millenials must be the most screwed over generation in history

we are all here wrote:

Then I bought Disney stock at $99 per share.

Bro, this is embarrassing. It hit like 84$ last week. How are you bragging about missing the bottom by 15%?

Were you too busy telling people to get off your lawn? Boomer.

james joyce jr wrote:

financial crisis of 2008-09 basically guaranteed several years of underemployed or unemployment, while carrying massive student debt loans.

and now when many of them finally have the careers and financial lives on track, they get decimated again by corona.

sucks, they can't catch a break.

Really? When I was 21 years old I was hunkered down in a jungle in Vietnam, clutching a rifle and wondering if I’d ever make it back to the US. After four hellacious years I did, unlike several in my platoon and 2 of my high school classmates.

Quit comparing your life to others’ and do your best. You’ll be a lot happier.

Your privilege put yourself in position to do all that. Boomer or possibly Gen Xer.

Please snow flake Gen. You sissies wouldn’t last 5 minutes from my generation growing up in the 70’s n 80’s! Ha. So soft it’s sad... ?

Boomer, I highlighted an important part of your post to emphasize what makes your situation different from millennial, which you don't seem to understand.

You were able to do these things BECAUSE YOU WERE ABLE TO BUILD WEALTH, which Millennials haven't been able to! The economic realities what you grew up in now are entirely different from what has been going on the last 10-15 years. Two massive "once in a generation" recessions limiting early career job prospects, insane education costs/student loans, declining wages, rising housing costs, etc are among other things why they haven't been able to build wealth like Boomers(especially) and GenX had. See below

It's easy to degrade younger generations (like your parents did) for whatever reasons, so don't fall into that trap and understand whats going on now is VERY different from when you were younger.

james joyce jr wrote:

financial crisis of 2008-09 basically guaranteed several years of underemployed or unemployment, while carrying massive student debt loans.

and now when many of them finally have the careers and financial lives on track, they get decimated again by corona.

sucks, they can't catch a break.

Oh really? Let me see, my grand parents survived WWI, followed by the Spanish Pandemic Flu which was followed by the Great Depression and thenWWII.

Go get a box of Kleenex to wipe your tears and while at it get real and get a life , complainer.

this is not right.

millennials have had every opportunity to build wealth. They have had the best job markets and one of the better stock and bond markets. Of all time. The longest economic expansion on record.

Housing is tricky because it started expensive and only got more expensive.

Sure they had to sit tight through two recessions. Oh my. Gen Xers had to live with 6% inflation and much higher unemployment in their formative years. Millennials have had it relatively easy. Although every generation has its challenges, certainly.

and those charts are always bogus...generational wealth is apples to oranges and how you determine inflation decides 80% of how the curves compare.

I'm right on the edge of Gen X and Millennial (born 1981) and consider myself more in the former than the latter. For instance, I didn't have the internet until I was 17 years old and at that point it was slow dial-up. Didn't have fast internet until college (2000-2004), but there wasn't nearly as much on there as there is today. I also never had a cell phone in HS and had a basic flip phone in college, so I rarely texted.

I say that to say that, regardless of what generation people will lump me in because of my birthday, I laugh at all of these generalizations.

Most people would say I am a millennial. But I am a millennial who has had a job since I was 10 years old (paper route until I was 16; cart/bag boy at a golf course until I was a senior in HS (lived in FL, so it was an all year job); American Eagle my senior year of HS; Starbucks for 30-35 hours a week all the way through my Ivy league undergrad; straight into the workforce). I own my own house. Am married with two kids (a third on the way this fall!). On the board of three local non-profits. Volunteer with our local mentoring program 2 hours a week. Never had avacado toast.

So don't generalize. It only makes you, the speaker, look like an idiot. You may as well base your opinion of people on astrology.

There are fantastic, productive people in each generation. And there are complaining douche canoes in each generation.

Nobody has to be shamed in this situation. Middle class folks haven't been winning for a while. Middle class share of income has decreased over the last 40 years with the decimation of unions. Corporations make record profit but the majority of jobs out there are minimum wage. People are hustling, working multiple jobs, and all the while expenses skyrocket -- college, housing, food, etc. It's really coming from a comfortable position to simply say younger folks need to save better & do the bootstrap thing. If you make the choice to go to college or buy a house, you're living/working to pay bills for some time. If you have a kid, it just gets worse.

NERunner053 wrote:

Nobody has to be shamed in this situation. Middle class folks haven't been winning for a while. Middle class share of income has decreased over the last 40 years with the decimation of unions. Corporations make record profit but the majority of jobs out there are minimum wage. People are hustling, working multiple jobs, and all the while expenses skyrocket -- college, housing, food, etc. It's really coming from a comfortable position to simply say younger folks need to save better & do the bootstrap thing. If you make the choice to go to college or buy a house, you're living/working to pay bills for some time. If you have a kid, it just gets worse.

the middle class has shrunk only because many middle classers have been sucked up into the upper middle class.

Think about it...two jobs paying $50,000 per year is suddenly six figures. Geography matters a good amount about how much $100k buys you but it's real money in all but a few cities.

