5 ms·

How Gen Z became so nihilistic about money

25 points by akpa1 2y ago

CoolestBeans 2y ago
Money should be no object, I just worry that this is the result of a generation coming of age in the tightest labor market in a half century and they're all in for an extremely rude awakening over the next couple years.
- cooolbear 2y ago
  I think they've grown up already awoken to it
ryandrake 2y ago
> My younger sister, Sophie, isn't worried about retirement – but she's not exactly optimistic about it, either. "We've got climate change, war – it's like, are we even going to be here to retire?" I see this belief in a lot of younger co-workers. Newsflash: You're highly likely to outlive your ability to work. If your plan is to die the day after you retire, that may happen, but in all likelihood you won't, and not having savings is going to end up unpleasantly for you. Save for retirement, people!
- etrautmann 2y ago
  This also seems like a natural consequence of crazy inflation and outlandishly unaffordable house prices. When the target is out of reach, it's hard to motivate to even try.
- pixl97 2y ago
  When you're spending almost everything on food, rent, and healthcare surviving till tomorrow is a much bigger issue than figuring out what to do 20-50 years from now. Late stage capitalism is doing a good job of sucking up excess money and returning it to the investor class via rents, if you're not in the infestor class then you are struggling.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    It is true, and that’s why I dislike the top line metrics. The stock market is doing great! Unemployment is low! GDP is up! But the hidden assumption, that these metrics would be coupled with second-order metrics like life expectancy, home ownership, health, and well-being? That no longer holds. These consequences today are all the results of political decisions made decades ago. The unfortunate reality is that turning this ship around will also take decades.
- JohnFen 2y ago
  It was a common belief amongst my own age group (roughly GenX) as well, and a whole lot of people are in a lot of trouble now because of it.
- ehPReth 2y ago
  I have literally no extra money to save. Everything I have is maxed out or near maxed out. my retirement plan is an overdose.
  - juujian 2y ago
    Ooooh, that's a lot more concrete and realistic than my retirement plans.
  - Alupis 2y ago
    [flagged]
    - sosodev 2y ago
      Even with compound interest $100/mo is only going to yield retirement like savings over 40 years with >=10% interest rates and monthly compounding. It also neglects the fact that the cost of retirement might be much higher when that time comes. Your whole spend less argument ignores the whole point of the article. These disillusioned people aren’t going to spend less because they don’t think it’s going to pay off. They’re optimizing for happiness in the present moment and that might end up being the right choice.
      - Alupis 2y ago
        [flagged]
    - antisthenes 2y ago
      > everyone can find an extra $50-100 monthly to stash away for retirement. With compound interest over a 40+ year working career, this is not trivial money. This amount of money is likely to pay for a couple of surgeries (assuming no other complications or chronic illnesses eating your savings before then) past the age of 50, given how expensive health care is. It's not a significant amount of money to let you retire in any kind of comfort. Maybe just not starve. No amount of financial prudence is going to change the math for you if your set of skills caps out at $20/hour on the employment market.
- Der_Einzige 2y ago
  This is slightly less true for tech work though. If they don't have a cure for carpel tunnel syndrome by 2050, I'll retire I guess - but why should I when tech is so lucrative if it still somehow looks like how it does today? Everyone seems in such a rush to stop earning money. Maybe be in a rush to get a "rest and vest" job instead? I plan to be some senior director at the 2050 equivalent of a sleepy and comfy giant company like IBM or Salesforce. By the time they realize I've stopped delivering value half a decade ago and lay me off, I'm already old enough to get the maximum possible monthly social security benefits AND will have prolonged my tech wealth earnings, likely with a house which is hopefully paid off. And I haven't even mentioned the golden parachute of long term severance packages! I get it if you're doing back breaking work, but this is HN! Most of the folks here have nothing more to worry about except eye strain/blindness, deafness, and carpel tunnel.
