 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Support the Young Entrepreneur Movement. Follow Under30CEO
  |
10 Things Gen Y Won’t Pay for
under30ceo | Jul 25, 2009 | Comments View Comments
Checking
Since the beginning of time, we’ve gotten free checking as students: Chase, Bank of America, Wachovia, Capital One all offer it to us. If we are no longer eligible as a full time student we have two options: A. Lie and tell them we are or B. Get direct deposit. Most banks will extend free checking for as long as we do this. Gen Y hates fees and we are smart enough to comparison shop. If someone is going to rip us off, it’s easy to hop online and find out who does it for free. It’s not the Mom and Pop economy anymore–we know there are plenty of banks out there who will cater to our needs.
Long Distance
Long distance was something our grandparents worried about. It doesn’t matter how far away from the person you are when you call them–it’s all has to go through outerspace anyway. The expression “it’s my nickel” sounds prehistoric. In actuality as long as we don’t go over our bazillion minutes on our cell phone we aren’t concerned. We most likely have free calls to all our friends and family on the same cell phone network. Plus, if our parents can text message, we are much more likely to drop them a note once in a while.
Quick–how much does a stamp cost? 32, 42, whatever, it changes more often than we ever need to mail something. Now, we don’t even know how much stamps are because of the Forever Stamp. BTW, we hate email too. It’s much too professional and the only things in our inbox are obligations. We know very few of our friends email addresses because they change too often anyway. We’ll just look you up on Facebook.
Music
First of all, we haven’t bought a CD since Jock Jams. Secondly, even if we don’t feel like beating the system with Bit-Torrents or whatever the newest Napster-like-service is, we’ll get it off YouTube. Forget radio, when we have Pandora Radio–it plays what we like and there are no interruptions. FYI–Pandora installed a usage limit this week, so check out Slacker Radio.
Wireless
While wireless internet is a necessity, it doesn’t mean we have to pay for it. First thing we do when we move into a new apartment is look to see which of your neighbors wireless we can pick up. Stealing? We don’t consider it stealing from the library or Panera bread. Oh yeah, Dear Starbucks and Barnes and Noble, you really piss us off trying to make us pay $3.95, but what’s worse is the hassle of registering and entering our credit card number.
Travel Agents
Let’s be serious–we don’t need any help with travel advice or finding the best price. We ask our friends where to go and do a little online research. Kayak, Cheap Tickets, Expedia and Orbitz is all we need.
Books
Cookbooks, phonebooks, appointment books–why buy a book when you bought a computer? As far as real books go, reading has been forced down our throats since age 5 and it just doesn’t quite stimulate the mind like HDTV, Xbox and YouTube.
Porn
If you pay for porn you either A. Have a problem or B. Have a problem. We all knew that kid who sold porn in middle school, but he’s out of business now thanks to high speed internet. The real issue with ordering a pay-per-view skin flick is you can’t clear your history on your cable bill.
News
Watching or reading the news used to be a form of entertainment. Luckily, we have better options than that for fun. If we really want to know something, we’ll bypass the newspaper that just reprints what happened and go directly to MLB.com to find out who won the game. No middleman needed. Gen Y gets our news through our friends–if it was important enough, we’ll hear about it. Most of us got 3 or 4 text messages when Michael Jackson died.
Directory Assistance
There might be Gen Yers who don’t know this term. Calling 411 or information for 75 cents is ridiculous. Yes, there is 1800-Goog-411 or 1800-FREE411 but we have Google, BlackBerrys, and the Yellowpages iPhone app. The best use we’ve ever gotten out of a phonebook was to see which of our friends thought they were superhuman enough to rip it in half.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Related posts:
Filed Under: Under30CEO Lists • Work Life Balance
I have to disagree as a travel agent with you on that one. Yes, Gen Y is more than capable of doing their travel plans; however, I have the theory that they also know a good way to leverage their time when they see it. My last three clients have been Gen Y. Thanks for allowing me to comment! Sandy Wheeler, http://www.SandyWheelerTravel.com
Hey Sandy, thanks for the input. I think a lot of GenY use recommendations from friends and the free information available online. How do you plan on making your services useful enough so people continue to use travel agents?
I would have to disagree about books – I know there is a lot of hoopla about the new Kindle (and related eBooks from Waterstones, etc).
But sitting on the Tube carriages, all I see are people my age reading books (well some are reading Dan Brown which I don't count, but that's another argument).
The whole experience of sitting in front of a screen versus sitting on your favourite chair with a cup of tea near-by…well there's no competition. Books are here to stay.
