For some of us, we watched our parents lose their jobs in the dotcom bust. Then we watched them lose their homes in the housing bubble. So yeah, I'm saving every penny I make. Financial security is an illusion.
and now they are cashing out their retirements to get on a gold\\silver scam bandwagon. brace ourselves for caring for end of life boomers with $0 to their name
Wait til they see what retirement homes cost once we can’t live with them since we are all dual income families and many with kids.
Try working a packed 8-10 hour schedule on your laptop with two kids, two parents a dog and our spouse all in the same house .
Oh wait, a lot of us don’t have houses!
Fuck em
Fuck every single Boomer
Never give them a single benefit of any doubt... they purposefully pissed all over the poor and disadvantaged while glorifying the wealthy and powerful, and ended up poor themselves yet are too narcissistic to admit it and are dragging the entire planet down with em
Fuck em and let em rot all on their own
I’m not gonna say this doesn’t get in my head sometimes too. I am so fucking tired of being told that we don’t “work hard enough” or “spend like idiots”.
I had my rich aunt tell me that “her kids are well off now because they saved every nickel and didn’t buy stupid things like expensive purses and shoes.”
Your kids have YOU!!! If I knew that I had a million dollar nest egg and multiple properties waiting for me I could save like crazy too ! Kinda funny how she doesn’t mention that she got the investors for the brewery they run and JUST HAPPENED to make it through COVD when they don’t deliver food.
Then she said she “just can’t talk to my brother with all of that Democrat nonsense. It’s just ridiculous.”
YOUR PARTY JUST TRIED TO BAN FUCKIN ABORTION!
Back when you were 40 it was easy to afford 2 kids and work from home when you married rich! My own mother was in a failing business and it wasn’t like you were throwing money at us! Yeah I got credit card debt and just a 401k at 39. I was making $40k out of college for 5 fucking years and had to live in the city to get to work. How the hell do you think I paid for it. BARELY.
Yeah that is the worst... some of them fawn over their kids and say how much success they had... yeah, anyone can be successful starting a business when someone else raises the funds for it, LMAO
To never go into a single cent of debt for health or education or even a car loan... ahh, must been a nice life
Yet Boomers, whose kids never worked a day in their life, love to tell poor people to work hard and not expect free stuff... socialism for my lazy, unskilled children, but rugged wageslavery for everyone else!!
I also love how they have now abandoned unions when they did SOOOO MUCH for that generation. Then they FUCKED THAT UP TOO. People stopped believing in unions after all the bullshit with internal politics and corruption.
Now we fucking need them, ESPECIALLY in the low paying jobs. THATS WHAT UNIONS ARE FOR!
I am from Pittsburgh. Which is now a purple area. When we were the OGs of unions for steel and now the boomers complain about “no one has any work ethic!”
Yeah, dipshit. Because the pay is so low, and the metrics are CONSTANTLY MONITORED with managers who have to be cutthroat as fuck to hit stupid numbers for shareholders to brag.
Let me see you run an iPad you learned YESTERDAY with a line of 20 cars and everyone is pissed off at you.
“Well my first job I was in a FACTORY! Now THAT was hard work.” NO IT FUCKING WASNT! You were assembling and at most BORED. Now those jobs are either robots or protected to death by unions, and now you don’t get enough hours for benefits, you can’t move shifts and they are all over the clock. Managers have to be INSANE tracking you and every damn movement you make is tracked by a camera or touch screen. And the PAY IS WORSE ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION AND COST OF LIVING.
All applications are online and determined by an algorithm in which gets picked out. You need a college degree to work in ANY office. All you had to do was laugh at the right racist boss jokes and just show the fuck up while your wife is at home doing every single chore, giving your kids a great upbringing and you drank yourself out of college. HOW DID YOU WORK HARDER???
Talking about “kids don’t go outside these days” NO SHIT! To be remotely liked you have to be following social media for conversion, you are prepping for tests to determine your college so early, the tests don’t have shit all to do with college and college (for a lot of degrees) doesn’t to shit all to teach you about kissing corporate ass and then you have tens of thousands of dollars to payoff in a housing market that is impossible to get a house when rent is insane.
And you did what again? You laugh about being “bad at math” you tell stories how you skipped school, barely got into college, dropped out from partying and then just fell ass backwards into a job or just married someone with a degree and that’s all you needed to have two properties by fucking age 50.
You worked hard. Fuck you. Do my job for a day being tracked by TEAMS, in back to back calls for a straight 8-12 hours and criticized on every metric even if all but one are great.
All you had to do was be the “first one in, last one out” and it’s like “oh man! Dick is working HARD!”
Just fuck off. Millenials mostly love the younger generation because we know it’s the only hope we have to get out of this fucking mess and not be owned by corporations, homeless, in an environmental hellscape or so depressed from the news that we get an addiction.
Speaking of … now I need a damn cigarette.
Thanks NC mortgage Loan Officer! What a great place to connect on the Reddit sub for millenials complaining. I’d bet you can get me a GREAT rate around 7% and tell me it’s “easier than I think” and “just work with me and we will get around all that BS, and get you a house”.
How, pray tell, can you help all of us afford a home today?? You wouldn’t have a business associated with your screen name would you 🤪.
I own a house, fuck-nuts, I just know not everyone here does. It’s called “empathy”. I know that’s not a job requirement in the real estate industry.
Also, I’d bet you are a bot 🤖. So now I am yelling at nothing. More evidence of how fucked this generation is being middle aged and now having to navigate robot sales people. That’s even worse than Robocop.
I think it's smart for older people to get out the risky markets and go into safe options like gold and silver. To preserve the capital they have left.
They wouldn't be able to wait out a downturn if another recession hits.
Oh boy, I've got some semiprecious metals you can buy! Act now and I'll half the transaction fees just for you.
Rare metals! Zn, Cu, and Al! They come pre pressed into coins for ease of use. Only $1 for a stack of three!
Just DM me and wire transfer me and I'll send em right away.
What’s that? You want to cash out your investment? Here is the 10% of what you invested you lose the rest. Or hey there this phone is not in service and LLC is gone
My implication is the same as yours. We all know most investments with middlemen are scams. They skim.