  - giraffe_lady 2y ago
    We still have dreams beyond labor.
  - ryandrake 2y ago
    It's probably worse in tech, due to the rampant age discrimination that's been normalized in this industry. Your plan to become "some senior director" is probably the only way to remain employed at a tech company in your 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. Good luck doing that as an individual programmer or low-level manager.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    - tivert 2y ago
      > It's probably worse in tech, due to the rampant age discrimination that's been normalized in this industry. I haven't worked many places, but I have a feeling that working for a company that has tech but doesn't identify as a tech company is probably the way to go. Also stay the hell away from the Bay Area. Tech company culture seems so dysfunctional (e.g. the normalized age discrimination, etc.).
- cooolbear 2y ago
  You might be really missing the point here in simply echoing the conventional wisdom of the last 100 years
- janalsncm 2y ago
  > Save for retirement, people! The article names many reasons why it isn’t so simple. None of those reasons are that Gen Z decided against saving money. I do agree that opening with a quote about other larger issues may not have been helpful. It’s not like other generations didn’t have to worry about e.g. nuclear war. It’s really not the point though.
  - lagniappe 2y ago
    Hang on, what retirement? There's no social security, there's no potential to live on a fixed income, inflation has effectively restarted the clock on a lot of retirement plans. I'm not gen-z but I fully understand I will need to work as long as my heart beats. I say this -with- a retirement fund.
    - janalsncm 2y ago
      Agreed. I think you’re objecting to the line I quoted. The reason people don’t trust institutions is because the institutions aren’t working for them.
- jhanschoo 2y ago
  I feel like graduating college with so much debt (at least on paper) fucks with your relationship with money and what financial goals seems realistic.
jafo1989 2y ago
>I get so tired of seeing content saying, 'Oh, if you just saved a little more, if you just invested a little more…' Like, no – people are on the edge. People cannot afford to live, to eat, to put gas in their cars," Brama says. >That's partly why Brama now splits her time between the United States and Europe I wish I was broke enough to split time between two continents.
- jltsiren 2y ago
  Travel is cheap if you don't have to pay for accommodation. Flying a few times a year between Europe and the US is definitely cheaper than renting in the US.
  - strictnein 2y ago
    Sure, but if you're not having to pay rent, why fly at all? Why not stay put and save that money?
    - jltsiren 2y ago
      Maybe the quality of life is better elsewhere. Maybe the differences in daily costs of living are enough to offset the flights. The article mentions Albania, where the nominal/PPP GDP figures suggest that prices are almost 3x lower than in the US.
    - fragmede 2y ago
      Because there are no jobs where they're not paying rent, so they can't afford to live there either.
- throwaheyy 2y ago
  That stuck out glaringly for me too.
- nrfulton 2y ago
  "There is a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." But even setting that aside, the article goes on to mention Albania (low CoL) and access to healthcare. The latter, in particular, checks out. I have great insurance, but my out-of-pocket max equals somewhere between 5 and 10 round-trips to Europe. It's not hard to imagine there exist people who can setup the circumstances such that working in the USA part of the year and living somewhere else part of the year is massively more economical than staying in the USA. Actually, doesn't that exact situation describe a huge fraction of the US agricultural labor force?
aaron695 2y ago
[dead]
iamleppert 2y ago
[flagged]
jagger27 2y ago
[flagged]
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
10xDev 2y ago
