Oh, you millennials...

[bononos]

The retirement issue isn't just a Millineals problem. This article states that 37% of Gen X won't be able to retire as well, and nearly half worry that they'll run out of money.
https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.usatoday.com/amp/1016739001

Ignorance has dire consequences, and it seems that most Americans are ignorant. They say that knowledge is power. How many people are willing to take the time to read about investing? Or, how to make additional income? Or, read inspiring stories on people who have been able to go from being in debt to being able to retire in 5 years. Those stories exist.

But No!!! Why should I need to read when I can act like everything is hunky dory. I can just ignore the fact that I'm in debt so I can watch hours of Netflix, hang out with my friends at the bar, and/or play video games until the sun rises.

IMO, people are soft today. They don't want to put in the work. They'll do just enough and that's it. You can make all the excuses in the world. And, most of those excuses are valid. College debt is real. You might be $100k plus in debt. You might have difficulty finding work, or maybe you were abused as a kid. Those are real concerns. But, A) No one gives a f*k, and most importantly B) it doesn't solve anything.

Sounds like the head bump you took as a baby affected your reading among other things.

The link you quoted said "Gen Xers were derailed by three market downturns" - crashes of '87, 2000 and 2008 meltdown. And being the "first 401(k) generation," which transferred the responsibility to fund retirement from employers to workers". Hardly the irresponsible netflix and video game generation you are talking about.

Read about investing? Sounds like you think investing as a layperson is real easy and all it takes is "some reading" even with the stock market being very overvalued and volatile compared to how the previous generations had it.

Read inspiring stories from being in debt to being able to retire in 5 years? Probably money also grows on trees in your world.

 

[bononos]

1. 66% of Millennials have nothing saved for retirement and 95 percent of Millennials are not saving adequately for retirement.
http://money.cnn.com/2018/03/07/retirement/millennial-retirement-savings/index.html
https://www.nirsonline.org/2018/02/...ennials-not-saving-adequately-for-retirement/
2. Millennials fall for financial scams more than any other age group.
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/03/07/millennials-fall-for-financial-scams-more-than-other-age-groups.html
What are we going to do with you? Looks like too many of you are spending what money you have on scams, although I'm sure that doesn't apply to the oh so savvy folks here. So go forth and smarten up the rest of the group.

Millenials are having a harder time due to the tougher new economy. They pay a larger proportion of their income for rent/home loan. They get less for their retirement savings/investment due to overvalued stocks and have to take a larger burden of risk for market volatility compared to the previous generations.
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/10/03/zillow-the-top-2-reasons-more-millennials-cant-buy-homes.html
And thats not even talking about the tighter job market today.

Do you really believe that things have gotten easier for millennials compared to Boomers or Gen-x'ers?

 

[Red Squirrel]

Does borrowing money from Mom, to buy PC parts, to discuss and "show off" them online, count? I may have done that, once or twice. *whistle*

(Note that I do live on my own, and pay my rent regularly with my own income.)

Edit: I'm paying $14/mo for a cell phone, and ~$10/mo for internet. I economize where I can.

Wow I'd be happy paying even double that for cell/internet. That's a crazy low price. Nothing even remotely that cheap available here.

 

[fralexandr]

Wow I'd be happy paying even double that for cell/internet. That's a crazy low price. Nothing even remotely that cheap available here.

he didn't specify broadband and smartphone, so he could be on dial-up and a limited basic phone plan for that price. Some places apparently still offer those.

 

[Exterous]

Harder or productive or not.. wait, how can it be not when all women are mostly also working in a marriage? That alone wipes the floors of any argument against millennials being slackers. They have no CHOICE to do double income in most cases.

Are you suggesting that women who stayed at home to raise the larger families of the past didn't work hard? What is harder, keeping track of 4 kids all day or going to work to sit at a desk looking at ATOT, facebook, and twitter between responding to emails? While that is not obviously the situation in all cases I think we confuse 'hours at work' with 'working hard' along with potentially the productivity gains with hard work instead of efficiency.