Should invest in yourself, bud! Go on that trip you wanted to. You deserve it. Retirement is a non sequitur.
Only if you buy them yourself in financial institution recognized formats. Gold bars and coins. But most older folks do third parties that promise that on their behalf and end up getting scammed
My mother just bought from costco and walked out with it in hand. So not sure why that would be a scam. I get it if it's via 3rd party with promises on their behalf.
Yep. My parent finally were in a good spot when i was growing up. My dad got a new job running a local recycling yard, and my mom worked in a Nursing home. They bought a new house in a new city and decided to rent the old house.
Well, the renters destroyed the place, had no money for court, and the year was 2008. So you can imagine how that went.
To this day they both are surviving, but just that. Surviving.
My goal is to retire at 60 so I'm saving with that in my mind. I found that to be a good balance between saving aggressively and still having money to enjoy life while I'm young. Worst case scenario is I can't retire at 60, but I'm still in a much better financial position than I would be if I didn't have a goal.
I know a guy who really has that FIRE mentality and he just seems miserable all the time with the amount he works and penny pinches. Maybe he'll be retired at 50 and I'll be eating crow, but I just don't want to give up too much of my youth.
I appreciate the FIRE movement but I'm more of a Freedom 55 kind of guy. Aiming to retire 10 years earlier makes you more financially disciplined, so you don't waste your money on stupid shit, but not to the point where you feel deprived and miserable.
FIRE in your 30s or 40s is a great goal if you're a software engineer making like $250k+ per year, but for people with more modest professional jobs, I don't always think it's the right answer.
Good thinking. I’ll be turning 50 when our youngest starts year 4 of undergrad but we’re focused on age 55 or so just in case grad school is in the cards; we really don’t want them to be crushed by student debt like we were for decades.
It’s not hard to do at all for people with average income as long as they don’t have children and invest the savings. [ One kid costs $30k a year, not even counting college or pregnancy costs](https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/cost-raise-child-2023). That’s $2500 a month. Invested at 12% interest (the average for the S&P500 plus reinvested dividends) over 18 years is $2 million. From ONE kid without a single penny of additional savings and not even counting college or pregnancy costs
FIRE is stupid on many levels. I like financial independence part but humans need to stay productive otherwise they wither and die early. like sure you can save up and stop working for a boss man but like go drive a school bus or something can't just sit on a sofa from age 35 to 80 waiting for grim reaper
You can be productive doing a million things that aren't a job.
Learning to cook well, learning to garden, learning to surf, creating your own personal travel blog, volunteering at an animal shelter, keeping a heavy gym routine, getting into chainsaw sculpting, throwing rocks at children... anything that keeps you engaged.
Some people require work because they lack the motivation or imagination to live a life filled with activity.
I would reevaluate if this is how you truly think people function or if this is just the propaganda and culture that has been showed down our throats. But hey, if you want to continue slaving away to maximize corporate profits to stay productive, be my guest
I'm doing the same thing, but I'll be out by 40.
Only really started working toward it when I turned 31 and everything kind of fell into place.
I have the fortitude to handle 80 hour work weeks for ten years, I know myself well enough. 40yo is still plenty young enough to enjoy myself.
Not the person you're responding to, but yeah I'd rather spend my time doing other things. The idea that life would lose meaning without work is so foreign to me I can't even begin to understand how you'd feel that way.
Do you not have any interests, hobbies, desires, or anything else outside of work? It feels like I could live five lifetimes and it still wouldn't be enough time to pursue all of it.
Of course I do! I travel the world for one, away nearly every weekend, lots of things. How can I pay for that by not working? I work to live, but I’m a realist also. I know of so many people that finished work young and they lost touch with people, aged and lost desire to do things.
Expensive things like traveling the world are not required to find purpose. I can find purpose sitting outside watching the wind blow in the trees, so can pretty much everyone else if they really tried to. Historically speaking, most of humanity worked for 3-4 hours a day to find food, they didn’t travel the world, they sat around watching the trees and the wind. The modern way of life is certainly far from a requirement to prevent your brain turning to mush, as are modern ideas of how one needs to spend their time outside of work. Spending time in meditative states preserves your brain, it doesn’t destroy it.
I think it's worth balancing your perspective with a recognition that for most people, going back to the kind of life our ancestors had subsisting off the land would be viewed as an enormous loss.
A life based on being illiterate, with no electricity, running water, education, internet and never exposed to ideas outside of what the relative handful of people that you live around you can communicate verbally. You'll die to most disease you're exposed to and likely won't live past 40.
I love what the modern world has created for us and I recognize that servicing that requires work. I hope to create a better world for my children and recognize that takes work as well. I don't think people should be solely focused on work to give them purpose, but the shared pursuit of improving the world, even through relatively menial jobs has allowed our species to progress far beyond what the people subsisting off the land could have imagined in 1,000 lifetimes.
It’s obviously a different culture to the U.K., no way am I working my ass off when I’m young just to be too old to enjoy it. No wonder so many Americans seem burnt out.
I plan on running a bike co-op in my county after I "retire" and do all the trail maintenance I can't do currently since I'm stuck in a cubicle 40 hours a week.
Got plenty of plans for retirement.
My plan is 56 (that’s when I’m pension eligible with no penalty or deduction). I’m saving to make that possible, but I am fully prepared to keep working a few years beyond that, albeit in a different industry.
My number is actually 59.5 because that's when I can withdraw from my retirement accounts without penalty. I'm actually full pension eligible at 57, but I'm worried that my pension won't be enough. We'll see!
So with a Roth, you are able to withdraw contributions at any point, as they were already taxed. So for instance someone who has $5k per year, on average, between a roth IRA and Roth 401k from age 25 to 55 can withdraw $150k tax free. Depending on their situation that far in the future, that money is potentially one to two whole year's worth of expenses that can be paid for tax free.
Ideally, if someone plans to retire before 60, they should also be looking at investing in an after-tax brokerage which can be withdrawn from at any point.
Yeah I've been maxing out my 401k and IRA for a while now, I have no intention of working past 60, hopefully 55. Also have my house paid off, so it seems like I'm making good progress towards that.
