Millennials may never be as rich as their parents
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Many believe they are owed absurd luxuries from society and believe that all people who are financially independent / business owners are privileged evil people who took advantage of others. Complaining seems to be more mainstream than taking legitimate action to improve ones life / society in general.
I'm very much a fan of the rhetoric behind "Being a millennial is great because it's so easy to be better than the entirety of the millennial generation".
Some of the complaints are true, for example, housing has become very expensive. Part of what to blame is immigrants/international students (especially ones with rich parents in undergraduate) who drive up demands for land and housing.
But on the other hand, I know many millennial friends -- females and males -- who complained they "can't cook" and would eat out every meal and "food is very expensive." That "can't cook" disability is especially common among American friends for some reason. I know friends who work at Walmart who take home $1300 per month and have cell phone plans with unlimited everything for $120 per month because they can't live without a "good phone." Same for having pets, taking credit card loans, car payments, Netflix subscriptions, game consoles, dresses, cosmetics, non-GMO food, fancy gadgets, etc. When a phone or a laptop breaks, they say that's a piece of junk and throw it away to buy a new one. And at the end of the month, they ask where the money went. Sometimes I think because some people think they are entitled to the "lifestyle" they have now.
While I don't think it's fair to say everything has to stay the same, but I have seen and know people who don't take those things for granted in grad school. I see some people had depression, yet they didn't get a dog as a companion because they knew they couldn't afford a dog. When a laptop broke, they would try to ask a friend to fix it.
Yet, I think you would rarely hear a person complaining they couldn't afford a dog, you only hear people who have dogs and complain that "dogs are expensive" "people who have dogs are discriminated against" when it comes to housing, and they don't "make enough money." You hear people who complained they had to throw the laptop away to the trash can because it breaks after 2 years and they got ripped off for a piece of shit, and can't afford a "good" (aka expensive) new one. You hear people who dumped their phones in the toilet and are like "I just know Apple and iPhones, and I like blue bubbles, don't ask me to buy any cheap shit," and at the same time "I don't make enough." You don't usually hear the person who rocks their 5 year old secondhand Android phone with a broken screen complaining about not having money to buy another phone.
Sometimes I wonder: Did their parents not cook at home ever? Did their parents change cars every 5 years and phones every 1.5? Did their parents throw a computer away because they spilled coffee on it? Did their parents only use Apple because they only know Apple? Did their parents never buy secondhand products?
The entitled are the ones who tend to complain the most about money. On the other hand, I see many who see life as self-sufficient, live humbly and enjoy life for whatever they have. The unprecedented amount of advertisement and social media might have contributed to that sense of entitlement. Keeping up with the Joneses is hard, who would have thought?
The hiccups and bumps that life can throw at us have gone higher and higher in price. Health benefits were basically a given for my parents growing up, even when working in retail full time. Now, most places play HR shenanigans to avoid having to offer either those benefits, or enough wage for the worker to afford them themselves. Paying out of pocket is even more destructive in the sense that without an insurer backing you up, you end up having to fight shifty pricing practices on your own, where the insurance company devotes entire departments to it.
Or how bout that iPhone? Increasingly, the non-digital Rolodex is becoming an anachronism. Contact information and the ability to communicate at "normal" rates results in increased dependence on technology that is being priced inordinately high.
Or how about drug companies buying old drugs long proven and jacking up prices. Or keeping new drugs from being generic'd to bring down prices?
Or how about those bankers, and real estate firms buying up and developing land purely for rent seeking?
How about that lack of SERIOUS financial education, and an increasingly skewed and asymmetric job market where companies are paying 1970's wages, but raking in 20XX revenues?
Tried learning how to fix your car and maintain equipment that has become increasingly unfriendly to user service?
I get your message. Don't pretend it is all their fault though. The System they have to work from is pretty gnarly, and very few have any precious idea how to navigate it surefire. Even the more "Well-to-do" who have done everything right can end up with sudden massive reversals of fortune.
Before you start calling an ENTIRE generation out for having messed up priorities, remember that the priorities that lead to success had their foundations set by those that came before, and not even THOSE foundations are guaranteed to remain relevant.
The whole world seems to have this idea that there is an entitlement to greatness. The elders for the work they've done, and the youngsters from youthful inexperience.
A humble, self-sufficient life doesn't even occur to many as an option anymore, and becomes less and less probable as tech and globalised economies of scale begin to maximize around fiscal success as a proxy to improving human quality of life.
But hey, life and big picture thinking is hard and making dismissive excuses instead of recognizing our own parts we play of the problems we face as a species/society is easy, right?
The point is that people of my age are set back economically compared to generations prior at the same stage in life.
Not us bourgeois tech dweebs, but normal people who aren’t in industries that have had unprecedented growth over the last 30 years. Think about that for minute. Even wages in tech have been mostly stagnant, keeping up with inflation but not really growing, despite the incredible, staggering wealth creation of the last 30 years.
No. This isn’t keeping up with the Joneses, this is the system being broken in a fundamental way for the common person. The few get rich and the rest are left behind to toil in financial uncertainty until an inevitable hardship wipes out their savings and they’re back at square one, or more likely in great debt.
I own a 15 year old car, haven’t been on a vacation in 10 years, and work as a software engineer making 120k in a major metro. I put the max into my investment/ savings account. If I feel concerned about this in my admittedly comfortable lifestyle, I can’t even imagine the level of stress that the other person who doesn’t have my skills/advantages feels like.
The person who works a minimum wage job must be in constant complete financial terror. The type where you give up and shut down and stop trying to dig out of the financial hole, because it’s bottomless and endless and it keeps getting deeper.
