazy hours right after college. These are probably the people who come to you for financial advice. The rest of us who are just trying to make ends meet every month aren't talking to financial advisors because we think of that as something that's only useful for people who actually have money (I know that's not true, but it's a real perception)
I get what you're saying about the current culture of people in their 20s blowing their money on fun. It happens. But for the most part, they're blowing their extra $100 a month at the bar, not thousands. Because even though we all know saving for retirement is important, when you're living on the brink you sometimes just need to have fun, and when you have so little, saving a tiny bit feels like a joke. things that don't seem like an immediate threat don't make us take action. Most of my friends think they'll never get to retire, anyway, so that makes saving feel even more futile. The lack of immidiate threat of our futures will never be more powerful than our FOMO of today.
Love that show and anything
Love that show and anything agatha Christie or poirrot and also keeping up appearances.
I will always
have enough money for beer.
A lot of them date rich
A lot of them date rich foreigners and live with their beaus in $4000/m places like Ink Blot.
Or they live on their parents' dole.
Or they just spend spend spend every paycheck on frivilous things like this and never save.
Or they sue their schools for millions because a professor said something "triggering" and had a panic attack.
Well, now
Ain't you a peach.
How do you know?
Starting from the poorly-defined term "millenials" -- whose textbook definition, insofar as there is one, seems to mean something very different than what you're clearly talking about -- I have to wonder, how do you know exactly what "a lot of them" are doing? What's your data set?
A frank admission that this is just your impression based on the "millenials" you know would be ok, and I would not think less of you. I would, however, ask you to think about just how well you really know these people, and how sure you are of what they're spending, why they're spending this way, and what they plan to do down the road. The person who posed the question is a planner, and someone like that wants to deal in facts, not stereotypes.
Not everyone there is a Millennial?
The article states that the age range was 18 to 60 in the class.
You don't need to be in the 1% to be able to afford a weekly yoga class or drinks at a bar. It's not a rich lifestyle.
Numbers
Couple things. There are a LOT of millennials. It's the largest American generation ever. Which means those bars etc. can fill up with many of the customers only going out every once in awhile.
Second, we're in Boston. There is a huge number of companies here that employ lots of young people at high wages, in tech, biotech, medicine, finance.... Then there are all the grad students on stipend - not rich, but making enough to go out once or twice a week. So while a lot of us (including me) struggle, in this region a lot of people don't.
Third, We're in Boston, meaning relatively good public transit and relatively good biking (compared to other US cities). So while we might be spending 50% of our income on rent, we're spending hardly anything on transportation.
Fourth, almost no one does all these things. Folks might do one or two, which is much easier to manage, and it's important to mental health to do fun, social things. It just seems like there's endless money because, as in point 1, there are a lot of us, and in point two, a lot of us in this area ARE well-off.
This
The industries in Boston provide a ton of well-paying jobs. I'm not talking about the mega- earners, I'm just talking about the professionals in one of those industries. A household income >$300k isn't unusual at all with two wage earners and that's why you see lots of expensive real estate - because people can afford it. Those same companies create a lot of entry-level jobs that pay well, especially after working there for a few years. When some kids just coming out of school can pull ~$100k to start, that pays for a lot of yoga.
Like he said - numbers.
Then : Now :
Then :
Now :
YOGA RAVE