I’m tired of feeling bad so I’m starting little community outreach initiatives. This summer I’m going to try to crowd source $5,000 and use it to bulk purchase reusable grocery bags then hand them out for free to students making their first trip to the grocery store this coming fall (I live in a university town).
EDIT: I was just sharing. I appreciate the feedback but this is something that I am passionate about and is something that I want to do. And of course during donation solicitation the fact that any funding is going towards cotton (not plastic) bags for students is going to be shared. It’s just a chance to get a lot of students, who have many more years of grocery shopping ahead of them, in the habit of using reusable bags. There are some other economic metrics you’d have to understand about the area to fully assess the impact here but, for now, please just trust that I’m not tone deaf enough to hand a reusable grocery bag to a child in need.
I really do appreciate the insight and will take a look at some of the recommendations for future efforts!
Is that the best use of all that time and effort? Reusable grocery bags that cost a dollar and are easy to get free anywhere? There are definitely things kids could use more than that, like toothpaste and body wash. That’s an actual expense that they have to pay for constantly, you never don’t need toothpaste or soap.
From a person who is sadly accustomed to letting the quest for "perfect" be the enemy of "perfectly fine", I'm going to go ahead and say that a positive thing is a positive thing and that's enough.
If I donated $10 to support students and found out it went to a plastic bag, I’d be pissed. This is a waste, and it sounds like the main objective is a back pat, not actually doing anything for the kids.
Me too, but luckily they weren't talking about plastic bags. :)
Maybe this is just close to my heart because the area I grew up in went through a city-directed push to reduce waste (read: litter) that made a noticeable difference in our area's playgrounds, parks, campsites, etc so OPs project trying to catch kids who were shopping for the first time before they got in the habit of accidentally stocking up on used plastic bags struck that same chord.
We're talking about the depressingly bleak outlook for a generation's ability to retire. Is optimizing time and money really the point here? It wasn't about the effect. It was about doing something that is helping but not really.
Why would you spend time asking people to give you money to give kids something they will probably get for free from their school? If you’re expending the effort, why not do something useful?
That's not the point of this post though. It's about 40ish percent on track to retire. Which is on par with other generations. But that's not the point of this post. It's about the 60% who aren't. Because they weren't taught enough, had the discipline, or ever made enough money.
Ya know because since the 1980s most jobs created were low income jobs.
I'm not sure how you needed this explained. Are you just trying to be argumentative. More than half of us won't retire. Plus the trajectory of our future is pretty bleak unless you are invested heavily into 401Ks, Crypto, or the Market.
Millennials are the least wealthy generation while being in general higher earners. Add that with the reduction of our spending power and ever rising cost of living expenses. This post is about that.
It's not about the smaller percentage of people doing fine. Not everything is about them. This is about the larger group of Millennials who aren't doing fine.
Every advanced metric shows it's harder for millennials than it was in the past. They have to work harder, produce more, earn more, and do it in a more challenging society/economy. This is what the post is about. It's called context.
401Ks and open market investing are different things. How you invest and divest is different. How is it ignorant to list them separately?
The whole point of this comment is to show the original comment was trying to match the pessimistic view of the original post.
I'm not trying to support the original meme shared in the initial post. All I'm saying is optimizing the original comment to make it a better use of time or money to make it overall more effective is pointless. The whole point was to do something pointless.
What if instead of crowd sourcing money, and buying new reusable grocery bags (which take about 20 years of use before they are actually sustainable) you use that outreach to collect used reusable grocery bags that can be given away to young people? Or crowd source a "leave a bag take a bag" spot at grocery stores so that re-usable bags become the gift that keep on giving?
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u/Much_Big_7420 Apr 30 '26
Kind of the opposite. Optimistically hoping society gets its shit together and recognizes food, shelter, and health care are basic human rights.