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70% of Millennials Are Living Paycheck to Paycheck: Survey:
Millennials' wallets are rather skimpy.
Seventy percent of the generation said they're living paycheck to paycheck, according to a survey by PYMNTS and LendingClub, which analyzed economic data and census-balanced surveys of over 28,000 Americans. It found that about 54% of Americans live paycheck to paycheck, but millennials had the biggest broke energy.
By contrast, 40% of baby boomers and seniors said they live paycheck to paycheck, the least of any generation. Living paycheck to paycheck reflects economic needs and wants just as much, if not more than, incomes or wealth levels, according to the report. Age and family status also factor in greatly. This explains why millennials, who turn ages 25 to 40 this year, are struggling.
[...] It doesn't help that millennials have faced one economic challenge after another since the oldest of them graduated into the dismal job market of the 2008 financial crisis. A dozen years later, many are still grappling with the lingering effects of The Great Recession, struggling to build wealth while trying to afford soaring costs for things like housing and healthcare and shouldering the lion's share of America's student-loan debt.
The pandemic threw yet another wrench into their plans by giving them their second recession and second housing crisis before the age of 40. The report acknowledges that the pandemic played a major role in that stretched thin feeling.
[...] It seems, then, that it's a combination of external economic circumstances, a precarious life stage, and some spending habits that are leaving millennials feeling strapped for cash.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @05:58AM (40 children)
Or are they nothing but a bunch of woke little snowflakes?
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:07AM (7 children)
The real question is what the fuck did boomers do that was productive?
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:24AM (1 child)
Well,we tried to elect Bob Dole back in '96... woulda saved the country...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @04:21AM
Troll
I absolutely love watching you dumbass moderators waste your points. You sure are easy to trigger. C'mon! Show me some of that outrage!
(Score: 3, Touché) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:00AM (3 children)
Well... they produced Millenials...
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:36PM (2 children)
I love how they were the ones handing out all those participation trophies that are now the root of all evil.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:06PM
It was the boomers' idea to do that shit. Nobody over the age of 2 is fooled by a participation medal - what, you think kids don't know a piece of plastic handed to them out of a black trash bag is worthless? Yay I got a plastic trinket that doesn't do anything. The smart kids used them for target practice.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:32AM
They handed out participation trophies because they didn't want to deal with their disappointed kids. So everyone's a winner, that way the kid doesn't sulk and cry and be a nuisance.
Don't expect that anything coming from a boomer isn't for their own benefit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @09:54PM
They probably created you or created the people that created you.
But I do agree that the creation of you wasn't very productive.
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:15AM (2 children)
Human fails the lot of them! APK proves it here https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=45187&page=1&cid=1182630#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] as we await those dumbcuck COVID cuck clucks deaths.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:20AM (1 child)
Come to Daytona Beach, I think you need a real hug.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:45AM
It's too early to come to Daytona. Wait for all the bikers to get there first. Mid-October at the earliest, I think.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:22AM (17 children)
I don't want to deny the effects of crises on the affected people, but from my non-American perspective, Americans living paycheck to paycheck is the powerhorse of the American economy. Low savings rate, huge consumption, huge innovation to feed this consumption, huge economic growth.
The opposite is Japan, with low consumption, high savings rate, no growth.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:07AM (16 children)
Huge consumption is a has-been. That's not really here anymore. That's why the economy is as mediococre as it is. Americans did consume like crazy while they could. The problem is that they can't anymore.
Living paycheck to paycheck is ok and works as long as that paycheck is steady and reliable. That used to be the case for a lont time in US history. You could rely on having a paycheck for the foreseeable future, sure, shit happened but in general, as long as you didn't fuck up badly and got fired and your boss didn't fuck up badly and the company goes under, it was smooth sailing. That's simply no longer the case.
The US work situation was always hire and fire, and the workplace mobility of the average American sure was higher than in, say, Europe, where for the longest time working from apprenticeship to retirement for the same company was very common. And certainly higher than in Japan where the idea of the salaryman who considers his comapny his second, and maybe even often first, family, thrived. But working for years, even decades, for the same employer was common.
How many people do you know that can still say that?
Safety, especially social security, isn't there anymore. Living paycheck to paycheck is allright if you can rely on this next paycheck to be a given, but it's highly different when that next paycheck is a hopeful maybe, or even a worrying hopefully.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:43AM (1 child)
For a long time ending not that long ago if you saw someone that moved around employers, that was considered a red flag. Now if you see someone who hasn't switched employers, that is considered a red flag.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:56PM
> Now if you see someone who hasn't switched employers, that is considered a red flag.
