I was groomed for the American Dream for as far back as my memory takes me. Standardized testing at an early age. Promoting the idea of a college education, a stable career, getting married, buying a house, and having some children. I didn’t grow up wealthy, but I certainly grew up in a home that strived for and achieved the American Dream. My parents got married, worked hard, had two kids and bought a house in a suburb with a highly rated public school system. They nailed it. I have friends who have worked hard and achieved all of these things as well. I’m happy for them, truly. They are wonderful people, and they are living great lives.  But when I take a deeper look at this Dream, I personally see a nightmare. 

It’s a nightmare filled with power and control. It’s a tantalizing illusion that is likely to leave you stressed and anxious at night. You have the American Dream, but you aren’t falling asleep with visions of sugar plums in your head. You’re staring at the ceiling, running through the bills and the checklists that need to be tackled. The bills and checklists that are never going to end until you’re six feet under.

For me, my debt nightmare began in high school: Economics class. Whelp- I was kind of a nerd in high school, so I typically paid attention to what my teachers were saying. And I really only remember learning a bunch of irrelevant or obvious information. I learned how to write a check, balance a checkbook, and a little bit about stocks. Sure, yeah, that’s some good information, but I don’t feel like it taught me enough information to help prepare me to live on my own after graduation. And it sure didn’t teach me enough about how to prepare to retire. I learned more about retirement savings from my JROTC Colonel who thought it was important information for us to know (but my Econ class didn’t seem to think so). Nobody taught me about student loans and how to budget for real life.

And as a high school junior, I was thinking about college. I got a killer ACT score so I figured I obviously should just go to an expensive private university. I really wasn’t certain what career I wanted, but my ACT score got me in. I got approved for a loan at 6% interest rate. Everybody kept telling me how much money I could make with a college degree, so no big deal, I’ll just pay it off within a couple years of graduating. I slightly miscalculated. And seven years later, I’m still staring at my debt and wondering how much overtime I should work to pay it off. So basically, before I even graduated high school, I had chained myself to the work place. I had no concept about how much life costs. At 17, I never needed to pay rent, buy groceries, or pay for medical expenses. Not to mention, pay for my addiction to traveling. All I considered was what my estimated income would be and subtracted my student loan debt. Easy peasy, I figured I could have that paid off in two or three years.

Okay, so I probably could have paid off my debt in that time frame. But nobody ever taught me about budgeting or interest rates. I figured as long as I was making my minimum loan payment every month, I was rocking adulthood. But I wasn’t. My student loan debt didn’t seem to go down very quickly, and I realized how much the interest rate was burdening me. And I’m not the only person struggling with student loan debt.

Student loan debt tripled over the past ten years, and between 2008-2014 alone, it increased 84%. Student loan rates are much higher than other loans. Why are we punishing our nations youth with these interest rates? The average student graduates with $30,000 in debt. The lenders are profiting $20,360,000,000 every year.

But hey, if you are making your payments on time- this can help you with a good credit score! So now, you can finance your car, your wedding, and your house. And to make it even better, you can start having kids now. The average cost of a child from 0-18 years of age is $245,340 for a middle-income family. That’s about $12,800-14,970 per child per year. And no, this doesn’t include saving for your kids college tuition. But you probably shouldn’t be saving for that because you still have to pay off your own student loan.

So as a recap, you have a student loan, a mortgage, and you’re paying to raise your kids. You’re probably not taking as many vacations as you probably need to cope with the stress of adulthood. Why are we not taking the much needed time to recuperate? One of the reasons is US citizens aren’t given that much paid time off. These are the latest stats I pulled up from the Bureau of Labor. Average full time employees get 8 holidays a year and 8 paid vacation days a year. If you work for the same company for five years you might be able to get that up to 14 vacation days per year. So your first year working, you might get 16 days paid leave total, and five years later, you might get 22. But according to marketwatch.com, the typical US worker only lasts 4.6 years on the job so you’re probably not going to ever snag those extra days.

In contrast, some other countries have different approaches. New Zealand ensures 30 days. In Europe, Spanish and German citizens get 34 days off per year. Austrian citizens get 35 days, and they even get extra days off if they work a “strenuous night job”.  Clutch.

