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Almost all the examples are women?
Could you clarify the point of your statement?
Almost all the examples are women?
To be clear, much of the older generation didn't do this in their early 20. It's been a building concern for many decades.
And they've been lectured about it forever, same as 20-somethings are today. It's not clear what "older generation" here here, but Millennials and Gen-X got stuff like SNL's 2006: "Don’t Buy Stuff You Cannot Afford" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R3ZJKN_5M44
This isn't "Gen Z is poor; Boomers/Gen X/Millennials were rich". This is "I'm poor, and know some older people who aren't". There's no shortage of people in their twenties making well into six figures.
> Ms. German-Tanner said 20-somethings were often encouraged to take financial steps like build emergency funds, save for retirement and pay off debt.
Well...yeah. It's good advice. It might be hard, but it's been hard for a sizeable chunk of the population for many, many decades. That's why there's constant push for it—without this emphasis, people just borrow and spend. True in the 70s, true in the 90s, and true today.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Could you clarify the point of your statement?
Didn’t think it needed saying but only representing the perspectives of half the population doesn’t sound like a great way to make your point especially since these problems are not restricted to women.
Looking back, our retirement saving really started in the mid-late 30’s. No kids, two incomes and finally above entry level salaries. Continued through our 50’s. Only out of school mid 20’s and married a few years after than. No chance to really accumulate then.
I was born in 1981, my family was comfortably middle class. I left college in the early 00s with a decent chunk of debt, and couldn't really start saving until I was nearly 30.
Yes, I get that many college graduates today are saddled with more debt than I had, and inflation and rising housing costs aren't helping, but is it really that different? It seems like the severity is worse, but the tune is the same.
Statements like this are weird to me, because "cooling inflation" doesn't mean "prices are dropping", and suggests that the author doesn't really understand basic economic concepts. When inflation raises the price of something, that's it: that's the new price. Absent other innovations to make it cheaper (more efficient production or logistics, etc.), the price will not go back down. The hope, of course, is that once inflation is under control, wages will rise to counteract its effects.
> Theresa Fairless [...] said paying off student loans was her priority. Ms. Fairless graduated from college in 2018 with about $25,900 in government loans and $50,000 in personal loans.
Now I don't know the details of her loans, but this was a mistake I made in my 20s: if your interest rate is low, your priority should be saving and investing, not paying off the loans. Obviously you still need to make the minimum payments.
Granted, investing has not been great over the past year, so it probably has been a good idea to pay down debt more aggressively than in prior years.
I had a government college loan at 3.5% that I absolutely should not have paid off early. I had a private loan as well that was variable, and I think when I paid it off it was a little over 4%. Still questionable; maybe should have put the extra cash toward investments rather than the loan. But at the time I didn't really know what I was doing, and was also worried about the variable rate rising too much.
(Her loan amounts are also in line with what I had... well, I guess technically lower than mine, considering inflation over the past 20 years.)
A couple paragraphs down it talks about how she is saving and investing, has a $10k emergency fund, and is still able to give her mom some money to help her out. So... it seems like she's doing just fine? Seems better off than a ton of people, anyway.
Looking back, our retirement saving really started in the mid-late 30’s. No kids, two incomes and finally above entry level salaries. Continued through our 50’s. Only out of school mid 20’s and married a few years after than. No chance to really accumulate then.
I always interpreted the "always save some" mantra (which was a mantra as long as I can remember) as a way to form habits, not to really accumulate any large amounts of retirement funds.
The second example is a lady with 76k in debt, who has managed to pay down nearly 70% of it. Somehow this doesn't qualify as savings to the author.
The third woman actually makes a lot (they won't say how much) and has "achieved financial stability" (thus undermining the thesis of the article), but sends "the majority" of her paychecks to her family.
Finally, by the fourth example: someone with three jobs, who still manages to save $200 a month! I do feel for her, though. (Note to author: why in the world would you bury this example??)
The fifth example spends on expensive exercise classes and "also likes to go out to dinner with her friends"...but still saves $600 a month.
For the very last example, we have a 28-year-old man, earning well below average in NYC (90k a year), who nonetheless saves $2,000 a month. I'm sensing a bias here.
This is a ridiculous article. It should be titled: "These 20-somethings mostly manage to save despite difficult life choices and low incomes, and so can you."
Almost all the examples are women?
The last example is a man.
>"He said that he owed his father for providing him with much of his personal finance knowledge and that friends from families who didn’t talk about money did not have as much financial literacy."