This post may annoy you. Especially if you are between the ages of 22 and 30 and like to whine about how difficult your life is.

Kara McGuire of the Minneapolis Star-Tribune brought up the subject of Gen Y finances yesterday in this blog post that offers more stats about how bad the young have it today financially versus earlier generations. And in the last couple years there have been not one but two oft-reviewed books about the money problems of the young - Generation Debt and Strapped. It sounds really, really tough out there if you're young.

If you're part of Gen Y and find yourself whining about how hard you have it in comparison to those that came before, you're preaching only to yourself. Everyone's had it hard, and your lot isn't any more difficult.

It used to be that the older generation told kids how hard they had it in comparison: "When I was your age, I had to walk 5 miles barefoot to school and I liked it."

But both Gen X (of which I am a part) and Gen Y have tried to turn this around and make it seem like they are the ones that have it hard. With Gen X it was the slacker stereotype, with all of us disaffected, taking on nowhere jobs and listening to grunge music with little hope or interest in improving our lots. Our parents had screwed it up for us, and now we were lost.

We were full of it, and anyone from Gen Y who complains is full of it, too.

Every generation starts out in their early 20s broke and working in deadly jobs. Luckily there is sex and alcohol to balance out these financially-unrewarding years. Then you get older. You work your way up, you make a little more money, you have sex less and drink less (or more in some cases). There's always a trade-off.

Gen Y, it will be no different for you. Sure it sucks to have a bunch of college debt and maybe your apartment costs more than mine did. Whatever. Deal with it.

I mean, come on. It wasn't that long ago that people in their early 20s were being drafted to go to wars and get shot at. Even if that paid well, it would be the absolute definition of a crappy job. And, ladies, you weren't even expected to have enough of a brain to do anything outside of getting hitched and keeping a house for a man, and preparing the soil for babies. Does this sound like the dream life?

When I got out of college in the early '90s there was a bad recession going on. I couldn't get a full-time job for two years and had to live in my parents house for the majority of that time. You'll find this hard to believe, but I had to create my resumé and cover letters on a typewriter! And if I wanted multiple copies, I had to go to Kinko's to do it! It sucked, man! You may remember the 90s as the Bill Clinton party years, but Clinton got elected because things were going B-A-D, bad. He was elected the year I got out of school.

And we didn't have the Internet yet! I could not go to Wikipedia and get any piece of information I wanted, or jump on the computer to do extensive research on any company that might be hard-up enough to interview me. I had to go to the freaking library. And don't get me started on the "computer lab" I used in college.

I also was underprivileged enough to not carry a cell phone with me everywhere I went. This was almost as bad as having to use outhouses.

I'm not saying I had it worse than you or my parents had it worse than you or their parents had it worse than you. I'm just saying every generation has its own challenges and its own opportunities. Almost every young person has financial struggles that resolve themselves in time, especially if that person is well-educated. You are not worse-off than your parents, just different.

(And don't look at your well-fed, satisfied parents when you make this comparison; think of them when they were your age. Ask them about it sometime, I'm sure they'd be happy to go on endlessly about their struggles when they were first married.)

I love you, Gen Y, and I tell you this only as some tough love.

(DISCLAIMER: I know that Gen Y gets stereotyped just as every other generation does. I was not a Gen X slacker, my parents were not decadent baby boomers who thought they deserved everything, etc. If you are in Gen Y and don't believe that the world has somehow left you with a raw deal that previous generations could never understand, please know that I am not talking to you.)

Chrysler has a new promotion announced this morning-buy a Chrysler vehicle and get a gas card that you can use for three years and be guaranteed that every gallon will cost $2.99, regardless of how much gas is currently costing.

The Chrysler gas card is a Visa or MasterCard that you can use anywhere those credit cards are accepted, so you don't have to go to special gas stations to get the deal. The way it works is that as long as you use that Chrysler card, the cost to you will be $2.99 per gallon, even if the station's price is $4.62 or whatever.

What if the price of gas goes below $2.99? Well, that Chrysler card won't be such a deal anymore. But that's sort of the risk you take-and it doesn't seem like much of a risk as gas prices aren't showing signs of dropping in any significant way.

On Fox Business News this morning, Chrysler's Jim Press went on and on about how Chrysler wants to help Americans and get the economy going again, etc., but of course Chrysler really wants to get Chrysler going again.

If you're in the market for a new car, does this promotion make you more likely to consider Chrysler?

On Friday, the Federal Reserve laid out a bunch of new regulations it is proposing to clamp down on the credit card industry. Here is one of the official press releases from the Federal Reserve on the changes. I've summarized them in a way that I think is a bit more understandable here:

The regulations, which could go into effect by the end of 2008, would:

* Prohibit credit card companies from raising rates on existing credit card balances, unless a payment is at least 30 days overdue
* Force card companies to give at least a 21-day "grace period" before payments are due
* Have customer payments allocated to higher-interest balances first
* Stop subprime credit cards from offering extremely small credit lines that are then mostly used up by the initial fees the card requires
* Make credit card companies disclose what credit factors influence their decisions when offers are made that include differing tiers for interest rates and credit lines
* Make customer payments received by 5PM on the due date considered to be "on time", and/or, if card companies set due dates when mail is not delivered or business is not conducted, payments would be considered on time if received the next standard business day.