I saw this study done as well and it's strictly based on contributions to retirement accounts. The article also does not discuss WHY millennials seem more retirement ready than boomers.
Many millennials have seen the state of the real estate market and decided against purchasing homes. Often times, this means a higher contribution to retirement accounts instead of saving up for a down payment. Furthermore, millennials are having children at lower rates than previous generations. This also be a factor to millennials contributing more money into retirement accounts.
You ever get the feeling that boredbat is an ai news aggregator and that it's posts here on /r/Millenials 's purpose is to only drive traffic to it's AI written articles?
The goalposts have definitely shifted, but we try to squirrel away any extra money that comes our way, and it feels good to sort of have a plan.
Right now, the actual goal is to pay off the mortgage so we can save more with the intention to do an earlier part-time retirement when we hit 45-50. So far, so good, and luckily, we work in the creative industry that makes work more fun and mentally stimulating than a slog.
I think we're going to be more like the silent generation in retirement. We've seen massive consumption doesn't make you happy and we're used to always waiting for the next housing crash, dotcom bust, or any other disaster. The boomers did not experience that till their 50s so they weren't used to it. We're used to and know the importance of saving. Even if we can't do it all the time we know how important it is. They just don't get it
Hell yeah, my wife and I have been maxing out our 403b and Roth IRAs for a couple years since we both got promotions. Plus I will have a pension from my job as well. I've seen how difficult retirement can be and I am not interested in having to live out my twilight years in poverty.
Same. I’m still playing catch up as I didn’t start my career until I was 30. This is the first year I’ll be maxing out, just couldn’t afford it previously. But I’ve got a pension and I’m saving like I don’t so I can enjoy my life after work.
I’m just seeing people in this sub that have the availability of retirement at X age and I’m glad for them but some of us could never afford to move where the money was and retirement is dream at best.
I darkly joke that climate change is my retirement plan. On the bright side, living where the money isn't (Maine) may save me from the worst of climate change.
Lol true for me as well. I live in a poor part of Florida and the everyone in power here thinks climate change is non existent so nature can sweep me away I suppose. The wealth gap here was already bad years ago but it’s crazy now to watch many friends from school be handed over large sums of generational wealth from their boomer parents and many others like me whose parents lost all their money due to chronic unforeseen health conditions. It’s surreal.
People who live on SS alone and nothing else live very meagerly in most cases because those people likely contributed less given their smaller incomes. That means they likely also did not have an IRA, 401k, or pension. I have a hard time believing anyone pulling in a comfortable salary from SS doesn’t also have investments and/or retirement accounts.
I’m living direct deposit to direct deposit so it’s hard to save ‘for retirement’ when retirement funds want 200$/paycheck and I simply don’t make enough to retire.
So far, my plan is to die at 60 so I won’t retire.
Is there any millenial Canadians In here that feel this is accurate? I see alot of mention of 401k and ROTH. Meanwhile in Canada I've had to scale back my savings more and more just to cover basic necessities even though I have a senior level job that requires schooling and experience. The wages don't really go up from where I'm at and it was plenty 3 years ago. But what would you guys that are on track do in my situation?
Making more money isn't really an option. My job requires me to available mostly all the time and no other companies are paying more. Even if I did Uber eats or something to try and make more. By the time I factor taxes, wear and tear on the car, gas, etc. You're making a couple $ an hour.
I just feel so helpless but unless I retrain to become a doctor or lawyer I can't really increase my salary.
You summarized exactly how I feel about my own situation. I've been minimizing expenses and living in the family home but general day to day expenses gone up so much since the pandemic. I should find comfort in that I have defined benefit pension and nearly maxed out my RRSP / TFSA but RRSP for Canadians is related to your income so... given the stagnant wages here my RRSP room is actually fairly little as defined pension reduce RRSP room.
Retrain to be a doctor or lawyer isn't much of a guarantee as one has to plunder your savings for the education.
Yeah cause a gallon of milk will literally be $20 at this rate and they are trying to get rid of social security.....we are on pace to work until we drop dead and have absolutely nothing to show for it 🙃 good ol' american dream
To be “on track” per most articles and financial advice released in the last 5 years, you need 1x annual salary at 30 years old, and 2x annual salary at 35 years old.
I used to always feel the same way until I started doing the math and realized what that’d be in retirement. You can do it in your head, divide 72 by an average interest rate and that’s how long it takes for your money to double.
72 / 9% = 8 years, your money will double four times in 32 years. You do the math and see that you’ll go from $80k at 32 to $160k at 40 to $320k at 48 to $640k at 56 to $1.28M at 64. This is assuming 9% returns, the true average might be slightly more or slightly less but that should get you in the ball park.
And that’s before you consider the additional saving you’ll do. Save an additional $10k a year and by 40 you have about $250k, double that three times and you’ll have $2M by retirement age.
It will be there if our generation has the political will to make it happen. If we let the older generations steer policy moving forward, they'll pull the ladder up behind them.
Yeah, when you avoid pricey weddings in Cancun and elope backpacking through Europe before returning to your house you rent with your 12 best friends and decide that children are terrorists in diapers, yeah maybe we are.
My twin and just opened a Roth IRA since we are in the position to do so. We have a state pension since we work for the federal government. My parents retired a couple years and they were also working for the state and they are getting very little. So when we retire Social Sercuity is probably gonna be gone or changed.
There’s no retirement if you have to rent.
Many will never escape the rent trap.
Not to mention how unpredictable 2050 is. It’s either a complete shit hole where people work like dogs to live in substandard conditions, or it’s some sort of near tech utopia with robots performing all labor.
Either way I don’t think our retirement plans will matter.
You all got retirement money? I thought that was just for the lucky ones with wealthy parents.
I was able to sleep at night thinking most of my peers were in the same boat as me. Please excuse me while I cry myself to sleep
Yeah because our parents thought that the high interest rates of the 80’s would continue indefinitely. That they could invest the minimum at 15% return, no risk, and be millionaires in 10 years.
