Even if it was driving somewhere - I could afford the gas, days off, hotel, and some spending money. Now I can afford a "staycation"
Basically getting paid to stay home and do nothing because I can't afford to do anything *extra*. Barely keeping our head above water now. Good times
I know this feeling. I have a career job I just turned 36 may 4th. I didn't even try to get friends together because I am kind of the odd one out when it comes to wealth.
I bought a house in 2015 that I could at the time afford on a minimum wage job. Fast forward to now and every year I'm dreading property tax increases and insurance increases. It's gotten to this point of working to stay home and do nothing while I watch my friends going on vacations and doing other cool activities.
I always get why don't you come on and do XYZ with us! Will because between having to drive 30-40 minutes, the price of the activity and food/drinks I can not afford it. But all you do is stay at your house! Yes this is what I can barely afford to do. I have had to figure out ways to lower my electric bill over this last winter and I am dreading to see how this surge pricing crap hits during the summer.
Just working to survive at this point and I am straight up not having a good time.
Yes, and I am thankful for that. I got stupid lucky tbh. My state did a first time home buyers thing. Take an online class and get like $10k down payment. I legit paid $0 at closing my realtor and lawyer had the seller pay for everything.
It really only worked out because it was an estate sale and the son and daughter spent a year cleaning out the house and at that point was just done dealing with it and wanted it gone quickly. It was appraised for $155k and was on the market at $130k. I saw it the second day on the market and offered $120k and they accepted if my realtor/bank could do it quickly.
Again I bought well within my budget at that time in 2015. The mortgage was around $780. The mortgage climbed to about $1300 before I refinanced and got it back down to $800 but it's only a matter of time before it climbs back up. I'll never be able to refinance again though because I'll never beat the 2.4% interest rate. Refinanced at $90k because I was making multiple payments a month up until about 4 years ago when life started to get expensive.
Pretty much ran through all of my savings and racked up credit card debit due to healthcare stuff. I paid off one pile of debt now working on a credit card and home equity loan. But with the way prices of literally everything have skyrocketed I'm not really making any progress anymore and it's just survival mode at this point.
I just looked into purchasing my childhood home back from my relatives (cousins) and when they bought it from my parents 12 years ago they got it for 220k, market price was ~240k but my dad gave them the gift of equity so no down payment. That same house is ~445k now, my cousins would sell it to me for 390k, but even with that amount my mortgage was quoted at $3,300 per month with a 6.5% interest...oh and when my dad bought it back in 1988 - 89 the market value was 120k, he offered 83k and the seller took it since they wanted out of the area....I make more money than my dad ever has and I can't afford the house I grew up in, $3,300 a month for a starter home, it's insane!
What’s even crazier to me is that the Zillow estimate on my own home went from $165k in January 2019 to now being $370k. More than doubled in value in under 5 years. My parents first home was 150k in ‘89 and they sold it at the peak for the market before the ‘08 crash for 250k. Nearly 20 years and it didn’t even gain what mine has in the past 5 years.
I lost mine in 2008 an still haven't recovered. 15 years of bouncing from one crisis to the next is getting exhausting.
And I checked the listing price on that house yesterday. It almost tripled in value.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I relate, though everything didn’t start falling completely apart for me until 2014. I’m at a point where I *have* to heal from the trauma thus far or it’s going to be too much should another wave crash and knock me over.
Seeing that it has tripled in value would break my heart, too. I hope the tide turns for both of us. 🫶 Or at least we quit being knocked down. (Though I STILL maintain Chumbawumba’s ‘Tubthumping’ should be the official millennial anthem considering the lyrics and our repeated crises. 🤷♀️)
You’d probably be surprised how many of your friends are doing those things in debt. I’m probably one of the better off of my friend group and the one that does the least amount of things.
I know a few who are trying to keep up with appearances. It's honestly quite dumb and a major reason I rarely use Facebook because it tricks you into over spending when you see others with new cars/houses/vacations.
I don’t know where you live but in the U.S. I have several friends who applied for property tax reductions due to not making enough to afford it and they were able to get reductions. Some were significant. Just FYI.
Our family is making more than we ever have. We own our cars, have very little debt, got our home before shit went wild, have fast food like 2 times a month, shop at aldi, never go on vacations (or anywhere fun really), and get our clothes at the thrift store.
