Claire*, 42, was always told: “Follow your dreams and the money will follow.” So that’s what she did. At 24, she opened a retail store with a friend in downtown Ottawa, Canada. She’d managed to save enough from a part-time government job during university to start the business without taking out a loan.
For many years, the store did well – they even opened a second location. Claire started to feel financially secure. “A few years ago I was like, wow, I actually might be able to do this until I retire,” she told me. “I’ll never be rich, but I have a really wonderful work-life balance and I’ll have enough.”
But in midlife, she can’t afford to buy a house, and she’s increasingly worried about what retirement would look like, or if it would even be possible. “Was I foolish to think this could work?” she now wonders.
She’s one of many millennials who, in their 40s, are panicking about the realities of midlife: financial precarity, housing insecurity, job instability and difficulty saving for the future. It’s a different kind of midlife crisis – less impulsive sports car purchase and more “will I ever retire?” In fact, a new survey of 1,000 millennials showed that 81% feel they can’t afford to have a midlife crisis. Our generation is the first to be downwardly mobile, at least in the US, and do less well than our parents financially. What will the next 40 years will look like?
Good post, but we really need to get out of the generational thinking.
I know rich and poor boomers. I know rich and poor millenials, and gen X/Z.
It’s a class struggle. Always has been.
Stop making it a generational battle. That only serves to divide the working class.
Yes, there is racism, ageism, sexism. We should debate those things and improve, but we can’t let those things divide us politically.
And since I’m ranting, let me end with a solution. We need to find themes that help all of us.
So perhaps we should say: for example, everyone with less than $1M in wealth gets a $20K tax deduction.
Who could oppose that? It doesn’t benefit home owners vs. renters. It doesn’t benefit students vs. retirees. It doesn’t benefit city dwellers vs. rural. Or white vs. black.
But it does benefit the class who owns nothing and gives them a better chance to own something.
So perhaps we should say: for example, everyone with less than $1M in wealth gets a $20K tax deduction.
As long as you a) have a robust enforcement mechanism (otherwise it will just be another PPP scenario), and b) offset that tax break with new taxes on the wealthy.
Electoral reform is needed to do away with First Past The Post voting so people can be free to vote outside the two party system with no spoiler effect.
Good post, but we really need to get out of the generational thinking.
I know rich and poor boomers. I know rich and poor millenials, and gen X/Z.
It’s a class struggle. Always has been.
As I said somewhere else, it is not that boomers are rich. It’s just
allmost rich are boomers.TIL Taylor Swift and Elon Musk are boomers.
Replaced all with most.
That’s better.
But most rich people are old, that’s not new.
That’s just how wealth accumulation and inheritance works.
That’s the thing. “It’s a class struggle. Always has been.”
My wife has a job with an awesome pension and as a result there is basically no situation she will ever leave. I pointed out to her that the golden handcuffs are still golden.
One day some MBAs are going to learn that if you don’t want constant turn over you give workers a pension so great they would crawl over their mother’s corpse to get it.
What am I saying? MBAs learning? Hahaha I love being silly.
Just give them a box of crayons to eat so the adults can get some work done for once.
Unfortunately, living in the US, I would not take a job with a pension because the (private) pension system cannot be trusted. I remember the 00s when many company pension accounts went bankrupt, because companies were no longer offering it as a benefit and it was easy enough to screw over retired past employees. Companies would take poorly performing divisions and their pension plans, spin them off as a new company that would quickly file for bankruptcy.
I would not trust a pension without it being insured by an organization like the FDIC. Even then, I would be afraid that my pension would not cover living costs due to inflation.
Luckily there are alternatives. I have a 401k, which should give me a steady flow of inflation proof dividends… until a market downturn wipes it out. If that happens, I can fall back to Social Security. Don’t believe the baloney that the government will ever let Social Security go bankrupt. They will just cut down benefits.
I don’t deny things like that happened. You heard about them right? So did I. But that’s the thing, these are the stories you heard. It’s man bites dog, it is observation bias.
Also her pension is insured. And I am pretty sure the bankruptcy thing you mentioned was one particular case with a car part maker.
It doesn’t matter if any specific MBA learns a lesson. Some other douche canoe will swing by and have their single brain cell fire off just this one time and they’ll start hacking away at the pensions to make Q3 look better.
Boeing style.