According to Oxford Economics, the USA is one of few industrialized countries that does not legally guarantee paid time off. But we can’t blame this all on the government, because culturally, we aren’t pushing for it. We don’t even use what we are given!! Four out of ten employees don’t use all of their PTO. People on average use only 84% of their allotted time off. About a quarter of employees said that it was their heavy workload that prevented them from using their time off. Not only are we not taking time off, but we’re working extra hours. Only half of people that work “full time” actually work 40 hours or less. 18% of full time employees put in over 60 hours. 21% of full time employees work 50-59 hours a week. So as a recap, we aren’t given that much vacation time, we don’t use the little amount of time we’re given, and we work extra hours.

Okay, so if you just really love working, I still have a reason why you should back off a little. The less time you spend at work, the more you sleep at night.  And the more vacations you take, the more productive you will be. It’s true. Research shows it; I read it in the New York Times so it must be true. Ernst & Young did a study of its own employees. The results showed that for every ten hours of vacation an employee took, their year-end performance rating increased by 8%. And Cheri D. Mah is a Stanford researcher who got basketball players to sleep ten hours nightly. Their shooting average increased by 9%. So even though you think you’re the best employee because you were the last person in the office, the guy that always goes home earlier than you, actually accomplished a hell of a lot more.

Why do I think this is important? In the US, we have 580 million unused vacation days. According to USA today, if we turned those vacation days into travel days, $67 billion dollars would be used for travel spending which would boost the economy and create more jobs.

Why else is this important? Why aren’t there more primary care physicians? PCPs typically have the same amount of student loans as a plastic surgeon, but that plastic surgeon is making way more money. Why would we expect a med student to make the choice to become a PCP when they are staring at their mountain of student debt? High student loan rates are really one of the reasons it takes you so long to get in to see your PCP and why the ER waits are so damn long.

I was originally inspired to write this due to my own personal experience. I used to not mind working six 12-hour night shifts in a week. I was being a good employee, I felt like it made me a better person. I felt that part of my worth was measured by being a productive member of society. I got burnt out. But then, I started working less, taking lunch breaks, and seeking less stressful jobs. I can honestly say, that I take way better care of my patients when they come through the door now. I’m not hangry, and I’m not a sleep deprived zombie. I feel good, and it genuinely helps me to get my patients feeling good too!

But the biggest inspiration to write this has been watching a person close to me dedicate himself to his career. I see how hard he works regularly, but it pains me the most when we take vacations together. When we have breakfast in the morning, I’m reading a book or looking out over the ocean sipping my coffee. I see him with his work laptop, replying to emails while absentmindedly trying to down his coffee and a couple bites of food. He’s hardly aware of the paradise he’s sitting in. At the end of my vacation day, I change into my jammies and find a peaceful place to sit and journal about my travels. He climbs into bed with his work laptop trying to address yet another set of work emails that accrued during the day. Recently, he got hired by a new company. I tried to encourage him to take a little bit of time off before he started the new job, but he was “excited to start working again”. I get it. I do, but I know he doesn’t take all his vacation days. And when he does, he works throughout his vacations. I know he keeps long work hours. I know he skimps on his breaks. I don’t blame him, and I don’t want him to stop rocking at his job.  I know he works hard because he is passionate about his work. He’s one of many good US citizens working (literally) for the American Dream.  But what is the impact in the end?

I don’t want us to destroy the American Dream, but I want us to reform it into a Dream worth having. If you still want the house, white picket fence, marriage, and kids. That’s awesome! Go for it. But I want you to realize that we live in a capitalist country, and they want you to have debt. Maybe there’s a reason public school Econ class doesn’t adequately prepare us for the financial hurdles awaiting us. They want us to have high interest rates and student loans. They want us to feel that work is compulsory and that to be a good citizen we need to work hard, minimize our breaks and vacation. But really, being a good worker means taking care of yourself first. So let’s be trend setters. I want you to take your paid days off. I want you to take a vacation and ignore your work email. I want you to realize that although you’re great at your job, you can still take a break from it. You can take time to take care of yourself. Work-life balance can be a reality in your life. The American Dream can be even better if we take it back and make it our own.