See! You’re not THAT poor. Just give it another few decades!
Yeah i earn more than my parents combined for my entire childhood but guess what gobbled that shit right up.
The house i grew up in cost $20,000.
The one my husband and i bought cost $1,000,000.
Both 3 bedroom postwars in slightly dodgy neighbourhoods yaaay inflation
For the curious: $1,000AUD in 1980 is equivalent in purchasing power to about $5,125.00 today, an increase of $4,125.00 over 44 years. The Australian dollar had an average inflation rate of 3.78% per year between 1980 and today, producing a cumulative price increase of 412.50%.
This means that today’s prices are 5.13 times as high as average prices since 1980, according to the Bureau of Statistics consumer price index. A dollar today only buys 19.512% of what it could buy back then.
Oh nice, you found 1 family that this is relevant for. Now call that family “all millennials”! Proper journalism right here.
I’ve read the article. It goes into detail in the stats across the entire generation. It talks about the big rise in both median and average household wealth for millennials between 2019 and 2022. It also acknowledges that the gap between 20th percentile and 80th percentile for millennials has grown to the largest in history for any generation.
It’s the rise in house prices and the stock market. For millennials who already owned that stuff before the pandemic, and in a position to take advantage of the huge salary gains from the great resignation, the last 5 years have been a financial boon.
It’s also just math working. The older millennials should be millionaires or close to it in order to be on track for retirement. A 401k is going to make people look wealthier than a pension.
Alright, cool. That’s quite well and good, then.
Still though, is this perhaps how the article starts off? If so, it might still be a bit misleading for those who don’t read all the way through. Not everyone is as thorough as you. ❤️
Have to admit I am a millennial who signed up to buy an apartment just as the pandemic started and we had just had our first baby. It was a bit sweaty there for a second, but I was very fortunate to land a job that pays very well. But yeah, it was hard for a bit. Was out of work for 9 months during 2022. Got through some good games in my Steam library though! 🙃
Yeah it’s a somewhat standard reporting structure, of an intro paragraph about the stat, 4 paragraphs about a specific person’s journey from unemployed college grad living with parents and mowing lawns for extra cash to becoming a CFO in the span of 15 years, and then a longer description of what the stats show, then placement of those stats in context comparing to Gen X and Boomers, and important caveats in what the stats actually mean (unclear whether this makes millennials better off when they’re expected to face higher lifetime costs on housing and healthcare). Then it dives back into the anecdotes, including how most rich millennials perceive the fragility of their own financial position.
Here’s an archive.is link:
https://archive.is/Gr6qG
Well, they did technically just say “millennials”.
They omitted the modifier “a tiny fraction of”, but that’s assumed
Strong disagree. When someone says “humans”, does that also imply “a tiny fraction of”? I think that this quantifier is very significant, and needs to be included. Otherwise it becomes misleading.
My highschool civics teacher, who once told the class that everyone becomes more conservative with age and income, will be pinning this to the wall of the classroom.
I don’t understand this. The older I get, the more angry I get at the system and want to tear it down 🤔
He’s a boomer and his brother is a small business owner. Their only hardships have come from petty disputes with the township over signage. This same guy, without any irony, said that the only unions we still need anymore are teacher’s unions. Surprised that bootlicker didn’t include police unions.
Don’t ever let anyone tell you public schools teach liberalism. This happened while the science teachers would tiptoe around outright saying that climate change was real.
Translation: Please no revolution.
Partner and I are millinials, household income ~200K, one child, excellent credit, no debt. Partner’s standards are a tad high but I’m unusually spartan with some minor capital expenditures, so I feel we balance out.
I grew up middle class and on paper we put my parents to shame, nevertheless they built a huge house, had three kids, five cars, fed the family… while my partner and I struggle to find a home while paying for one kid.
Something doesn’t add up.
That said I do wonder if it would basically be impossible to top the boomers on wealth and cost of living. Think back before WWII and how hard was it on the average joe, probably a lot harder than we want to admit. The boomers mighta hit the jackpot and millennials are stuck basically with the expectation that we should do that well while also footing the bill for all of the “progress” they have made since the 60’s.
Don’t get me wrong, there has been real progress but there has been a lot of “progress” in the wrong directions as well, in some cases 180°. Millennials have been paying for it our whole lives, and I don’t think we are ever going to really come out ahead, we’ll bust our asses to break even but honestly I’m okay with that if it sets our children up to have a better life.
https://www.in2013dollars.com/
Prepare to get mad
That makes sense. I plugged in what I think my dad was making in 95 and it was quite a bit more than I’m making now. Explains the big house, kids, etc.
ლ(ಠ益ಠლ)
Is this the beginning of the framing of “Look how good you have it. You don’t need to murder CEOs.”?
Trump is coming to power again, so the WSJ has to switch back to selling the idea that everything will be okay.