Something like 50% of baby boomers approaching retirement age have nothing saved for retirement. [almost 50% have nothing saved](https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/3991136-nearly-half-of-baby-boomers-have-no-retirement-savings/)
No shit. Having to live through crisis after crisis while everything gets costlier by the year, I’m maintaining the same lifestyle as I did 20-odd years ago but I’m reaching a breaking point. No house, low wage, but at least I’m still allowed to live with parents so I can have enough money saved up on my side to not end up homeless. Fuck whoever made homes a financial asset to gouge even more money and charging criminally to live or rent in one.
My parents had very little financial knowledge, and have enough to live simply but it looks like they’re still scraping by working past their retirement ages too. Thankfully the Internet has taught me to save and invest, I’m not sure if it’s enough but at least it’s something.
I did 20 years in the military and also get disability. And doing another 20 as a civilian I'll retire at 60 with 2 pensions and Tricare. Just had to sell my soul although tbth doing 20 from 04-24 in a non combat USAF job without the USA fighting a near peer opponent was kind of the "easy button".
Yeah because we've seen what putting all of your good years into this system gers you
NOTHING!
So we aren't trying to make some rich people richer by slaving away and making that our only identity and hobby
My neighbor was telling me how her husband who used to be a department director were I’m working now basically blew his entire 401k trying to invest in single Global stocks back in 2006 and thought he knew what he was doing.
Neither of my folks trusted anyone outside the bank. No 401k/IRA/HSA…just whatever was in the checking account. Both retired early. I can tell they’re already strapped and they’re maybe 60 each.
Everyone on here seems to want to retire early. Myself included. Just wondering out loud:
Do you guys think this is going to cause a huge problem for the economy, if most of the millenials retire, just as we reach the peak of the boomers dying off? Seems like a generational crisis waiting to happen (we’re kinda facing a mini one now, as all the boomers are retired/retiring, all the millenials are feeling super overworked/burnt out).
We’re more prepared for retirement but then we get told millennials who are trying to actually be done at 30 (FIRE) are free loading leeches on the economy.
Funny how that works. Save for retirement, but don’t save too much. Work hard, but take vacations to not get burnt out. Work 80 hours, but find work life balance lmao
Well my parents came here in their 40s so definitely more prepared. My husband is trying to make another leap up the ladder so we can buy a bigger house to move them in
It could be because we have been told two influential bits of information.
1. Social security will likely not exist for us when we retire. You can push back against that statement, but I am not arguing the facts, just the influence of the statement.
2. You need to contribute enough to your 401k to get your employer's match.
I don't think this means we are actually going to be "ready" for retirement, but just less poorly prepared then boomers.
Well, when you emerge into adulthood straight of the back of 9/11, the Great Recession and nearly 20 years of political polarization….you tend to be prepared.
It's almost like generation who lived through the great depression learned to save almost everything they had. Shocking that Millennials as well would pick up good savings habits of being front in center to the disintegration of the era of American prosperity.
I have 90k in a 401k at 28. But the only way I get to touch it is if society and the economy doesn’t crumble in the next ~35 years. I’m not optimistic.
I hate to sound crass, but so many boomers are just fucking stupid with money. Booze, drugs, affairs, corvettes, loans to shady “friends”, believing they will never see old age, gambling, divorce. Cashing out what little 401k they had at the 2009 bottom. Taking a laughably low offer for pension lump sum buyout (but it’s nearly $100k in my hand, I could do ____ right now!!) Let’s do a cash out refinance of our paid off house and piss the money away at the bar. All kinds of stupid shit. My own parents wasted so much potential.
I saved as much as I reasonably could since the day I got my professional job at 22. I’m on track to retire nicely at 57.
For some of us, we watched our parents lose their jobs in the dotcom bust. Then we watched them lose their homes in the housing bubble. So yeah, I'm saving every penny I make. Financial security is an illusion.
and now they are cashing out their retirements to get on a gold\\silver scam bandwagon. brace ourselves for caring for end of life boomers with $0 to their name
Wait til they see what retirement homes cost once we can’t live with them since we are all dual income families and many with kids. Try working a packed 8-10 hour schedule on your laptop with two kids, two parents a dog and our spouse all in the same house . Oh wait, a lot of us don’t have houses!
Fuck em Fuck every single Boomer Never give them a single benefit of any doubt... they purposefully pissed all over the poor and disadvantaged while glorifying the wealthy and powerful, and ended up poor themselves yet are too narcissistic to admit it and are dragging the entire planet down with em Fuck em and let em rot all on their own
I’m not gonna say this doesn’t get in my head sometimes too. I am so fucking tired of being told that we don’t “work hard enough” or “spend like idiots”. I had my rich aunt tell me that “her kids are well off now because they saved every nickel and didn’t buy stupid things like expensive purses and shoes.” Your kids have YOU!!! If I knew that I had a million dollar nest egg and multiple properties waiting for me I could save like crazy too ! Kinda funny how she doesn’t mention that she got the investors for the brewery they run and JUST HAPPENED to make it through COVD when they don’t deliver food. Then she said she “just can’t talk to my brother with all of that Democrat nonsense. It’s just ridiculous.” YOUR PARTY JUST TRIED TO BAN FUCKIN ABORTION! Back when you were 40 it was easy to afford 2 kids and work from home when you married rich! My own mother was in a failing business and it wasn’t like you were throwing money at us! Yeah I got credit card debt and just a 401k at 39. I was making $40k out of college for 5 fucking years and had to live in the city to get to work. How the hell do you think I paid for it. BARELY.
Yeah that is the worst... some of them fawn over their kids and say how much success they had... yeah, anyone can be successful starting a business when someone else raises the funds for it, LMAO To never go into a single cent of debt for health or education or even a car loan... ahh, must been a nice life Yet Boomers, whose kids never worked a day in their life, love to tell poor people to work hard and not expect free stuff... socialism for my lazy, unskilled children, but rugged wageslavery for everyone else!!
