No, this is not about baseball. I’ve been thinking about how I’ve been having to take more responsibility for myself every since the beginning of the school year. I’m paying for my own gas now, I’m paying for my own church trips, and I’m planning/applying to colleges and for scholarships with minimal help from my parents. It’s a far cry from when I was younger and had everything handed to me. Ah, the good ole days.

Which brings me to a point: I hate it when I see teenagers who do have everything handed to them, even after they have “grown up”. There are many students like that at my school. Just go into the student parking lot, and you can tell who had to buy their own cars and who received theirs as presents.  Sadly, there’s a shocking amount of bright, shiny new cars in the parking lot.

And there are some students who go off campus to eat out for lunch EVERY SINGLE DAY, going to places like Bojangles, Backyard Burger, and even more expensive places like this Chinese joint just down the street from the school. I mean, come ON, where do you get the money for that??

I suppose it IS possible that they just have really REALLY good jobs that pays a TON of money, but I find that route less likely.

I think it’s good when parents force kids to pay for their own things. It teaches them frugality and moderation. You take a kid who was paying for their own clothes by 14 and another who was handed everything until they got out of college and look at them all grown up, and more than likely the first kid will be more successful and thrifty than the spoilt one.

So basically, even though it is difficult to live from paycheck to paycheck, I think I’ll ultimately benefit from it in the end. Hopefully.