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Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

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Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#221

Post by eropple »

jdhn wrote: post #203
eropple wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The hitch in this whole thing is that down payments have gotten ridiculous, it's gotten harder to save in desirable areas because rents and many expenses have grown out of pace with income for normal folks. Even as the percentage necessary for down payments has dropped, house prices have gone into orbit so much that it hasn't kept parity. My girlfriend and I had to buy a house for $520k, at 5% down, just for the priv…

Where do you live, the Bay area? At what point do you say that enough is enough, and you move to a location that even though you'll earn less, the COL adjustment will more than make up for it?

I live in the Boston area.

I can't foresee ever leaving because of cost-of-living expenses. I'm not an import; I've lived in New England my entire life and the Greater Boston area--let's define it as "the Red and Orange Lines, and I guess the Green Line if I was desperate"--is effectively the only place I can be short of blowing off my family and my support network of friends and colleagues. The area is congruent with my politics--I mean that not just in the "who you vote for" sense of the word, but in the "how a society should operate" sense of it. And while I own one for errands I really profoundly don't like commuting and don't like driving a car much even outside of that, which rules out much of the surrounding area like New Hampshire or Maine, where I'm originally from. My parents live in northern Vermont. It's nice to visit, when I'm not white-knuckling across ice-floe roads in February. I couldn't live there.

We're thankful that we bought what will eventually, after a big up-front whack, be a really nice house. And we did it somewhere where it's still kinda doable, rather than when it's not doable at all.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#222

Post by village-idiot »

refurb wrote: post #71
makerofspoons wrote: post #30

"Climate change, protecting the environment and natural disasters topped the list of most respondents on a personal level, but less than three in ten of both the Millennial and Gen Z cohorts cited it as a worry." This is surprising. As a Gen Z-er this highlights the kind of bubble I find myself in- my friend group is almost universally in a state of despair about the collapsing biosphere. Climate change and mass exti…

Climate change and mass extinction are the chief reasons I am pessimistic about my life. Can you name another time in recent history where the end of the world wasn't near? WW1, Great Depression, WW2, Mutually Assured Destruction, Swine flu, AIDS, Cuban missile crisis, etc, etc. The correct answer is it's always been this way and what we're going through right now isn't really all that new.

I doubt many in America thought either world war was the end of the world.

But the difference is that all of those required affirmative action to cause a global catastrophe, someone had to reach out and press a metaphorical button. With global warming the status quo will get us all killed.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#223

Post by Eleopteryx »

xyzzyz wrote: post #26
syn0byte wrote: post #15

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019; Let's talk about how is social media's fault! Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! The beatings will conti…

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019 Do you have any source to support this? Because real median personal[1] income went up almost 50% since then[2]. [1] — don't confuse it with real median household income, which didn't grow nearly as much, because of a significant rise in single-person households which pushes the median…

My understanding is that real median income is influenced by the sheer total number of hours worked. Real median income can increase by virtue of more people working more often while their wages stay the same.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#224

Post by selectodude »

travisjungroth wrote: post #189
TremendousJudge wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I find amazing about Americans is that most of them don't understand inflation at all. It's uncommon to see any mainstream source talk about inflation-adjusted values when referring to past numbers. This becomes clear when for instance box office numbers become a conversation topic -- nobody really stops to consider how comparing films from 20 years ago with films of today is just really a measure of h…

The box office thing is a game, and the game isn’t fun when Gone With The Wind will never be defeated.

The new Avengers movie is already #5 (inflation adjusted) and it's only been out for a little over three weeks.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#225

Post by Domenic_S »

icegreentea2 wrote: post #118
refurb wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Climate change and mass extinction are the chief reasons I am pessimistic about my life. Can you name another time in recent history where the end of the world wasn't near? WW1, Great Depression, WW2, Mutually Assured Destruction, Swine flu, AIDS, Cuban missile crisis, etc, etc. The correct answer is it's always been this way and what we're going through right now isn't really all that new.