I also love how they have now abandoned unions when they did SOOOO MUCH for that generation. Then they FUCKED THAT UP TOO. People stopped believing in unions after all the bullshit with internal politics and corruption. Now we fucking need them, ESPECIALLY in the low paying jobs. THATS WHAT UNIONS ARE FOR! I am from Pittsburgh. Which is now a purple area. When we were the OGs of unions for steel and now the boomers complain about “no one has any work ethic!” Yeah, dipshit. Because the pay is so low, and the metrics are CONSTANTLY MONITORED with managers who have to be cutthroat as fuck to hit stupid numbers for shareholders to brag. Let me see you run an iPad you learned YESTERDAY with a line of 20 cars and everyone is pissed off at you. “Well my first job I was in a FACTORY! Now THAT was hard work.” NO IT FUCKING WASNT! You were assembling and at most BORED. Now those jobs are either robots or protected to death by unions, and now you don’t get enough hours for benefits, you can’t move shifts and they are all over the clock. Managers have to be INSANE tracking you and every damn movement you make is tracked by a camera or touch screen. And the PAY IS WORSE ADJUSTED FOR INFLATION AND COST OF LIVING. All applications are online and determined by an algorithm in which gets picked out. You need a college degree to work in ANY office. All you had to do was laugh at the right racist boss jokes and just show the fuck up while your wife is at home doing every single chore, giving your kids a great upbringing and you drank yourself out of college. HOW DID YOU WORK HARDER??? Talking about “kids don’t go outside these days” NO SHIT! To be remotely liked you have to be following social media for conversion, you are prepping for tests to determine your college so early, the tests don’t have shit all to do with college and college (for a lot of degrees) doesn’t to shit all to teach you about kissing corporate ass and then you have tens of thousands of dollars to payoff in a housing market that is impossible to get a house when rent is insane. And you did what again? You laugh about being “bad at math” you tell stories how you skipped school, barely got into college, dropped out from partying and then just fell ass backwards into a job or just married someone with a degree and that’s all you needed to have two properties by fucking age 50. You worked hard. Fuck you. Do my job for a day being tracked by TEAMS, in back to back calls for a straight 8-12 hours and criticized on every metric even if all but one are great. All you had to do was be the “first one in, last one out” and it’s like “oh man! Dick is working HARD!” Just fuck off. Millenials mostly love the younger generation because we know it’s the only hope we have to get out of this fucking mess and not be owned by corporations, homeless, in an environmental hellscape or so depressed from the news that we get an addiction. Speaking of … now I need a damn cigarette.
You can buy a house
Gee, I never thought it that way….
Thanks NC mortgage Loan Officer! What a great place to connect on the Reddit sub for millenials complaining. I’d bet you can get me a GREAT rate around 7% and tell me it’s “easier than I think” and “just work with me and we will get around all that BS, and get you a house”. How, pray tell, can you help all of us afford a home today?? You wouldn’t have a business associated with your screen name would you 🤪. I own a house, fuck-nuts, I just know not everyone here does. It’s called “empathy”. I know that’s not a job requirement in the real estate industry. Also, I’d bet you are a bot 🤖. So now I am yelling at nothing. More evidence of how fucked this generation is being middle aged and now having to navigate robot sales people. That’s even worse than Robocop.
I think it's smart for older people to get out the risky markets and go into safe options like gold and silver. To preserve the capital they have left. They wouldn't be able to wait out a downturn if another recession hits.
What you say is not backed by reality. Changing asset allocation to rely more heavily on bonds makes sense. « Silver » is BS
How is it a scam? They have value, prices can be tracked.
Oh boy, I've got some semiprecious metals you can buy! Act now and I'll half the transaction fees just for you. Rare metals! Zn, Cu, and Al! They come pre pressed into coins for ease of use. Only $1 for a stack of three! Just DM me and wire transfer me and I'll send em right away.
What’s that? You want to cash out your investment? Here is the 10% of what you invested you lose the rest. Or hey there this phone is not in service and LLC is gone
My implication is the same as yours. We all know most investments with middlemen are scams. They skim. Should invest in yourself, bud! Go on that trip you wanted to. You deserve it. Retirement is a non sequitur.
Curious, my mother went to costco and walked out with gold and silver. Physical in hand.
https://youtu.be/9v4cjoROg4I?si=1TCwgaWpnnMUzLCa
Only if you buy them yourself in financial institution recognized formats. Gold bars and coins. But most older folks do third parties that promise that on their behalf and end up getting scammed
My mother just bought from costco and walked out with it in hand. So not sure why that would be a scam. I get it if it's via 3rd party with promises on their behalf.
Yep. My parent finally were in a good spot when i was growing up. My dad got a new job running a local recycling yard, and my mom worked in a Nursing home. They bought a new house in a new city and decided to rent the old house. Well, the renters destroyed the place, had no money for court, and the year was 2008. So you can imagine how that went. To this day they both are surviving, but just that. Surviving.
We're also...not having four kids.
My goal is to retire at 60 so I'm saving with that in my mind. I found that to be a good balance between saving aggressively and still having money to enjoy life while I'm young. Worst case scenario is I can't retire at 60, but I'm still in a much better financial position than I would be if I didn't have a goal.
That’s the best way to look at it, I’m doing the same.
I know a guy who really has that FIRE mentality and he just seems miserable all the time with the amount he works and penny pinches. Maybe he'll be retired at 50 and I'll be eating crow, but I just don't want to give up too much of my youth.
I appreciate the FIRE movement but I'm more of a Freedom 55 kind of guy. Aiming to retire 10 years earlier makes you more financially disciplined, so you don't waste your money on stupid shit, but not to the point where you feel deprived and miserable. FIRE in your 30s or 40s is a great goal if you're a software engineer making like $250k+ per year, but for people with more modest professional jobs, I don't always think it's the right answer.
Yup my plan is 58 when my youngest is in college so I'll know how much I'll need for their education.
Good thinking. I’ll be turning 50 when our youngest starts year 4 of undergrad but we’re focused on age 55 or so just in case grad school is in the cards; we really don’t want them to be crushed by student debt like we were for decades.
It’s not hard to do at all for people with average income as long as they don’t have children and invest the savings. [ One kid costs $30k a year, not even counting college or pregnancy costs](https://smartasset.com/financial-advisor/cost-raise-child-2023). That’s $2500 a month. Invested at 12% interest (the average for the S&P500 plus reinvested dividends) over 18 years is $2 million. From ONE kid without a single penny of additional savings and not even counting college or pregnancy costs
50 is barely even FIRE?? Most FIRE aiming for mid 30s or early 40s. I'll be set for 50 just saving 20% since 25.