Probably peer pressure from social media. Who wants to save money when I can get instant gratification online 'living the dream' like my peers are?
- janalsncm 2y ago
  Social media is definitely making information about inequality more accessible. But that doesn’t mean the underlying issues aren’t real. It would be a mistake to dismiss economic anxieties as just a trendy social media thing. Owning a house isn’t just “trendy”, it’s been part of the American dream that has steadily become out of reach.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - 10xDev 2y ago
    Thanks for the downvote and missing the point. I decided to read the article and was largely responding to the following: >"I'm a Gen X-er," says Beal. "We lived to work. Generation Z works to live. They work to enjoy life, to experience life, to travel. They have a completely different mindset Which is more a point about the current culture than about the state of economy.
    - jhanschoo 2y ago
      The article also said > including falling wages and a challenging real estate market in which rent increases outpace earnings. > Around the globe, the eldest Gen Z-ers are heading into their late-20s amid undeniable economic headwinds. > Financial wellness company Brightplan's 2024 Wellness Barometer Survey of 1,400 US-based knowledge workers at global companies found that a majority, regardless of age, report feeling stressed about their financial situation, citing high inflation, rising interest rates and market volatility as complicating factors. Are we reading the same article?
      - 10xDev 2y ago
recursivedoubts 2y ago
Saddling kids with insane amounts of debt, education ("it's the good kind!") or otherwise, and then pricing housing out of reach for all but the luckiest of them isn't a great way to sustain a civilization. Maybe that's the idea.
- buzzert 2y ago
  "then pricing housing out of reach for all but the luckiest" You're saying this as if the price of housing is decided by some guy/group of guys.
  - rho138 2y ago
    What’s private equities rate of home ownership in the US again? Edit: also this https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...
  - recursivedoubts 2y ago
    Yes, I am. And yes, it is.
    - buzzert 2y ago
      If that’s true, we should petition them and ask to please lower the cost of housing! Would you happen to have their phone number or email address?
      - recursivedoubts 2y ago
        yep: 20th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20551
ralferoo 2y ago
As a late gen-X'er (I feel I have far more in common with millenials than my 12 years older brother, also gen-X), I think it actually is really interesting to see how some millenials and moreso gen Z see their financial problems as intractable. The actual reality is that every generation has complained about crippling prices when they're in their 20s, especially property, only to find that as they get older their salaries eventually rise and then they start earning over the median salary, they find they're actually in a good place. Personally, I couldn't afford to get on the property ladder until I was 28, and I've always been a big saver. Just before I actually bought my house, there was a massive property price boom in the UK - 18 months earlier I'd looked at a house on the same road as the house I eventually bought, with a loft conversion (extra room) and in better condition. The house I bought 18 months after viewing this one (and deciding I couldn't really afford it) was 50% more, and my salary was exactly the same 18 months later. In fact, I could only afford it because the bank was running an offer on its graduate accounts that allowed a 4x mortgage instead of the standard 3x. In that brief moment of eligibility for that mortgage, I went for it, despite knowing that it'd be even more financially burdensome than the much cheaper house I'd decided against on financial grounds. As it turned out, I ended up buying at the peak of the market, and the value of the house remained stagnant for 10 years. Along the way, I had other setbacks, like getting a 5 year fixed rate mortgage for 5.5% three months before the Bank of England dropped rates down to 0.25%, but the exit penalties were so high I had no choice but to suck it up. But the thing is, even though the value of the house didn't change for 10 years, my salary