Why Yes, Many Debt-Ridden Millennials Would Choose Money Over Love

When faced with the prospect of making more money or staying in a relationship that is fine to not fine to whatever, most millennials would ditch the ‘ship in a heartbeat, take the money, and run.

According to a study run by Comet, a financial services company, millennials are ready to prioritize their careers—and by extension, themselves—over a relationship. Forty-one percent of the 364 millennials surveyed said that they’d end a relationship for a “significant or life-changing promotion.” A nice chunk of those millennials would also end their relationships for money.

Comet also found that almost a third said they would end a relationship for a raise. These workers on average said that a $36,000 raise would convince them to put off having a relationship.

Millennials are so focused on career advancement, that respondents admitted that they’d be willing to stay single for 11 years, delay marriage for seven years and put off having kids for eight — if it meant getting ahead at work, according to the Comet survey.

It’s callous, maybe—dumping your partner for $36,000 extra a year in a fictitious scenario—but also really smart? Pundits looking to excoriate millennials for whatever ills they continue to wreck upon society will likely tear an entire generation a new asshole for the results of this study, which, for the record, does not speak for an entire generation—just 364 individuals who decided to take this survey. Before finding the nearest young person and screeching at them about their intimacy issues, perhaps consider why a millennial would be pumped as hell to snatch $36,000 extra a year and leave their partner in the dust.

The average college student graduating in 2016 left the hallowed halls of higher education carrying around $37,712 in debt. There are 44 million Americans with student loan debt totaling to roughly $1.31 trillion dollars. People default on their loans at a rate of about 11.2 percent; defaulting on your loans is shitty and scary and effectively ruins your credit, making it so that you cannot get a credit card or rent an apartment or do anything else that requires decent credit. Rebuilding credit is possible, but the stain of bad credit lingers. Why can’t anyone pay their loans? Because sometimes, jobs are hard to find! It’s a vicious cycle perpetuated by factors that are often out of your control, keeping loan companies in business and chaining millions of people to a debt that, yes, they undertook willingly, but without the proper understanding of what precisely they were getting into.

Relationships come and go, marriage is either overrated or something you really desire, and children, god bless them, cost a lot of money. Debt follows you around, chews at the hems of your garments, and screams at you in the night. It is a huge pain in the ass. If offered the opportunity to possibly get rid of it—even in a fictional situation where the money isn’t real—anyone in their right mind would jump at the offer.