Hey, I work for myself, you insensitive clod!!
(Score: 5, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday September 29 2021, @08:20AM (12 children)
I have nieces and nephews who are millennials and they still consume like crazy even though they can't afford it. I realise I'm sounding like an old fart here but when you see a couple's plans that started as "save some money, put down a deposit on a house, get married, start a family" turn into "go on a trip to Europe, go on a cruise, start a family, buy a large-screen TV and new car and iPhones and laptops and ..., um, complain about how we don't have any money" then this tends to put a bit of a cap on the amount of sympathy I'm willing to extend. Had a Chinese boarder for awhile who had saved enough for a deposit on a house before he'd even left China, he worked all the hours in the day, didn't buy anything that wasn't absolutely necessary, and last time we talked owns two, possibly three by now, houses and is living comfortably for the cost of living a bit frugally in his 20s.
My neighbour was a financial planner who would go to families in debt and help them with their finances, she eventually gave up when she realised she was just wasting her time, she'd show them how they could live well within their means (do you really need a $100/month phone plan for every person in your family including your four kids, and a new iPhone for everyone every year?) and even have money left over to save for a house and they went straight back to throwing money around like it grew on trees ("of course the kids all need brand new iPhones, how else will they be able to call us to pick them up from school in the SUV we've just put a deposit on?").
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:11PM (2 children)
The problem is that it ain't sustainable. Total consumption used to be something we could do. From cradle to crave. Yes, we went out of this life with little in terms of savings, but hey, who gives a crap? People would spend, but their income would keep them afloat. Maybe barely, maybe comfortably, but they would get by and continue spending.
The problem is now that this ain't the case anymore. Your niece and nephew will eventually hit their credit limit, that is, the point when nobody will let them spend on more debt anymore. And that will affect more than your your niece's and nephew's comfort, because the economy is dependent on them being able to spend. if nobody spends money and consumes, then companies don't get money for their goods.
Our economy is fully dependent on peoples' ability to spend money. And we're desperately short on that kind of people. Not that people wouldn't want to keep our economy rolling. They'd love to. They just can't afford to anymore. And that creates a vicious cycle. Because fewer people spending money means less goods and services being requested meaning fewer goods and services being produced meaning fewer people being needed to produce those goods and services, meaning fewer people having jobs, meaning fewer people getting money from working, meaning fewer people having money to spend on goods and services, meaning fewer people spending money...
(Score: 4, Interesting) by driverless on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:56PM (1 child)
They hit their credit limit a long time ago, and then depended on their parents for money. They've been insulated from financial reality, and having to take responsibility for things, for their entire lives.
Thing is, it is a lot harder now to make your way in life today, I'm not denying that. However, there are also an awful lot of people who expect to be able to live beyond their means because someone else will bail them out and/or because they've never had to consider not living beyond their means. When I was a kid, blah blah, 26 hours a day, blah blah, uphill both ways, blah blah, only the shirt on my back, blah blah.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:22PM
Agreed. There seem to have been several generations feeling entitled to literally mortgage their lifestyles onto the backs of subsequent generations, then throw their hands up and shed crocodile tears as they feign sympathy and can’t deny how much harder life is now as a direct consequence of their own avarice, then scold people for their financial state because of $2 avocados and $200 “big screen TVs.”
So, I really don’t blame younger generations for getting a bit of a case of the fuck-it’s when they should really be expressing an acute case of the fuck-yous.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:30PM (1 child)
I'm Gen X. I have five younger siblings, one other Gen X and four Milennials. The only ones with high end smart phones received them as gifts. All five use pay-as-you-go phone service. Only one has a gaming console, he got that as a gift. None have paid television service. None take vacations. None have SUVs or pickup trucks, none bought their car new, three have used cars with no payments. All four Millennials are living paycheck to paycheck, all five are buried in student loans.
I'm Gen X. I'm paying $90 per month for a combination of streaming services, $120 per month for family cell service, we have a Playstation, and my family members all have refurbished top-of-the-line smartphones. We have a 55 inch UHD TV that was $400 when we bought it. It sounds extravagant, doesn't it? Here's the thing: I spend over $1,500 a month on health care between insurance and copays. I spend $2,500 a month on the mortgage and utilities, and our house isn't that big. Ten years ago I was spending $1,500 a month on daycare. Twenty years ago I didn't have daycare costs but I was spending $800 a month on student loans. Now I'm not covering daycare or my student loans, but next year my oldest starts college.