I agree books are here to stay but that doesn't mean I pay for them! Or at least not much. I will never buy a book at full price and I get most of my books for free by leveraging my blog.
Great list lol very funny!
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Jon Anderson. Jon Anderson said: Ten things gen Y wont pay for, thanks @under30ceo http://ow.ly/tz8Y [...]
agreed paying for music is a thing of the past… however if ur an espn fan… they still got people paying for news on their site…
While I totally agree with you as so far so the content of this article, I have to inform you that while we might not like to pay for checking. Free checking offers are one of the biggest scams in history. An old white dude banking consultant actually came up with the idea of offering us free checking with built in overdraft protection as a way to basically compete with those “pay day” loan rip-off joints. So if you buy a pizza with your debit card (aka. “free” checking account) and the pizza costs 12 bucks and you only have 5 bucks in your account – the debit card will allow the transaction to occur and charge you something like $35 or 40 dollars per overdraft. It is roughly the equivalent of paying 3,000%APR interest on a short term loan provided by the bank for the privilege of buying a pizza.
“According to the F.D.I.C. study, a $27 overdraft fee that a customer repays in two weeks on a $20 debit purchase would incur an annual percentage rate of 3,520 percent. By contrast, penalty interest rates on credit cards generally run about 30 percent.” *quote from following NYtimes article
Don't take my word on it though:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/09/your-money/cr...
10 reasons to pay for porn – well here's 9 add 1 more yourself -
Cos you don't want to become a crumby tight assed freeloader
You'll get higher quality than on a freeloader site – they compress the films
You'll get faster downloads – freeloader sites eat bandwidth and have to throttle it or they go bust
You'll get it without viruses and Trojans
You can be sure the models are of legal age
You won't be breaking copyright law
You'll often get to chat with others into the same thing, plus bonus features like messages from the models
Cos if noone paid they wouldn't make it any more and we'd have nothing new to watch
Cos its a fun industry that deserves your support
So true a lot of this stuff. The pornography on the internet I think is a real problem, it should be treated like a dangerous narcotic, and not so f*#@ing easy to obtain. That sh#* is like crack! Freedom of speech, my a** that stuff is toxic! It demeans all people involved in both the viewing and making of it.(yes, i have had a problem…..I've never had crack, though.)
Whew…ok…had to vent…sorry about that…..
Other stuff..I personally do still like to get used cd's and used books…the used cd's can be gotten cheaper than downloads often times even with shipping thru amazon, though not as instant. also getting cd's free from the public library. But the music ends up ripped as mp3's on my ipod anyway, but i still like having that physical cd, but only if it is of some music or artist i really enjoy, plus my car has a cd player changer. (i stopped pirating music, too addictive, and it is still stealing) I am definitely more into mp3's, I've gotten rid of over half of my CD collection, just getting rid of albums i didn't listen to anymore.
i think I will like e-readers & ebooks when they are more common & affordable. abe.com is a favorite place to order used real books.
I hope a large facebook exodus begins soon, I'm not a big fan.
reason 10 :
Cuz you want to spend hard earned money remain emotionally detached from real people, so you can pleasure yourself indefinitely without the consequences of a meaningful interaction with another person and remain a porn addicted wanker who really needs a wake up call to reality and get help! Having a sexual relationship with a machine is a sad product of our society, but there is still time to quit looking at pornography. It's never too late to quit.
i agree with books are here to stay…they are cheap and their batteries never die and they never need upgraded (unless you get them really wet) and you can actaully focus on one at a time.
[...] browsing through various articles, I found myself giggling at one of their popular articles “10 Things Gen Y Won’t Pay For.” As a pessimist, I expected a dry list of what entrepreneurs should not try to sell to this [...]
Great top 10 list… Thanks
As a Realtor both in the Gen Y, and serving the Gen Y this list is completely true.
That was obvious, wasn't it?
I love EVERYTHING about this post. Seriously, couldn't agree more…
What about health insurance? What are Gen Yers thoughts about needing/buying health insurance?
What about health insurance? What are Gen Yers thoughts about needing/buying health insurance?
[...] week I read an article on the Under 30 CEO blog that discussed 10 Things Gen Y Won’t Pay For. There were a lot of funny and true insights about some of the day-to-day things we get for free [...]
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Matt Wilson. Matt Wilson said: RT @HurriGator: http://under30ceo.com/10-things-gen-y-wont-pay-for (Warning-the 1st pic is a lil' offensive, make sure kids aren't around) [...]
meh.
a book “just doesn’t quite stimulate the mind like HDTV, Xbox and YouTube”? wtf are you retarded?
Wow… I cant agree less most especially Music and Wireless