This really comes down to who has and hasn’t saved. If you are a millennial that regularly saves into a retirement account you are probably looking good because the market has been good. But not a lot of millennials save for retirement which is the problem. Some of that is low wage, but some of that is bad spending habits.
Housing on the other hand is totally fucked for millennials regardless of what you are saving. If you got a starter home you are unable to sell and upgrade with decent rates. If you are first time buyer there is no inventory for starter homes because folks can’t afford to leave them even if they want to.
I’m a pretty well paid millenial who was saving well. My partner is now disabled and our savings are shrinking from medical bills and supporting her lost wages.
For our generation, to succeed, you need to get obscenely lucky. One disaster can wipe a lot of us out.
I know it will suck if it happens but I think we might be nearing the point of revolution. Shit is really fucking hard and you’re being squeezed from every direction… as an example my employer switched to “an equivalent insurance plan” my dental coverage disappeared and my raise+CoL increase is less than my increased out of pocket for meds - just for myself… my partner’s medical costs are insane.
We exist a bad day away from destitution… and the wealthy and the boomers keep hoovering up “passive income” (i.e. our income).
They say people are only three meals away from revolution. But that’s even meager meals, not just “i can’t afford steak”. So I think we’re still a ways off from most people reaching that point.
I am very sympathetic to this. When I had a friend go through cancer, it made me realize a lot of important things about life. In the middle of that list, but critical in that list of things is paying for supplemental disability insurance. It was like a few hundred dollars a year that is the difference retaining an additional 20% of your salary in disability if needed. I am probably more likely to near term need supplemental disability insurance vs life insurance, and if I’m still alive and thriving and on disability that’s probably a bigger financial drain on my family that sudden untimely death.
I mean, this is why I left a few potential partners. Because they proved to me after months/years of dating that they were going to be a financial drain on me and they could and would not contribute to the relationship financially. I want a partner, not a dependent.
Just like it’s a choice to have children or not. I’d love to have a kid, or three. but it’s not financially responsible for me to do so.
That is an incredibly callous response to the situation they described. Their partner didn’t decide to be a financial drain. It could happen to you too. All it takes is one bad day and you’re in severe medical debt.
life is callous. and plenty of people decide to be drains who could be productive. it’s also why you buy insurance.
it has happened to me. my dad died and left us with tons of debt when i as 16. and instead of being a whiny bitch about it, i got a job and starting contributing to my family and we were able to pay it off through hard work and sacrifice of luxuries. i was hospitalized for month a few years ago and almost lost my job and had $5000 in unexpected hospital bills. i learned that the only person in life who will ever take care of me… is me, so i decided to take care of me. and now i’m doing great instead of being another whiny entitled millenial who thinks saving is ‘says it’s for my mental health’ when they take empty their savings account to take a vacation to the maldives
you know what’s ironic. I don’t see immigrants making 30K/yr whining about how they can’t afford a home and retirement and education. I see them working their asses off, and making sacrifices to get ahead, applying for scholarships, living at home, working menial jobs and saving where they can. because they aren’t entitled nitwits who think luxuries are a given. they know they have to be earned.
what i see is a lot of entitled upper middle class people with six figure salaries who expected the world to be handed to them getting mad they can’t afford a home/retirement because they are spending $5000+ vacationing each year and five figures on other luxuries while they doomscroll on their $1500 phones and whine about how unfair their life is and how unhappy they are and how much their therapy costs them and they will never be able to retire! yeah… no shit they won’t… because unlike the immigrant they are lazy entitled idiots who refuse to be responsible for their own futures.