Most of this is pretty common sense stuff, but you won't be surprised to hear that the credit card industry opposes the Fed and related government agencies sticking their noses in its business. And while the card companies may be successful in getting things watered down a bit, no doubt some of this will go through as proposed.

So, what does it mean to you?

First, it means fewer surprises from your credit card company. You'd have enough time to get your bill paid without feeling like the due date was the day after the bill arrived. And you wouldn't have to worry about your interest rate suddenly being mysteriously raised with little warning and no explanation (this is definitely the biggest one of all the rules proposed).

On the other hand, if you are a good customer who generally has not any problems with the card companies, don't be surprised if these rules actually hurt you a bit. The card companies currently steal from the bad and give to the good (so to speak), in that those who mess up get dinged and those who don't get rewards. Or at least they get free credit with no fees attached. If the rules go through as proposed, credit card companies will have fewer opportunities to take cash from the cardholders with bad payment habits, which means their profits will go down. When their profits go down, they will offer good customers less in terms of rewards, and, depending on how extreme the situation gets, they could go back to using annual fees more often. (It's very rare to pay an annual fee on a credit card these days.)

The rules are definitely a win for the average consumer, but every change has its good and bad consequences, and there will be a bit of both with this latest round of regulations.

Forget 50 Cent. Cleveland's got 23 Cent.

Illustrating the downside of having independent franchisees, Papa John's Pizza is doing a make-good in the Cleveland area after a Washington D.C. area franchisee decided to pay to plunk the Papa John's logo on T-shirts given out at the final game of the Cleveland Cavaliers-Washington Wizards game. The shirts said "Crybaby" with the number 23 below, in reference to Wizards player Brendan Haywood calling Lebron James (#23 in your program) a crybaby during the series when James complained that the Wizards were roughing him up.

Of course Papa John's has plenty of stores in the Cleveland area, too, and some fans were a little miffed that Papa John's was taking sides against their man.

To try to clear up the bungle, Papa John's is offering 23-cent large pizzas at its Cleveland-area stores this Thursday.

So I'm thinking Lebron has another nickname to add to his stable of names - 23 Cent.

Isn't it interesting how the same basic thing can have so many price points?

This weekend my wife & I went to a local bike shop and got her a Specialized brand bike that cost roughly $350. Bikes aren't so cheap anymore, so that seemed like an OK price for what seems to be a good bike.

My wife wanted to grab a helmet, too, so she took one she liked and headed toward the register. Thankfully she looked down at the price before it was pointed out to her by the ringing register-$175! My wife just figured, "Eh, how much could a helmet cost?" She put the helmet back and went to Target and got one for $15 or $20.

This is no rip on over-priced bike helmets. It was just one of those moments where you realize that things can have so many different prices and you need to think about where you want to put your money. A serious biker probably grabs that $175 helmet and checks out the light weight, the ventilation, the radio-controlled straps (just kidding on that one) and thinks, "This is what I need."

My wife, on the other hand, just wants some padding between her and the ground, hoping her helmet will never actually have the chance to perform its intended function.

The economy is slumping. Many people think we're already in a recession. So I would suggest to you that replacing today's lunch or dinner with a free ice cream cone from Ben & Jerry's would be a good way to protect your hard-earned dollars in these difficult times.

They've also introduced a few new flavors to mark the day:

* Coconut Seven Layer Bar - What can we say, except we know you'll go coconuts for our latest and greatest flavor, based on the popular dessert: coconut ice cream with coconut & fudge flakes, walnuts & swirls of graham cracker & butterscotch. This is a treat solely for our Scoop Shop fans, as it is the only place in the world that you can get this flavor!

* Imagine Whirled Peace - Continuing in a long lineage of rock and roll flavors, we're honored to introduce Imagine Whirled Peace. John Lennon imagined a world without war, and asked us all to "Give Peace a Chance." We're proud to partner with Peace One Day to act globally and take one step closer to making our planet one of peace and love. Imagine Whirled Peace is a tongue-pleasing concoction of caramel and sweet cream ice creams mixed with fudge peace signs and toffee cookies.

* ONE Cheesecake Brownie - This top-testing new flavor is a decadent cheesecake ice cream with cheesecake brownie chunks. The amazing thing is the taste is only the half of it! We're partnering with ONE.org to "make poverty history." To find out all the campaign info, visit ONE.org/benjerry.

* Cake Batter - This flavor combination takes the cake! Yellow cake batter ice cream with a chocolate frosting swirl. The perfect flavor to help blow out Ben & Jerry's 30 candles!

I'm feeling a little like a shill for Ben & Jerry's right now, but I like ice cream. Go here to find your nearest Scoop Shop where you can get your free cone.