Regardless millennials will still likely be in the top couple of generations of Americans when it comes to 'the best situation' so it seems a little misplaced if there is a lot of time spend complaining that 'it wasn't #1'. Hopefully that complaining turns into action though and they join the other 15 or so generations that made the country better. If you are a glass half full person you could even look at it that they have a slightly more achievable goal because everything wasn't as perfect as they had hoped for

Worth pointing out that Boomers aren't doing much better

https://www.fool.com/retirement/gen...rs-retirement-woes-summed-up-in-5-statis.aspx

45% have no retirement savings'
Here's a terrifying nugget of data to wrap your hands around: based on IRI data, just 55% of respondents in its study had retirement savings in 2016, meaning 45% of baby boomers surveyed had absolutely nothing saved for retirement.

Yeah those numbers don't even match up from other articles of theirs in the same year. 45% percent have no retirement savings but 63% have over $50,000 in retirement savings

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/17/baby-boomers-average-savings-for-retirement.aspx

Even odder - if you look at that actual report used for your article in 2014 80% of boomers said they had retirement savings. That drops to just 55% in two years? Millions of baby boomers had their entire retirement savings evaporate (which would be a median amount of $125k depending on what "study" you read) and there was no news coverage of that? In one of the best investment markets ever?

Also most of these reports also don't include pensions and they were the generation that had the most of those so any comparison between the two should (hopefully) show millenials saving more.

https://www.rothira.com/average-retirement-savings-age-2017

Good to see articles that paint a rosier picture. Both of the ones I posted about were news items today and were, frankly, depressing.

Its tough to get a good picture on actual wealth in the US so we end up with a lot of surveys that made good financial porn\clickbait but are of exceedingly questionable value. That is why we get articles covering the same topic with the same methodology but end up with completely different results. Or even the massive 25 point drop within the same study(the study in Belegost's post). The reports from large financial institutions like Fidelity or Vanguard have their own problems as they tend to spawn articles about the 'median' or 'average' savings of Americans or X age group but the big guys only report a 'Per account'. However, many people have several accounts, not just the one at that institution. Because of the way my work is structured I actually have 4 through them. My wife has her account + a pension (never counted in these sorts of articles) and we both have a Roth IRA. Two of us have 7 accounts sans pension but the studies treat us as 7 different people. Sure not everyone has that many but enough to distort the numbers. How much? I don't think anyone really knows. People who peer at publicly available tax information don't get the full picture either as it misses out on non-taxed income from Roths, certain trusts, and chunks of money received from inheritance or lawsuits.

So thats a small wall of text way to say take articles on how much people have in retirement savings lightly.

 

[snoopy7548]

Be warned, I talk out of my ass a lot...

I'm a Millennial and I'm doing just fine, then again I got an engineering degree and my parents paid for my education, but I didn't take that for granted. I lived in a crappy 390sq.ft. apartment across the street from work in a small town with nothing but businesses and houses for over four years after I got out of college, saving as much as I could. All the Millennials I know are doing well too, but in the engineering bubble everybody is paid fairly well with benefits, and most of us live in a MCOL area outside of the major cities. Some of the older people at work make worse financial choices than the younger ones, though.

The major problems and articles seem to always be common to large metro areas, i.e. San Francisco or New York or Boston or Seattle. Rent is through the roof, sometimes even if you split it with a roommate, and you need more than a generic/low-level degree (teaching, business, languages vs. engineering, law, medicine) to thrive in those areas. This shouldn't be hard to figure out; if you want to be a teacher in Los Angeles and not struggle, you're either gonna have to partner up with a doctor or engineer, or realize that your chosen career path isn't suited for that location. You can't have a historically low-wage job and also live in a major metropolitan area without making serious compromises on your quality of life. HCOL areas + low-wage job = articles on you not saving enough.

Millennials are known to value experiences over everything else, so naturally they're attracted to those big expensive urban/metro areas. They're not going to want to live in a podunk town, cook all their meals at home, and limit vacations, even if it means they might be able to save a significant amount of their income if they did. Many grew up with parents who gave them those experiences, whether they had the means or not, so they expect them straight out of college as soon as they become a "working adult." They just don't realize that their parents are either in debt, not saving, a combination, or saved up in a L/MCOL area until they could afford to provide that lifestyle for their family (or, of course, had advanced degrees and landed good jobs.)

