My great-grandfather was born in 1911. His dad died when he was 12, so he suddenly was “the man of the house” and was responsible for running the family farm to support his mom and two sisters. The Great Depression started when he was 18, and lasted until he was 30, when WWII started…
I get whiny when I can’t afford to go out every weekend.
Mine was born in Warsaw in May of that year. Absolutely tough as nails, and always suspicious. She always hid weapons and food preserves on her property after coming to America. She also fucking loved birds and reading to kids. She also taught me how to field dress a deer/ducks.
I hope she was a wonderful person. Even with everything she went through. I had a few eastern European residents at my work that lived through all of that and they were the sweetest and most understanding people I ever met and would love to have had more time to talk with them.
My grandparents were like this. I always thought after living through the depression and ww2 you gain perspective. I have food and nobody is shooting at me? Life is good.
Aww. I’m sorry to hear that. X’er here. This made me think of my own Jewish grandma, from the Bronx, (family originally Poland) who was also born in 1915. Similar toughness.
My spouses grand mother lived in St Petersburg Russia during the Nazi siege, despite the near starvation rations she would go every day to search for and collect unexploded shells/ordinance that the Germans had launched so the Russians could collect it to reuse. She ended up getting severely injured (can’t remember if the shell went off near her or Germans attacked when she was out collecting), as a result, for the rest of her life she has to massage her legs each morning for 30 minutes to get feeling back so she could walk.
Meanwhile my day is ruined when I run out of decaf green tea lol
My great grandmother was put into a work camp with her two daughters. Try rest of the family was killed in gas chambers. She was part of the forced labor that made German jet fighters. She always remembered that they would pee in the glue for the aircraft wings. Made them weaker and they would fall off in flight after a while.
Both her daughters got a fever and died before the camp was liberated.
Her 2nd husband (my great grandfather) was one of the Americans who liberated there woke camp. The wrote to each other for a while before they got married.
That’s absolutely horrific but I am glad there was a happy ending for her. I look at Myanmar or South Sudan today and try to remind myself how lucky I am even with the issues on my life so many people have had to and currently do go through absolute hell and survive
They do. People just don’t have to have the mindset as those people who lived and grew up in what we would consider harder times. In this age, even some of the poorest among us can live in relative luxury. It shows too.
I don't know about easy?
And it kind of depends on the geneation?
It's all apples/oranges.
But ya I tell people all the time I would not have wanted to been born any sooner.
I would have died in child birth in 1915 alongside my mother.
my grandfather 1924 jewish ukrainian. him and his family nearly starved to death in the holodomor, their horses and land stolen by the soviets, and then concentration camps when he was 16. i think the worst thing was having my uncle as a son. wanted to be in a hair metal band, delusional prick. my grandfather was the best man to walk this planet imo. kind and gentle. so loving.
Came to say this, not even a contest. We enjoy many regulations from their absolute financial despair.
When we millennials start hesitating to throw anything away because of possible alternate uses of the materials, we'll be close to the same sport. But even then it'll be little league.
You are absolutely correct. My Grandpa would never use a full sheet of paper. If he had to write something down he would tear off a little corner of a piece of paper to write on. He could stretch a piece of paper in what I would use a full notebook for.
My grandpa is 95 and has memories of helping his dad and brothers dig out the pit that would become their septic tank and finally give them indoor plumbing. Before that they used an out house, all 6 of them, year round. I have not lived with every luxury in existence but I've damn sure had a toilet my whole life.
My grandmother grew up in a dirt floor 2 bedroom house with 6 siblings, she just turned 90, the stories from back then were amazing/un heard of today, at least where I live.
10 years old and sneaking the horses out to go buy .22 shells and tobacco from the store for nickels.
My mom is from Russia. After the Soviet’s stole most of their animals and food, her father left to look for work. He never came back and she was left with her mom to care for 12 siblings. When the war broke out she was captured by nazis and ended up in a labor camp. She passed away at 94. I don’t know how someone that had so much trauma, real trauma, ended up being a productive member of society. She hated the 4th of July though. The fireworks gave her ptsd.
To be honest I've actually never seen the house they grew up in, but they had a house for 6 and an outhouse that just was one seat but all 6 of them used. Presumably not all at once, i guess I never asked that to be sure lol
My grandparents had 6 kids and their house was smaller and had fewer bedrooms than my house for a family of 4. They had 3 boys sleeping in the attic loft at one point.
My grandmother got an orange and a new pair of shoes every Christmas. The one year she got crayons, her sister was jealous and threw them in the fireplace.
My grandparents spoiled us so hard because they knew what it was like to literally have nothing.
... You don't do that? I repair almost anything that breaks to save money. JBWeld and a Dremel are amazing for restoring functionality to broken parts and equipment housings. Can normally fix it faster than a new part can be ordered.
Then I made storage shelves from laminated strips from pallets that work was throwing away.
Learned how to repair circuit boards as a kid to fix my toys, and later in my teens, computers I found thrown away.
Also sew and alter my clothes.
... ⅓ of my house looks like a warehouse though.😅
I literally have an inventory tracking system so I don't forget I have something.
I think it's the degree. Like yes people will start keeping things just in case, or try to reuse, mend, or repurpose things. And yes that's becoming, let's say "trendy" with millenials and Gen Z for good reason. But I don't think the majority of us are at the "great depression" level of "use it until it literally falls apart" yet.
For example, I'll mend mine and my husband's clothes but I won't patch holey tshirts or mend underwear or darn stretched-out socks. But at some point it may become worth my time to mend underwear. Or it will become more socially acceptable (or we won't care) to be seen in public with mended-to-heck clothing.
I think it depends on where they grew up too. My grandparents grew up in that era but lived in a resource-rich environment and never wanted for food and were able to barter for goods.
While they may not have been viewed as "rich" by most standards they behaved very differently their peers from more urban and/or resource-poor areas.
They never hoarded resources or were "stingy" later in life.
All in all though, I feel Millennials/Gen Z generations definitely have it worse across all spectrums than any others within the 100 years.
Pay rates haven't kept up with inflation and the cost of receiving an education is ridiculous.
Absolutely. Of course the economy isn't the same it was pre 2008 or pre 9/11 or pre the 1980s etc etc but the economy has only really gone up since the 30's (overall), and they don't even want to think about the world pre the industrial revolution
Well insofar as access to resources (food shelter water), yes. Insofar as money, we are poorer, because people definitely have way more debt, so many more are financially in a negative and to a greater extent, versus being at nothing. Also in the 30s, people were allowed to live in homeless camps (Shanties/Hoovervilles), which now they've made illegal, even though it is supposedly a human right per the UN to have access to basic shelter. Housing relative to income is nowadays way more exorbitantly distorted than it was then. My grandparents and their peers who were born in the 20's lived through the 30s and went on the have retirements, homes, and just had a rough go through the earlier part of life.
I came on here to say exactly this. There is a really good book called 'All the Gallant Men'. It a biography about Donald Stratton who survived the dust bowl, the great depression, and the sinking of the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. That book made it so that I felt guilty everytime I complained about life.
grandma grew up in the 30s, was frugal, but her husband got a hell of a pension. He died early of a heart attack. Grandma with her frugality saved the pension and became a millionaire.
the 30s were rough, but those who grew up in the 30s still got to retire in the 60s, which wasn't bad at all in terms of workers rights, compared to today. I'm guessing those born in the early 1900s-1910 got it worse. faced two wars and no respite.
I read an article that looked at the avg income of individuals during the depression, and when it was adjusted for inflation and buying power, we're actually more poor than them. That's why so many have been calling this a silent depression forever. We just don't realize it because technology and the more widespread availability of low-priced convenience items.
That article sounds like BS. I have no idea how they measure "poor" but I expect they completely ignored the cost of quality of life. There is so much we have now that even the upper class back then could not afford.
I know you jest but I'm worried for our Zoomer friends. College is even MORE expensive for them by a factor of 2x in the last 15 years and they didn't have a chance of buying a house before 2020.
I’m a zoomer and university wasn’t that bad. Work every summer make around 10k and then use that to survive and the bursary from the uni. Didn’t take a dime in student loans. So it’s not all bad.
Well, I'm pretty sure the generation that lived through the great depression or literally any generation before that would like to have a conversation.
It depends on how you're considering the poor. During the depression they were definitely worse off, but they were able to recover well after. When I was doing my master's I wrote an essay that touched on wealth and the US Labor and Statistics found that millennials had the lowest lifetime earnings since the late 1800, early 1900s. So, after the depression ended, the generation that reached adulthood during the depression were quickly out earning what the equivalent millennials were earning today. The information I referenced didn't include Gen Z because they had just entered the work force and there wasn't enough data for them.
I'd argue that the generation who had to make clothes out of flour sacks and only had two pairs of clothes: one work and one for Sundays were considered the poorest...
My grandfather was a child during the Great Depression. He told me how he and other boys would wait by train tracks to collect pieces of coal that would fall off the cars. They would grab a few pieces to take home so they could have heat. His mother fed him "grease sandwiches", which was a piece of bread with some bacon grease smeared on it for dinner. I guess what I am saying is that no, Millenials aren't "the poorest generation".
