NYT Opinion Piece: This Isn’t What Millennial Middle Age Was Supposed To Look Like

[Anonymous]

As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I'm an older millennial or younger Generation X depending on how you divide them and haven't read the article. Also, I took out student loans for law school and have paid them off.

But I do think people now entering middle age with student loans got kind of screwed and it's one of the reasons I support loan forgiveness coupled with totally overhauling how we pay for higher ed, even though it won't benefit me personally.

It just seems crazy that we as a society decided it was okay for 18 year olds to take out hundreds of thousands of dollars in loans with no underlying transferable asset (you can't sell someone your degree) and we think that's normal. I think my loans were different -- I took them out for a graduate degree with more value on the market, I was older when I took them out and I better understood what it would mean to repay them. But student loans for undergraduates, or for these schools with dicy cost-benefit promises (like community college or these for-profit colleges) just seems usurious to me.

I get why someone approaching 40 now who is still paying off those loans while also trying to buy a home and save for their own kids college would be really frustrated by that. People who let their kids take out loans like that without sitting them down and coming up with a plan for repayment first, were bad parents. It's just a really irresponsible thing to let a 17/18 yr old make that choice. It will haunt them for decades. And then schools and lenders profited off it -- the availability of student loans drove up the cost of higher education, and there are a bunch of very unethical businesses that have made a killing off servicing these loans and making it as hard as possible for people to pay them off or discharge them. It's really disturbing. I think people should be mad. They were taken advantage of.

That might explain the interest rate on these loans. They are an extremely risky proposition for banks since there are no assets.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Sorry I don't pay to read news. It's part of my "adulting"

That's called entitlement. Journalists don't work for free as part of their own "adulting."

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

The Millennials drowning in student loans and housing debt aren't the same ones that are going to inherit a lot money from their parents. That's not how it works.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you're a white guy, life and economic prospects are better today than they've ever been.

Hahahahahahahaaaaa

You disagree? What era was any better for someone who wasn't a white guy?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Unless you're a white guy, life and economic prospects are better today than they've ever been.

Let’s just it’s not white guys who I see whining that “life is so hard for millennials” yada.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m 38, married 11 years, have 3 kids, own my home, have a healthy retirement savings.

I’m absolutely dumbfounded by how few of my peers have progressed down the “normal” path of adulthood with me. I kept thinking they’d catch up to me at some point, but the door is closing.

I am 35 and nobody in my orbit was talking marriage at 27. It feels like it took my circle (myself included) until 30 to start "growing up" - I was married at 31 and that was the first of my friend group.

You were not in the right orbit. God 27 is late to be married if you want to be somewhat responsible.

My friend group is a bunch of MBAs, attorneys, and PA's. The men we have married were in similar situations at 27.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Sorry I don't pay to read news. It's part of my "adulting"


Someone is paying for the news to be written. Do you know who paid for the “free” news you read, and why they paid for it? As the wife of a journalist I can tell you that journalists actually need to be paid to do their work. If you pay them by subscribing to a paper you get the news. If you get your news from an entertainment company that pays them instead…you get entertainment, ie content created for maximum clicks.

Pay for your news, the same way you pay for books. Or read a newspaper through your public library. That’s good too.

NP: Thank you 11:59, well said.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

The Millennials drowning in student loans and housing debt aren't the same ones that are going to inherit a lot money from their parents. That's not how it works.

That is probably true for some but not all. The lucky millenials who were taught to be fiscally prudent are not those who need to wait around for mom and dad to die to pay their bills.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

There's some truth to this. The millenials have also had the benefit of the lowest interest rates imaginable, for a really long time. (My student loans were at 8-12%, depending if they were subsidized!).
But I also feel bad for them because the generation behind them is basically quiet quitting before they even start. That puts a lot of burden on Gen X-ers and millenials to keep the economy running, and not being able to staff up businesses the way we'd like. The boomers all left during the pandemic, and now I know a lot of Gen X-ers that are so burnt out that they are taking early retirement as well. That leaves a lot of work for those millenials. I'm also not sure how much wealth transfer there will be -- those boomers are spending that money pretty quickly, and I suspect a lot of them will outlive their savings since they are the generation that gave up smoking and invented aerobics.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Unless you're a white guy, life and economic prospects are better today than they've ever been.

Hahahahahahahaaaaa

You disagree? What era was any better for someone who wasn't a white guy?

Lol. Oh shit dude, you’re right! Black people and women are allowed to own property now. I guess everything’s just fine for everyone.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

Maybe but the 90s was an AMAZING time for workers unrivaled until maybe last year. Dot.com millionaire secretaries. Huge run up in stock prices. Cheap houses.

I’m late GenX and I literally graduated the month before the dot.com stock meltdown. And I was nominally in tech.

I pivoted to gov contractor to pay the bills, and it was steady work. But by the time I put enough cash together for a house, prices for homes were astronomical compared to my body shop salary.

It’s okay now, we bought after Great Recession and make $300k as a family so while we are DCUM poor, we are way better off than midlife millennials. But hardly rosebuds. And no inheritance from my hard scrabble silent generation parents of course.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

There's some truth to this. The millenials have also had the benefit of the lowest interest rates imaginable, for a really long time. (My student loans were at 8-12%, depending if they were subsidized!).
But I also feel bad for them because the generation behind them is basically quiet quitting before they even start. That puts a lot of burden on Gen X-ers and millenials to keep the economy running, and not being able to staff up businesses the way we'd like. The boomers all left during the pandemic, and now I know a lot of Gen X-ers that are so burnt out that they are taking early retirement as well. That leaves a lot of work for those millenials. I'm also not sure how much wealth transfer there will be -- those boomers are spending that money pretty quickly, and I suspect a lot of them will outlive their savings since they are the generation that gave up smoking and invented aerobics.

As a millennial, my grad school loans during the 2008 recession were at 8-12% interest rates even though "normal" interest rates were 0% at that time. There wasn't a discount.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:As a Gen Xer who graduated into the recession of the early 90s and then endured the financial crisis I find the millennial attitude/ignorance that they are apparently the first generation ever to face economic hardship laughable. This generation has been feeding at their boomer parents trough all their lives is on track to receive the largest intergenerational transfer of wealth in history.

The Millennials drowning in student loans and housing debt aren't the same ones that are going to inherit a lot money from their parents. That's not how it works.

That is probably true for some but not all. The lucky millenials who were taught to be fiscally prudent are not those who need to wait around for mom and dad to die to pay their bills.

It's not about being taught to be financially prudent, but about whether your parents have money. I took out student loans and will likely have to help finance my parents in their old age. There's no money coming my way. Boomer parents with money help their kids with school costs and downpayments. But that's only true for a subset of millenials.

[Anonymous]

DCUM only approves of articles that highlight the plight of people making over $250k a year and how money doesn’t go as far as it used to. Every other demographic is “whining”.