That said, there really needs to be a greater effort in teaching financial concepts to youngsters, or at the very least the population in general. Americans are horrible when it comes to finances and saving. In a few years we'll be reading articles about how the Millennial-successor generation is not saving enough. Do most Millennials (or even older folks) even know what a Roth IRA is or why a low expense ratio is important? How many Gen-Xers panicked during the 2008 crash and sold all their stocks, locking in their losses and missing out on massive gains, even though they may be decades away from retirement?

 

[FerrelGeek]

My request for a comment was based on your suggested edit for the 2 sentences that you quoted. My using 2 sentences was reasonable enough given that I was addressing 2 specific cases.

As to your comments below... For the first point, I was re-iterating many of the points that my 4 millennial kids make about their fellow millennials. Here's an example - My younger son and his former gf attended the same college last year. They were, and still are, very good friends and my son has been a very willing shoulder for her to lean on as she's gone through some rough patches. On that fateful day in November, 2016 when Trump won the presidency, his friend freaked out like many millennials did. The kicker was that she looked in the eye and said, 'now that Trump got elected, I don't know if I can trust you anymore'. My son was floored cuz he'd never behaved in even a remotely inappropriate way with her and had given her no reason to think ill of him. It's that kind of irrationality that my kids, and many of us older people, notice in your generation that drives us nuts. Feel free to hate Trump all you want; not skin off my a**; but don't let that hatred drive you to the type of irrationality I just mentioned.

As to transgender comment, my heart genuinely goes out to those who are legitimately struggling with this. But extrapolating that out to trying to identify dozens of 'gender types' seems more like mental masturbation to me.

As to point 3, I stand by what I said. Don't get a degree in some obscure major and expect to land a decent job. The world doesn't owe anyone a living.

Rereading your post, I'm honestly not sure what you're asking me to agree with. You start with a mish mosh of mocking millennials for their superficial behavior on social media, throw in an ugly trans-phobic comment, and then seem to mock them for making poor choices WRT their college educations.

On the first point, I don't particularly like the way most people behave on social media, part of the reason that I don't spend much time on Facebook or Instagram. I do use Twitter a bit on the train. By my own observation, millennials don't behave more or less poorly on these platforms than any other generation. It's worth noting that the way users engage these platforms is entirely predictable and they are mostly invented by Generation Xers and old Millenials.

On the trans comment, the only thing I'd suggest is that you consider how poorly comments like that make you look to anyone that engages with trans people on a regular basis and sees them as no different from any other marginalized group.

On the third point, the condescending attitude about millennials pursuing useless degrees in college, I don't think those attitudes rooted in anything but a desire to vilify a group of people who are facing a challenging job market and got their college degrees while funding for public colleges was being eviscerated. Most of the narratives about what they should have done instead have been discredited. Example: http://prospect.org/article/stem-shortage-myth

 

[1prophet]

Hows that Trickle Down Outsourcing working out for you, you can thank Reagan and Clinton for it, and no Trump ain't going to save you.

This is from 14 years ago, today its chickens have come home to roost and millennials are going to feel the full brunt of it.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5770.htm
Trickle Down Outsourcing - A Brave New World

Todd Smyth

02/26/04: (ICH) Trickle-Down economics just isn't what it used to be. That $ trillion Bush pumped into the economy last year is trickling overseas. With cheap foreign labor, a new US tax code, trade policies and modern technology all encouraging US companies to expand overseas, why would US companies create jobs in the US? The trick to Trickle-Down economics is the jobs need to be created in the same country the tax cuts come from. Ooops!

The premise of Trickle-Down or Supply-Side economics is to stimulate the economy with large tax cuts for the wealthy. That money hopefully is invested in a way that creates economic growth. That translates into increased productivity, profits and jobs. It sounds good and to some extent, it use to really work. However, something got terribly misunderestimated this time.

The technology boom that occurred during the Clinton administration namely mobile computing, Internet, satellite and broad-band communications, laid the foundation that has made it possible to ship so many jobs overseas, where labor is cheap. Our declining public education system and lack of graduating engineers and scientists hasn’t helped. A new fifteen thousand page tax code with loopholes galore hasn’t helped. Weak trade policies that are casually enforced are no great help either.

All this adds up to a great short term gain for the wealthiest US corporations. It drives down costs and drives up profits, while destroying labor unions and competing small and medium size businesses. It also permanently damages our middle class. With every job lost overseas a consumer is lost in this country. We are by far the largest market place in the world. We have every right and responsibility to protect that at some level.