did. What seemed impossible right up to the point of stretching myself to the limit and committing to the mortgage, a few years later was tolerable (although I didn't change my spending habits, instead I overpaid my mortgage as much as I could because of the high interest rate and terrible savings rates), and after 10 years, everything was very comfortable because I'd had 10 years of inflation in my income, but my minimum mortgage payments were still roughly the same. Finally, after overpaying like crazy, I paid off my mortgage after 18 years into the 25 year term. Now it's all paid off, my life is definitely on easy mode, but I do feel somewhat aggrieved when a gen-Z'er says "oh, you're just the generation that had money", because I sure as hell didn't have any money at the start of my working life - it took ploughing everything I had into savings, and then into the mortgage for the house to make that happen. So, what can a gen-Z'er take away from this? They could just say "yeah, it's too hard" and just give up. Sadly, I think a lot of them do think that way. Or they could think, "life is hard, I need to save hard". Sooner or later, the opportunity will come - house prices are cyclical, sometimes they go up in value at insane rates, other times they stay about the same for years. But to take the advantage of the opportunity when your salary is relatively high and the house prices are relatively low, you need to have made some savings in the meantime. If you give up too soon, you're guaranteed to hit the failure state. If you persevere saving, even a little, sooner or later, there will be an opportunity for you to seize. I know for some people, it's going to be impossible - if you are genuinely living pay cheque to pay cheque, it's tough. The smallest thing can completely ruin you. That's why it's even more important to save what little you can, whenever you can. That £5 coffee, even as a once-a-week weekly treat, is £250 a year of missed savings opportunity. That £10 netflix subscription, £500 per year. That £50 on alcohol going out on a Friday night, £2500. I know these latter comments will sound ridiculous to people who are genuinely spending everything they earn just to get by, and I'm sorry if this sounds flippant, but equally there are gen-Z'ers complaining they will never afford a house who can afford to pay abroad for a "holiday experience" because they're "living in the now" or some nonsense. Those people could easily save up the deposit they need for a house if it was genuinely a priority for them. Maybe it'd take 5 years until the market conditions work in their favour, but the point is not to give up because you think life is unfair. It's been just as unfair to almost everyone in the past too. You need to just get on with it and press on through. As an example of what it is to live a frugal lifestyle, I currently spend about £700 per month on council tax, utility bills, food and entertainment. In the last 2 years, I've spent about £4000 on travel and holidays. If I hadn't already paid off my mortgage, I could rent somewhere for about £700 per month. That comes in at about £1600 per month, so my equivalent income to sustain this lifestyle is £21000 per year. That's far below the median UK salary, but it's easily achievable because I choose not to go out drinking very often (around once a month, £15-£20 for the evening), I don't have lots of TV subscriptions, I just have a single subscription to a video-on-demand service that's £35 per year. I have the money to spend much more if I wanted, but my priority is still saving - only now it's for retirement.
freitzkriesler2 2y ago
My retirement plan is what everyone else in the rest of the world does: I plan on providing free childcare to my kids when I'm unable to work so they can work and save money. I'll sleep on a couch and call it a day. That's the best retirement anyone can ask for. I still set aside 10% for retirement though. Maybe I'll get lucky but even I doubt it'll amount to anything.
smarm52 2y ago
> the message seems to be: money isn't real. Literally true. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. And also, it's a pretty stupid way to handle wealth. Lietaer, B., & Dunne, J. (2013). Rethinking money: How new currencies turn scarcity into prosperity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

