It’s a vicious circle :
- People can’t afford to have kids
- Aging population
- Labour shortage
- Use more immigrant labour
- People start getting pissy about immigrants
- People vote for right wing candidates
- Decrement the social wellbeing counter and return to 1
y’all got retirements and belonging???
Millennial here - gen Z has retirement savings???
Not if they’re dipping into it at 30. That’s going to kill any kind of compound interest.
I’m about to be 29, and have literally zero savings to speak of. I’ve been paycheck-to-paycheck pretty much my entire working life.
If it’s any consolation it took me until I hit 33 for me to have any savings at all.
Anything I put into the account I used for savings went out the same month so I didn’t go into an overdraft.
Funny enough the only thing that changed is I passed my qualifications and got my first “real” job… Though I may have also spent the past 8 or 9 years isolated in a way that regular people only got to see during the 'rona times
The best investment at your age is in training/education to improve your take home pay or ability to relocate. Fuck retirement savings, you have to eat for 30+ years to get there first. Invest in yourself, not in the fucking casino controlled by billionaires that is the stock market.
My wife made a career swap 5 years ago after getting a master’s degree. We used our retirement savings to pay for the schooling because the ROI was under 1 year.
Millennial here- I’m bout to not have retirement savings.
It’ll be the best avocado toast ever though, right?
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I had 14 grand in a 401k. I had to spend it to survive for a year while I looked for a job. All of it.
Now I know 14k aint shit. But that is where we are.
14k would have been $132k in 45 years when you would have otherwise retired.
The power is in the interest. Even if you max out your 401k in the future it cannot make up for missing interest earnings on early deposits. Having to use it it now means nobody in this entire generation will ever retire, ever.
Just to put it into perspective, if the inflation rate for the past 45 years predicts the next 45 years. $14K today = $55K in 45 years. A $75K household income today would be $294K in 45 years.
So $14K in a 401K saved for 45 years is a pittance and should never be considered a retirement “program”. It’s all bullshit to decrease and eliminate the cost of actual pension programs.
401k will accrue interest (and will rise with the market). It’s not just going to be JUST a straight inflation calculation.
You don’t just put $14k into a 401k, you keep contributing to it. Getting more and more money to compound upon itself.
If you put $4k into it every year (remember, this is pre-tax money and often has an employer match), and it grows 8% per year on average (S&P 500 actually does more like 10%, but we will be more conservative and say 8%), we will also be conservative and assume you won’t increase contributions, even as you earn more later in life, then you have $1,546,022 after 45 years of working.
Yes, this is something you can retire on.
Gotta include inflation in there.
$1,546,022 in 45 years with the same inflation we’ve had for the past 45 years would only be worth $529,400 in todays money.
If you only plan on living for 10 years or less after retiring, then, Maybe.
You only get the 401k when you retire in US? This is not in addition to normal Social Security?
Most of us that are younger than the Boomers or maybe Gen X don’t want to count on Social Security because we’ve been hearing our whole lives that Social Security is on the chopping block because the government is in so much debt. And at this point we kinda just expect that ladder to be pulled up behind the Boomers before we get anything, because that’s already happened in so many other areas like home ownership.
I also think people need to remember that Social Security is their own money that they paid in over their lives, and they are owed it back.
And also that even though the US government has a large amount of debt, we’ve also spent the last 50 years giving tax cuts to the rich, we’d probably be just fine if we went back to a 90% marginal tax rate on the top earners like we had in the “good old days” of the 1950s.
Most of us that are younger than the Boomers or maybe Gen X don’t want to count on Social Security because we’ve been hearing our whole lives that Social Security is on the chopping block because the government is in so much debt.
Thinking about it, the chance that Social Security money will be stolen and transferred to the 1% is quite high. Not because of the debt but simply to make the rich even richer. They will probably just say that the current system is not sustainable and move all the money into pension funds controlled by private banks which will then gamble with it pocketing the profits and socializing the loses. But 401k is the same so putting money there is not really a solution. The solution is to run away but obviously not everyone is able to.
