======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ==== ======= ======= ====== ====== ====== ===== ==== ====== ====== ===== ====
It’s no secret that the financial lives of millennials aren’t exactly top notch. While our parents had a house and two-and-a-half kids by their mid-twenties, most of us are still living with roommates and calculating whether or not we can actually afford the up-charge for guac. Blame the recession, lack of increase in wages, crippling student loan debt, or a combination of all three, but the sad fact is that many of us are struggling to achieve The American Dream in ways our parents never did. Honestly, I feel pretty financially secure if I can manage to pick up the group brunch check without overdrawing my checking account.
While we already knew it was bad, new research by the Institute for Fiscal Studies showed us just how bad things actually are. As it turns out, millennials born in the early 80s are literally twice as poor as individuals born just ten years earlier. Ouch. Data from the study showed that the average wealth of those born in the 80s is around $34,500 whereas just ten years ago, that number used to be $67,600. That’s seriously rough.
This is obviously having a negative effect on things such as home ownership and savings rates – after all, it’s pretty hard to save money when you’re spending almost all of it on rent. If it helps console you, at least you know that it’s not just you – literally everyone else our age is broke too. Sure, you don’t have a house or kids or a 401K, but you probably have a sick apartment, a dog, and a strong brunch squad, and honestly, I wouldn’t have it any other way. .
[via Harper’s Bazaar]
Respond
Steph W.
Steph W. is a new Master's degree graduate with an intern's salary and six-figure taste. She realizes her expectations far exceed reality, so she spends her days pinning away Loubs she pretends are in her physical closet instead of her virtual one. Her hobbies include attempting to trapping her boyfriend into marriage before he finds out how insane she is and pretending that Black Box wine tastes as good as the kind she could afford when she was gainfully employed. Send her tips for getting out of student debt at recruitchairtsm@gmail.com
@therecruitchair
so what is it for those born in the 90s? asking for a friend
I just compare the money between my brother and me. O look, I’m poorer than him.
Same. I need to know…
sup?
Referencing “the American dream” while linking a study done by a British research institution looking at British citizens, whose economy has not mirrored our own over the past fifty years. That’s the type of hard hitting journalism and fact checking we’ve come to expect on this site.
I appreciate your concern, but kindly fuck off.
I was going to congratulate you on not putting “millennials” in the title, but then I read the first sentence.
I agree with this article, but I think some of it falls on our lifestyles. Most of our parents grew up a little more poor then we did. When they were in their 20s and did things like get married and have kids, they weren’t buying things on Amazon every day and going out to eat nearly as much. I am not refuting anything about this article, but I think that there is a little more to it.
The raw numbers go out the window when you throw in “affording your own house.” Going out to eat and online shopping pale in comparison to the wealth obtained by owning property, especially people ahead of us who bought low and saw the values skyrocket.
S’all good! I live in poverty always, so jokes on you!
Yeah but you’re a carpenter you could build your own house and cut out the middle man. If you needed to i bet your dad could help you out too.
If I could turn water to wine I’d have a lot more money saved.
Hey everyone, sorry for being MIA as of late but I’ve been chasing that paper and you know what, it’s all fucking bullshit. Everything. The new American Dream is going to be waiting in the bread line before you go to your second temp job that given week. I’ve been doing a lot of reflecting and thinking lately and I’ve come to the realization that there is not heaven or hell. We are already in hell, none of us made the team and we’re all just festering here in our own piles of shit as we boast about our stupid existences that amount to resin getting scrapped out of a bowl before we get lit on fire and inhaled by the universe. Holy shit I think I just figured out life and stuff
🙁