As a millennial, at least one thing that is different is that we all grew up in that brief period when the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable. It seemed like the adults generally knew what they were doing, and could be counted on the to the right thing. I'd also argue (with no real basis of course) that the type of dread that cli…

> the world wasn't ending. We grew up in the 90s and early noughts, when ya, there were problems, but they all seemed containable

Here are some things I remember from that time off the top of my head:

We were on the brink of environmental collapse as CFCs were destroying the ozone layer

Acid rain was going to destroy lakes, trees, rivers, eventually killing us all

HIV was not well understood and very very scary

Waco/Branch Davidians siege

The Oklahoma City bombing

The Unabomber

Desert Storm

The Bosnian War

of course, 9/11

> It seemed like the adults generally knew what they were doing, and could be counted on the to the right thing.

I wager that's an artifact of youth, it seems to me we all think the times when we grew up were easy to understand, everything's going great, etc.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#226

Post by algaeontoast »

danielecook wrote: post #215
algaeontoast wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a millennial who's been saving about 80% of my take home income, I mostly believe the money problems our generation complains about (regardless of economic background, debt, etc.) is more linked to spending habits and a perception of what an "ideal" or "reasonable" lifestyle is. For instance, I have a few friends who work at JPL outside of LA. They all make $110-120k TC and have ridiculous benefits (5% contrib to…

It’s not representative. Most millenials are sub 60k and have loads of debt. You have a very skewed view. Most people can’t save 80% of their income because their housing costs are at least 30%z

I also know millennials who live in NYC, have $180k+ student loan debt and continue to live as if they're making $100k a year (which doesn't go far in NYC) although they're un-employed or just doing sporadic temp work.

Also - you don't have any insight into my TC...

In your opinion - what constitutes "common place" both in terms of "expected lifestyle" and $$ situation (debts, money in the bank, etc)?

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#227

Post by AlexB138 »

syn0byte wrote: post #15

A single mother working as a waitress at Denny's in the 1980's had more spending power than a college educated cubicle drone in 2019; Let's talk about how is social media's fault! Twice in the last 20 years - more than any other time in US history combined - The Presidential election went to the candidate that LOST the popular vote; These generations just lack a proper understanding of civics! The beatings will conti…

This post is a fantastic example of what the actual problem is. Neither of the points made are factually accurate, but boy is the poster angry about it. "Let's talk about how is social media's fault", indeed. Moral outrage, mostly fabricated, pedaled by every media outlet, spreading like wildfire. It's everywhere, and it seems like almost everyone, myself included, falls for it to some degree.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#229

Post by xj9 »

keiferski wrote: post #92
SamuelAdams wrote: post #39

> Less than three in ten Millennials expect to stay at their current job for the next five years. Well yeah. I can stick around my current company for 5 years and get a 2-4% increase each year, or job hop every 2-3 years and get a 20% raise each time. With a market like this, why wouldn't you job hop? Loyalty to a company only inhibits you.

All things considered, I think most people would sacrifice earning power for stability, with a reasonable tradeoff of course.

changing jobs has ~0 risk. i can (and have) spent time job hunting while fulfilling my responsibilities to my employer. then i use the offer as leverage to get a raise and switch jobs if my current employer declines.

Re: Millennials and Gen Z Increasingly Pessimistic About Their Lives, Survey Finds

#230

Post by asdff »

travisjungroth wrote: post #189
TremendousJudge wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing that I find amazing about Americans is that most of them don't understand inflation at all. It's uncommon to see any mainstream source talk about inflation-adjusted values when referring to past numbers. This becomes clear when for instance box office numbers become a conversation topic -- nobody really stops to consider how comparing films from 20 years ago with films of today is just really a measure of h…

The box office thing is a game, and the game isn’t fun when Gone With The Wind will never be defeated.

It's still a fun game when you can double to quadruple your investment
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