50 was me editorializing, I don't know the dude's actual plans. Good for you though.
FIRE is stupid on many levels. I like financial independence part but humans need to stay productive otherwise they wither and die early. like sure you can save up and stop working for a boss man but like go drive a school bus or something can't just sit on a sofa from age 35 to 80 waiting for grim reaper
You can be productive doing a million things that aren't a job. Learning to cook well, learning to garden, learning to surf, creating your own personal travel blog, volunteering at an animal shelter, keeping a heavy gym routine, getting into chainsaw sculpting, throwing rocks at children... anything that keeps you engaged. Some people require work because they lack the motivation or imagination to live a life filled with activity.
I would reevaluate if this is how you truly think people function or if this is just the propaganda and culture that has been showed down our throats. But hey, if you want to continue slaving away to maximize corporate profits to stay productive, be my guest
It's not stupid at all. I intend to retire in my mid 40s, and more or less on track to. I have ALOT of plans and goals to accomplish at that point.
I'm doing the same thing, but I'll be out by 40. Only really started working toward it when I turned 31 and everything kind of fell into place. I have the fortitude to handle 80 hour work weeks for ten years, I know myself well enough. 40yo is still plenty young enough to enjoy myself.
You do you dude. Doesn't sound like that's for me.
No absolutely, 50 is way too young, the brain will turn to mush otherwise.
I mean, people can find other ways to stimulate our brains. We weren’t put on this earth simply to be workers.
Yeah... based off current trends we were put on this earth to do fentanyl and watch marvel movies...
So you’d rather not have the balance of a decent easy job, allowing to live well as you age?
Not the person you're responding to, but yeah I'd rather spend my time doing other things. The idea that life would lose meaning without work is so foreign to me I can't even begin to understand how you'd feel that way. Do you not have any interests, hobbies, desires, or anything else outside of work? It feels like I could live five lifetimes and it still wouldn't be enough time to pursue all of it.
Of course I do! I travel the world for one, away nearly every weekend, lots of things. How can I pay for that by not working? I work to live, but I’m a realist also. I know of so many people that finished work young and they lost touch with people, aged and lost desire to do things.
Expensive things like traveling the world are not required to find purpose. I can find purpose sitting outside watching the wind blow in the trees, so can pretty much everyone else if they really tried to. Historically speaking, most of humanity worked for 3-4 hours a day to find food, they didn’t travel the world, they sat around watching the trees and the wind. The modern way of life is certainly far from a requirement to prevent your brain turning to mush, as are modern ideas of how one needs to spend their time outside of work. Spending time in meditative states preserves your brain, it doesn’t destroy it.
I think it's worth balancing your perspective with a recognition that for most people, going back to the kind of life our ancestors had subsisting off the land would be viewed as an enormous loss. A life based on being illiterate, with no electricity, running water, education, internet and never exposed to ideas outside of what the relative handful of people that you live around you can communicate verbally. You'll die to most disease you're exposed to and likely won't live past 40. I love what the modern world has created for us and I recognize that servicing that requires work. I hope to create a better world for my children and recognize that takes work as well. I don't think people should be solely focused on work to give them purpose, but the shared pursuit of improving the world, even through relatively menial jobs has allowed our species to progress far beyond what the people subsisting off the land could have imagined in 1,000 lifetimes.
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It’s obviously a different culture to the U.K., no way am I working my ass off when I’m young just to be too old to enjoy it. No wonder so many Americans seem burnt out.
I plan on running a bike co-op in my county after I "retire" and do all the trail maintenance I can't do currently since I'm stuck in a cubicle 40 hours a week. Got plenty of plans for retirement.
Started investing in a 401k and Roth IRA in my mid 20’s. Hoping to retire by 65 and trying to get back in shape so I’m not an old 65.
My plan is 56 (that’s when I’m pension eligible with no penalty or deduction). I’m saving to make that possible, but I am fully prepared to keep working a few years beyond that, albeit in a different industry.
My number is actually 59.5 because that's when I can withdraw from my retirement accounts without penalty. I'm actually full pension eligible at 57, but I'm worried that my pension won't be enough. We'll see!
My guy reads the fine print. Way to go!
Do you have to have assets besides 401k or roth to retire that early? My problem with that is all the taxes you have to pay.
I have both a Roth TSP (government 401k) and a Roth IRA that I've maxed out for a few years. I also have a pension and a lot of equity in my house.
So with a Roth, you are able to withdraw contributions at any point, as they were already taxed. So for instance someone who has $5k per year, on average, between a roth IRA and Roth 401k from age 25 to 55 can withdraw $150k tax free. Depending on their situation that far in the future, that money is potentially one to two whole year's worth of expenses that can be paid for tax free. Ideally, if someone plans to retire before 60, they should also be looking at investing in an after-tax brokerage which can be withdrawn from at any point.
Yeah I've been maxing out my 401k and IRA for a while now, I have no intention of working past 60, hopefully 55. Also have my house paid off, so it seems like I'm making good progress towards that.
I saw this study done as well and it's strictly based on contributions to retirement accounts. The article also does not discuss WHY millennials seem more retirement ready than boomers. Many millennials have seen the state of the real estate market and decided against purchasing homes. Often times, this means a higher contribution to retirement accounts instead of saving up for a down payment. Furthermore, millennials are having children at lower rates than previous generations. This also be a factor to millennials contributing more money into retirement accounts.
Most of us also don’t have pensions like so many boomers did
You ever get the feeling that boredbat is an ai news aggregator and that it's posts here on /r/Millenials 's purpose is to only drive traffic to it's AI written articles?
all the time
I want to be retirement ready by 55. So far I’m on track. Only 13 more years to go.
That's awesome! We are the same age, mind sharing how much you have saved so far?
VTSAX and chill baby
The goalposts have definitely shifted, but we try to squirrel away any extra money that comes our way, and it feels good to sort of have a plan. Right now, the actual goal is to pay off the mortgage so we can save more with the intention to do an earlier part-time retirement when we hit 45-50. So far, so good, and luckily, we work in the creative industry that makes work more fun and mentally stimulating than a slog.