The wholesale give away of our middle-class job market is not a good thing and job retraining is not much of a solution. Dr. Catherine Mann, the architect and most quoted advocate of globalization has no more of a remedy than job retraining. Retrain us for what? It doesn’t take much training for the French fry cooking, car parking and butler serving jobs transforming our new “service industry growth.”

Is it possible too many of us are confusing the word “serfdom” with “surfing” and think it sounds like fun?

David Stockman, Ronald Reagan's budget director has said [Supply-Side tax cuts] "was always a Trojan horse to bring down the top [tax] rate" … "It's kind of hard to sell 'trickle down," … "So the supply-side formula was the only way to get a tax policy that was really 'trickle down.' Supply-side is 'trickle-down' theory." (Atlantic Monthly August 1981)

Hmmm.....?

While George Bush tells us to be patient, job growth is just around the corner, the trickle-down effect has already come and gone. We should still see some job creation by November, probably around a million new jobs. They will be mostly low paying service sector jobs that will bring down the median income while the rich get richer. Meanwhile, I’m sure we’ll hear plenty of empty rhetoric about how job growth will continue to accelerate as long as we re-elect Bush and make the tax cuts permanent.

In addition to the 3 million jobs lost in the last three years, 2.6 million additional good paying, median income jobs have already been replaced by part time and minimum wage jobs. The typical American now works 184 hours longer than in 1970, an additional 4.5 weeks on the job for only nine percent more pay.

I think it’s time for a change. I personally have never liked being trickled on and prefer investment in middle-class tax cuts to put the money directly into our own US marketplace. Investing in public education, small and medium size businesses, public works and infrastructure to create good paying jobs and stimulate our internal market upward.

So how do we make such a change? You’re not going to like this. Register to vote; inform yourself on the issues and vote. Volunteer to help other people vote. Encourage everyone you know to do the same. It’s that simple. That’s the way it really works. There is no short cut and we can only hope it’s not too late.

On a lighter note

 

[rh71]

Harder or productive or not.. wait, how can it be not when all women are mostly also working in a marriage? That alone wipes the floors of any argument against millennials being slackers. They have no CHOICE to do double income in most cases.

We're not millennials and plenty of people our age HAVE TO both work. It depends on where you live, and that's true for millennials too - they can live in a flyover state and survive on a $100k income alone. We can't.

 

[kranky]

I work with a lot of millennials fresh out of college. It's not representative of all millennials since they are all college grads in STEM fields. But I sense an attitude of "what's the use" regarding finances. They have what they feel is practically insurmountable college debt and lack perspective on how to knock it out. Since a $7 breakfast won't make a dent in $80,000 of debt, that same concept gets applied to everything - $200 nights at the bar, new car payments, travel.

I understand why they value experiences, because they are fun and give you things to put on social media. But many don't seem to understand or care that just a few years of frugality could make them debt-free and let them start savings/investing. I can only think of two of our new hires that were committed to smart money handling. They moved here (a low cost-of-living area) from areas with high rents. They don't own cars - Zipcar, Uber or Lyft if needed. They live in cheaper apartments instead of the new high-rises in the hot areas of the city. Their socializing is having friends over, not at $$$ clubs. But both budget for one nice vacation a year. One told me she would be debt-free in 3 years, the other is on track for 4 years but is putting 6% into his 401k to get a 50% match. That's pretty damn good. Both told me they struggle with not having all kinds of things to post on social media but manage to deal with it. They have good jobs and in a pretty short time they'll be in great shape.

Maybe it's harder for millennials who grew up in families that had discretionary money to spend on stuff. They might feel like sacrificing now means they are failing because they would have less than they used to have.

 

[rh71]

Are fewer parents helping with college payments these days? Or simply because they're astronomical compared to years past? We have two 529s and all our money is being saved towards our 9yos' college funds now that the mortgage is done.

I think spending $9k on a 1 week vacation flying 4 to Turks & Caicos is looney toons. We've done road trips instead. Spending so much on college tuition also seems like a waste because the cost is so inflated, but it's a necessity.

 

[DougK62]

The issues discussed in this thread are fixable. Elect leaders who value people before corporations.

