Don't get me wrong, I am one of those ill-fated twenty-somethings. The sizeable student loan, the rented room in a shared house (post-the extended 'living at home to save money' period when I was actually sobbing over failed job applications); I even worked at a tractor company before getting a 'proper' career thing. And I am definitely one of those 'mortgage undesirables'.
At this point though, you're probably thinking: "Oh, well at least she's got a job," - yeah, in journalism which has a future that is precarious at best, catastrophically doomed at worst*.
Now I've convinced you of my desperate state of affairs, I really ought to launch into a tirade against industries that survive on free labour (erm, like, journalism), bemoan the car and sofa owning adult population's attitude to graduates (as if graduates are somehow not adults?) and finally, unleash my harrowing career/money/home-owning fears and angst on the government - which, after all, is ultimately responsible for this utter shambles.
It's that or jump aboard a whirligig of "culture of entitlement" debates... all of which have a sliver of rightness in them somewhere.
What does grate on me specifically is printed case studies on 29-year-old graphic designers earning £30k whose parents still pay their phone bills (see The Time's twenty-something special in last week's Saturday supplement). If you can't afford your phone bill, you shouldn't have a phone. Fact. Use Skype you fools and stop getting the rest of us self-funded strugglers a lazy name.
On the whole though, I just want to scream: I LOVE BEING IN MY FLIGHTY TWENTIES.
We have our whole lives to own houses, send our future children to "good schools" and go on cruises.
It all gets rather dull in the end. We twenty-somethings get sick of being lectured to, you grown ups get sick of listening to us moan (and picking up the bill). Yes, to make it you do need a heady combination of luck, talent and (a helluva lotta) hard work but it can be done.
This might sound naïve, short-sighted and not particularly pension or pocket friendly, but look at the Olympics. A disaster waiting to happen and yet, it turned out to be two weeks of giddy, tearful, goose-bump filled joy. Who gives a toss how much it cost taxpayers when we're nabbing gold medals all over the place and talking to each other on the tube?
So why can't we apply that same logic-less rule to living our twenty-something lives? Hope for the best and enjoy our freedom while we can...
*Although, the ABCs of GQ and Easy Living Magazine are looking surprisingly rosy...