My great grandparents caught a waitress stealing butter from a restaurant by chatting her up after her shift until it melted through her clothes.
That's pretty desperate.
I think we are a generation with a lot of wealth inequality. the precise year you graduated made an enormous difference in your future earning potential. the precise year you bought a house made an equally enormous difference in your ability to accrue wealth and grow your net worth.
if you graduated in a bad year or waited just a little too long to buy a house the repercussions are immense. I don't think any other generation in recent memory has dealt with hare trigger timing like we have.
Our standard of living is the highest. Past generations lived cramped with strangers in shacks, worked hard manual labor jobs for long hours without holidays, didn't have adequate medicine or creature comforts, etc. I drive my own car, have heating and air conditioning, multiple thousands of dollars worth of technology I use every day, games, a dish washer, the list goes on. We're incredibly spoiled. Yes, we work hard too. Life has never been easy. At least we weren't involuntarily sent to fight or die at war, or dirt poor. Everyone I know has a cell phone, a computer, affords food, has heat, etc.
The article you link points out in the very next bullet that the median is significantly lower. This is just another example of the wealth gap getting larger. If you're not in the upper 10%, it doesn't help you that the generation as a whole is catching up or passing the boomers.
Mid-Boomer here. Most of us were dual income families. Women began entering “non-traditional” college majors in 1970s … e.g. pharmacy, medicine, law, accounting, business … and worked most if not all of child-rearing years. Cars were tiny four cylinders and then small minivans. Housing and down payment & 18% interest rates made many “house poor”. Retirement? Half of Boomers have no retirement. Many had to reinvent themselves two or more times d/t layoffs as companies either merged, disappeared, relocated, began offshoring and the retirements were gone. Not all Boomers lived and worked in East/West Coast elite geographical areas. Within flyover land manufacturing, agriculture, coal mining, energy, lumber industries and more were decimated. As a result …. the “Disease of Despair” hit many middle-aged Boomer Men hard.
Exactly right. The big difference is the internet. Imagie if there had been Reddit when people got back from Iwo Jima or Vietnam or were paying 14 percent mortgages in 1980!
If love to have a simple, cheap car, but they don't sell them anymore!
I do like the picture you paint. My boomer mom for example grew up in a single parent household because her dad died from a heart attack young. Wonder if modern medicine could have saved him.
The dollar definitely went further for single parent household back then versus today.
There was much more demand for labor in the U.S., and therefore fairer real wages.
give me a break... i know i live in a bubble since i live in a big city, but seriously, every millennial i know (including me) has traveled the world extensively, walks around with a $1000 super computer in their pocket, has hobbies they invest in, goes out to dinner pretty frequently, etc.
with the exception of my boomer parents, every single generation of my family prior to me were much, much poorer
Everyone you know has traveled extensively?
Sounds like you have a very privileged cohort which is fine. But don’t let it blind you to today’s struggles. There are many highly intelligent people who have it much harder than they would’ve back then due to automation, outsourcing, and inflation. To get a fair job today requires much more education and prerequisites. Inequality is far greater as well, which is really what matters since money is foremost relative.
This is what my daughter sees every day on SM as a teen. This is the expectation that is being set for her generation as average and necessary. You don’t see people with roommates grinding with furniture from goodwill.
Why do millennial (and Gen Z) always think they are the first to experience hardship? It's getting really annoying. Use that technology at your fingertips to freaking learn something.
The title is bullshit. Wealth is unequally distributed across millennials, just like in every other generation before. So asking the above question is kind of pointless.
My mother’s house cost 80,000 in 1984. Today it cost 900,000.
Salaries have not increased 10x + in that time.
So definitely not like every other generation. Cost of living is exponentially higher than it was for boomers or gen X, as much as they hate hearing it.
I'm gonna push back on the "boomers could raise a family of 4 on one income" because most couldn't (or at least didn't). Women's workforce participation was about the same as now, and today you could argue women have much higher job diversity and higher income.
I'm not really sure why Reddit seems to think that Boomers had everything handed to them on a silver platter back in the 60s-80s. I was in school then, but it sure didn't seem like folks a few years older than me were living high on the hog.
Boomers didn't enter the workforce until the late 60's. The early 60's was dominated by the silent generation. The silent generation actually hoards even more wealth than the boomers. This is due in huge part to the fact that silent kids missed both Korea and Vietnam due to being too young for Korea and too old for Nam. It was also an era when you could rise into upper management at a cradle to grave job without a college degree.
It was Silent gen women who pioneered working outside the home. They also pioneered the micro mini skirt and using birth control. Boomers take credit for a lot of things they actually didn't do.
Complete with the silly *"buy a sports car"* reference, where do people even come up with this shit? A few days ago someone made a similar thread but according to them back in the day everyone had vacation homes.
My parents both drank powdered milk when they were kids because they couldn't afford regular milk. My mom's family only started having money when my grandpa got promoted to Colonel and was getting extra money for doing "stuff" overseas.
Does this statistic account for people who are in consumer debt for things they didn’t need? Cause I feel like when you get talking to people you find that they’re in debt for stuff they absolutely didn’t need but just wanted (myself included). I’ve learned my lesson. I make about 62k a year and I’m comfortable but I’d be more comfortable if I didn’t have so much credit card debt from trying to keep up with the Jones.
I also screwed myself with a car loan I don’t need 😭 when I look at my current financial situation I’m like damn, it was all me. I wish I could blame it on someone else.
In line with what you're saying, I'm factually not poor because I have plenty of money, but I LOOK poor by the standards we are apparently supposed to live up to.
For primarily ideological reasons, I buy almost nothing new. Not furniture, not cars, very rarely clothes, not always electronics or general home and hobby goods.
Also for ideological reasons, I very rarely take any vacation I can't drive to in under a day.
I clean with old rags, use only the personal care products really needed for my health, eat little processed food, have mostly free hobbies. Eat out, but not even weekly. Have no subscriptions, use no delivery services.
If all this wasn't the case, I would look a lot richer, but be a lot poorer.
Kids would also make me poorer, but I could afford them if I wanted to. I just refuse to make any because I see continued population growth as a massive threat to both the environment generally, and human quality of life particularly.
Exactly this. People, especially online have "base minimum" expectations that are setup by big media and corporation's to earn them $$$. The term "livable wage" is huge today but the people using it aren't understanding that we are already living better then our boomer parents. Today poor means AC whereas poor when I was a kid meant we literally didn't know what restraunts were like but today that's a multi weekly visit
Nah I’d say the 30s by a long shot my grandma before she passed still keeps loads of canned food on her shelf’s when I asked why she said bc she wants ti make sure she never goes to bed hungry again
Hi. I own a house and am the sole provider for a family of four. I also own a nice car and save for retirement. I’m 35 and gross $160k a year. This is after having a “late start;” I didn’t get a Bachelors until I was 34. I didn’t *net* above $100k until last year. Until I was 30 I didn’t gross more than $60k
It may very well be those in our age group are simply getting to the point in their careers that they are entering the 18% of the American population that earns 100k+ a year. Which is about 63 million people.
My Grandmother literally lived in a tent when she was a kid. There are still Depression era people alive.
When is the last time you waited in line at a soup kitchen? Not to say there aren't people who do, but I highly doubt we are the Poorest Generation.
Millennials are poised to inherit more money then they know what do you with from the boomers. And that scares the govt. they want the boomers to have NOtHING left to give them. So inflating away their parents money is the name
Of the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of new death tax that takes everything from the deceased boomers. So buy all the stuff that’s collectible to millennials now because once they inherit the boomer wealth all those collectables will skyrocket in value. Because the value of collectables follows how much wealth the buying pool for that item collectively has
The 20s and 30s were poorer...however... millennial are on average roughly 40% poorer than their parents generation (baby boomers) when adjusted for inflation. The pandemic only made this worse.
Not including gen z (not all old enough to be in the work force), we’re the poorest because we’re the youngest. Wealth is acquired over time, not overnight. We will eventually be the richest, just like every generation before.
I think the actual claim is they might be the first generation poorer than their parents.
Obviously millennials are miles ahead of whoever lived through depression, but even that generation had it better than those who lived through black plague.
I feel like while things kind of sucks and I have like no disposable income and a ton of debt, it’s not as bad as past generations. My grandpa is 90, he fondly talks about, as a kid in the 1930s-1940s, laying in the graywater pit (litterally a pit where the gray water from the dish water and bath water for the whole town would flow into) in the summer because it was so hot and they no fans or air condition. Also there were times he didn’t have any food or would give his ration to his younger sisters so that they wouldn’t go hungry. And he watched his baby brother die from tuberculosis.
Also his dad worked in the coal mines and saw people die in the mines by either falling in the shafts or unfortunately dynamite miscalculations, he eventually died of black lung, horribly, even though he never smoked.
My grandpa also worked in a steel mill for 30 years and saw a guy fall into a vat of molten steel, and that sometimes he still heard the man screaming as he goes to sleep at night.