That is what I was trying to tease out: Some of the problems are serious because of the relatively high cost of living. I think that's true for land, housing, health care, education. But part of it is the programmed "lifestyle," for example, eating out, depending on credit cards, buying new cars, living paycheck to paycheck. Those are not what the baby boomers did.
Food is clearly cheaper, yet you hear complaints about food being expensive. Moving around is cheaper, yet you hear complaints about transportation being expensive. Communication is cheaper, yet you hear complaints about cell phone bills being expensive. In a sense, I even dare to argue that education is generally cheaper (if you factor in how much you can learn online), yet people complain about it being expensive: It is if the only solution to education is to go to expensive colleges.
Part of your financial stability is because you drive a 15-year-old car. How many people do you think who make less than you who drive a shinier much more expensive car and would be terrorized because they need $500 tomorrow and they can't come up with it [1]? Do you think that's entirely because they aren't paid enough? If so, how much do you think a person should be paid to have $500 in their savings account?
1: http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/12/pf/americans-lack-of-savings...
My take is this:
There's no clear path to home ownership, so you put off having a family. Because you put off having a family you don't get married and you continue in a prolonged adolescence through your twenties. Because you're not bothering with a family you're also not worried about saving for the future, so you focus material pleasures and the present. You eat out, you get a nice car, you use the charge card for stuff that you happen to want. You're comfortable and you're not concerned about what happens to you financially because the consequences don't extend beyond your own sort of vapid existence, that isn't really that fulfilling anyway except for the creature comforts that you're spending your paycheck on. You date but it's all casual because love and marriage is for suckers.
Additionally any attempt to save money is inherently risky. You would give up the few comforts you do have, that are keeping you from having a life (that you believe to be) devoid of pleasure. You're genuinely trapped on the hedonic treadmill.
Any emergency would wipe out your savings anyway, or if you die you wouldn't have been able to spend it, which is now the point of your life.
So i agree with you, the lifestyle is a problem. But I also disagree with you that it is the cause. The cause is an inherent despair that are lot of us are going through.
If anything we're the "Why Bother?" generation. We know the things that our parents had are impractical for us the afford, so we ignore lofty goals that involve saving and budgeting, and most of all planning, and you find ourselvs stuck in an instant-gratification lifestyle.
My anecdotal experience seems to hint that it's because of the more liberal thinking among millennials when it comes to choosing "the right one."
I work in tech in silicon valley and... I often have difficulty not giggling when my co-workers talk about how poor they are. I mean, I'm the sysadmin and a agency contractor, meaning I'm usually the lowest paid/lowest status person in a room full of direct-hire engineers, and I usually feel very well remunerated, even though I'm probably making two thirds what a direct-hire SWE with my seniority would make at the same company. Especially when it comes to buying services and gadgets and, well, just about everything but rent. I mean, some of it is kids; I know kids are expensive, and I don't have any.
But I think a lot of it is just that people like complaining. And... I mean, in a lot of ways that is normal, and at appropriate levels, maybe even healthy.
But:
>> I see some people had depression, yet they didn't get a dog as a companion because they knew they couldn't afford a dog.
This isn't entitlement. People do deserve some things in life. A dog for a depressed person in a isolated society seems like below basics, i would say.
And if the economic system can't even provide those basics, especially given all the tools technology have given it, maybe the problem is in that economic system?
But I personally know many who are depressed temporarily because they just broke up and they always wanted a dog. Therefore, as the doctor suggests, they get a note from a doctor to get a dog and shove it to the face of the current landlord (and in less than a year, get kicked out and have to find a far away and expensive place from work that allows dogs). Did the doctor tell them that the only solution is to get a dog? I doubt so. To me, that's an excuse to get a dog, not a necessity to treat depression.
But the alternative view, of seeing the all powerful economic system failing to provide people as something as basic as a dog, and viewing this as a big failure may also be true.
Maybe your (and my) parents used to spend very little for a dog and we have to spend a fortune now, but it doesn't make having a dog a basic need. It's just as good of an argument as they used to dream about a projector and now you can get one for $200. The dynamics of having things changes: Being able to get something cheap doesn't make it a basic need.
I am speaking as a dogs lover and the only reason I don't have a dog now is that I don't think I can afford a dog.
What exactly has changed about the cost of having a dog? Veterinary care has not drastically increased in price so far as I know, so what about having a dog is so expensive?
My last dog was “expensive”, but I’m acutely aware of the fact that most of the expenses were things my parents simply did not do: buy a specialty breed from a reputable breeder for >$1000, have a dog walker visit daily, feed the dog expensive food, lots of toys and expensive treats.
Growing up, my dog was from a local breeder who probably ran a puppy mill. He ate pretty cheap food that came in a 30lb bag from the grocery store. He played in the yard with a tennis ball. No one came to walk him because he was outside all the time anyway. If I cared for my dog the way my parents did, the costs would be comparable.
I fully agree that having a dog is not a basic need, though.
If you have land, I suppose having a dog is not more expensive. That's what my parents had, and I don't.
Part of what makes having a dog expensive for people who rent is the fact that they have to rent. When you have a dog you can kiss goodbye at least half of your rental options. The ones that allow dogs charge a premium on top of limited options.
Plus, even when you have land, when you have a dog and wants to take a vacation you have to take care of the dog. When you ask/hire a someone to take care of the dog, you have to pay them, etc.
Lifestyle expectations and the way we treat dogs is different. People who grew up with outdoor dogs in the suburbs now want to live in urban apartments with indoor dogs. But that’s kind of like saying cars are expensive because you have to rent a parking spot. You could see it that way, or recognize that as a cost of urban living instead.
I don't think this article even considers anyone but USA.