We try to do the right thing. We go to college, so we can get a "good job" when we graduate. With rising tuition hikes, many students have no choice but to sign their lives away at the tender age of 18, and let's be honest: at 18 can any of us really be expected to understand what signing that piece of paper means? Does the fine print explain that we're sentencing ourselves to 10 plus years of extra jobs, ramen noodles, and living in squalor?

Take me (please, take me). I'm 24 years old, and have over $35,000 in debt. That's $30,000 in college loans (and most of my tuition was covered by grants - this was what was leftover), and $5,000 in credit card debt (stupid VW lemon piece of shite). My paycheck from my "real job" just about covers all of my minimum payments, and I'm left with zero. Enter job number two at the local ski resort every Sunday. Job number two lets me snowboard for free, but it doesn't quite buy the groceries. Enter job number three, organizing a youth group 8 hours a week. But wait, I'm young, I'm energetic, and I've got a portfolio to build. Enter jobs four, five, six, and seven. Jobs four and five don't pay (but I love to write, and I love watching the portfolio grow), six pays $10 a review, and the other intermittent gig will pay $250, when I get it (when being the operative word). Still, given my mountain of debt, I keep on the most minimal weekly budget I can ($100), and everything else goes to my debtors. I feel like I'm busting my ass, and there's no end in sight. Oh well.

The problem is that most of us are children of the '80s — remember, those lovely Reagan years? — and that nice little recession in the early '90s wasn't enough of a wake-up call. College loans, for many, are unavoidable. Mass amounts of credit card debt are avoidable, to a point. Why do some of us insist luxurious splurging when most of us already owe our first born? Why are so many of us consistently living beyond our means?

You want a solution? I don't have one. Forgo the college of your choice to go to a state school? Not appealing (not that I'm dissing state schools one bit, but if it's not what you want, it's not what you want). Do what several of my small, liberal, private school classmates did and moonlight as a stripper and then appear on Oprah? Sorry, even less appealing. My only cynical snippet of advice is to get over it. Life is expensive. Do what you have to do to do what you want to do, and realize that everything has a price tag. Just make sure that what you do is worth not only the price, but is also worth the 21% APR tacked on.

Suck it up, Gen Xers. The world owes us nothing.