No more moon shots, contract out everything, slash pensions, fight a war against your union, move corporate away from production, buy your own stock.
I searched what MBA actually means. Fuck that shit. Degree in “Business Administration” sounds like degree in praying. Wait, there is one! Fuck!
I’m a late gen-Xer (born in '80, so I’m more of a “Xennial”). I have a stable job, pension, matching 401k, no kids, no debt (paid off my car and student loans), make 6 figures, and I am STILL convinced that I will never be able to retire. I feel horrible for all those who are in a worse financial situation than me, but we are all really fucked in the next 20 years.
I have a stable job, pension, matching 401k, no kids, no debt (paid off my car and student loans), make 6 figures, and I am STILL convinced that I will never be able to retire.
If this is your reality, there’s more wrong with your expectations than your situation.
Social Security is set to run out in the 2030s, and I fully expect the stock market to crash, effectively wiping out my 401k. As others have mentioned, resources like water will start to become scarce, inciting instability.
SSI isn’t set to run out. It will have to be reduced if they don’t take the income cap off of it, however.
But all the other things you said will happen.
SSI isn’t set to run out. It will have to be reduced if they don’t take the income cap off of it, however.
that’s as realistic as single payer healthcare; or universal basic income; or sensible gun control legislation; or abolishing the electoral college, they all have super majority support of everyone in this country but there’s too much monied political interest against ever allowing it happen.
Exactly. SS is too popular. There will be some sort of reform/funding, but congress will wait to the least minute to fix a problem. See any sort of continuing resolution government funding bill or the last time SS had problems back in the 80s. The '83 reform only occurred a mere months prior to insolvency. The fact that SS is still years/decades from major problems means it’s someone else’s problem to our elected representatives.
The one thing you can count on conservatives paying attention to is messing with their money.
What happens might not be pretty, but if they try to day “fuck it, guess we are ending the program” there will be hell to pay.
Correct. IIRC there’s an auto mechanism that will cut all benefits by 23% or something. So you’re mom/dad getting $2,000 a month would now only get about $1,500.
If you think the stock market crashing wipes your 401k to 0 and that’s realistic you need to get your head checked.
In 2020 it only dropped 20% and bounced back within 3 years.
Where do you chicken littles come from? Lol
and I fully expect the stock market to crash, effectively wiping out my 401k.
You only lose money if you sell. Those who were able to stay the course after '08 made it all back and then some.
The risk is a huge crash right before you retire, or you have to pull from your 401k to fund living expenses.
Invest in water you say…
That’s very pessimistic.
Not for the entire southwestern United States. There’s 5 major cities off the top of my head getting ready to face a zero day. If you don’t think the stock market is going to react when that happens…
What’s a “zero day” in this context?
Zero day is the day a city runs out of water and must literally truck it in.
Gotcha, thank you!
I call it realistic. If you think everything is going to work out, you’re delusional, man. But I hope you prove me wrong some day, I really do.
Yeah, I’m not going to live my life like that.
i want to live like you; what evidence to you use to shore up this viewpoint?
Faith baby! pure, Colombian uncut hopium
Jumping in here with a couple cents. Background: Old millennial, paid off home, pension, 401K, 6 figs. I’ll be able to retire. My viewpoint: Automation and AI will accelerate. “Safe” jobs will be gone. In fact most jobs will be gone by 2029 (my guess). Goal: keep working and investing until I lose my job.
Hard times will hit because government is slow and wealthy people won’t care until it affects them. Once jobs are cut, profits for many businesses will fall because no one will be buying anything with the money they aren’t making. As big companies begin to fail, stocks will have already begun dropping. Wealthy will go after government and government will have to do something. Only good option to keep things running: Universal Basic Income. Question is where does the money come from? Answer: AI/robots will be taxed and taxed almost 100% more than a human. Why? They won’t care.
This leads us into humans have free-time to do whatever they like. Some can work where AI/robots fail for whatever reason, some can create new things using all the new tools. Businesses will still try and make the best products so the wealthy can still feel better with all the money that really won’t matter as much anymore. They’ll enjoy some exclusive things but it will likely be just locations and not technology.
TL;DR: Hell at first, then modern day renaissance.
No evidence. I just choose to live with a positive world view and not like every day is doom. I face problems head-on when they appear and I don’t collect sorrows in advance. But you do you. I know my approach is hard for most people.