So you can cut my streaming services, you can refund me the money for my family's phones and cancel our phone services, you can cancel my twice-a-month family dinner out, you can cancel my six family trips to the movies a year - and you're going to save me much less than a month of my regular living expenses. For the most part, it's not extravagance that's the problem. Health care, mortgages, and student loans are just too damn expensive. When my Boomer dad went to college he worked third shift in a factory and took classes during the day, and the factory income let him pay his own rent, pay cash for a new car, and pay cash for his tuition. Can you imagine doing that today? That's the difference between 1971 and 2021.
Now, vehicle purchases are different. People routinely overspend there. But if you read other headlines, Millennials aren't nearly the car fans that Gen X and Boomers are. People are calling it a cultural shift, but I guaran-fucking-tee it's not some change in interests and ideals. It's just the realization by most Millennials that after they pay the rent and the medical bills the only Mustangs and Escalades they can afford is in the Walmart toy section.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:43PM
Retirement planning: Millennials are stashing money away earlier than Gen Xers and Baby Boomers [usatoday.com]
Millennials Now Saving More Money Than Their Parents According to Zip [prnewswire.com]
Are Millennials the Greatest Generation of Savers? [synchronybank.com]
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Wednesday September 29 2021, @03:40PM (2 children)
Haha, cruises?????
If there's one thing I know about Millennials it's that they love being shoved into tiny quarters with a bunch of annoying kids, shitty buffet food and old people!
(Score: 2) by driverless on Wednesday September 29 2021, @04:02PM (1 child)
It was around the Greek islands, AFAIK that's the standard way to see them, some tour package they booked.
My parents went on a cruise too before they got married: A thermos of tea on a ferry across the harbour. That's the difference between living within your means and living beyond your means.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @11:27AM
I wrote this elsewhere, but I have four younger brothers that are Millennials and entertainment - including smart phone payments, smart phone plans, streaming services, gaming services, trips to the movies, and coffee from coffee shops - take up less than $50 a month each for three of them and less than $100 a month for the fourth. Rent, health insurance, and student loan payments take about $2000 a month for each. They don't go on vacations, and didn't go on vacations before the pandemic. The ones that have high end smart phones got them as a gift.
So tell me how cutting out entertainment would solve their financial problems.
I know there are people spending money they don't have on vacations, or on a brand new pickup truck, or whatever. But there are millions of Millennials that are doing everything by the book, and then they have Gen X'ers and Boomers standing there and saying, "Back in my day, we walked uphill in the snow barefoot to school, both ways. If you just canceled your $8/month Netflix subscription and sold off that $400 TV, all your financial problems would be over, whippersnapper!" Aside from vacations, entertainment is far cheaper now relative to minimum wage than it was fifty years ago. Everything else has gotten more expensive, and for the most part that's what's burying Millennials. And telling someone up to their eyeballs in medical debt or student loan debt that cutting out the last things in life they enjoy is a pretty asshole thing to do.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:12PM
It's been a thing lately with stories about how Millennials don't want "stuff," but "experiences," [amazonaws.com] and go on to talk about taking a "sabbatical" year and traveling the world or whatever. I agree, it does cap the sympathy, especially for the ones who overtly let you know that they are not "consumertards" and eschew materialism, then complain about how they can't afford a house (especially when they've limited their searches exclusively to walkable to work, the barista, etc.).
(Score: 2) by Beryllium Sphere (r) on Wednesday September 29 2021, @10:12PM (2 children)
So that happens over and over, but I wonder how common it is compared to the people who have nothing left after urban rents, copays, and student loan payments.
(Score: 2) by SunTzuWarmaster on Thursday September 30 2021, @03:15PM (1 child)
Thus far - in my life - I legit know mmaayybbee one millennial where the wounds were not self-inflicted. I'm a millennial (technically, on the edge). I had roommates - because, like, rents' high, bro. Division works. Just go ahead and suggest the idea of roommates to a crowd of young-people. Suggest eating 0 meals outside of the home for a week. Go ahead. They backlash at it SO HARD it makes my head spin.
...and I keep coming from the "and I am a millennial and I did these things" perspective. You want the real hate? Be older and watch the media-brainwashing-anti-boomer-rhetoric set in. Nevermind that almost all boomers had roommates. Nevermind that most of their parents didn't have their own bedroom growing up. No no no - the boomers had it nice and cozy and were buying whole houses for themselves at 18 with some trade-job or something?
The good news is that the Zoomers, after watching the millenials fuck it all up, got a freaking clue. They are savvy with their money and time and looking to make good bets on their future.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @04:50PM
>Muh anecdotes about a nonsensical construct
Yeah, yeah... I lived in an unfinished basement to save up enough cash to pay for college outright and then some emergency funds on top. My friend is doing the same right now, sans college. Two other friends are living with their parents as well. We're all millennials.