Correct, you get both your own savings and Social Security during retirement. The person replying is being a doomer, rather than preparing for his future.
And $132K in 45 years will buy you 1 Happy Meal. ;)
Without the toy, because we can’t incentivize kids to ask for fast-food meals.
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It’s the opposite actually. The stock market has historically returned an average of about 7%/year after inflation. $14k invested at 7% per year is worth about $327k after 45 years. And that 7% is again, an average rate, so a balancing of the crashes vs. the rallies, and it’s after inflation.
I would really rather just have a pension.
But that’s too much to ask.
Eh. I’ve done pretty well with the 401k system. Pensions often just seem like a way for employers to pull a bait-and-switch. Need to work for 30 years at a company for a full pension? They get you to accept a lower wage on that promise, then you get fired at year 29. Or a company recruits a bunch of young workers on a promise of a pension decades down the line. Decades later, when they’re about to face a massive surge in those on the company pension rolls, the company mysteriously goes bankrupt. The company owners looted the company, wracked it up with debt, and let it go bankrupt before the pension bill came due, and left the workers holding the bag.
The nice thing about 401ks is that employers can’t screw you over after the fact. I don’t trust companies to be able to deliver on promises decades from now. With a 401k, they give all they’re ever going to give up front, and you can make an informed decision over whether you’re being fairly compensated. It’s hard to judge the fair value of a pension that may or may not disappear before you’re eligible to collect it decades from now. Oh, and employers only retain control over your 401k funds for as long as you work there. After that, you transfer them to an IRA account that is completely under your control.
My partner and I are in our late 30s and have made regular contributions to 401ks and IRAs. At this point, our retirement is fully funded. By this I mean we could choose to never make another contribution, and if we just let our investments sit and grow, we would be able to comfortably retire at age 65. We’re still making investments, but only to move forward the date we’re able to retire.
Yes, it requires some discipline and you have to educate yourself. You need to learn about things like investment ratios, index funds, etc. But ultimately it isn’t that complicated as people like to pretend it is. And you have to have the discipline to not panic sell when the market drops. It’s a bit different if people have to cash out for a financial emergency. But many make really stupid mistakes such as selling during a downturn, trying to time the market, instead of just buying and holding cheap index funds until retirement.
But yeah, we’ve done pretty well. At this point, barring some catastrophic life-altering scenarios, our retirement is assured. We don’t have to worry about an employer pulling the rug out from under us. We don’t have to worry about a company going bankrupt. We don’t have to worry about being fired shortly before reaching reaching the number of years needed for a full pension. We don’t have to stay at a job earning below-market wages for years just for the pension. We don’t even have to work some arbitrary number of years; we can retire as soon as our assets are enough to provide for whatever lifestyle we’re comfortable with.
And if you’re just worried about running out of money in retirement? You can always invest in the stock market and then buy annuities once you reach retirement age.
Pensions have their place. But I think we tend to look at them with rose-tinted glasses. Companies bankrupting their way out of pension responsibilities was an infamous thing not too long ago.
And then one major medical emergency happens… poof!
Same happened with pension though. Get sick and lose your job? Those twenty years you spent earning less than you’re worth, just for the sake of the pension? Poof.
I had $20K a 401K and $15K in school loans when I swapped jobs in my late 20’s. Guess what I did with it.
3 years later I was able to purchase my first house because I saved up money instead of paying the student loans.
Right now I should be maximizing my retirement savings according to all the advisors. Instead I am using the money to pay for my kids college so they can start off in life above zero instead of -$50k like my wife and I did.
I figured out a long time ago that there is no way in hell I can retire and remain in the U.S. The system is rigged against me. So my goal for the next 10 years is to learn Spanish.
14k is worth 14k, and you can live a very spartan year on it apparently.
Probably worth a lot less after early withdrawal penalties and taxes.
Yep. Was 18k originally.
Luxury, I had 9.5k and had to spend it to survive for 2 years while I looked for a job.
Gen X here, same fucking story.
Yeah what I said last time I saw this article.
Which generation isn’t doing this? I don’t think it is a generational cadre thing. I think it is a class thing.