Same exact boat. Zero confidence I can retire. My best case plan is to move to South America at so. E point and hope I can make it until I die.
Weird flex, but ok
He’s lying.
I’m almost exactly same as you and you’re full of shit.
If you’re honestly making 100k with no debt and one mortgage around 300k you can save 2k a month if your wife makes a decent wage.
Who said they have a wife?
Am millennial… xenniel or “elder millennial to be exact… I have completely given up on ever owning a home or being able to retire. Short of some major acts of public disruption at unprecedented, economy-toppling, billionaire-eating scale, my entire generation - and those after us - are fucked.
And yet we act like boiled frogs, each generation making fun of the prior one for expecting things to be better than they are. Gen z is so used to things being like shit that they think that all older generations are entitled fuckers And that we should get used to everything being worse because Right now it’s the best they’ve ever known.
You only need like 5% down for a home. Zero if you are a veteran for some reason. Mortgage is almost always cheaper than renting.
Unfortunately, this age-old folk wisdom just isn’t true any more.
Near Los Angeles (and many/most big cities these days) even “fixer-upper””starter” homes cost $1,000,000.
5% down ($50k) would result in a monthly mortgage payment of $7,939.88 which more than twice my rent payment, which is already high.
And saving is nearly impossible given the rate at which the basic costs of living (including rent) have skyrocketed in recent decades.
It worked for me last year. Put 5% on a home near a major city, purchase price $425k
Some areas like LA are just a special kind of fucked, but you don’t have to live there.
The lesson here is do the calculations for your area. There are a lot of “buy vs rent” calculators online.
Yeah, I bought fairly recently (as interest rates were starting to climb) and it was 100% a qol decision rather than a financial one. I’m paying more in interest now than I was paying in rent before, so instead of giving my money away to a landlord, I’m giving it away to my mortgage company.
The only way I’ll come out ahead financially is if the value goes up. But I have mixed feelings on that, too, because the housing situation is fucked here and value continuing to go up will mean that the situation is still fucked. I don’t want this place to be my home forever, so if the price here goes up, then the price of better places will also go up and it ends up being a wash until I don’t need to own and can sell, but even that would be tough because inheritance is probably going to be my daughter’s only way of ever owning her own place.
Or, on the other hand, if they fix the housing issue here by limiting the number of residences any person can own and barring corporations from owning at all (or at least not having them count as new people for number of places they can own), then prices will crash and most people who currently has a mortgage will end up owing more than their house is worth and will still be fucked in that way. Unless the government makes the banks eat some of that or does a bailout for homeowners.
But anything in the above paragraph would probably take a revolution to actually happen because all of these bugs for regular people are features for those that have the wealth to influence the political power.
Or best option, rather than a crash we massage the housing market into stagnation for a decade or two with a combination of increased supply and gradual regulation. Stagnation in housing prices will over time let wages catch up.
Even at 425 PMI is killing you to the tune of an extra 300/ month
$61/mo actually.
Zero down also for USDA home loans
Now try being a mid 30s millenial that couldn’t even make it running a business
For real. I’m over here having a mid-life crisis since I was 27.
That was your “quarter-life crisis”. Don’t worry your mid-life crisis is still on its way :D
Goddamn right, I thought the quarter was rough, I was wrong
i felt like that at 28 after my 3rd layoff, i’m in my early 40’s now and still feel this way and wish the article had something to share besides describing my life using other people as an examples.
Running a business is way harder than just being a worker. I don’t understand what you mean by this.
in the article someone with a successful business is worried about home affordability and retirement. elsewhere someone with an unsuccessful business is worried about both of those things plus the business bleeding money. I’m referring to myself. I ended my so called business, quitting while I was behind because there is no getting ahead of the explotative big players without drowning in stress and never having time to relax or enkoy life.
Aw shit I did the classic reddit thing and only read the headline. Sorry, that’s my bad.
I do that all the time too.
LOL I’m never retiring. I’ve already accepted that I’ll be working until I’m dead. There are those who get dealt the right cards and will get to retire comfortably. I’m just not one of them.
Hell. Gen X also are worried about retirement.
Will social security be here in 15 years? My 401k has not kept up at all… Everything today costs soooooooo much there’s no real room for saving.
Right??
Early Gen Z / very tail end of millennial here.
