Are the Millennials the ones, who have the least money in the bank?  Is it true that Millennials are poorer than what their parents used to be? And stuck in debt?

The other day, I came across an article when I was eating my “quite Millennial” breakfast (cheese bagel with egg and a bit of avocado). The article title was “Meet the typical 40-year-old Millennial, who has $128,000 in debt, is not nearly as wealthy as their parents were … ” from Business Insider.

Err, what are we talking about?

For the record, a Millennial is considered anyone who was born between 1981 and 1996. Also, it seems the oldest Millennial turns 40 this year, which terrifies me twice.

After reading the full article and saving it as a bookmark, I started wondering. How is this possible? Are we the poorest of them all? And if yes, why is it like that? So many questions popped into my head, that I couldn’t answer. I decided to fire up my Google search results to find the truth if the Millennials are really the least wealthy generation. 

I AM IN SHOCK!!! WHERE HAVE I BEEN? 

It seems it’s a trend to write about how poor are Millennials, kind of feeling like our mothers are becoming journalists and trying to punish us through that or is it just me? 

A few articles such as the one by Andrew Van Dam (“The unluckiest generation in U.S. history“) and the one by San Francisco Chronicle provided very good insights with backed data. As you can see there are a plethora of articles talking $#!* about Millennials, and it doesn’t help the situation at all! After reading all of those articles, I was sure that we are just the poorest generation that ever existed. Even though the article was referring to the US Millennials, I feel the rest of us had the same fate. 

The economic crisis of 2008 had a global impact, and just in time before we were off to university. Student loans, universities printing out degrees for everyone, and unpaid internships were a trend. I still remember that I felt super lucky to find a paid internship in London, I was receiving £500 and my dad needed to give me 3 times more the “salary” in order to survive in the urban jungle. 

On top of everything, after we were about to open our wings and find the job of our dreams, a pandemic happens. Well, people call it life, I call it a conspiracy of Baby Boomers…

EPIPHANY 

While I was laying on the couch staring at the ceiling, I was like “We could be the richest though”. The Recession, the economic crisis of 2008 and the Pandemic are not created by us. But yet, we are still standing, fighting through and have only 11% of a gap to cover. 

Millennials might appear to be the poorest, but they are the most educated generation that ever existed, and even with crisis and a pandemic, we are still standing. So, I am refusing to believe that Millennials are the poorest, but we just need some time to catch up. 

Still, struggling with finances? It’s okay, an economic crisis and a pandemic happened, so it’s okay. Start saving today and financial independence is around the corner. 

by A. CH