The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials

[marmar]

The Next Recession Will Destroy Millennials
ANNIE LOWREY AUGUST 26, 2019

Millennials are already in debt and without savings. After the next downturn, they’ll be in even bigger trouble.


The trade war is dragging on. The yield curve is inverting. Investors are fleeing to safety. Global growth is slowing. The stock market is dipping. The Millennials are screwed.

Recessions are never good for anyone. A sputtering economy means miserable financial, emotional, and physical-health consequences for everyone from infants to retirees. But the next one—if it happens, when it starts happening—stands to hit this much-maligned generation particularly hard. For adults between the ages of 22 and 38, after all, the last recession never really ended.

Millennials got bodied in the downturn, have struggled in the recovery, and are now left more vulnerable than other, older age cohorts. As they pitch toward middle age, they are failing to make it to the middle class, and are likely to be the first generation in modern economic history to end up worse off than their parents. The next downturn might make sure of it, stalling their careers and sucking away their wages right as the Millennials enter their prime earning years. .........(more)

https://www.citylab.com/life/2019/08/next-recession-will-destroy-millennials/596836/

[ProudMNDemocrat]

1. That means my 23 year old granddaughter is fucked....

For she has a good job right now, is conservative when it comes to money, has a building savings, and owns her own home.

We will help her as much as we are able. The 9 and 7 year old ones have some cover with both parents being professionals.

[Igel]

2. It's a generalization, it doesn't necessarily apply to individuals.

Macroeconomic trends matter. So do personal habits.

Take student loans. I've seen many seniors told that they'd be getting financial aid, and they immediately start working out the nicest apt. they can get and balancing that with the new clothes they must have. In other words, treat the loan money as free money for lifestyle subsidy. Four years later, they're as far in debt as they can be. If they drop out of college, they don't get the income necessary to pay it off. They're in trouble. Some are from poor families and get money for the first time; some are from well-off families and just feel entitled. Same outcome.

I've known kids in college that live 3 and 4 to a 2-bedroom apts. and eat very frugally. At the end, they've borrowed a lot less money.

(What's really funny is that the ones who squander have usually been humanities/social science majors, fields with low starting salaries after graduation; and the frugal ones have usually been science and engineering folk.)


I graduated college in '82. "Reagan" recession was hard. Was smacked a bit in '91 and in '01, not much affected in '09. Haven't been much affected now, at least not yet.

But I know others who were hit hard in '82, and who aren't retiring now because what they put away in their IRA is so far down they don't want to sell any of their assets. And can't sell their house to move to a smaller one. Boomers only see Boomer pain, Millennials see mostly Millennial pain.