It was already happening. Plenty of people were insulting those complaining about the cost of living, saying things like “What do you mean? The economy is doing fine.” In Canada the finance minister called it a “vibecession”, implying it was all in our heads.
All these people are talking about asset prices while we talk about the cost of living.
When we think cost of living we mostly think about rent and cost of food. The rich don’t pay rent and food is a tiny fraction of their budget, so obviously they don’t complain.
I mean when you get down to it vibes are a major cause of many (usually smaller) recessions. Doesn’t mean he has to be a dick about it tho.
“Look how good everyone is doing. Oh, you’re not doing good? You must be lazy, pull up those boot straps!”
Maybe if we just go around shooting everyone whose better off that ourselves then one day we’ll all be equally poor and miserable.
Brian whatshisface killed more Americans than Bin Laden .
Wasn’t Thompson living in a different house than his wife and on the way to a divorce when he died? That’s not better off, that’s just richer.
Article: https://archive.md/Gr6qG
Basically: got to buy a house early as opposed to most of us ( probably with parents’ help), got lucky on the stock market (because he wasn’t spending everything on rent), and works as a CFO somewhere.
Definitely not in everyone’s reach here.
But maybe that could happen to YOU, so don’t pay too much attention to how much you’re getting screwed, because you’ll totally be a CFO in just a few more years of work!
Hell, I might be a CFO now and I’ve failed to notice! Hold on, let me check… No… No, I’ve just managed to burn a microwave dinner again.
Yup we just need to travel back in time, attend a select private university, have parents who can give us a living space until we save up for a house, and get a job directly into the C-Suite off the networking from that private university. It could totally happen! We don’t need any workers, everyone can be in the boardroom!
and their examples are absurd;
brent royer got a 40% raise when he left one job for another, which is not a common occurence
and andy holmes basically moved back home and got a $90,000 home and flipped it to be worth $300,000 while investing in the stock market.
I bought my house in 2009 and I was really lucky because I wouldn’t have been able to afford one precrash. It was actually cheaper to have a mortgage on a house than rent in many 2 bedroom 800 sq. Ft. apartments in my area. Cheaper than some 1 bedrooms in certain areas around here.
For a few years after 2009 interest rates and prices were low enough much more affordable than now.
My situation then is not the situation most millennials find themselves in just a few short years after and certainly not now, especially since I’m an old ass millinial.
I make 6 times what I did when I bought my house and my means is roughly the same plus a car payment basically. My house is worth much much more than what I mortgaged.
A million back then could have given you a lot, lot more structure and a lot more land. Now it’ll get you around a 2700 sq. ft. house on an 4th of an acre in a neighborhood in my area. Less than an hour down the road you’ll get a shitbox in the hood.
This article is just full of so much shit relative to the normal person. But then that’s not the target audience. It’s just there so Gen Xers and Boomers will continue to subscribe and just drives the “if millinial weren’t stupid and lazy they’d have the same opportunities as we did.” propaganda.
How are you a millennial? I was barely out of highschool in 2009
If millinial births start in 1980 then a millinial could have been 29 in 2009.
1980 is definitely gen x
I was born after 1980. It isn’t definitely generation x because the definition has changed since millennials were called generation y/why. So a person born in 1981 would have been 28 years old in 2009. It doesn’t change anything.
Then you maybe aren’t one? you’re born in the 90s which makes you heavily tail end.
Edit. Sorry I guess you’re millennial out to approx 1996, but still, there are a lot of us born WAY before you. There were millennials in middle school before you were born. Don’t be shitty about it.
I sincerely doubt this asshat is even in the 25% percentile. He’s likely closer to the top 10%.
I mean maybe.
I went to school through 23rd grade and ran a lab at a university for about 7 years. Then I switched jobs and pastures in industry are much greener.
I suspect there are a fair amount of us who spent too much time in school and also on donating our time instead of getting paid for it.
Thankfully as we’re all breaking into our 40s, we have finally reached a point our society expected of us by 25. All it took was the slow deaths of our families.
But our kids are gonna be fucked! Thanks boomer for telling us that should make us feel better like it apparently did your generation.
Big reason I’m not having kids. Oh I’m only starting to feel relatively stable in my late 30s?! Why would I ruin that now, kids cost well over 800k, I can’t afford my house and one kid, let alone 2
Yeah, because their parents are dying and leaving their kids an inheritance.
Y’all got an inheritance? All I got was a funeral bill.
my parents asked me for loans
:: cries in having poor parents ::
Generational wealth is a huge cancer on the system that isn’t talked about enough. You can’t fix wealth inequality with nepo-babies running around.
I’m not going to pretend I didn’t get an inheritance when my dad died. I got a little run down house in a farm town and the balance of a workers comp settlement. There’s a big difference between that and people inheriting enough that they never have to work a day in their lives.
No it isn’t the same, but it is something. I’d sleep a lot better knowing I at least had a run down farmhouse on the way instead of working until I die to pay the rent.