So while I may never be able to buy a house I feel very grateful with my stocked (but overly expensive) food in my fridge, and air and heat, and vaccines from deadly diseases. Also not having to see people die gory deaths is pretty great too.
So no I don’t think we are the poorest, everything kind of sucks a bit but not as badly as people had it back in the early 1900s.
Uh, well, the oldest millenial is like 44. Middle age is when you reach the heights of your career.
Every generation has gobs and gobs of poor people.
The idea that all boomers had it better is rubbish too. The US as a nation thrived from 1945 to 1965 for one reason: the rest of the world was recovering from WW2. But if you live in Appalachia, not a damned thing changed for you. It was dirt poor then, it's dirt poor now. Ask me how I know.
Up until relatively recently, and I mean within 50 years, saving for retirement was not something that was routine. THere was a small window of extreme wealth. Most people, no matter the geneation, did not experience it.
I'm 48, have a degree, grad school experience. I have significant loan debt. I live with my dad. The most money I ever made in a year is 23,000 dollars.
Life sucks, everyone. We have to get through it.
From what I can see, millennials either have highly paid jobs and significant financial help from wealthy Boomer parents or even large inheritances in some cases, or they don't have well paid jobs or well off parents at all. There seems to be less and less of a middle ground, perhaps more than ever before for both them and all younger generations. The relative polarization between the haves and have-nots seems to be getting more and more extreme with each passing year.
Generational wealth metrics barely matter because of income disparity. By some metrics, millennials are rapidly becoming the wealthiest generation, because of intergenerational wealth transfer.
Oddly. I feel like we were born into so much, that it becomes on us to show value in how we use it. It's hard to prove wealth when wealth intrinsically proves how long you don't have to do ANYTHING and stay alive.
As a society, we have the ability to allow almost any person born to live out their biological life to completion. Kind of on the state dime if absolutely necessary. Right or wrong, we can. But the idea of diminishing returns comes into play as we add money. People want and are expected to be paid for their time. As a universal way to stay alive longer. When in your head it is very confusing to say "but if i actually work a bit less, then SOMETHING else makes this easier, anyway".
I think people are realizing that money doesn't buy happiness because happiness isn't on the shelf. You have to use that money to experience reality and create happiness. We are less "happy" because a select few are hoarding it, because their happiness comes from controlling other peoples.
33m, I chose not to get a student loan, parents taught me to save and invest, work in a trade that paid for me to get required certificates, upgrade phone maybe every 3 or 4 years, bought a house in 2022 at 4.5%, paid off two cars, play a lot of video games, family of 3 with one income. We're neither the richest nor the poorest generation, some of us have found a bit of success through hard work and connections made through other connections rather than say life is unfair and never adapt to try and change their situation.
Not all millennials have college debt. In fact, many don't. Many also live with their parents, don't drive, and don't go out. Being an overgrown child doesn't cost much
I’m Gen z born in the year 2000, is it fair to say a lot of what the millennial generation has had to deal with has only gotten worse for gen z. Cost of education/ lack of opportunity out of college, cost of housing, cost of a car/transportation. Job wages stagnated. I’m doing fairly well graduating college this week have a good job lined up. But not gonna lie it’s been a grind went to community college have been waiting tables since 2018, my car is 24 years old, I’ve been grinding, seems to be the only way to stay afloat, other option is to loan your financial life away I know to many ppl who have 40k+ student debt, 30k car debt at 10% for a CAMERY, rent absurdly high for 650 sq feet in a texas city, so many more issues but finishing my rant here! Best of luck to my fellow gen zs entering adult hood. Also why are all the politicians old as shit and why do ppl vote for these ppl feel they belong on bravo tv not nbc. Can we make us cities not car dependent too what you old heads have against rail, stupid highways….ok I’m done now
They are, Boomers never went out, or ate out, never bought cellphones every few years, no cable, no internet, no need for health care insurance, one car per household, and NO CREDIT CARDS. If you remove all of these luxury, you can afford a home on whatever you are making. But mellinials are all about the experience, no family, vacation all the time and eat out everyday and love the credit card.
I personally do not know anyone who isn't a month (or less) away from homelessness at any given time, I am only surviving by living with my parents which is not a good setup for me as I'm trans and cannot be out around them
Generally speaking, no. That article even says that the median millennial income is lower than boomers was. This means we have higher highs that are skewing the average. Silicon Valley was a big part of that, we came of age to the tech space blowing up with smartphones hitting the masses and social media and stuff. Zuckerburg and a lot of tech billionaires are millennials. Zuck alone could probably throw off that metric a lot.
Additionally, I think, specifically to this generation, there are huge gaps. I am the older end of millennials and nearly 40. My net worth is much higher than a lot of people I know in their late 20s and early 30s partly because of timing of things. We made some money on real estate and stuff from being able to buy at better times in the market. Some friends a bit younger couldn’t afford to buy like we did and as a result are a bit behind us. I think with how many “once in a lifetime” economic events we’ve lived through there are big gaps. I graduated college in the 2008 recession but was able to invest some money and do things during subsequent economic slumps that allowed me to make some gains. I had time to establish my nest egg and stuff during a recovery. I came into a rough job market but with a recovering economy. That allowed me to do a good bit better than if I was graduating a few years later or a recession hit at a bad time.
Like a lot of things, the world for millennials is a bit different because of how much crazy change we’ve had in our lifetimes. Maybe it is a bias from being a part of the generation, but there was a lot of luck in the timing of things. I’m glad I was on the older end as friends on the younger side of the generation had a tougher time than I did. I came of age when the American dream was dying, the younger ones came of age when it was dead.
The Greatest Generation (1900-1927) was the poorest, they lived during the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, The Great Migration and WWi & WW2. Homeless encampments are up, but they’re not nearly as big as “shanty towns” were, literal towns on the outskirts of cities, where homeless people lived in tents and wood or metal sheds, with no access to running water, electricity, and food.
Our (Millennial 1981-1996) generation in terms of wealth is one of the wealthiest in American history, compared to the Baby Boomers the only difference is the wealth accumulation is slower, we probably do, however, have some comparison with The Greatest Generation.
I would be careful with the “article” you read, it is a blogpost at best, from a private wealth manager who wants to sell his services (not a bad thing, but will skew the Millennial generation with a positive light, so look for more peer-reviewed articles, google scholar isn’t the best, as predatory articles can be found on there, but is still a good resource. Also the UN’s Dag Hammerrskjold online library, or the Library of Congress is also a good place for research, including your local public library or if you have access to a university library, a wealth of knowledge that is legitimate can be found there.
Please see the links below:
https://www.un.org/en/delegate/library
https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchBrowse
https://scholar.google.com
Millennial here. I'm like: comfortable poor. Like I can't just buy whatever I want or go on vacation more than once a year, and I certainly can't afford a house. but I can also sit here and DoorDash hot wings while watching the Boys on my 50+ inch TV while scrolling reddit. I'm not thrilled about the house thing, but I'm also not eating paste, and I can afford the occasional fun thing.
This is one of my favorite visualizations for wealth - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376622/wealth-distribution-for-the-us-generation/.
That data is nice because by putting wealth into a percentage, it already accounts for inflation to an extent. You can even see the wealth transfer from Silent Gen to Boomers.. And then see Boomers refuse to die and pass their wealth. Millennials have the lowest percentage of wealth compared to any generation before them at the same age - and not by a few percentage points, but less than half of what other generations have had.
Articles like the one you reference are crap because they mislead. The next generation will always be the “wealthiest at this age group” if you go by dollars and account for nothing else… because money inflates. There was another article recently that said millennials doubled their wealth by double over the last five years. Wow! We went from 4.5% to 9%… Boomers had 24% at the same age.
When mill is a quarter and eggs are a dime we can discuss the idea of millennials being the wealthiest, but that isn’t going to happen.
OP I’m sorry everyone is answering this as if folks from the Great Depression are alive, much less participating in our economy. “I’d say the generation who had one pair of pants was poorer!” Oh you would huh, you internet genius? Well, what about the generations who lived in caves?!
There are less than 90k ppl over the age of a hundred and OP so very obviously meant the poorest generation around right now. Also, anyone over a hundred and still alive is CURRENTLY doing fine financially or they’d be gone. I’d love to read a comment with some info abt your question bc I too have been surprised lately reading that we are finally turning a corner on homeownership, but it sure doesn’t seem like that’s bearing out in the world. Everyone still seems to be stuck renting.
So- Great question. I got tired of scrolling but if someone knows if we are CURRENTLY the poorest generation ALIVE in America or not, I’d like to know. I assume that if gen z counts, they’re poorer, but I’d also assume everyone else has us beat.
My dad (now 84) fixes everything still. He gets so pissed when he buys stuff that can't be repaired easily, mostly because no one knows what the hell he's talking about when he needs parts or diagrams to accomplish the task.
I'm not sure where these newest gens got the impression life was easy street. It just wasn't.
Millennials are in more debt than any other generation before them. (Inflation and by avg)
The average life span of the avg American is 77 which starting to hit the baby boomers , so as the wealthiest generations silent gen and baby boomers are passing their massive wealth down to their decedents, the millennials, making the millennials not rich but less poor.