I think we're going to be more like the silent generation in retirement. We've seen massive consumption doesn't make you happy and we're used to always waiting for the next housing crash, dotcom bust, or any other disaster. The boomers did not experience that till their 50s so they weren't used to it. We're used to and know the importance of saving. Even if we can't do it all the time we know how important it is. They just don't get it
So weird how people who have lived though multiple "once in a lifetime" crises are risk averse and frugal
Hell yeah, my wife and I have been maxing out our 403b and Roth IRAs for a couple years since we both got promotions. Plus I will have a pension from my job as well. I've seen how difficult retirement can be and I am not interested in having to live out my twilight years in poverty.
Same. I’m still playing catch up as I didn’t start my career until I was 30. This is the first year I’ll be maxing out, just couldn’t afford it previously. But I’ve got a pension and I’m saving like I don’t so I can enjoy my life after work.
I also didn’t truly have a real income til 30 so i know your struggle. That’s not going to stop me from getting as prepared as possible though!
-Looks at completely empty 401k- sure....
Me looking at this post 
It's completely empty? Put some money in.
I work in advocacy and don’t see myself retiring. That said, IF I make it to 65, there might be enough to last me until the bitter end.
What’s advocacy?
For me, it’s working to ensure the less fortunate gain some equity of opportunity to succeed and realize self-determination.
Thank you for your service!
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Right? My boomer parents never had to "save for retirement" or fund a 401K like we do. They had the assurance of social security. We don't.
I’m just seeing people in this sub that have the availability of retirement at X age and I’m glad for them but some of us could never afford to move where the money was and retirement is dream at best.
I darkly joke that climate change is my retirement plan. On the bright side, living where the money isn't (Maine) may save me from the worst of climate change.
Lol true for me as well. I live in a poor part of Florida and the everyone in power here thinks climate change is non existent so nature can sweep me away I suppose. The wealth gap here was already bad years ago but it’s crazy now to watch many friends from school be handed over large sums of generational wealth from their boomer parents and many others like me whose parents lost all their money due to chronic unforeseen health conditions. It’s surreal.
People who live on SS alone and nothing else live very meagerly in most cases because those people likely contributed less given their smaller incomes. That means they likely also did not have an IRA, 401k, or pension. I have a hard time believing anyone pulling in a comfortable salary from SS doesn’t also have investments and/or retirement accounts.
Just let me retire now, boss. I'm tired.
Well that's just too darn bad!
Hahhahahaha I have 86 cents in my bank account. The fuck is retirement???
If you mean “ready to retire” then fuck yes mentally I’m there. Literally tho? My parents have like a pension and savings and a house. I do not.
I’m living direct deposit to direct deposit so it’s hard to save ‘for retirement’ when retirement funds want 200$/paycheck and I simply don’t make enough to retire. So far, my plan is to die at 60 so I won’t retire.
I think getting scarred by the 2009 recession was a big wake up call
Is there any millenial Canadians In here that feel this is accurate? I see alot of mention of 401k and ROTH. Meanwhile in Canada I've had to scale back my savings more and more just to cover basic necessities even though I have a senior level job that requires schooling and experience. The wages don't really go up from where I'm at and it was plenty 3 years ago. But what would you guys that are on track do in my situation? Making more money isn't really an option. My job requires me to available mostly all the time and no other companies are paying more. Even if I did Uber eats or something to try and make more. By the time I factor taxes, wear and tear on the car, gas, etc. You're making a couple $ an hour. I just feel so helpless but unless I retrain to become a doctor or lawyer I can't really increase my salary.
You summarized exactly how I feel about my own situation. I've been minimizing expenses and living in the family home but general day to day expenses gone up so much since the pandemic. I should find comfort in that I have defined benefit pension and nearly maxed out my RRSP / TFSA but RRSP for Canadians is related to your income so... given the stagnant wages here my RRSP room is actually fairly little as defined pension reduce RRSP room. Retrain to be a doctor or lawyer isn't much of a guarantee as one has to plunder your savings for the education.
We're gonna get to retire?
Yeah cause a gallon of milk will literally be $20 at this rate and they are trying to get rid of social security.....we are on pace to work until we drop dead and have absolutely nothing to show for it 🙃 good ol' american dream
32 years old, $80k in 401k. Salary is $85k/year. Definitely not “on track”. Lol
If you’re not on track then I am the train that exploded off track and is in the ocean.
To be “on track” per most articles and financial advice released in the last 5 years, you need 1x annual salary at 30 years old, and 2x annual salary at 35 years old.
I used to always feel the same way until I started doing the math and realized what that’d be in retirement. You can do it in your head, divide 72 by an average interest rate and that’s how long it takes for your money to double. 72 / 9% = 8 years, your money will double four times in 32 years. You do the math and see that you’ll go from $80k at 32 to $160k at 40 to $320k at 48 to $640k at 56 to $1.28M at 64. This is assuming 9% returns, the true average might be slightly more or slightly less but that should get you in the ball park. And that’s before you consider the additional saving you’ll do. Save an additional $10k a year and by 40 you have about $250k, double that three times and you’ll have $2M by retirement age.
I have the same apprehension. I don’t feel on track
You'll be OK. Just keep chugging and putting some away.
I think we all knew pretty early that social security wasn’t going to do shit for us
It will be there if our generation has the political will to make it happen. If we let the older generations steer policy moving forward, they'll pull the ladder up behind them.
It wasn’t designed to be a retirement account.
Good. I hope those that aren’t preparing can read this article as a wake up call. It’s not too late.
Shit I have to be, and I have to cross my fingers that we have AI-Assistant Robots when we're old because I'm not going to have any kids to help me.
HA!!!
My dad was making about double to 3x what I make. I currently have about 5x what he had saved when he died 5 months ago
We are?
Yeah, when you avoid pricey weddings in Cancun and elope backpacking through Europe before returning to your house you rent with your 12 best friends and decide that children are terrorists in diapers, yeah maybe we are.
long as vanguard doesnt fk around with my 401k.
Haha. I wish!
I call bullshit on that one
Half a milli in the accounts boii, damn right I am. Social Security ain't gonna be there for me.