25 points by akpa1 2y ago

Money should be no object, I just worry that this is the result of a generation coming of age in the tightest labor market in a half century and they're all in for an extremely rude awakening over the next couple years.

cooolbear 2y ago
I think they've grown up already awoken to it

ryandrake 2y ago

> My younger sister, Sophie, isn't worried about retirement – but she's not exactly optimistic about it, either. "We've got climate change, war – it's like, are we even going to be here to retire?" I see this belief in a lot of younger co-workers. Newsflash: You're highly likely to outlive your ability to work. If your plan is to die the day after you retire, that may happen, but in all likelihood you won't, and not having savings is going to end up unpleasantly for you. Save for retirement, people!

etrautmann 2y ago
This also seems like a natural consequence of crazy inflation and outlandishly unaffordable house prices. When the target is out of reach, it's hard to motivate to even try.
pixl97 2y ago
When you're spending almost everything on food, rent, and healthcare surviving till tomorrow is a much bigger issue than figuring out what to do 20-50 years from now. Late stage capitalism is doing a good job of sucking up excess money and returning it to the investor class via rents, if you're not in the infestor class then you are struggling.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- janalsncm 2y ago
  It is true, and that’s why I dislike the top line metrics. The stock market is doing great! Unemployment is low! GDP is up! But the hidden assumption, that these metrics would be coupled with second-order metrics like life expectancy, home ownership, health, and well-being? That no longer holds. These consequences today are all the results of political decisions made decades ago. The unfortunate reality is that turning this ship around will also take decades.
JohnFen 2y ago
It was a common belief amongst my own age group (roughly GenX) as well, and a whole lot of people are in a lot of trouble now because of it.
ehPReth 2y ago
I have literally no extra money to save. Everything I have is maxed out or near maxed out. my retirement plan is an overdose.
- juujian 2y ago
  Ooooh, that's a lot more concrete and realistic than my retirement plans.
- Alupis 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - sosodev 2y ago
    Even with compound interest $100/mo is only going to yield retirement like savings over 40 years with >=10% interest rates and monthly compounding. It also neglects the fact that the cost of retirement might be much higher when that time comes. Your whole spend less argument ignores the whole point of the article. These disillusioned people aren’t going to spend less because they don’t think it’s going to pay off. They’re optimizing for happiness in the present moment and that might end up being the right choice.
    - Alupis 2y ago
      [flagged]
  - antisthenes 2y ago
    > everyone can find an extra $50-100 monthly to stash away for retirement. With compound interest over a 40+ year working career, this is not trivial money. This amount of money is likely to pay for a couple of surgeries (assuming no other complications or chronic illnesses eating your savings before then) past the age of 50, given how expensive health care is. It's not a significant amount of money to let you retire in any kind of comfort. Maybe just not starve. No amount of financial prudence is going to change the math for you if your set of skills caps out at $20/hour on the employment market.
Der_Einzige 2y ago
This is slightly less true for tech work though. If they don't have a cure for carpel tunnel syndrome by 2050, I'll retire I guess - but why should I when tech is so lucrative if it still somehow looks like how it does today? Everyone seems in such a rush to stop earning money. Maybe be in a rush to get a "rest and vest" job instead? I plan to be some senior director at the 2050 equivalent of a sleepy and comfy giant company like IBM or Salesforce. By the time they realize I've stopped delivering value half a decade ago and lay me off, I'm already old enough to get the maximum possible monthly social security benefits AND will have prolonged my tech wealth earnings, likely with a house which is hopefully paid off. And I haven't even mentioned the golden parachute of long term severance packages! I get it if you're doing back breaking work, but this is HN! Most of the folks here have nothing more to worry about except eye strain/blindness, deafness, and carpel tunnel.
- giraffe_lady 2y ago
  We still have dreams beyond labor.
- ryandrake 2y ago
  It's probably worse in tech, due to the rampant age discrimination that's been normalized in this industry. Your plan to become "some senior director" is probably the only way to remain employed at a tech company in your 60s, 70s, 80s, or 90s. Good luck doing that as an individual programmer or low-level manager.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
  - tivert 2y ago
    > It's probably worse in tech, due to the rampant age discrimination that's been normalized in this industry. I haven't worked many places, but I have a feeling that working for a company that has tech but doesn't identify as a tech company is probably the way to go. Also stay the hell away from the Bay Area. Tech company culture seems so dysfunctional (e.g. the normalized age discrimination, etc.).
cooolbear 2y ago
You might be really missing the point here in simply echoing the conventional wisdom of the last 100 years
janalsncm 2y ago
> Save for retirement, people! The article names many reasons why it isn’t so simple. None of those reasons are that Gen Z decided against saving money. I do agree that opening with a quote about other larger issues may not have been helpful. It’s not like other generations didn’t have to worry about e.g. nuclear war. It’s really not the point though.
- lagniappe 2y ago
  Hang on, what retirement? There's no social security, there's no potential to live on a fixed income, inflation has effectively restarted the clock on a lot of retirement plans. I'm not gen-z but I fully understand I will need to work as long as my heart beats. I say this -with- a retirement fund.
  - janalsncm 2y ago
    Agreed. I think you’re objecting to the line I quoted. The reason people don’t trust institutions is because the institutions aren’t working for them.
jhanschoo 2y ago
I feel like graduating college with so much debt (at least on paper) fucks with your relationship with money and what financial goals seems realistic.

jafo1989 2y ago

>I get so tired of seeing content saying, 'Oh, if you just saved a little more, if you just invested a little more…' Like, no – people are on the edge. People cannot afford to live, to eat, to put gas in their cars," Brama says. >That's partly why Brama now splits her time between the United States and Europe I wish I was broke enough to split time between two continents.