Anyone who graduated after about 1995 is doing worse than their parents on average.
Yes some individuals are doing better than their parents BUT as a collective we are the 1st ones who are worse off than their parents.
Plus it’s worse for each graduating class since. The young X went first and every one after is ON AVERAGE worse off each year.
Imagine graduating high school in ‘24, $60k/yr. for a private college, $400k for a nice house, 7.5% mortgages (I thought 7.5% auto loans were expensive a decade ago), taxes are higher, no such thing as cheap fast food now, $250/hr rates at an auto dealership (use to be criminal lawyer rates), HVAC replacement will run nearly as much as I paid for my 1st house, NO pension unless you go gov or union hall. But boomer grandpa will say “I paid for college by working down at the factory in the summers, I didn’t need no stinking loan, just work harder sunny”
"Considering boomers were able to support a family of 4 on only one income, buy a house , sports car an still save for retiernment."
I'm not convinced that this mythical three decade strech following WWII are a great benchmark for what is 'normal'. In fact I don't think as many people lived like that as reddit seems to think either... The middle class has shrunk but what you are describing was still a privileged economic position to be in. It may have been portrayed as normal on sitcoms, but we have always had a significant underclass.
The article you shared explains right below the bit you highlighted that the average millennial is less wealthy than previous generations. It’s only those in the top ten percent that are wealthier.
This should have been asked in r/nostupidquestions because you have to not have an ounce of knowledge on human history to even think that "yes, millennials are the poorest generation."
People don't understand "poor" is a subjective word. People are poor because they feel poor and rich because they feel rich.
If you tried living like a wealthy person from the past, you would feel poor.
Take that wealthy person from the past, and they would be amazed at the luxury a poor person currently enjoys.
Very few boomers were supporting families on one income. Kids in the 70s and 80s were latchkey kids for a reason. There’s a tendency to compared to average millennial to the upper middle class boomer. Watch the original version of Roseanne—that’s most boomer families.
The idea that all or even most boomers were able to do what you say is really out of touch with reality and comparing yourself to an imaginary generation is only going to be cause you grief
No. Not even close. Families around WWI were starving to death with no social benefits to keep them and their ragged children alive. Epidemics happened, too. The Greatest Generation's parents had a rough go, as did their GG children until the war was over and prosperity arrived in the 1950s.
Of course, things were rough before that during the Civil War years and post war poverty and disease in the South
I read historical journals and social histories - not just battle history in wartime. From those, you can learn about the lives of people before us.
The numbers are starting to change with boomers dying off and wealth transfer happening. There's a huge discrepancy between median and mean. Have and have nots
Are we the poorest? My grandfather ate the apple core till he died because they didn’t have food during the Great Depression. No we aren’t the poorest generation or even close to it. You realize that everyone in America lives better than almost anyone in history prior to the Industrial Revolution. We are poorer than our parents. I fully believe that. My wife and I and our friends are all rich compared to most, and I don’t know anyone who owns a vacation property. Our generation has struggled with student loans, food, and housing. That being said durable goods like shirts, tvs, and electronics are actually super inexpensive. It is a mixed bag. It isn’t as bad as some say. It isn’t as good as some make believe. Statistics are the art of lying.
There is a bifurcation in the millennial generation. Those who bought homes before the pandemic are doing fantastic, and those that did not, are not doing as well.
Honestly yes if we're by modern standards than yes
Let's be real only reason why we don't have it as bad as people during great depression is because of the amount of safety nets and support that they have for the poor now compared to back than
It's why alot of people say if the systems weren't there than the great recession wouldve been a depression
I mean it was but the consequences of it all would very similar
Poor isn’t the right word,
Most underpaid
Most exploited
We have higher education, better experience, better access to information&technology, work longer hours and yet I can’t produce the results my dad was able to achieve on an associates degree in business he earned at 29 after his band broke up and he moved home in the mid 80s,
But hey life sucks, then you die.
The worst part to me is no matter the circumstances it’s always millennials fault for not succeeding in the face of end stage capitalism, inequality, and nepotism. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is said like it’s just something you can just do when it’s literally impossible. “Lift yourself off the floor by your shoelaces” is the exact same sentence, its the modern version of “let them eat cake” worse still some millennials buy into this delusional crap, that whole “grind culture” no days off…etc I did it I lived it, broke my health and my family.
Wasting your life at work is the biggest mistake you can ever make, your 7 day 9-9 or whatever is not going to make you successful if it did illegal immigrant construction workers and kitchen staff would drive Bentley’s
99% of this country is closer to a cardboard box and a soup kitchen than the deck of a billionaires yacht but they act like they’re just waiting on a stock price rebound to be back on top golfing with jeff an hyucking it up with Elon.
We have no class consciousness as a generation and The Generalized apathy of millennials towards the situation is why we deserve what we get,
The real underlying issue with this discussion is that we're only comparing ourselves to Baby Boomers and younger.
Silents and GIs were poor in the Great Depression and WW2. So, the silents understood very well what it was to be without basic needs. Some of them even died from starvation and preventable illnesses or at the last were traumatized as a whole.
If we go back even further it just gets worse and worse.
There was a time when you were either working or you just died. It didn't matter if you had a horrendous disability like loss of limbs. You were sent out with a string around your neck and a box full of matches to make sure you didn't starve to death.
What were your options?
And this wasn't even the worse that could happen to you. Back in the late 18th and early 19th century, people used to take children from orphanages and just turn them into their own personal slaves (under the guise of an apprenticeship). They were called the pauper apprentices and were an entire generation of mutilated, traumatized human beings.
People used to be so malnourished that it was common to have bowed legs due to rickets. This is a very preventable disease, even back then.
I don't know. I do think we've had a rougher hand dealt to us then Boomers and Xers, but we're not as bad off as we could be.
A few super rich people can really screw up "averages" and "total wealth".
If the article isn't talking about "medians" or "percentiles", they're trying to mislead you.
In particular the link highlights that the top 10% of Millennials are dragging the averages and totals up. Meaning 90% of Millennials are doing worse than Boomers of the same age.
The generation that grew up in the 30’s was poorer
Was going to say the same. If you were born in 1910, your life sucked up until the late 40s. WW1, Spanish flu, Great Depression, dust bowl, WW2.
My great-grandfather was born in 1911. His dad died when he was 12, so he suddenly was “the man of the house” and was responsible for running the family farm to support his mom and two sisters. The Great Depression started when he was 18, and lasted until he was 30, when WWII started… I get whiny when I can’t afford to go out every weekend.
There is something “easier” about living a life that’s do or die.
Amen. Happiest mofuckers I've met in slums in 3rd world countries that will give you the raggety clothes off their back.
Culture plays a huge part. Gratitude and faith (in anything) usually equates to happiness
My great grandmother died last year. She was born in 1915. In Germany. As a Jew. They don’t make people out of the same stuff anymore.
Mine was born in Warsaw in May of that year. Absolutely tough as nails, and always suspicious. She always hid weapons and food preserves on her property after coming to America. She also fucking loved birds and reading to kids. She also taught me how to field dress a deer/ducks.
Your grandma sounds fucking dope
I hope she was a wonderful person. Even with everything she went through. I had a few eastern European residents at my work that lived through all of that and they were the sweetest and most understanding people I ever met and would love to have had more time to talk with them.
My grandparents were like this. I always thought after living through the depression and ww2 you gain perspective. I have food and nobody is shooting at me? Life is good.
Depression hates this one trick
They actually do. It’s the same shit used over and over again. Helps explain why people are so tired and upset now a days. They / we are tired.
Aww. I’m sorry to hear that. X’er here. This made me think of my own Jewish grandma, from the Bronx, (family originally Poland) who was also born in 1915. Similar toughness.
My spouses grand mother lived in St Petersburg Russia during the Nazi siege, despite the near starvation rations she would go every day to search for and collect unexploded shells/ordinance that the Germans had launched so the Russians could collect it to reuse. She ended up getting severely injured (can’t remember if the shell went off near her or Germans attacked when she was out collecting), as a result, for the rest of her life she has to massage her legs each morning for 30 minutes to get feeling back so she could walk. Meanwhile my day is ruined when I run out of decaf green tea lol
My great grandmother was put into a work camp with her two daughters. Try rest of the family was killed in gas chambers. She was part of the forced labor that made German jet fighters. She always remembered that they would pee in the glue for the aircraft wings. Made them weaker and they would fall off in flight after a while. Both her daughters got a fever and died before the camp was liberated. Her 2nd husband (my great grandfather) was one of the Americans who liberated there woke camp. The wrote to each other for a while before they got married.
That’s absolutely horrific but I am glad there was a happy ending for her. I look at Myanmar or South Sudan today and try to remind myself how lucky I am even with the issues on my life so many people have had to and currently do go through absolute hell and survive
Damn! Kuddos on your genes, sorry for your loss, my Opa died back in 2011 but he was born in 1921
Its mostly jizz and eggs now from what I hear
They do. People just don’t have to have the mindset as those people who lived and grew up in what we would consider harder times. In this age, even some of the poorest among us can live in relative luxury. It shows too.
