Anya Kamenetz	The Week of February 26th, 2006

Generation Debt-er

1. What's in your wallet right now?

$50 cash, 1 credit card, 1 debit card, 1 MetroCard, 1 health insurance card that expires in a week, 2 receipts I'm planning to deduct from my taxes.

2. What do you wish your parents taught you about money?

The basics of investing.

3. What is your worst habit around finances?

Same as my worst habit in everything—sloppiness! Not keeping records, not keeping better track of deductions & invoices & benefits.

4. What makes you happy?

Consistently? Spending time with the people I love, exercise, cooking & eating, sunshine.

5. Personal philosophy around money?

I read somewhere recently that "money has no home." It wants to move out of your pocket as fast as it went in. Money is energy. It flows to people who use it wisely (and then again, the people who deal with it directly, seem to capture the most!). You should always be able and willing and know how to survive on the minimum—this is freedom.

6. Where does money come from?

I guess I would like to believe it comes from work. I know that unlike in physics, money-energy is not a closed system, but is constantly growing.

7. What would you do with a million dollars?

Probably buy a house or an apartment in New York City.

8. What is your most prized possession?

Hmm...I guess I have to say my engagement ring. But it could be replaced easily. How about my cat?

9. Who is your role model?

I can't pick just one. People, especially authors, who craft interesting and quirky and multi-level careers and lives while also making a contribution to society. Jared Diamond, Susan Orlean, Jon Krakauer, my mother and father.

10. What is your greatest achievement?

It's a tie between my relationship with my fiance and the book. Actually, it's probably located in the balance between the two.

11. How did you come up with "Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young?"

Laura Conaway, my editor at the Voice (and another role model) coined the term and hatched the idea of a feature series. She assigned the second story in the series to me and the rest is history.

12. What contributions to society do you want to make?

I want to play a small, but measurable role in the pendulum swinging of our society back to a sanely progressive stance (key examples: national health care, proactive policy on global warming, a peacemaking and bridgebuilding diplomacy, healthy respect for the Constitution).

13. If you could buy one thing right now what would it be?

I need a new front tire for my bicycle, but I'm too lazy to go over to the store and get it. So I would like to have it delivered.

14. Favorite activity that doesn't cost a dime?

People-watching in the East Village.

15. How do you indulge yourself?

Right now? Usually by ego-surfing online, checking my Amazon rankings, etc. This is really a filthy dirty guilty pleasure. A cleaner one is to go out for lunch with a friend on a workday, or to lie on my bed in the middle of the afternoon and read magazines, as only a freelancer can.

Anya Kamenetz grew up in Baton Rouge and New Orleans, Louisiana. Since graduating from Yale University in 2002, Anya has lived in Manhattan and freelanced as a fact-checker, copy editor, research assistant, and writer. Reporting assignments have taken her to the Palestinian territories, post-Katrina Louisiana, and the streets of New York City, during protests of the 2004 Republican National Convention, where she barely evaded capture by plastic netting.

Anya has written for The New York Times, the Washington Post, New York Magazine, Salon, Slate, The Nation, and The Village Voice, which nominated her for a Pulitzer Prize in feature writing for her work on the series “Generation Debt: The New Economics of Being Young,” now in print as her first book.

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