The irony is that I only got that house because my parents divorced and I only got money because my dad was injured badly at work. His bad fortune was my good fortune. I would give it up in a heartbeat if it meant he didn’t have to go through that pain.
Cool now show my parents equivalent you know the person who left highschool, had 3 kids by 30 didn’t work till 50 and still hasa house, car retirement.
mocked at times for being perpetually behind in building wealth
but that was you guys who did that. you know that, right? it’s important to me that you know that.
nice star in your name
First millennials were mocked for wanting part of The American Dream; now Millennials are being mocked for a few of them having a bit of it from the “COVID+inheritance” effect.
The WSJ should be ripped asunder. It is an insult to birds to line birdcages with it.
This is" true" for a (tiny) subset of the Australian population. I know that I straight up sacrificed my 20s to an engineering degree and fifo job and now, at 35 I have comparable material wealth to my dad when he was my age (who was a sheet metal worker in a major city). But even still, the tiny population who did what I did will never get another run at what should’ve been the best 15 years of their life.
I’m unconvinced that my decision was better than the ones my (much poorer) friends who now have families made…
As an American i know exactly what I did wrong to not make comparable money to a tradesman of my parents generation. See I should’ve become an engineer, but instead I became a female engineer, which apparently in my location poses wildly different employment opportunities
what you don’t want to be secretary at an engineering firm? why else would you get an engineering degree? ▔\▁((.′◔_′◔.))▁/▔
We seem to have followed a similar path, but I am quite satisfied. I do have a family though, so maybe that’s what does it….
It sucked making sacrifices in my 20’s, but looking at where I landed, I would not change it if I could. Would you?
Don’t get me wrong; We are nowhere close to rich, but we managed to buy a decent house and not having to wory about the price of groceries and the bills every month, and that’s all we really need.
Early 30’s for reference.
I’m not sure I could be happy if I hadn’t made the choices I made, poverty felt like a prison so I did what was necessary to set myself up. I played the hand I was dealt and I think I played it reasonably well, but if I was born in easier times I’d have definitely made different choices.
I don’t the insinuation that “millennials had the opportunity to achieve wealth like their parents” these type of articles make, it feels dismissive of the sacrificed youth and relationships.
Ahhh they surely saved from not buying avocado on toast.
All they did was stop their once a week Starbucks and they became executives!
Stop it! The avocado toast shit is so old, my wife’s mom repeated it like it was a clever joke two years ago
Spoken like someone that’s a little too attached to their avocado toast.
Guilty as charged. I buy $4 avocados in the winter because I’m rich as fuck.
Not really. I buy them when they’re $1 or less, in season. I’ve never even made avocado toast for real. I cut them in half, score them, then squeeze lime juice on plus salt or Tajin. Scoop them with a spoon. So delicious.
Nice, that sounds delicious. I’m actually guilty of enjoying avocado toast every now and again. There is a “everything bagel” seasoning at Trader Joes that goes super well on top. The funny thing is I had no idea what avocado toast was or that it was a thing until boomers started bitching about it. Sounded good so I tried it lol
That everything bagel seasoning is the shit. Kinder’s is a brand I hadn’t seen until recently and their seasonings are awesome. Not full of sugar which I hate. They’re a bit pricy but they come in big-ass bottles
I’ve had some Kinder’s stuff. Most were really solid.
@scrubbles Let me correct this one for them:
Millennials — long mocked for being locked out of the housing market and postponing major life decisions due to their financial position — are finally starting to inherit wealth.
Well, as long as they’re middle class.
Many princes and princesses of the top 10% already had parents willing to be guarantors on mortgages, or just outright give precious a trust fund.
And working class millennials are already screwed, and will be for the rest of their lives.
But for 40-something middle-class Millennials, their 70-something Boomer parents kicking the bucket is providing an unexpected financial windfall.
I know everyone thinks they are middle class, but If your parents are giving you a trust fund you are probably pretty solidly in the upper class, not middle.
@jrs100000 You’ll note I said “princes and princesses of the top 10%”. As in top 10% of households by income.
Those Millennials are set.
The middle class Millennials are now starting to inherit property.
And the working class Millennials? Screwed.
My parents have been very clear, there is no inheritance. I love them but when we were young adults they bought into the idea that getting college degrees would set us up for life and they decided to coast on their early retirement instead of buying property and getting real assets to hand down.
All Im inheriting is debt…
Are you American? If so, know your rights. Most debt cannot be passed down to surviving children. If the amount of debt exceeds how much their estate is worth, the lenders are not entitled to you paying them. They will try to make you pay, don’t do it! Do not give them even one penny or agree to anything, or you will have then “assumed” the debt and now it is yours.
The exceptions are loans where your name is on them (joint or cosigned iirc) or medical debt in certain states with filial responsibility laws.
With ya there.
after 30 years I thought the house was paid off. Nope. Now I’m in 5 way inheritance battle over scraps waiting to happen.