The real fuckin' problem is the "American Dream" bullshit. Multigenerational households are the solution. This shit where you've got everybody running about trying to buy a fucking house but there's only enough to satisfy a fraction of the demand... Well that doesn't bode well. Of course thanks to the "American Dream" shit, none of the fucking houses built are suitable by default so that's nice. When and where they are, the costs are so exorbitant it's improbable for any working class schmuck to even consider, or be considered for the purchase with a small handful of exceptions. In the rare case you can find something tenable it's in an economically despairing locale. So you're left to the sharp teeth of the rentier, and they'll bleed you dry. But that's capitalism, you've gotta generate passive income for the idle wealthy minority so they can laze about playing golf and patting themselves on the backs, and patting the backs of their cohort for "added value" which is ultimately extracted from the reduced quality of life of the people which are their victims.
It worked for a momentary little blip, but it was such a visible, such an exploitable system - once the teeth were set in the parasite was as good as burrowed. Now you choose usury or poverty, play at lottery odds for sustainability in any meaningful sense, and if you're defined as a winner you're made to be a loser by systemic oppression until you reach the highest echelon of society, at odds with all probability, where your strata is so far above the others that the rule of the land is no longer applicable and all the worries of the mortal flesh, and the chains that bind are effaced as you soar above the deplorables.
"We may say, by the way, that success is a hideous thing. Its counterfeit of merit deceives men. To the mass, success has almost the same appearance as supremacy. Success, that pretender to talent, has a dupe,—history. Juvenal and Tacitus only reject it. In our days, a philosophy which is almost an official has entered into its service, wears its livery, and waits in its antechamber. Success; that is the theory. Prosperity supposes capacity. Win in the lottery, and you are an able man. The victor is venerated. To be born with a caul is everything. Have but luck, and you will have the rest; be fortunate, and you will be thought great. Beyond the five or six great exceptions, which are the wonder of their age, contemporary admiration is nothing but shortsightedness. Gilt is gold. To be a chance comer is no drawback, provided you have improved your chances. The common herd is an old Narcissus, who adores himself, and who applauds the common. That mighty genius, by which one becomes a Moses, an Æschylus, a Dante, a Michael Angelo, or a Napoleon, the multitude assigns at once and by acclamation to whoever succeeds in his object, whatever it may be, Let a notary rise to be a deputy; let a sham Corneille write Tiridate; let a eunuch come into the possession of a harem; let a military Prudhomme accidentally win the decisive battle of an epoch, let an apothecary invent pasteboard soles for army shoes, and lay up, by selling this pasteboard instead of leather for the army of the Sambre-et-Meuse, four hundred thousand livres in the funds; let a pack-pedlar espouse usury and bring her to bed of seven or eight millions, of which he is the father and she the mother; let a preacher become a bishop by talking through his nose; let the steward of a good house become so rich on leaving service that he is made Minister of Finance;—men call that Genius, just as they call the face of Mousqueton, Beauty, and the bearing of Claude, Majesty. They confound the radiance of the stars of heaven with the radiations which a duck’s foot leaves in the mud."
-Victor Hugo, Les Miserables
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:49AM
Define "long time". 60 years? 80? Even at the height of the union days, it wasn't the case for the majority. Union jobs are great, if you can get one. Even in a strong union city or state, non-union workers outnumberd union workers, probably 2 or 3 to one. Meanwhile, right to work states didn't reap union benefits.
Abortion is the number one killed of children in the United States.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @06:58AM (10 children)
Depends. You got a job for them? And I don't mean Uber driver, I mean a job where their expense is more than covered by the money you pay them.
I'm a boomer. Ok, I'm a Gen-X, but I'm older. I got lucky. I got a job. Back when it was still possible to get one that pays the bills. Now I am older, have experience, am good in what I do and what I do is highly wanted in the job market. I tell you what you pay me, and you're glad that I graciously allow you to pay me for my illustrous presence. But that's me. That's not the 25 year old who just managed to get his degree, has a higher debt around his neck than he can ever hope to pay back and who has zero work experience.