I pretty much said the same thing about my own experience then was downvoted to all hell and accused of being a boomer who caused all this. Wth is wrong with people, no wonder we can’t escape this shit no matter the generation.
Right? I’m in my 40s and I’ve razed every 401k I’ve had to survive and move between jobs.
You guys have retirement savings?
Billionaires have all our money. Maybe we could ask for it back nicely.
Guillotine is nice.
Free haircuts for the rich! You’ll immediately feel 10-12 pounds lighter!
People would need to stop using their social media, software, webstores etc.
Yes.
But: people still want to be billionaires, what if they became billionaires themselves after coming up with a new invention?
I don’t understand the question. If you are a billionaire you took too much from society, not matter how it happened.
Millennials be like…
Yeah, because everything is ridiculously expensive and no one makes any money.
The survey this is based on has a summary page, but they don’t post their survey error estimates. What I can tell, without giving them my email, is that the entire survey was 250 adults. How many of those are “gen z” I have no idea, but if you are generous and say 1/4 that is 63 people considered gen z. The 46 percent that reported dipping into savings would then be about 29.
Just so everyone prognosticating about the state of the economy in this thread is aware, you are commenting on a survey that has a very low n and did not publish any sort of margin of error.
I also noticed that the dichotomy is “luxury spending” vs. “paying off debt”, but that debt could easily have come from prior ‘luxury spending’, lol.
The source cited in this article is a website that’s shilling products, no methodology available at all, that I can see.
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose
Gen Z has retirements? 🤔
It’s amazing how badly small amount of people can treat large amount of people and get away with it.
I learned this lesson when I was in middle school. Our school cafeteria sold students expired food. Not, “Oh it’s a few days late, these dates are estimates so it’s probably fine.” I mean food several months past dates, with obvious changes to consistency and taste. Two examples I vividly remember were moist cheetos and ice cream that looked like foam.
I thought it was disgusting and unsafe. I personally stopped trusting all such school cafeteria food from that point (and never touched it again.) My friends, however, didn’t seem to care? Somehow?
Every time a friend took a bite and asked, “Does this taste weird?” I’d examine the food. If it was a packaged food, I’d check the date. Every time, the expiration date would be from last semester. I know this, because at one point I started keeping records in a notebook about it.
But before I started doing that, I encouraged the affected friends to tell the lunch ladies and ask them to exchange the expired package for a fresher one. They refused to. They were terrified of “causing trouble.” I was like, “It’s just a simple exchange. I’ll go do it for you.” But they begged me to just stay there and say nothing, like the rest of them. They were so scared to potentially upset someone.
Must be quiet. Must behave. Must not dare consider speaking up for our own well-being, even if it means we must literally eat garbage.
I’ll give 'em this, the long-game authoritarians from the 90s and early 00s did a bang up job conditioning the kids to accept fascist rule in 2025. Want to know why so many Americans aren’t fighting back? Because we’ve been raised to accept this abuse. Many are active enforcers at worst, or spinelessly compliant bystanders at best. Anyone outside that spectrum is a trouble-maker that the first group would gladly make suffer (while the second group “minds their own business.”)
Millennial but I’ve been doing this for the last 4-5 years at this point
Wait, do you actually have retirement savings?
I’m on the leading edge of millennial and my retirement plan is to die.
My job has a 401k I was putting into when I started 12 years ago and they allow to borrow against it so I’ve had to do that to survive for a while now. Whenever I inevitably get fired or leave my job I’m gonna take the opportunity to just cash out and take the huge tax hit because I find it highly unlikely that I’ll make it to actual retirement age at this point.
Oh, you’ll make it to retirement age, you just won’t be able to retire at that age, or ever.
That’s what I expect at least.
I figure that I’ll be able to retire when I have my house, and all other debts paid off in full, and I’m collecting my government pension (we have a national program here in Canada). And that assumes that the pension payments can cover my day to day and month to month expenses, which, at this point, with inflation the way it’s going, I have absolutely zero confidence that it will be enough.
So I keep working and working, and creating value for shareholders.