jltsiren 2y ago
Travel is cheap if you don't have to pay for accommodation. Flying a few times a year between Europe and the US is definitely cheaper than renting in the US.
- strictnein 2y ago
  Sure, but if you're not having to pay rent, why fly at all? Why not stay put and save that money?
  - jltsiren 2y ago
    Maybe the quality of life is better elsewhere. Maybe the differences in daily costs of living are enough to offset the flights. The article mentions Albania, where the nominal/PPP GDP figures suggest that prices are almost 3x lower than in the US.
  - fragmede 2y ago
    Because there are no jobs where they're not paying rent, so they can't afford to live there either.
throwaheyy 2y ago
That stuck out glaringly for me too.
nrfulton 2y ago
"There is a leisure class at both ends of the economic spectrum." But even setting that aside, the article goes on to mention Albania (low CoL) and access to healthcare. The latter, in particular, checks out. I have great insurance, but my out-of-pocket max equals somewhere between 5 and 10 round-trips to Europe. It's not hard to imagine there exist people who can setup the circumstances such that working in the USA part of the year and living somewhere else part of the year is massively more economical than staying in the USA. Actually, doesn't that exact situation describe a huge fraction of the US agricultural labor force?

aaron695 2y ago

[dead]

iamleppert 2y ago

[flagged]

jagger27 2y ago

[flagged]

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

10xDev 2y ago

Probably peer pressure from social media. Who wants to save money when I can get instant gratification online 'living the dream' like my peers are?

janalsncm 2y ago
Social media is definitely making information about inequality more accessible. But that doesn’t mean the underlying issues aren’t real. It would be a mistake to dismiss economic anxieties as just a trendy social media thing. Owning a house isn’t just “trendy”, it’s been part of the American dream that has steadily become out of reach.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]
- 10xDev 2y ago
  Thanks for the downvote and missing the point. I decided to read the article and was largely responding to the following: >"I'm a Gen X-er," says Beal. "We lived to work. Generation Z works to live. They work to enjoy life, to experience life, to travel. They have a completely different mindset Which is more a point about the current culture than about the state of economy.
  - jhanschoo 2y ago
    The article also said > including falling wages and a challenging real estate market in which rent increases outpace earnings. > Around the globe, the eldest Gen Z-ers are heading into their late-20s amid undeniable economic headwinds. > Financial wellness company Brightplan's 2024 Wellness Barometer Survey of 1,400 US-based knowledge workers at global companies found that a majority, regardless of age, report feeling stressed about their financial situation, citing high inflation, rising interest rates and market volatility as complicating factors. Are we reading the same article?
    - 10xDev 2y ago

recursivedoubts 2y ago

Saddling kids with insane amounts of debt, education ("it's the good kind!") or otherwise, and then pricing housing out of reach for all but the luckiest of them isn't a great way to sustain a civilization. Maybe that's the idea.

buzzert 2y ago
"then pricing housing out of reach for all but the luckiest" You're saying this as if the price of housing is decided by some guy/group of guys.
- rho138 2y ago
  What’s private equities rate of home ownership in the US again? Edit: also this https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fixing-algorithm-still-price-fixing https://www.ftc.gov/business-guidance/blog/2024/03/price-fix...
- recursivedoubts 2y ago
  Yes, I am. And yes, it is.
  - buzzert 2y ago
    If that’s true, we should petition them and ask to please lower the cost of housing! Would you happen to have their phone number or email address?
    - recursivedoubts 2y ago
      yep: 20th Street and Constitution Avenue N.W., Washington, DC 20551