I will reject outright anyone saying millennials have had a rougher deal than previous generations. They haven't. Except in housing prices and student debt. But every generation has a problem. At least millennials have had jobs and not grown up in 6,7,8% unemployment with high inflation and garbage stock and bond markets like most of the country.

Hey millennials you want more money? Don't go on flying vacations, own a cheap used car, get a 1970s size house and a cheap phone. No cable. There you go. You've done it. You've cut expenses by tens of thousands of dollars. And succeeded in recreating the lifestyles of your parents and grandparents. If that is your goal.

agip wrote:

this is not right.

millennials have had every opportunity to build wealth. They have had the best job markets and one of the better stock and bond markets. Of all time. The longest economic expansion on record.

Housing is tricky because it started expensive and only got more expensive.

Sure they had to sit tight through two recessions. Oh my. Gen Xers had to live with 6% inflation and much higher unemployment in their formative years. Millennials have had it relatively easy. Although every generation has its challenges, certainly.

How is this not right? Numbers don't lie. Please point out why the graph/article I posted above is wrong. And when did "Xers" have higher unemployment in their formative years? This chart from the Bureau of Labor Statistics proves you absolutely wrong. Notice the skyrocketing rate from 2008-2010. These would fall in the "formative years" for Millenials, NOT Gen Xers. And these aren't just "two recessions" - they are large BY MAGNITUDES to any modern downturn, only comparable to the Great Depression.

Again, when you don't have money to begin with because when you left school the job market was unprecedentedly terrible and what disposable income you had is going to student loans, you don't have wealth to put INTO the stock market and capitalize on those gains.

Millennial home ownership is far lower than previous generations for the reasons I listed above. See the link below. Home prices have skyrocketed over the past 10 years and and since house is a primary wealth driver, boomers/gen xers who bought houses when they were cheaper have been able to build more wealth this way.

The facts don't lie about the plight Millennial have had trying to build wealth compared to previous generations. BTW these aren't just "two recessions" as you put - they are larger BY MAGNITUDES to any modern downturn, only comparable to the Great Depression. When these are what you have to go through in the early stages of building wealth, you can't build the base to get the compound affects over time.

agip wrote:

this is not right.

millennials have had every opportunity to build wealth. They have had the best job markets and one of the better stock and bond markets. Of all time. The longest economic expansion on record.

Housing is tricky because it started expensive and only got more expensive.

Sure they had to sit tight through two recessions. Oh my. Gen Xers had to live with 6% inflation and much higher unemployment in their formative years. Millennials have had it relatively easy. Although every generation has its challenges, certainly.

I'm not a millennial, but you've got it wrong. You're basically saying "if you ignore education and housing costs, millennials have had it easy." But education and housing costs are everything. It's pretty hard to buy stocks and bonds when over half your paycheck goes into housing, and a big chunk of the rest goes into student loan payments.

I think Gen Xers had it slightly easier, but both generations have been screwed by the Boomers. Now they're at risk of getting screwed by Gen Z too, who have fallen hook-line-and-sinker for identity politics engendered by the wealthy and powerful (Boomers) to distract us from their economic warfare.

You're also wrong about those charts. They're showing fractions of national wealth, so inflation has no bearing.

Oh for pete sake. First you are a millennial so you take instant offense at any criticism (trait no. 1 of millennial.) I doubt you know many older generations. Millennial also have a lot of things very easy. But their constant whining is too much.

I know a many millennials who agree with me. Things are difficult, but millennials are too lazy to vote.

But I think the generation that lived through the great depression and WW2 might disagree with you whiners.

Housing costs? really. I have a house for sale $140K in a decent metro area. It needs a little work. Millennials won't touch it because they have been conditioned by House Hunters and other home shows that fixing up a house is hard work. they all wan the the same open floor plan with granite counter tops, stainless steel appliances, hard wood floors throughout.

Plus mortgage rates have been at historic lows for years.

They don't know how good they have it! I bought my first house in 1999 and interest rate was over 7 percent. My parents bought homes in the 1970s with interest rates in double digits.

I WISH rates were higher and I could make a few bucks on my savings account. Our economy is such a house of cards.

Jerry Maguire wrote:

Of older generations I know personally, the successful people acknowledge how much more difficult things are now for the millennial generation. It's just a fact.

The other stuff you said might be true but this is not.

Gen X here. Not sure how things are better for us but I definitely would not go around saying that I have it tougher than my parents generation and no where near my grandparents!

Imagine growing up in the depression and then fighting the Second World War. You think any of us have it tougher?

Timmy Treadwell wrote:

They don't know how good they have it! I bought my first house in 1999 and interest rate was over 7 percent. My parents bought homes in the 1970s with interest rates in double digits.

I WISH rates were higher and I could make a few bucks on my savings account. Our economy is such a house of cards.

The average price of housing has increased since then (inflation adjusted) and has drastically outpaced the average wage growth, thus making it comparably more expensive now than then to buy a first home.

But at least the Millennial's have their Avocado toast to fall back on.

Nobody else has that.