"'It's okay to be selfish, as long as you're up front about it . . . We trust ourselves, and money. Period.' David Leavitt, 'The New Lost Generation,' in Esquire" (Howe 114).

In her study Teenagers: An American History, Grace Palladino notes, "Ever since the word 'teenager' first came into popular use around the time of the Second World War, the group has been linked to 'buying power and influence,'" (xii). They came to be identified as high schoolers who had "the time and inclination to shop for clothes, party goods, records" (Palladino xiii). And as America grew ever more into a consumer economy the adolescent spending trend blossomed as well. Palladino, writing in 1996 (when the youngest Breakfast Clubbers turned fifteen) reported that "a third of the age group owns their own cars (up from 7 percent in 1968), 25 percent have their own phones, and 50 percent own personal computers. A record 60 percent go to college, where they need an average of sixteen electrical outlets to plug in all their 'stuff'-microwaves, computers, televisions, VCRs, CD players" (257).

Breakfast Clubbers willingly admit to their materialism, their faith in the Almighty Dollar. This only seems appropriate to a group that heard its elders proclaim "Greed is Good." The 1980s gave us Dallas, Dynasty, Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous and Alex P. Keaton on the tube, the Material Girl on the radio (and everywhere else), and yuppies who scarfed up designer ice cream, cosmetic surgery, fax machines, home computers, answering machines, cellular phones, Trivial Pursuit, bottled water, pasta and jogging. It had to "trickle-down." So its only natural that Claire gets dropped off in her father's BMW; she brings sushi for lunch; she wears suede skirts and real diamond earrings.

But the eighties are over. The Boomers have repented. Why are Breakfast Clubbers still putting their faith in cold hard cash? "[A] lot of this money fixation can be attributed to this generation's premature affluence and its poor economic prospects down the road. Anyone who can't obtain at age 30 the same amenities he enjoyed at age 15 has plenty of reasons to obsess over dollars and cents" (Howe 114). Even those of us whose fathers never got behind the wheel of a luxury sedan had mom and (or) dad footing the major bills, so our allowances and any proceeds from after school jobs were spendable. Now we find ourselves working at McJobs and paying ever-increasing tuition, so cash flow is a little tighter.

More fundamentally, though, Howe and Strauss remark, "Having grown up in a childhood world that stressed private rights and liberties, they learned that families may leave you, neighbors may rob you, government may cheat you-but money is always faithful. . . . In sufficient amounts, it can vanquish any foe or deter any predator. Money isn't everything-but for a generation uninvited to most other avenues of social approval, it's the best thing within reach" (114-5).