I'm not proud of it. But... a little back story ... I'm on a full scholarship, which means I'm not like my friends with 80K in student loan debt right now. I knew when this started a few months ago I was taking a job this summer making 20K in 3 months. Car is paid for, apartment is paid for through next year, and I have plenty of money in investments right now. No different than me buying a Mac Pro (which I have no use for). I just chose to not go out and lease a new car and/or buy electronics.
In my mind it was totally worth it. In 6 months, I'm in the real world and not going to be able to afford the time to spend with my friends like this (not to mention, I'm relocating). I guarantee you, when I look back on these months I will not regret it 10, 20, 30, 40+ years down the road. Plus all of the nice ladies I met was definitely worth it.
i worked in marin county, known to be above the middle class, and in sausalito, the richer of most of the cities there, and there were plenty of rich kids that worked at a small company there
my boss, who had a boring job there, basically had no college, mortgage, or medical bills and he was young, so everything he didn't spend on for absolute necessities went to his hobby...4 star restaurants in the city (SF)
he spent many thousands a couple of times a year when his credit card would max out and then pay it off...his dinners were always over 100 bucks with tip, tax, and wine (and this was in the 80s)
to each his own...he had a good time
i knew plenty of bay area people who played it smarter, supposedly, and worked for the dot.com revolution and relied on both their companies and stock options...in most cases, and all i know of personally from friends, they all crashed and burned
people were buying yahoo and several hundred a share and other companies like that, they worked for the man.com, webvan, juniper networks, and speculated on cisco, hp, sun, and ibm all surpassing microsoft in an office suite or operating system...or the possibility of taking on bill gates
what a stupid group of people those yuppies in the mid to late 90s were, hindsight