The Cheapest Generation

Single page version: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/09/the-chea...

I don't like The Atlantic's title: it implys what is happening as negative.

When I last had a personal car, TCO was over 900USD per month (auto financing, parking, insurance).

Since I live in an urban area well served by subways, buses, taxis, Zipcar, and Uber, letting go of that high fixed monthly expense in favor of an a-la-carte approach has been a great financial benefit for me.

Of course, if I had two kids, lived in remote suburbs, or had to commute to suburbs, the equation would be very different.

But for now, for me and many other urban dwellers, the value of owning my own car just doesn't compute.

I own a car now, simply because I tried relying on public transport for a year and found the experience pretty depressing - it makes your day so very long (I was basically doing 6am-7pm including commuting) and loses you flexibility. I fell into a routine of coming to work, going home, and doing nothing else, because it was so much effort to plan a trip anywhere other than the office. It started to make me sink into something approaching a depression.

So here I am, with a car - but it's not a fancy brand-new £10,000 model with crippling monthly payments. It's a slightly beaten-up 2002 Micra, I bought it from a guy down the road for £600 cash, it doesn't use much gas. I don't care how I look in it, whether it's 'cool,' I don't see it as a status symbol, I see it as a tool for life.

Maybe that's the difference - younger generations don't see a house or a car as a symbol of status or wealth, merely as something to be used, as a necessity - just like you wouldn't choose your electricity supplier based on how "cool" it is, we don't choose our cars on that basis either now.

Does the author of the article somehow assume that Millennials don't spend because they don't buy cars or houses? Do they just stuff their money in their socks, or might it be that they splurge on electronics and traveling? Of course, one does not usually take up a mortgage for any of those, so that may lead to macroeconomic woes in the short run, but in the long run I suppose we can just expect consumption patterns to shift.

I realized recently I'm more reluctant to own a house than have a baby.