I mean, I don’t disagree with you, but we both know people will reject that as government overreach and call it socialism. Esp in the USA culture, people are in love with their own ignorance above all else and will justify to you how their 10 year car loan is ‘worth it’ despite the objectively poor choice that it is.
i love how common sense and self-responsibility get downvoted to oblivion on lemmy.
vast majority of millenials in my area have high wages… they just spend more than they make and whine about it. they refuse to become adults and save.
sure, if you live in bumfucksville and you are a cashier at a gas station with a HS diploma, yeah you can’t save. but if you’re a programmer who is 35 and living in debt, that’s your own damn fault, nobody else’s. where I live most millenails are the latter, and 75% of their conservations are whining about life is unfair because they can’t get the 5 million dollar home in the elite town they want.
I think the personal responsibility experiment of 401k’s is proving to be a failure. Yes, responsible people with sufficient incomes are somewhat at fault for not using the available retirement vehicles. But if individuals can’t be trusted to tend to their own future, we should probably be mandating retirement savings. And with that increasing minimum wage and considering UBI’s to make it reasonable for people save and have money in retirement.
But thanks for the sympathy for the downvote brigade. Merely suggesting personal responsibility seems to bring on the hate in lemm personal finance discussions. I have coworkers and friend’s with 6 figure incomes, top 75% of USA household incomes. They hardly use their 401k’s and use Roth IRAs when they have the means to be maxing those out.
I mean, I don’t disagree with you, but we both know people will reject that as government overreach and call it socialism. Esp in the USA culture, people are in love with their own ignorance above all else and will justify to you how their 10 year car loan is ‘worth it’ despite the objectively poor choice that it is.
My favorite irony is telling people I use savings and 401K matching and them telling me that I am ‘wasting money’ saving/investing because ‘you’ll just die of cancer in the future before you can spend it’. It’s just… pure bitterness and a willful lack of self-respect.
I love the comments in these discussions that are like “Fuck hedge funds, fuck investing, fuck the stock market, fuck 401ks. Bring back pensions.” And then I have to explain that pensions are investing in the stock market and actually own like 20% of common traded mid and large size company stock. Apparently folks want the benefit of being in the stock market without the personal responsibility to do it themselves, but in the process get to hide their guilt of personally investing in the market themselves. But that’s okay, and that’s why I think we probably should have mandatory minimum retirement savings and investment programs.
This really comes down to who has and hasn’t saved. If you are a millennial that regularly saves into a retirement account you are probably looking good because the market has been good. But not a lot of millennials save for retirement which is the problem. Some of that is low wage, but some of that is bad spending habits.
Housing on the other hand is totally fucked for millennials regardless of what you are saving. If you got a starter home you are unable to sell and upgrade with decent rates. If you are first time buyer there is no inventory for starter homes because folks can’t afford to leave them even if they want to.
I’m a pretty well paid millenial who was saving well. My partner is now disabled and our savings are shrinking from medical bills and supporting her lost wages.
For our generation, to succeed, you need to get obscenely lucky. One disaster can wipe a lot of us out.
I know it will suck if it happens but I think we might be nearing the point of revolution. Shit is really fucking hard and you’re being squeezed from every direction… as an example my employer switched to “an equivalent insurance plan” my dental coverage disappeared and my raise+CoL increase is less than my increased out of pocket for meds - just for myself… my partner’s medical costs are insane.
We exist a bad day away from destitution… and the wealthy and the boomers keep hoovering up “passive income” (i.e. our income).
They say people are only three meals away from revolution. But that’s even meager meals, not just “i can’t afford steak”. So I think we’re still a ways off from most people reaching that point.
People need hope to sustain them, it’s in short supply these days.
I am very sympathetic to this. When I had a friend go through cancer, it made me realize a lot of important things about life. In the middle of that list, but critical in that list of things is paying for supplemental disability insurance. It was like a few hundred dollars a year that is the difference retaining an additional 20% of your salary in disability if needed. I am probably more likely to near term need supplemental disability insurance vs life insurance, and if I’m still alive and thriving and on disability that’s probably a bigger financial drain on my family that sudden untimely death.
Sorry about your partner’s health. I know it’s unlikely, but hopefully things can get a bit better for y’all.