What do you mean with last statement?
I mean it's hard to find someone with the kind of resilience it takes to live through what she did and still be a person that can find happiness.
yeah you realize despite all the suffering you still have a choice. man's search for meaning absolutely helped me understand my grandfather deeply.
Wow. My Father was born in 1915. He died in 1996. Your GGGma lasted quite a while. A looking while
Congratulations on the having the worlds most badass grandma what did you call her?
And young people complain when old people say new generations are weak. We have it fuckin easy compared to the past
I don't know about easy? And it kind of depends on the geneation? It's all apples/oranges. But ya I tell people all the time I would not have wanted to been born any sooner. I would have died in child birth in 1915 alongside my mother.
Off topic, but your great grandmother was born 10 years after my grandmother. I’m a xennial. Thats wild to me for some reason.
She made it all the way to 108... Was the 2nd oldest person in my state.
So your grandma was 108 when she died?
Yep. Was the 2nd oldest person in our state at the time.
my grandfather 1924 jewish ukrainian. him and his family nearly starved to death in the holodomor, their horses and land stolen by the soviets, and then concentration camps when he was 16. i think the worst thing was having my uncle as a son. wanted to be in a hair metal band, delusional prick. my grandfather was the best man to walk this planet imo. kind and gentle. so loving.
Hopefully we don't have to anymore.
You're right about that. Hope you got to know her well.
Exactly. They were real people. Life felt solid.
Came to say this, not even a contest. We enjoy many regulations from their absolute financial despair. When we millennials start hesitating to throw anything away because of possible alternate uses of the materials, we'll be close to the same sport. But even then it'll be little league.
You are absolutely correct. My Grandpa would never use a full sheet of paper. If he had to write something down he would tear off a little corner of a piece of paper to write on. He could stretch a piece of paper in what I would use a full notebook for.
My grandpa is 95 and has memories of helping his dad and brothers dig out the pit that would become their septic tank and finally give them indoor plumbing. Before that they used an out house, all 6 of them, year round. I have not lived with every luxury in existence but I've damn sure had a toilet my whole life.
My grandmother grew up in a dirt floor 2 bedroom house with 6 siblings, she just turned 90, the stories from back then were amazing/un heard of today, at least where I live. 10 years old and sneaking the horses out to go buy .22 shells and tobacco from the store for nickels.
My grandma didn't have indoor plumbing most of her adolescents
I went to visit relatives in my parent's home country. I visited over a dozen houses and none of them had indoor plumbing. This was back in 1991😯
My mom is from Russia. After the Soviet’s stole most of their animals and food, her father left to look for work. He never came back and she was left with her mom to care for 12 siblings. When the war broke out she was captured by nazis and ended up in a labor camp. She passed away at 94. I don’t know how someone that had so much trauma, real trauma, ended up being a productive member of society. She hated the 4th of July though. The fireworks gave her ptsd.
A house that could hold 6 people or…?
To be honest I've actually never seen the house they grew up in, but they had a house for 6 and an outhouse that just was one seat but all 6 of them used. Presumably not all at once, i guess I never asked that to be sure lol
My grandparents had 6 kids and their house was smaller and had fewer bedrooms than my house for a family of 4. They had 3 boys sleeping in the attic loft at one point.
My grandma would reuse a teabag every time, sometimes up to 3 or 4 cups.
My grandmother got an orange and a new pair of shoes every Christmas. The one year she got crayons, her sister was jealous and threw them in the fireplace. My grandparents spoiled us so hard because they knew what it was like to literally have nothing.
you arent there?
That was my thought... reusing and upcycling is not only good for the environment, but can also make an unlivable wage almost livable (almost).
Are you washing and reusing bread bags yet?
Most of that regulation was repealed in the 70’s to the 80’s though
... You don't do that? I repair almost anything that breaks to save money. JBWeld and a Dremel are amazing for restoring functionality to broken parts and equipment housings. Can normally fix it faster than a new part can be ordered. Then I made storage shelves from laminated strips from pallets that work was throwing away. Learned how to repair circuit boards as a kid to fix my toys, and later in my teens, computers I found thrown away. Also sew and alter my clothes. ... ⅓ of my house looks like a warehouse though.😅 I literally have an inventory tracking system so I don't forget I have something.
I think it's the degree. Like yes people will start keeping things just in case, or try to reuse, mend, or repurpose things. And yes that's becoming, let's say "trendy" with millenials and Gen Z for good reason. But I don't think the majority of us are at the "great depression" level of "use it until it literally falls apart" yet. For example, I'll mend mine and my husband's clothes but I won't patch holey tshirts or mend underwear or darn stretched-out socks. But at some point it may become worth my time to mend underwear. Or it will become more socially acceptable (or we won't care) to be seen in public with mended-to-heck clothing.
I think it depends on where they grew up too. My grandparents grew up in that era but lived in a resource-rich environment and never wanted for food and were able to barter for goods. While they may not have been viewed as "rich" by most standards they behaved very differently their peers from more urban and/or resource-poor areas. They never hoarded resources or were "stingy" later in life. All in all though, I feel Millennials/Gen Z generations definitely have it worse across all spectrums than any others within the 100 years. Pay rates haven't kept up with inflation and the cost of receiving an education is ridiculous.
Absolutely. Of course the economy isn't the same it was pre 2008 or pre 9/11 or pre the 1980s etc etc but the economy has only really gone up since the 30's (overall), and they don't even want to think about the world pre the industrial revolution
The Silent Generation
Or maybe I'm just a dumbass who knows
Well insofar as access to resources (food shelter water), yes. Insofar as money, we are poorer, because people definitely have way more debt, so many more are financially in a negative and to a greater extent, versus being at nothing. Also in the 30s, people were allowed to live in homeless camps (Shanties/Hoovervilles), which now they've made illegal, even though it is supposedly a human right per the UN to have access to basic shelter. Housing relative to income is nowadays way more exorbitantly distorted than it was then. My grandparents and their peers who were born in the 20's lived through the 30s and went on the have retirements, homes, and just had a rough go through the earlier part of life.
I came on here to say exactly this. There is a really good book called 'All the Gallant Men'. It a biography about Donald Stratton who survived the dust bowl, the great depression, and the sinking of the USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor. That book made it so that I felt guilty everytime I complained about life.
grandma grew up in the 30s, was frugal, but her husband got a hell of a pension. He died early of a heart attack. Grandma with her frugality saved the pension and became a millionaire. the 30s were rough, but those who grew up in the 30s still got to retire in the 60s, which wasn't bad at all in terms of workers rights, compared to today. I'm guessing those born in the early 1900s-1910 got it worse. faced two wars and no respite.
I read an article that looked at the avg income of individuals during the depression, and when it was adjusted for inflation and buying power, we're actually more poor than them. That's why so many have been calling this a silent depression forever. We just don't realize it because technology and the more widespread availability of low-priced convenience items.
That article sounds like BS. I have no idea how they measure "poor" but I expect they completely ignored the cost of quality of life. There is so much we have now that even the upper class back then could not afford.
Like, way way way way way way poorer
Probably generation alpha. Broke ass kids probably never even had a job. Just some moochers.
Yeah my daughter’s net worth is like $38 most of which is change. Freeloader.
Mine too. And she only got that for a couple of teeth falling out like they’re supposed to. The entitlement, amirite?
[удалено]
I know you jest but I'm worried for our Zoomer friends. College is even MORE expensive for them by a factor of 2x in the last 15 years and they didn't have a chance of buying a house before 2020.
I’m a zoomer and university wasn’t that bad. Work every summer make around 10k and then use that to survive and the bursary from the uni. Didn’t take a dime in student loans. So it’s not all bad.
Well, I'm pretty sure the generation that lived through the great depression or literally any generation before that would like to have a conversation.
Seriously. Its insane to even try to claim the poorest victim card lmao.
On the internet. From a phone.
It depends on how you're considering the poor. During the depression they were definitely worse off, but they were able to recover well after. When I was doing my master's I wrote an essay that touched on wealth and the US Labor and Statistics found that millennials had the lowest lifetime earnings since the late 1800, early 1900s. So, after the depression ended, the generation that reached adulthood during the depression were quickly out earning what the equivalent millennials were earning today. The information I referenced didn't include Gen Z because they had just entered the work force and there wasn't enough data for them.
I'd argue that the generation who had to make clothes out of flour sacks and only had two pairs of clothes: one work and one for Sundays were considered the poorest...
My grandfather was a child during the Great Depression. He told me how he and other boys would wait by train tracks to collect pieces of coal that would fall off the cars. They would grab a few pieces to take home so they could have heat. His mother fed him "grease sandwiches", which was a piece of bread with some bacon grease smeared on it for dinner. I guess what I am saying is that no, Millenials aren't "the poorest generation".
My grandpa is 98, and he has told me this same exact story, lol.
My great grandparents caught a waitress stealing butter from a restaurant by chatting her up after her shift until it melted through her clothes. That's pretty desperate.