Yes, special snowflake Millenials exist. The gender studies majors who now lament how The Man (both government and the patriarchy, which is the same anyway, ain't it) keeps them down and doesn't give them a cushy 200k a year job for producing expensive pipe dreams. Just like the "just get a job" boomers (like, say, you) exist who know fuck all about the problem the current job market has for young people.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @07:40AM (9 children)
Whenever I would catch up with my one of my neighbors after her oldest grandkid graduated from college, she always complained about how he was stuck in the basement applying for jobs online instead of "pounding the pavement" to get one (Incidentally, after he got one she complained how it isn't a real job despite paying six figures to sit there and "clickity-klack" on a keyboard). She got laid off about one year later (before 2020) and the first thing she said to me the first time she saw me was "{major_company} blackballed me because I went to get a job in person! And {different_company} shooed me out the door and told me to apply online! Can you believe that!? And then you apply online to all these places and hear nothing back." Took all my restraint not to laugh in her face.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Opportunist on Wednesday September 29 2021, @11:51AM (8 children)
Why restrain yourself? Your neighbor is a moron and finally got a healthy dose of reality check. Welcome to the real world of today, it's not the world of the 1950s.
(Score: 4, Informative) by EEMac on Wednesday September 29 2021, @02:11PM (2 children)
One of our (elderly, retired) neighbors told us how she started with a degree in chemistry. Right after she graduated, she happened to be in {random company} for unrelated reasons, chatted with the CEO-equivalent, and got hired as a computer programmer making 3x a living wage even though she'd barely worked with computers before.
I graduated with an engineering degree. The college held a job fair, usually had 40-60 companies eager to hire. NO companies bothered to show up that year. Resumes sent out just got "we're in a hiring freeze, sorry."
You try not to take this stuff personally . . .
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:30AM (1 child)
Like I said, I was insanely lucky with my career life. But I wouldn't expect this to be the norm, I would actually consider it akin to a lottery jackpot. How people who were similarly lucky can be blind to how hard it is for others is kinda weird.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @10:01PM
His 'big break' was Intel in the 80s, who were hiring everyone they could for a few facility they were opening. He happened to graduate with an Associate's Degree, that just so happened to be in a skill they needed. He ended up getting unofficially scouted by 5-10 departments all trying to fill up positions so when the facility went online they could have 'full staffing'. He ended up spending 2 years burning through his savings renting in Silicon Valley to make sure he had that job when the other facility opened. Spent 15 years there before burning out with a tidy amount of stock options (which were then clipped by the dotcom crash and the sudden rise in health care costs... ~25k or more for a family of 4 by 2002 or so. Not including doctors visits, lab fees, etc which were 100-300 per visit.
He was also very much about 'working your way up by your own bootstraps' which worked out badly for me. I couldn't find anywhere that wanted to hire me as a teenager without a social 'in' (every kid who had a high school job knew someone who vouched for them, or a family member to get them an in) Then college was a combination of scheduling issues, nobody hiring, or everyone wanting employees who was a narc/corporate drone (I'd been advised not to let people have your SSN in the years prior to everyone demanding it due to identity theft concerns, slowly my values didn't match the reality of the job market, which wanted simpering toadies or ideologues for whatever kind of business it was. None of them were offering health benefits below 1-2 years with the company or working your way up to management level. Few offered more than a quarter increase in pay after a month or more, meaning switching jobs was a much faster way to pay increases than staying with a company (and these were formerly 'old' companies that used to have a good reputation, or franchisees thereof.) Some of these pay deficits have been remedied, some of the companies went out of business, and some are still crufting along at the bare minimums they can get away paying. But as for the millenials, of the ones I know the only ones with houses either recieved them from the premature death of parents, got lucky with an early 6 figure job, or barely managed to eke it out in thir 30s, between a six figure job and family assistance.
Me? I'm back living with my parents, may have a few out of town options once covid lifts, but otherwise am stuck working shit jobs because I never found that connect to get me in a good door (and the few attempts I had were all with persons or companies that were playing fast and loose with their legally required responsibilities, often dumping as much of that as they could on their bottom tier employees. I wasn't getting paid enough to keep rolling those dice, and being the quiet and 'dumb' looking type I heard enough or handled enough paperwork to know just how much better those places could have been paying their employees to shoulder that risk, but since they weren't, I just moved on until the jobs dried up.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday September 29 2021, @10:26PM (4 children)
Staying on the good side of busybodies is usually a good idea so they don't decide to make you the target of their ill intent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:26AM
The entirety of the Republican party shows that to be a lie, being nice to busybodies doesn't help.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday September 30 2021, @12:35AM (2 children)
Sorry, putting up with idiots is what got us the flat earth morons and the covidiots. It's time we start smacking them down while they're still testing the waters.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday September 30 2021, @06:53AM (1 child)
You've obviously never had a vengeful neighbor. They can do a lot more damage to you than the flat earth morons and the covidiots.
(Score: 2) by Opportunist on Thursday September 30 2021, @02:50PM
I am the vengeful neighbor, you insensitive clod!
But no, I haven't. In the areas where I live, annoying busybodies get priced out pretty quickly.