Got a job that pays ~80k (with promotion potential to 100k in a year) and I’m just… dumbfounded at how yall are making it. I didn’t grow up wealthy at all, and struggled with homelessness for a time, so I’m not new to the frugal game, but being able to put away only a hundred or two bucks a month after taxes is crazy with the hours and time I put into existing. I’d rather just not work at all if the end result is the same.
Doordash is a crux in my life and something I’ve definitely splurged on in the past, but groceries are just as expensive outside of rice beans and chicken. Baffling. :(
being able to put away only a hundred or two bucks a month after taxes is crazy with the hours and time I put into existing.
Every little bit helps. Future you will thank you for even putting that amount away.
I try, but of course life finds a way to rip whatever savings I’ve got slowly but surely.
At this point, I’m still looking at working till the day I die.
Most recent social security trustees report says the trust fund will run out in 2035. What happens in 2035? Benefits are still funded at 83% in perpetuity. By the way, last year it was going to run out in 2033, and the year before that it was going to run out in 2031. And also by the way, the trust fund was specifically set up because they knew the baby boomers were going to stress the system, so it’s supposed to get depleted as the boomers use it.
Everything is working mostly as intended, and yet there’s all this anxiety around Social Security. Why? Because Republicans want you to think Social Security is fucked all on its own so that you don’t question it when they ratfuck it. That and they want to constantly frame the conversation as such so that the conversation doesn’t turn to “how do we make social security more robust and generous?” or some other radical socialist nonsense.
What do you invest your 401k in?
For the last 10 years when I’ve been asked about my career goals during job interviews I always respond, “I would like to retire.” I then clarify that I don’t mean tomorrow, next year, or even 5 years down the road. I just don’t want to die a wage slave.
X’er here. I have what most would consider a good job, with good pay, and a good boss. I consider it a good job with good pay and a good boss. My spouse is unable to work, and we have two children. I’m currently seeking some skill or product I can develop without taking time away from my existing responsibilities such that I have a chance of not having to work until I die at my desk one day.
With no shade against millenials, this is the only time I’m grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping that goes on. All these articles (like OP) about this very valid angst from older millenials and I identify with it pretty much every time. I know I’m not the only X’er who does.
X too, steady job, ok pay, lucky enough to have bought a house before COVID, but not enough to save thousands of $ for retreat.
I’m grumpy about being forgotten in the generational sniping
Every generation grows up, settles down, and starts quarrels with its parents.
In 10-15 years, Zoomers will remember you.
Lol!
No.
You won’t retire, no. No longer work a job because everything is slowly falling apart as our climate apocalypse trudges on? Sure, but you’ll still be working hard to survive.
No.
But one day I will get so desperatly poor that taking out someone in siphoning wealth from the country and ending them might seem like a fitting end.
If we don’t change things anyways.
I always wonder why people shoot up schools and parks when their problems are caused by people in board rooms. Never see a mass shooting in a board room for some reason.
Maybe there’s a selection bias, and we only hear about the dumb ones who target innocent people and get caught.
Believe it or not, people willing to murder others aren’t the best at thinking clearly.
“Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”
- John F. Kennedy
Let’s make peaceful revolution possible by campaigning for electoral reform at the state level! We should all be free to vote for those who best represent us, secure in the knowledge that our vote will still be cast against those we don’t want in office.
We don’t need to wait for trump to have a hamburger heart attack, we dont need to wait for the republicans to stop existing. We can do this right now… and some states already have!
Yours can to, most especially the blue states. Who is stopping you in those blue states?
What a quaint question. I honestly wonder if I’ll live my full life and die with a dignity instead of how i suspect, with a fistfull of dirt and a pigs boot on my skull.
This is another one of many things that the government should be taking care of for people (and they sort of tried to with Social Security) but of course the “privatize everything” sociopath elites killed that idea, and our culture expects everyone to just learn how to Warren Buffet better. Bro, do you even index fund?
she has about $75,000 saved up for a downpayment
Oh you poor child. That’s not even close to enough. 💀
It’ll get somewhere just north of half a million.
So a two bedroom condo. Probably not what most people had in mind for that much work.
Yeah that’s about it where I am but in other places that’s a 2b/2b house with a half acre yard, which isn’t horrible.
I guess that means you can add on to the house. Like one of those shanty towns.
It is tho. 75k gets u closed on a 300k house with 20% down basically