 

[Belegost]

Are you suggesting that women who stayed at home to raise the larger families of the past didn't work hard? What is harder, keeping track of 4 kids all day or going to work to sit at a desk looking at ATOT, facebook, and twitter between responding to emails? While that is not obviously the situation in all cases I think we confuse 'hours at work' with 'working hard' along with potentially the productivity gains with hard work instead of efficiency.

Regardless millennials will still likely be in the top couple of generations of Americans when it comes to 'the best situation' so it seems a little misplaced if there is a lot of time spend complaining that 'it wasn't #1'. Hopefully that complaining turns into action though and they join the other 15 or so generations that made the country better. If you are a glass half full person you could even look at it that they have a slightly more achievable goal because everything wasn't as perfect as they had hoped for



Yeah those numbers don't even match up from other articles of theirs in the same year. 45% percent have no retirement savings but 63% have over $50,000 in retirement savings

https://www.fool.com/retirement/2016/12/17/baby-boomers-average-savings-for-retirement.aspx

Even odder - if you look at that actual report used for your article in 2014 80% of boomers said they had retirement savings. That drops to just 55% in two years? Millions of baby boomers had their entire retirement savings evaporate (which would be a median amount of $125k depending on what "study" you read) and there was no news coverage of that? In one of the best investment markets ever?

Also most of these reports also don't include pensions and they were the generation that had the most of those so any comparison between the two should (hopefully) show millenials saving more.

https://www.rothira.com/average-retirement-savings-age-2017



Its tough to get a good picture on actual wealth in the US so we end up with a lot of surveys that made good financial porn\clickbait but are of exceedingly questionable value. That is why we get articles covering the same topic with the same methodology but end up with completely different results. Or even the massive 25 point drop within the same study(the study in Belegost's post). The reports from large financial institutions like Fidelity or Vanguard have their own problems as they tend to spawn articles about the 'median' or 'average' savings of Americans or X age group but the big guys only report a 'Per account'. However, many people have several accounts, not just the one at that institution. Because of the way my work is structured I actually have 4 through them. My wife has her account + a pension (never counted in these sorts of articles) and we both have a Roth IRA. Two of us have 7 accounts sans pension but the studies treat us as 7 different people. Sure not everyone has that many but enough to distort the numbers. How much? I don't think anyone really knows. People who peer at publicly available tax information don't get the full picture either as it misses out on non-taxed income from Roths, certain trusts, and chunks of money received from inheritance or lawsuits.

So thats a small wall of text way to say take articles on how much people have in retirement savings lightly.

That was actually a big part of the point of the post.

You can cherry pick statistics from various "studies" to give just about any result you want. From what I have seen all the data being collected is rather low quality, tends to conflict, and is probably more misleading than useful.

 

[Mai72]

"They were suckered into the myth that they need to go to college to get a good job! ...also, shame on businesses for requiring college degrees for their good jobs!"

I blame that on the parents. "Oh my little Jonny is a special snowflake." He's never had a job in his life, is awkward around but college is going

Sounds like the head bump you took as a baby affected your reading among other things.

The link you quoted said "Gen Xers were derailed by three market downturns" - crashes of '87, 2000 and 2008 meltdown. And being the "first 401(k) generation," which transferred the responsibility to fund retirement from employers to workers". Hardly the irresponsible netflix and video game generation you are talking about.

Read about investing? Sounds like you think investing as a layperson is real easy and all it takes is "some reading" even with the stock market being very overvalued and volatile compared to how the previous generations had it.

Read inspiring stories from being in debt to being able to retire in 5 years? Probably money also grows on trees in your world.

Nope.

You're just an ignorant person. Have a nice life.

I've met enough millionaires to know that it's possible. A layperson can make great strides when it comes to investing. Just as long as they do so consciously. That means reading. Finding other people who have done it. That's what I did. I was able to save over $150k in 3 years. I'm looking to invest and I have a much bigger picture than I did a few years ago. Money doesn't grow on trees but we do live in the wealhiest country on the planet. So go keep on making excuses. My goal is to be a millionaire in 5 years. Or at least I'll be on the path.

Bye.

 

[Blackjack200]

My request for a comment was based on your suggested edit for the 2 sentences that you quoted. My using 2 sentences was reasonable enough given that I was addressing 2 specific cases.