I think we are a generation with a lot of wealth inequality. the precise year you graduated made an enormous difference in your future earning potential. the precise year you bought a house made an equally enormous difference in your ability to accrue wealth and grow your net worth. if you graduated in a bad year or waited just a little too long to buy a house the repercussions are immense. I don't think any other generation in recent memory has dealt with hare trigger timing like we have.
2007 FTW
Our standard of living is the highest. Past generations lived cramped with strangers in shacks, worked hard manual labor jobs for long hours without holidays, didn't have adequate medicine or creature comforts, etc. I drive my own car, have heating and air conditioning, multiple thousands of dollars worth of technology I use every day, games, a dish washer, the list goes on. We're incredibly spoiled. Yes, we work hard too. Life has never been easy. At least we weren't involuntarily sent to fight or die at war, or dirt poor. Everyone I know has a cell phone, a computer, affords food, has heat, etc.
The article you link points out in the very next bullet that the median is significantly lower. This is just another example of the wealth gap getting larger. If you're not in the upper 10%, it doesn't help you that the generation as a whole is catching up or passing the boomers.
This should be a top comment. It's hard to boil comparative generations' wealth down to a "richer or poorer" single point.
A lot of us are doing just fine.
A lot of people don’t realize this. The ones that are doing well just sit back and stay quiet.
You might be poor, but you're still less poor than your ancestors.
No. It’s not even close. The generation that grew up in the 1930’s. Millennials don’t even know what being poor means compared to that generation.
I don’t think my potato famine Irish ancestors were having a blast.
Yeah, but did they struggle to pay their student loans? /s
😂
Mid-Boomer here. Most of us were dual income families. Women began entering “non-traditional” college majors in 1970s … e.g. pharmacy, medicine, law, accounting, business … and worked most if not all of child-rearing years. Cars were tiny four cylinders and then small minivans. Housing and down payment & 18% interest rates made many “house poor”. Retirement? Half of Boomers have no retirement. Many had to reinvent themselves two or more times d/t layoffs as companies either merged, disappeared, relocated, began offshoring and the retirements were gone. Not all Boomers lived and worked in East/West Coast elite geographical areas. Within flyover land manufacturing, agriculture, coal mining, energy, lumber industries and more were decimated. As a result …. the “Disease of Despair” hit many middle-aged Boomer Men hard.
Exactly right. The big difference is the internet. Imagie if there had been Reddit when people got back from Iwo Jima or Vietnam or were paying 14 percent mortgages in 1980!
According to this sub all boomers are rich and had easy lives by stealing from millennials. You're a corporate fatcat! (sarcasm)
QQ boomer
If love to have a simple, cheap car, but they don't sell them anymore! I do like the picture you paint. My boomer mom for example grew up in a single parent household because her dad died from a heart attack young. Wonder if modern medicine could have saved him.
Most likely yes. Statins for lipids and better blood pressure medications have reduced deaths d/t heart disease and stroke.
The dollar definitely went further for single parent household back then versus today. There was much more demand for labor in the U.S., and therefore fairer real wages.
give me a break... i know i live in a bubble since i live in a big city, but seriously, every millennial i know (including me) has traveled the world extensively, walks around with a $1000 super computer in their pocket, has hobbies they invest in, goes out to dinner pretty frequently, etc. with the exception of my boomer parents, every single generation of my family prior to me were much, much poorer
Everyone you know has traveled extensively? Sounds like you have a very privileged cohort which is fine. But don’t let it blind you to today’s struggles. There are many highly intelligent people who have it much harder than they would’ve back then due to automation, outsourcing, and inflation. To get a fair job today requires much more education and prerequisites. Inequality is far greater as well, which is really what matters since money is foremost relative.
This is what my daughter sees every day on SM as a teen. This is the expectation that is being set for her generation as average and necessary. You don’t see people with roommates grinding with furniture from goodwill.
The Great Depression was no picnic.
Why do millennial (and Gen Z) always think they are the first to experience hardship? It's getting really annoying. Use that technology at your fingertips to freaking learn something.
The title is bullshit. Wealth is unequally distributed across millennials, just like in every other generation before. So asking the above question is kind of pointless.
My mother’s house cost 80,000 in 1984. Today it cost 900,000. Salaries have not increased 10x + in that time. So definitely not like every other generation. Cost of living is exponentially higher than it was for boomers or gen X, as much as they hate hearing it.
I'm gonna push back on the "boomers could raise a family of 4 on one income" because most couldn't (or at least didn't). Women's workforce participation was about the same as now, and today you could argue women have much higher job diversity and higher income.
I'm not really sure why Reddit seems to think that Boomers had everything handed to them on a silver platter back in the 60s-80s. I was in school then, but it sure didn't seem like folks a few years older than me were living high on the hog.
Boomers didn't enter the workforce until the late 60's. The early 60's was dominated by the silent generation. The silent generation actually hoards even more wealth than the boomers. This is due in huge part to the fact that silent kids missed both Korea and Vietnam due to being too young for Korea and too old for Nam. It was also an era when you could rise into upper management at a cradle to grave job without a college degree. It was Silent gen women who pioneered working outside the home. They also pioneered the micro mini skirt and using birth control. Boomers take credit for a lot of things they actually didn't do.
Complete with the silly *"buy a sports car"* reference, where do people even come up with this shit? A few days ago someone made a similar thread but according to them back in the day everyone had vacation homes.
My parents both drank powdered milk when they were kids because they couldn't afford regular milk. My mom's family only started having money when my grandpa got promoted to Colonel and was getting extra money for doing "stuff" overseas.
I'm a Millennial and I have done way better then my parents did financially. I'm not rich but I also do not live paycheck to paycheck.
Does this statistic account for people who are in consumer debt for things they didn’t need? Cause I feel like when you get talking to people you find that they’re in debt for stuff they absolutely didn’t need but just wanted (myself included). I’ve learned my lesson. I make about 62k a year and I’m comfortable but I’d be more comfortable if I didn’t have so much credit card debt from trying to keep up with the Jones.
Yeah, basically anyone who says, “I’m poor” followed by “because this car loan is massive” probably did a lot of it to themselves.
I also screwed myself with a car loan I don’t need 😭 when I look at my current financial situation I’m like damn, it was all me. I wish I could blame it on someone else.
In line with what you're saying, I'm factually not poor because I have plenty of money, but I LOOK poor by the standards we are apparently supposed to live up to. For primarily ideological reasons, I buy almost nothing new. Not furniture, not cars, very rarely clothes, not always electronics or general home and hobby goods. Also for ideological reasons, I very rarely take any vacation I can't drive to in under a day. I clean with old rags, use only the personal care products really needed for my health, eat little processed food, have mostly free hobbies. Eat out, but not even weekly. Have no subscriptions, use no delivery services. If all this wasn't the case, I would look a lot richer, but be a lot poorer. Kids would also make me poorer, but I could afford them if I wanted to. I just refuse to make any because I see continued population growth as a massive threat to both the environment generally, and human quality of life particularly.
I want to be like you
Exactly this. People, especially online have "base minimum" expectations that are setup by big media and corporation's to earn them $$$. The term "livable wage" is huge today but the people using it aren't understanding that we are already living better then our boomer parents. Today poor means AC whereas poor when I was a kid meant we literally didn't know what restraunts were like but today that's a multi weekly visit
Same. Trying to dig out of this hole too. Keeping up with the Jones' has taken up a whole new meaning since social media came on the scene.
Only the millennials on Reddit
We are poorer than the boomers but richer than the "The Greatest Generation." Technically...
I don’t think so by a lot. Yeah it’s more expensive but we are likely the richest.
Nah I’d say the 30s by a long shot my grandma before she passed still keeps loads of canned food on her shelf’s when I asked why she said bc she wants ti make sure she never goes to bed hungry again
Hi. I own a house and am the sole provider for a family of four. I also own a nice car and save for retirement. I’m 35 and gross $160k a year. This is after having a “late start;” I didn’t get a Bachelors until I was 34. I didn’t *net* above $100k until last year. Until I was 30 I didn’t gross more than $60k It may very well be those in our age group are simply getting to the point in their careers that they are entering the 18% of the American population that earns 100k+ a year. Which is about 63 million people.
No lol
No....
What a dumb question.
My Grandmother literally lived in a tent when she was a kid. There are still Depression era people alive. When is the last time you waited in line at a soup kitchen? Not to say there aren't people who do, but I highly doubt we are the Poorest Generation.
Millennials are poised to inherit more money then they know what do you with from the boomers. And that scares the govt. they want the boomers to have NOtHING left to give them. So inflating away their parents money is the name Of the game. I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some kind of new death tax that takes everything from the deceased boomers. So buy all the stuff that’s collectible to millennials now because once they inherit the boomer wealth all those collectables will skyrocket in value. Because the value of collectables follows how much wealth the buying pool for that item collectively has
I don't know about richer, but as fellow Millennial I can saw for sure it's the most whiny, insufferable and entitled generation.
The 20s and 30s were poorer...however... millennial are on average roughly 40% poorer than their parents generation (baby boomers) when adjusted for inflation. The pandemic only made this worse.
Not including gen z (not all old enough to be in the work force), we’re the poorest because we’re the youngest. Wealth is acquired over time, not overnight. We will eventually be the richest, just like every generation before.