ralferoo 2y ago

As a late gen-X'er (I feel I have far more in common with millenials than my 12 years older brother, also gen-X), I think it actually is really interesting to see how some millenials and moreso gen Z see their financial problems as intractable. The actual reality is that every generation has complained about crippling prices when they're in their 20s, especially property, only to find that as they get older their salaries eventually rise and then they start earning over the median salary, they find they're actually in a good place. Personally, I couldn't afford to get on the property ladder until I was 28, and I've always been a big saver. Just before I actually bought my house, there was a massive property price boom in the UK - 18 months earlier I'd looked at a house on the same road as the house I eventually bought, with a loft conversion (extra room) and in better condition. The house I bought 18 months after viewing this one (and deciding I couldn't really afford it) was 50% more, and my salary was exactly the same 18 months later. In fact, I could only afford it because the bank was running an offer on its graduate accounts that allowed a 4x mortgage instead of the standard 3x. In that brief moment of eligibility for that mortgage, I went for it, despite knowing that it'd be even more financially burdensome than the much cheaper house I'd decided against on financial grounds. As it turned out, I ended up buying at the peak of the market, and the value of the house remained stagnant for 10 years. Along the way, I had other setbacks, like getting a 5 year fixed rate mortgage for 5.5% three months before the Bank of England dropped rates down to 0.25%, but the exit penalties were so high I had no choice but to suck it up. But the thing is, even though the value of the house didn't change for 10 years, my salary did. What seemed impossible right up to the point of stretching myself to the limit and committing to the mortgage, a few years later was tolerable (although I didn't change my spending habits, instead I overpaid my mortgage as much as I could because of the high interest rate and terrible savings rates), and after 10 years, everything was very comfortable because I'd had 10 years of inflation in my income, but my minimum mortgage payments were still roughly the same. Finally, after overpaying like crazy, I paid off my mortgage after 18 years into the 25 year term. Now it's all paid off, my life is definitely on easy mode, but I do feel somewhat aggrieved when a gen-Z'er says "oh, you're just the generation that had money", because I sure as hell didn't have any money at the start of my working life - it took ploughing everything I had into savings, and then into the mortgage for the house to make that happen. So, what can a gen-Z'er take away from this? They could just say "yeah, it's too hard" and just give up. Sadly, I think a lot of them do think that way. Or they could think, "life is hard, I need to save hard". Sooner or later, the opportunity will come - house prices are cyclical, sometimes they go up in value at insane rates, other times they stay about the same for years. But to take the advantage of the opportunity when your salary is relatively high and the house prices are relatively low, you need to have made some savings in the meantime. If you give up too soon, you're guaranteed to hit the failure state. If you persevere saving, even a little, sooner or later, there will be an opportunity for you to seize. I know for some people, it's going to be impossible - if you are genuinely living pay cheque to pay cheque, it's tough. The smallest thing can completely ruin you. That's why it's even more important to save what little you can, whenever you can. That £5 coffee, even as a once-a-week weekly treat, is £250 a year of missed savings opportunity. That £10 netflix subscription, £500 per year. That £50 on alcohol going out on a Friday night, £2500. I know these latter comments will sound ridiculous to people who are genuinely spending everything they earn just to get by, and I'm sorry if this sounds flippant, but equally there are gen-Z'ers complaining they will never afford a house who can afford to pay abroad for a "holiday experience" because they're "living in the now" or some nonsense. Those people could easily save up the deposit they need for a house if it was genuinely a priority for them. Maybe it'd take 5 years until the market conditions work in their favour, but the point is not to give up because you think life is unfair. It's been just as unfair to almost everyone in the past too. You need to just get on with it and press on through. As an example of what it is to live a frugal lifestyle, I currently spend about £700 per month on council tax, utility bills, food and entertainment. In the last 2 years, I've spent about £4000 on travel and holidays. If I hadn't already paid off my mortgage, I could rent somewhere for about £700 per month. That comes in at about £1600 per month, so my equivalent income to sustain this lifestyle is £21000 per year. That's far below the median UK salary, but it's easily achievable because I choose not to go out drinking very often (around once a month, £15-£20 for the evening), I don't have lots of TV subscriptions, I just have a single subscription to a video-on-demand service that's £35 per year. I have the money to spend much more if I wanted, but my priority is still saving - only now it's for retirement.

freitzkriesler2 2y ago

My retirement plan is what everyone else in the rest of the world does: I plan on providing free childcare to my kids when I'm unable to work so they can work and save money. I'll sleep on a couch and call it a day. That's the best retirement anyone can ask for. I still set aside 10% for retirement though. Maybe I'll get lucky but even I doubt it'll amount to anything.

smarm52 2y ago

> the message seems to be: money isn't real. Literally true. Piketty, T. (2014). Capital in the twenty-first century. Harvard University Press. And also, it's a pretty stupid way to handle wealth. Lietaer, B., & Dunne, J. (2013). Rethinking money: How new currencies turn scarcity into prosperity. Berrett-Koehler Publishers.