I see now. That wasn't a suggested edit, that was pointing out that you post was internally inconsistent, criticizing millennials for thinking they need degrees for jobs, then criticizing employers for requiring degrees for jobs.

As to your comments below... For the first point, I was re-iterating many of the points that my 4 millennial kids make about their fellow millennials. Here's an example - My younger son and his former gf attended the same college last year. They were, and still are, very good friends and my son has been a very willing shoulder for her to lean on as she's gone through some rough patches. On that fateful day in November, 2016 when Trump won the presidency, his friend freaked out like many millennials did. The kicker was that she looked in the eye and said, 'now that Trump got elected, I don't know if I can trust you anymore'. My son was floored cuz he'd never behaved in even a remotely inappropriate way with her and had given her no reason to think ill of him. It's that kind of irrationality that my kids, and many of us older people, notice in your generation that drives us nuts. Feel free to hate Trump all you want; not skin off my a**; but don't let that hatred drive you to the type of irrationality I just mentioned.

For the life of me, I cannot understand why someone would support a candidate that's openly hostile to huge swaths of the country's population, and then act so triggered when people react exactly as you'd expect them to.

As to transgender comment, my heart genuinely goes out to those who are legitimately struggling with this. But extrapolating that out to trying to identify dozens of 'gender types' seems more like mental masturbation to me.

Can you be more specific? When I say transgender I mean people that are born one gender and live their life as the opposite gender. The only time I ever hear about "dozens of gender types" is when someone is disparaging trans people.

As to point 3, I stand by what I said. Don't get a degree in some obscure major and expect to land a decent job. The world doesn't owe anyone a living.

And when boomers were growing up, they didn't need a degree at all to land a decent job. Your shitty attitude has much more to do with your feelings toward millennials than anything the millennials actually did.

You know the American economy of the last thirty years? The economy that hasn't produced any middle class wage growth? The economy that's left people ODing on heroin and killing themselves at record rates? The economy that's created the most unequal society in a century?

That economy wasn't built by millennials, it was built by Boomers and X'ers.

 

[Red Squirrel]

he didn't specify broadband and smartphone, so he could be on dial-up and a limited basic phone plan for that price. Some places apparently still offer those.

Even those plans are WAY more expensive here. Dialup will hit you around $60/mo or so at least since you need to pay for a phone line too. You can get your cell bill down to about $30 if you have no data or voice mail, call display or anything though. You could in theory go without internet so you don't need the home phone.

I have fibre myself as it's not that much more than DSL. (don't think they actually even have dialup here) Went with one of the cheaper packages, managed to keep it below $100/mo for just internet. If I go down one tier I only save like 5 bucks so not worth it.

 

[snoopy7548]

Even those plans are WAY more expensive here. Dialup will hit you around $60/mo or so at least since you need to pay for a phone line too. You can get your cell bill down to about $30 if you have no data or voice mail, call display or anything though. You could in theory go without internet so you don't need the home phone.

I have fibre myself as it's not that much more than DSL. (don't think they actually even have dialup here) Went with one of the cheaper packages, managed to keep it below $100/mo for just internet. If I go down one tier I only save like 5 bucks so not worth it.

It's not glamorous, but I pay ~$100/year for my smartphone. Prepaid Tracfone all the way. It uses the Verizon network and it's a real smartphone (LG something, gets the job done and looks nice/modern). The only downside (for most people but not me) is you start with 1200 minutes, 1200 texts, and 1200MB of data for the year, and each year renewal adds the same amount (it all rolls over). Adding minutes/text/data if you go over costs money, but I go nowhere near the yearly allotment. Most people would blow through the data in a month, but if I'm ever out and need to look at stuff I just use free wi-fi. 90% of the time I'm either at home or work - I'd rather use my laptop at home, and I'm usually working at work. If there's no wi-fi and I don't feel like using my data for some reason, I'll keep myself busy by doing things people used to do before smartphones were invented.

My home internet is ~$92/month. Comcast just upgraded my tier from 200/10 to 250/10. Wish they'd get that upload up a bit...

 

[feralkid]

You can make all the excuses in the world. And, most of those excuses are valid.

Okay.