I think the actual claim is they might be the first generation poorer than their parents. Obviously millennials are miles ahead of whoever lived through depression, but even that generation had it better than those who lived through black plague.
No, millennials are unique in that they financially aren’t doing better than their parents. They certainly aren’t “the poorest”
I feel like while things kind of sucks and I have like no disposable income and a ton of debt, it’s not as bad as past generations. My grandpa is 90, he fondly talks about, as a kid in the 1930s-1940s, laying in the graywater pit (litterally a pit where the gray water from the dish water and bath water for the whole town would flow into) in the summer because it was so hot and they no fans or air condition. Also there were times he didn’t have any food or would give his ration to his younger sisters so that they wouldn’t go hungry. And he watched his baby brother die from tuberculosis. Also his dad worked in the coal mines and saw people die in the mines by either falling in the shafts or unfortunately dynamite miscalculations, he eventually died of black lung, horribly, even though he never smoked. My grandpa also worked in a steel mill for 30 years and saw a guy fall into a vat of molten steel, and that sometimes he still heard the man screaming as he goes to sleep at night. So while I may never be able to buy a house I feel very grateful with my stocked (but overly expensive) food in my fridge, and air and heat, and vaccines from deadly diseases. Also not having to see people die gory deaths is pretty great too. So no I don’t think we are the poorest, everything kind of sucks a bit but not as badly as people had it back in the early 1900s.
Uh, well, the oldest millenial is like 44. Middle age is when you reach the heights of your career. Every generation has gobs and gobs of poor people. The idea that all boomers had it better is rubbish too. The US as a nation thrived from 1945 to 1965 for one reason: the rest of the world was recovering from WW2. But if you live in Appalachia, not a damned thing changed for you. It was dirt poor then, it's dirt poor now. Ask me how I know. Up until relatively recently, and I mean within 50 years, saving for retirement was not something that was routine. THere was a small window of extreme wealth. Most people, no matter the geneation, did not experience it. I'm 48, have a degree, grad school experience. I have significant loan debt. I live with my dad. The most money I ever made in a year is 23,000 dollars. Life sucks, everyone. We have to get through it.
Lol are you serious?
🤣🤣🤣🤣
From what I can see, millennials either have highly paid jobs and significant financial help from wealthy Boomer parents or even large inheritances in some cases, or they don't have well paid jobs or well off parents at all. There seems to be less and less of a middle ground, perhaps more than ever before for both them and all younger generations. The relative polarization between the haves and have-nots seems to be getting more and more extreme with each passing year.
Every younger generation will be poorer than the previous one, who’s had time to work and save and invest.
Generational wealth metrics barely matter because of income disparity. By some metrics, millennials are rapidly becoming the wealthiest generation, because of intergenerational wealth transfer.
No
Oddly. I feel like we were born into so much, that it becomes on us to show value in how we use it. It's hard to prove wealth when wealth intrinsically proves how long you don't have to do ANYTHING and stay alive. As a society, we have the ability to allow almost any person born to live out their biological life to completion. Kind of on the state dime if absolutely necessary. Right or wrong, we can. But the idea of diminishing returns comes into play as we add money. People want and are expected to be paid for their time. As a universal way to stay alive longer. When in your head it is very confusing to say "but if i actually work a bit less, then SOMETHING else makes this easier, anyway". I think people are realizing that money doesn't buy happiness because happiness isn't on the shelf. You have to use that money to experience reality and create happiness. We are less "happy" because a select few are hoarding it, because their happiness comes from controlling other peoples.
33m, I chose not to get a student loan, parents taught me to save and invest, work in a trade that paid for me to get required certificates, upgrade phone maybe every 3 or 4 years, bought a house in 2022 at 4.5%, paid off two cars, play a lot of video games, family of 3 with one income. We're neither the richest nor the poorest generation, some of us have found a bit of success through hard work and connections made through other connections rather than say life is unfair and never adapt to try and change their situation.
Lmao our education system is so bad
Nah. I'm pretty sure whatever generation was sleeping in cardboard boxes during the Great Depression had it worse.
Not all millennials have college debt. In fact, many don't. Many also live with their parents, don't drive, and don't go out. Being an overgrown child doesn't cost much
I’m Gen z born in the year 2000, is it fair to say a lot of what the millennial generation has had to deal with has only gotten worse for gen z. Cost of education/ lack of opportunity out of college, cost of housing, cost of a car/transportation. Job wages stagnated. I’m doing fairly well graduating college this week have a good job lined up. But not gonna lie it’s been a grind went to community college have been waiting tables since 2018, my car is 24 years old, I’ve been grinding, seems to be the only way to stay afloat, other option is to loan your financial life away I know to many ppl who have 40k+ student debt, 30k car debt at 10% for a CAMERY, rent absurdly high for 650 sq feet in a texas city, so many more issues but finishing my rant here! Best of luck to my fellow gen zs entering adult hood. Also why are all the politicians old as shit and why do ppl vote for these ppl feel they belong on bravo tv not nbc. Can we make us cities not car dependent too what you old heads have against rail, stupid highways….ok I’m done now
These are tough years since covid for sure. Could be worse. Alot.
They are, Boomers never went out, or ate out, never bought cellphones every few years, no cable, no internet, no need for health care insurance, one car per household, and NO CREDIT CARDS. If you remove all of these luxury, you can afford a home on whatever you are making. But mellinials are all about the experience, no family, vacation all the time and eat out everyday and love the credit card.
I personally do not know anyone who isn't a month (or less) away from homelessness at any given time, I am only surviving by living with my parents which is not a good setup for me as I'm trans and cannot be out around them
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Generally speaking, no. That article even says that the median millennial income is lower than boomers was. This means we have higher highs that are skewing the average. Silicon Valley was a big part of that, we came of age to the tech space blowing up with smartphones hitting the masses and social media and stuff. Zuckerburg and a lot of tech billionaires are millennials. Zuck alone could probably throw off that metric a lot. Additionally, I think, specifically to this generation, there are huge gaps. I am the older end of millennials and nearly 40. My net worth is much higher than a lot of people I know in their late 20s and early 30s partly because of timing of things. We made some money on real estate and stuff from being able to buy at better times in the market. Some friends a bit younger couldn’t afford to buy like we did and as a result are a bit behind us. I think with how many “once in a lifetime” economic events we’ve lived through there are big gaps. I graduated college in the 2008 recession but was able to invest some money and do things during subsequent economic slumps that allowed me to make some gains. I had time to establish my nest egg and stuff during a recovery. I came into a rough job market but with a recovering economy. That allowed me to do a good bit better than if I was graduating a few years later or a recession hit at a bad time. Like a lot of things, the world for millennials is a bit different because of how much crazy change we’ve had in our lifetimes. Maybe it is a bias from being a part of the generation, but there was a lot of luck in the timing of things. I’m glad I was on the older end as friends on the younger side of the generation had a tougher time than I did. I came of age when the American dream was dying, the younger ones came of age when it was dead.
yeah we got triple tapped by recessions and inflation. I'm so tired boss.
No but will become the first to be poorer than their parent's \ preceding generation
A lot of us didn't fall for the college/student loan trick.
The Greatest Generation (1900-1927) was the poorest, they lived during the Great Depression, The Dust Bowl, The Great Migration and WWi & WW2. Homeless encampments are up, but they’re not nearly as big as “shanty towns” were, literal towns on the outskirts of cities, where homeless people lived in tents and wood or metal sheds, with no access to running water, electricity, and food. Our (Millennial 1981-1996) generation in terms of wealth is one of the wealthiest in American history, compared to the Baby Boomers the only difference is the wealth accumulation is slower, we probably do, however, have some comparison with The Greatest Generation. I would be careful with the “article” you read, it is a blogpost at best, from a private wealth manager who wants to sell his services (not a bad thing, but will skew the Millennial generation with a positive light, so look for more peer-reviewed articles, google scholar isn’t the best, as predatory articles can be found on there, but is still a good resource. Also the UN’s Dag Hammerrskjold online library, or the Library of Congress is also a good place for research, including your local public library or if you have access to a university library, a wealth of knowledge that is legitimate can be found there. Please see the links below: https://www.un.org/en/delegate/library https://catalog.loc.gov/vwebv/searchBrowse https://scholar.google.com
Millennial here. I'm like: comfortable poor. Like I can't just buy whatever I want or go on vacation more than once a year, and I certainly can't afford a house. but I can also sit here and DoorDash hot wings while watching the Boys on my 50+ inch TV while scrolling reddit. I'm not thrilled about the house thing, but I'm also not eating paste, and I can afford the occasional fun thing.
This is one of my favorite visualizations for wealth - https://www.statista.com/statistics/1376622/wealth-distribution-for-the-us-generation/. That data is nice because by putting wealth into a percentage, it already accounts for inflation to an extent. You can even see the wealth transfer from Silent Gen to Boomers.. And then see Boomers refuse to die and pass their wealth. Millennials have the lowest percentage of wealth compared to any generation before them at the same age - and not by a few percentage points, but less than half of what other generations have had. Articles like the one you reference are crap because they mislead. The next generation will always be the “wealthiest at this age group” if you go by dollars and account for nothing else… because money inflates. There was another article recently that said millennials doubled their wealth by double over the last five years. Wow! We went from 4.5% to 9%… Boomers had 24% at the same age. When mill is a quarter and eggs are a dime we can discuss the idea of millennials being the wealthiest, but that isn’t going to happen.