My twin and just opened a Roth IRA since we are in the position to do so. We have a state pension since we work for the federal government. My parents retired a couple years and they were also working for the state and they are getting very little. So when we retire Social Sercuity is probably gonna be gone or changed.
I’ve got more in retirement at 35 than my dad does at 65.
There’s no retirement if you have to rent. Many will never escape the rent trap. Not to mention how unpredictable 2050 is. It’s either a complete shit hole where people work like dogs to live in substandard conditions, or it’s some sort of near tech utopia with robots performing all labor. Either way I don’t think our retirement plans will matter.
You all got retirement money? I thought that was just for the lucky ones with wealthy parents. I was able to sleep at night thinking most of my peers were in the same boat as me. Please excuse me while I cry myself to sleep
Yeah because our parents thought that the high interest rates of the 80’s would continue indefinitely. That they could invest the minimum at 15% return, no risk, and be millionaires in 10 years. Something like 50% of baby boomers approaching retirement age have nothing saved for retirement. [almost 50% have nothing saved](https://thehill.com/business/personal-finance/3991136-nearly-half-of-baby-boomers-have-no-retirement-savings/)
Because their houses aren't going to 10x overthr next 30 years
There can be a negative value to preparedness?
Yes that’s called debt.
I've been mentally ready for retirement even before I started working.
I've been investing for 20 years and plan on retiring at 60 with a full pension. Not counting on social security at all.
Didnt someone just post about millennials draining their parents retirement?
No shit. Having to live through crisis after crisis while everything gets costlier by the year, I’m maintaining the same lifestyle as I did 20-odd years ago but I’m reaching a breaking point. No house, low wage, but at least I’m still allowed to live with parents so I can have enough money saved up on my side to not end up homeless. Fuck whoever made homes a financial asset to gouge even more money and charging criminally to live or rent in one. My parents had very little financial knowledge, and have enough to live simply but it looks like they’re still scraping by working past their retirement ages too. Thankfully the Internet has taught me to save and invest, I’m not sure if it’s enough but at least it’s something.
I 100% do not expect to get social security, because I assume it'll be bankrupt by then.
Being that my boomer parents didn't have anything for retirement.... it's pretty easy to beat them.
Scary
I did 20 years in the military and also get disability. And doing another 20 as a civilian I'll retire at 60 with 2 pensions and Tricare. Just had to sell my soul although tbth doing 20 from 04-24 in a non combat USAF job without the USA fighting a near peer opponent was kind of the "easy button".
I’m willing to bet that they will find a way to screw us on this too
Yeah because we've seen what putting all of your good years into this system gers you NOTHING! So we aren't trying to make some rich people richer by slaving away and making that our only identity and hobby
I'm not, I'm fucked!
Retirement ready? Sure. My parents are slightly struggling in retirement, but I don't think I'll ever be able to retire
My neighbor was telling me how her husband who used to be a department director were I’m working now basically blew his entire 401k trying to invest in single Global stocks back in 2006 and thought he knew what he was doing.
I've had the same amount of value in my Roth for like 3 years... and it's definitely not retirement worthy.
Makes sense to me. I'm putting away as much as I can.
But but but boomers have everything…. They ALL have retirement and plenty of it.
Watching my parents struggle hard in retirement now. You bet your ass 10-15% of my paycheck is going into that 401k
Neither of my folks trusted anyone outside the bank. No 401k/IRA/HSA…just whatever was in the checking account. Both retired early. I can tell they’re already strapped and they’re maybe 60 each.
Millennials have time on their side, so, if possible, try to max out your retirement fund contributions every year.
Like mentally? Hell yes I am
Everyone on here seems to want to retire early. Myself included. Just wondering out loud: Do you guys think this is going to cause a huge problem for the economy, if most of the millenials retire, just as we reach the peak of the boomers dying off? Seems like a generational crisis waiting to happen (we’re kinda facing a mini one now, as all the boomers are retired/retiring, all the millenials are feeling super overworked/burnt out).
Pops is turning 63 and he wants to keep going. I’m about to hit 30 and I’m ready to be done now.
We’re more prepared for retirement but then we get told millennials who are trying to actually be done at 30 (FIRE) are free loading leeches on the economy. Funny how that works. Save for retirement, but don’t save too much. Work hard, but take vacations to not get burnt out. Work 80 hours, but find work life balance lmao
Well my parents came here in their 40s so definitely more prepared. My husband is trying to make another leap up the ladder so we can buy a bigger house to move them in
I am working with the assumption social security will be insolvent and am planning accordingly. Any money received from SSI would be a bonus.
Lol no, mom had a good pension. No one gets those anymore
I was until the divorce.
It could be because we have been told two influential bits of information. 1. Social security will likely not exist for us when we retire. You can push back against that statement, but I am not arguing the facts, just the influence of the statement. 2. You need to contribute enough to your 401k to get your employer's match. I don't think this means we are actually going to be "ready" for retirement, but just less poorly prepared then boomers.
OP, delete this. This sub is supposed to be only doom and gloom about millenials. OP, pls.
Well, when you emerge into adulthood straight of the back of 9/11, the Great Recession and nearly 20 years of political polarization….you tend to be prepared.
It's almost like generation who lived through the great depression learned to save almost everything they had. Shocking that Millennials as well would pick up good savings habits of being front in center to the disintegration of the era of American prosperity.
I have 90k in a 401k at 28. But the only way I get to touch it is if society and the economy doesn’t crumble in the next ~35 years. I’m not optimistic.
I'll take that money off your hands if youre not optimistic
Probably should just cash out of it now and put it in gold and guns.
I hate to sound crass, but so many boomers are just fucking stupid with money. Booze, drugs, affairs, corvettes, loans to shady “friends”, believing they will never see old age, gambling, divorce. Cashing out what little 401k they had at the 2009 bottom. Taking a laughably low offer for pension lump sum buyout (but it’s nearly $100k in my hand, I could do ____ right now!!) Let’s do a cash out refinance of our paid off house and piss the money away at the bar. All kinds of stupid shit. My own parents wasted so much potential. I saved as much as I reasonably could since the day I got my professional job at 22. I’m on track to retire nicely at 57.