I mean, this is why I left a few potential partners. Because they proved to me after months/years of dating that they were going to be a financial drain on me and they could and would not contribute to the relationship financially. I want a partner, not a dependent.
Just like it’s a choice to have children or not. I’d love to have a kid, or three. but it’s not financially responsible for me to do so.
That is an incredibly callous response to the situation they described. Their partner didn’t decide to be a financial drain. It could happen to you too. All it takes is one bad day and you’re in severe medical debt.
life is callous. and plenty of people decide to be drains who could be productive. it’s also why you buy insurance.
it has happened to me. my dad died and left us with tons of debt when i as 16. and instead of being a whiny bitch about it, i got a job and starting contributing to my family and we were able to pay it off through hard work and sacrifice of luxuries. i was hospitalized for month a few years ago and almost lost my job and had $5000 in unexpected hospital bills. i learned that the only person in life who will ever take care of me… is me, so i decided to take care of me. and now i’m doing great instead of being another whiny entitled millenial who thinks saving is ‘says it’s for my mental health’ when they take empty their savings account to take a vacation to the maldives
you know what’s ironic. I don’t see immigrants making 30K/yr whining about how they can’t afford a home and retirement and education. I see them working their asses off, and making sacrifices to get ahead, applying for scholarships, living at home, working menial jobs and saving where they can. because they aren’t entitled nitwits who think luxuries are a given. they know they have to be earned.
what i see is a lot of entitled upper middle class people with six figure salaries who expected the world to be handed to them getting mad they can’t afford a home/retirement because they are spending $5000+ vacationing each year and five figures on other luxuries while they doomscroll on their $1500 phones and whine about how unfair their life is and how unhappy they are and how much their therapy costs them and they will never be able to retire! yeah… no shit they won’t… because unlike the immigrant they are lazy entitled idiots who refuse to be responsible for their own futures.
i love how common sense and self-responsibility get downvoted to oblivion on lemmy.
vast majority of millenials in my area have high wages… they just spend more than they make and whine about it. they refuse to become adults and save.
sure, if you live in bumfucksville and you are a cashier at a gas station with a HS diploma, yeah you can’t save. but if you’re a programmer who is 35 and living in debt, that’s your own damn fault, nobody else’s. where I live most millenails are the latter, and 75% of their conservations are whining about life is unfair because they can’t get the 5 million dollar home in the elite town they want.
I think the personal responsibility experiment of 401k’s is proving to be a failure. Yes, responsible people with sufficient incomes are somewhat at fault for not using the available retirement vehicles. But if individuals can’t be trusted to tend to their own future, we should probably be mandating retirement savings. And with that increasing minimum wage and considering UBI’s to make it reasonable for people save and have money in retirement.
But thanks for the sympathy for the downvote brigade. Merely suggesting personal responsibility seems to bring on the hate in lemm personal finance discussions. I have coworkers and friend’s with 6 figure incomes, top 75% of USA household incomes. They hardly use their 401k’s and use Roth IRAs when they have the means to be maxing those out.
I mean, I don’t disagree with you, but we both know people will reject that as government overreach and call it socialism. Esp in the USA culture, people are in love with their own ignorance above all else and will justify to you how their 10 year car loan is ‘worth it’ despite the objectively poor choice that it is.
My favorite irony is telling people I use savings and 401K matching and them telling me that I am ‘wasting money’ saving/investing because ‘you’ll just die of cancer in the future before you can spend it’. It’s just… pure bitterness and a willful lack of self-respect.
I love the comments in these discussions that are like “Fuck hedge funds, fuck investing, fuck the stock market, fuck 401ks. Bring back pensions.” And then I have to explain that pensions are investing in the stock market and actually own like 20% of common traded mid and large size company stock. Apparently folks want the benefit of being in the stock market without the personal responsibility to do it themselves, but in the process get to hide their guilt of personally investing in the market themselves. But that’s okay, and that’s why I think we probably should have mandatory minimum retirement savings and investment programs.