Go to school. Get a good job. Buy a house. Start a family. Repeat.
This five-point formula has reliably guided generations of young and clueless adults to economic prosperity. It’s what helped the Greatest Generation scale even greater heights on the home front and made the Baby Boomers boom. However, for Generation X and succeeding generations of young Americans, the simple formula has gotten increasingly complicated, especially during the past decade, when soaring education costs coupled with slow income growth meant that young adults were entering the workforce later. They were also making less and owing more. In addition, in Hawaii, a red-hot real estate market, which has pushed the median sales price of a single-family home to $615,000 and condominium to $295,000, is making the American Dream just that, a dream.
Crawford, who attended a junior college in Alabama for two years, secured a full scholarship from HPU to help coach the school’s cheerleading squad. He shared a one-bedroom Waikiki apartment with three roommates, paying $200 a month. To help with living expenses, he got a job coaching gymnastics to children in the afternoon. He also worked the graveyard shift at Abercrombie & Fitch restocking shelves. The problem was that, between school and his three jobs, Crawford only had enough time for a couple hours of sleep a night. He worked the hellish schedule for three weeks before his body finally gave out, and he couldn’t get out of bed one morning.