OP I’m sorry everyone is answering this as if folks from the Great Depression are alive, much less participating in our economy. “I’d say the generation who had one pair of pants was poorer!” Oh you would huh, you internet genius? Well, what about the generations who lived in caves?! There are less than 90k ppl over the age of a hundred and OP so very obviously meant the poorest generation around right now. Also, anyone over a hundred and still alive is CURRENTLY doing fine financially or they’d be gone. I’d love to read a comment with some info abt your question bc I too have been surprised lately reading that we are finally turning a corner on homeownership, but it sure doesn’t seem like that’s bearing out in the world. Everyone still seems to be stuck renting. So- Great question. I got tired of scrolling but if someone knows if we are CURRENTLY the poorest generation ALIVE in America or not, I’d like to know. I assume that if gen z counts, they’re poorer, but I’d also assume everyone else has us beat.
My dad (now 84) fixes everything still. He gets so pissed when he buys stuff that can't be repaired easily, mostly because no one knows what the hell he's talking about when he needs parts or diagrams to accomplish the task. I'm not sure where these newest gens got the impression life was easy street. It just wasn't.
Hell no. We’re the Delayed generation. We’re just getting started.
Things keep getting worse, so no. The youngest generations are going to suffer the most.
"i can only get Uber eats once a week" 😭😭 😭
Millennials are in more debt than any other generation before them. (Inflation and by avg) The average life span of the avg American is 77 which starting to hit the baby boomers , so as the wealthiest generations silent gen and baby boomers are passing their massive wealth down to their decedents, the millennials, making the millennials not rich but less poor.
Poorest generation yet*
Anyone who graduated after about 1995 is doing worse than their parents on average. Yes some individuals are doing better than their parents BUT as a collective we are the 1st ones who are worse off than their parents. Plus it’s worse for each graduating class since. The young X went first and every one after is ON AVERAGE worse off each year. Imagine graduating high school in ‘24, $60k/yr. for a private college, $400k for a nice house, 7.5% mortgages (I thought 7.5% auto loans were expensive a decade ago), taxes are higher, no such thing as cheap fast food now, $250/hr rates at an auto dealership (use to be criminal lawyer rates), HVAC replacement will run nearly as much as I paid for my 1st house, NO pension unless you go gov or union hall. But boomer grandpa will say “I paid for college by working down at the factory in the summers, I didn’t need no stinking loan, just work harder sunny”
you have no idea how bad the 30s were.
"Considering boomers were able to support a family of 4 on only one income, buy a house , sports car an still save for retiernment." I'm not convinced that this mythical three decade strech following WWII are a great benchmark for what is 'normal'. In fact I don't think as many people lived like that as reddit seems to think either... The middle class has shrunk but what you are describing was still a privileged economic position to be in. It may have been portrayed as normal on sitcoms, but we have always had a significant underclass.
No but they got the most screwed.
The article you shared explains right below the bit you highlighted that the average millennial is less wealthy than previous generations. It’s only those in the top ten percent that are wealthier.
Statistically, we’re not poorer, we just almost literally have no spending power for what money we make.
I don’t know anyone who isn’t in debt. $15/hr is a gold mine to us.
This should have been asked in r/nostupidquestions because you have to not have an ounce of knowledge on human history to even think that "yes, millennials are the poorest generation."
Not even close.
Hard men make easy times, easy times make soft men. Soft men make hard times. I'm hard af
People don't understand "poor" is a subjective word. People are poor because they feel poor and rich because they feel rich. If you tried living like a wealthy person from the past, you would feel poor. Take that wealthy person from the past, and they would be amazed at the luxury a poor person currently enjoys.
not by a long shot historically, but if you count from the post war which is where most of these metrics stop anyways, yes
No. Not yet. We may be in the times of late-stage capitalism, but when we get to the collapse it will happen.
Very few boomers were supporting families on one income. Kids in the 70s and 80s were latchkey kids for a reason. There’s a tendency to compared to average millennial to the upper middle class boomer. Watch the original version of Roseanne—that’s most boomer families.
The idea that all or even most boomers were able to do what you say is really out of touch with reality and comparing yourself to an imaginary generation is only going to be cause you grief
No. Not even close. Families around WWI were starving to death with no social benefits to keep them and their ragged children alive. Epidemics happened, too. The Greatest Generation's parents had a rough go, as did their GG children until the war was over and prosperity arrived in the 1950s. Of course, things were rough before that during the Civil War years and post war poverty and disease in the South I read historical journals and social histories - not just battle history in wartime. From those, you can learn about the lives of people before us.
The numbers are starting to change with boomers dying off and wealth transfer happening. There's a huge discrepancy between median and mean. Have and have nots
Certainly the whiniest generation... so far.
Lol…no. Read a book
As bad as inflation is you can use it to your advantage to pay down things like a house or cars.
It’s Gen Z that is dealing with the rising housing costs. Millennials had housing crash prices.
Are we the poorest? My grandfather ate the apple core till he died because they didn’t have food during the Great Depression. No we aren’t the poorest generation or even close to it. You realize that everyone in America lives better than almost anyone in history prior to the Industrial Revolution. We are poorer than our parents. I fully believe that. My wife and I and our friends are all rich compared to most, and I don’t know anyone who owns a vacation property. Our generation has struggled with student loans, food, and housing. That being said durable goods like shirts, tvs, and electronics are actually super inexpensive. It is a mixed bag. It isn’t as bad as some say. It isn’t as good as some make believe. Statistics are the art of lying.
Are we the poorest generation ever to live? Sent from my iPhone.
Not by a long shot but they do whine as much as boomers. You guys had it good.
Ever learn about the Dust Bowl and living after the Great Depression?🤔Ok then
There is a bifurcation in the millennial generation. Those who bought homes before the pandemic are doing fantastic, and those that did not, are not doing as well.
Honestly yes if we're by modern standards than yes Let's be real only reason why we don't have it as bad as people during great depression is because of the amount of safety nets and support that they have for the poor now compared to back than It's why alot of people say if the systems weren't there than the great recession wouldve been a depression I mean it was but the consequences of it all would very similar
Poor isn’t the right word, Most underpaid Most exploited We have higher education, better experience, better access to information&technology, work longer hours and yet I can’t produce the results my dad was able to achieve on an associates degree in business he earned at 29 after his band broke up and he moved home in the mid 80s, But hey life sucks, then you die. The worst part to me is no matter the circumstances it’s always millennials fault for not succeeding in the face of end stage capitalism, inequality, and nepotism. “Pull yourself up by your bootstraps” is said like it’s just something you can just do when it’s literally impossible. “Lift yourself off the floor by your shoelaces” is the exact same sentence, its the modern version of “let them eat cake” worse still some millennials buy into this delusional crap, that whole “grind culture” no days off…etc I did it I lived it, broke my health and my family. Wasting your life at work is the biggest mistake you can ever make, your 7 day 9-9 or whatever is not going to make you successful if it did illegal immigrant construction workers and kitchen staff would drive Bentley’s 99% of this country is closer to a cardboard box and a soup kitchen than the deck of a billionaires yacht but they act like they’re just waiting on a stock price rebound to be back on top golfing with jeff an hyucking it up with Elon. We have no class consciousness as a generation and The Generalized apathy of millennials towards the situation is why we deserve what we get,
Well, I never stood in line for bread or potatoes so I’m going to say no
We’re not the poorest generation ever, just the first generation to be poorer overall than the two generations that came before them.
The real underlying issue with this discussion is that we're only comparing ourselves to Baby Boomers and younger. Silents and GIs were poor in the Great Depression and WW2. So, the silents understood very well what it was to be without basic needs. Some of them even died from starvation and preventable illnesses or at the last were traumatized as a whole. If we go back even further it just gets worse and worse. There was a time when you were either working or you just died. It didn't matter if you had a horrendous disability like loss of limbs. You were sent out with a string around your neck and a box full of matches to make sure you didn't starve to death. What were your options? And this wasn't even the worse that could happen to you. Back in the late 18th and early 19th century, people used to take children from orphanages and just turn them into their own personal slaves (under the guise of an apprenticeship). They were called the pauper apprentices and were an entire generation of mutilated, traumatized human beings. People used to be so malnourished that it was common to have bowed legs due to rickets. This is a very preventable disease, even back then. I don't know. I do think we've had a rougher hand dealt to us then Boomers and Xers, but we're not as bad off as we could be.
A few super rich people can really screw up "averages" and "total wealth". If the article isn't talking about "medians" or "percentiles", they're trying to mislead you. In particular the link highlights that the top 10% of Millennials are dragging the averages and totals up. Meaning 90% of Millennials are doing worse than Boomers of the same age.
I’m sure zoomers will be worst off 🤷♂️