 

[jhansman]

I fear that by the time they figure out what they did wrong, it will be far too late. I'm a boomer, and while I'm earning a good salary, retirement does not look attractive. I can't imagine being a 20-something and looking out at the world; I take some comfort in being in my final third of life.

And, if I pulled up the ladder after myself, I made that ladder, and likely the boat that holds it. I have a work ethic, skills, intelligence, and the ability (and desire) to plan, all of which I learned from my elders. How about you? No?

 

[FIVR]

I'm a millennial, but I'm here to agree with OP. Almost every other millennial I know is lazy, saves nothing, and still gets a majority of their income from mom and dad. The rest of these millennials (everyone other than me) are collectively ruining my reputation as a normal, functioning member of society with tons of money saved and who never falls for financial scams. If it wasn't for them, everyone would know how awesome I really am.


I guess I am just a very atypical millennial.

 

[Blackjack200]

And, if I pulled up the ladder after myself, I made that ladder, and likely the boat that holds it.

A very common and corrosive attitude. Probably one of the root pathologies destroying American society.

 

[bononos]

Nope. You're just an ignorant person. Have a nice life.

I've met enough millionaires to know that it's possible. A layperson can make great strides when it comes to investing. Just as long as they do so consciously. That means reading. Finding other people who have done it. That's what I did. I was able to save over $150k in 3 years. I'm looking to invest and I have a much bigger picture than I did a few years ago. Money doesn't grow on trees but we do live in the wealhiest country on the planet. So go keep on making excuses. My goal is to be a millionaire in 5 years. Or at least I'll be on the path.
Bye.

Sounds like you are describing yourself all too well as an ignoramus.

First you quoted a link that doesn't support your claim and then talk about how easy it is to learn to invest for getting out and debt and retiring in 5 years. Then you doubled down by claiming you made a chunk of money in a short time. Most of what you said sounds like one of those people who continually fall into scams.

 

[nakedfrog]

Can you be more specific? When I say transgender I mean people that are born one gender and live their life as the opposite gender. The only time I ever hear about "dozens of gender types" is when someone is disparaging trans people.

Probably talking about the various divisions within genderqueer/gender fluid and what-not.

 

[EXCellR8]

I initially read the OP as "1.66% millennials have nothing saved for retirement" which was obviously quite surprising to me.

Anyway, I started putting away for retirement (as a nice chunk of my paycheck) several years ago through the company I currently work for. I don't know what the account will look like when I'm ready to retire but I also know that my current position just doesn't pay enough to be able to retire at a decent age anyway, at least right now. I always keep myself open to new opportunities, within reason.

On the flip side, my dad (now in his late 50's) only started putting away for his retirement a couple of years ago while my mom started when she was 18; she is only one year younger than he is. He knows it wasn't wise but as the sole proprietor of his business it was more difficult to put aside funds when working for yourself, though not impossible mind you.

I don't know, I have several friends/acquaintances who are young adults and who are CEO's of companies on the west coast and in other nations and others who don't work and smoke weed all day. Now, nobody can tell you how to live your life or what you need to be doing "right now" but my point is that everyone is different and that the world is a different and more complicated place than it was when my parents were my age, and when their parents were my ago etc.

Not to be a downer but the age of living the simple life is far behind us, unfortunately.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Both of these things are consequences of millenials being possibly the poorest generation in recent American history.

Then why is it that a good number of immigrants (namely, from certain countries [e.g. Nigeria]) are able to come up from dirt poor and easily make it here - but poor little basement dwelling millennials can't seem to fathom the concept of working hard? See my quote below:

According to Census data, more than 43 percent of African immigrants hold a bachelor’s degree or higher -- slightly more than immigrants from East Asia. Nigerian immigrants are especially educated, with almost two-thirds holding college degrees -- a significantly higher percentage even than Chinese or South Korean immigrants. African immigrants are also very likely to hold advanced degrees, many of which are earned at U.S. universities. By many measures, African immigrants are as far ahead of American whites in the educational achievement as whites are ahead of African-Americans.

https://www.bloomberg.com/view/arti...t-just-asian-immigrants-who-excel-in-the-u-s-

The answer is fucking obvious. When you live life always telling yourself (and others telling you) that "the man" is "keeping you down", then you're essentially just keeping yourself down. The american dream is alive and well, the problem is we have taught our children to expect it instead of reach for it.