Jackson Free Press

Each month after I pay about $220 toward credit-card debt, $150 toward student-loan payments (which I will do until I'm about 45), $400 on my car note, and about $400 on the mortgage (my husband pays the rest), not much is left over. Sound familiar? You're probably part of generation debt, too. The phrase classifies all of us mid-20 through late-30-somethings because we are, apparently, starting our adult lives with more debt than any other previous generation. But how and why, you may be wondering, did we end up in such massive amounts of debt? It's not very pretty.

Top 10 Reasons We're in Debt

1) Many of us were raised by baby boomers who wanted to give us better lives than their parents did. In other words, we were spoiled.

2) We grew up in a culture of consumerism. Everyone seems to own a laptop, cell phone, car, etc., so we want one, too.

3)A typical student in 2008 who received an undergraduate degree from a four-year university left school with an average of $20,000 in student-loan debt.

4)We are financially illiterate. Nobody sat us down and showed us how to make a budget or how to sustain ourselves without borrowing money.

5) Two words: credit cards. They are heavily marketed, easily available and easily attainable. Our generation has a median credit-card debt of $8,200.

6) The typical earnings of full-time workers, ages 25 to 34, are lower today than they were a generation ago, except among women with college degrees (according to the 2006 report "The Economic State of Young America" by New York City-based public-policy organization Demos).

7) We can't find jobs. One in five adults between the ages of 18 and 29 are unemployed, compared to a 7 percent unemployment rate for those over 30.

8) Many of us resort to bankruptcy to solve our debt issues. People between 25 and 34 years of age file 22 percent of all U.S. bankruptcies, even though student-loan debt is not forgiven through bankruptcy.

9) Housing and transportation costs have increased. In 2002, 25- to 34-year-olds spent 10 percent more on annual rental costs than boomers did of the same age in 1992. Also, we spent about $2,000 more on transportation in 2002 than in 1992 (Source: Generation Broke).

10) We don't have insurance. Young adults between the ages of 19 and 35 are the largest group of uninsured people. For many of us, it's not that we don't want health insurance; our employers don't offer it (if we have jobs). Therefore, we have trouble paying medical bills if we get sick or hurt.