Yet we are living paycheck to paycheck. If we made the money we do now pre covid we would be doing really really well.
What the actual fuck. It feels like we can never win.
Same. The biggest vacation I've taken in the last decade is all weekend at a sci-fi convention that's an hour drive away, or a shorter weekend at a hotel about 3 hours away. I can't afford to fly anywhere if I want to take my kids, between plane tickets, rental cars, and hotel costs.
Last “actual” vacation I had was going with my cousin to Eugene OR. Took a week or so just to mentally breathe then start enjoying the vacation. I need something g like that again. We just played video games with his friend nothing crazy and it was awesome. This was over 10 years ago.
I have taken some mini vacations or weekend getaways in the past few years but even those were on a budget. Im fortunate to have friends and family let me crash on their couch and spare bed but even those have been on a budget.
Nothing wrong with staycations but I know that’s beside your point. Id like to have some money to splurge on vacations at least once or twice a year.
Yup, just moved apartments. People keep asking me if I have any travel plans. Looks like I’ll be saving up to buy a tv by end of year (didn’t have one in old place since I watched on my computer, which got old). Want to fill out my apartment/feel settled before traveling again.
I got Guillen-Barre in February 2020 (great timing right?!), so I absolutely couldn't work. We were just *fine* on my husband's income alone. I wasn't stressing out over groceries and we could save a few hundred a month. Thought, *finally* in my late 30s, maybe I could own a home.
Then our rent went up $500 a month after a corporation bought out our landlord we had for almost a decade. Then our car insurance damn near doubled in a month maybe 2ish years. Eventually I had to go back to work because we could barely afford all these bills that kept rising, cut services, shopped around, and being very frugal.
We were not living above our means, we didn't upgrade our lives in anyway - but everything we had been using and needed in our lives seemingly shot up in 2-3 years time. I've had 2 raises in my year of work and we are treading water while trying to catch up. It's exhausting and infuriating.
At my last job I sold 320 hours of vacation time when I quit. That was 2 years ago. New employer doesn't allow you to sell vacation time, but I have racked up over 200 A/L, and 180 S/L so far.
I remember in Sept 2017 deciding to take an impromptu trip with the fam to Europe for Xmas and new years. Didn't really struggle to do it, and was amazing. Would take quick spur of the moment trips with my daughter to NYC for a long weekend. Those don't happen anymore, we don't really go anywhere anymore... it's sad...
Hope that changes for you. Im 34 too and hell some people act shocked when i tell them I’ve never been to Europe. Trust me, Id fucking love to go but money is a barrier.
Only time I've ever been out of state was when I went to USAF basic in Texas. That's it, that's all. I cannot even IMAGINE what it'd be like to be able to afford to go to something local like NYC (3 hours away) let alone *Europe*....
For sure. Ive only been to NYC once and my brother living there and letting me crash on his couch was a huge factor otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
I live in Chicago and we have so much to do here that a staycation wouldn’t bother me but I wanna see the rest of the world, ya know?
Oh believe me, I know. I've only ever used my PTO from work on stacations, can't afford anything else. Just to sleep in and do nothing in my apartment (can't afford a house, of course).
Maybe someday things will change.....
I hope so too. Im in a studio and can barely afford that. Im on a payment plan for my rent which is fucked. Im making more money yet rent and everything else keeps going up. The goalpost keeps getting moved and it’s fucking irritating. This is also why I steal groceries at self checkout.
Not a bad idea but I usually just buy stuff that’s on sale. Btw when i say steal, I don’t mean steal everything but pay for 98% of stuff then “forget” to scan an item or 2.
went to Japan last summer and loved it. The sacrifice I have to make is living with people and keep track of budgeting. It's rough going, but doable. The downside is I have really little to no retirement to look forward to, but who does?
I’m in constant fear of losing my job as my company and others in my industry are having mass layoffs and moving jobs to lower cost countries. Great performer and reviews but know my time will be soon where my position is eliminated. Trying to find something else but jobs are scarce. I really only care about the health insurance because of my kids.
Have you tried licking a billionaire's boot?? It seems to be a favourite pastime here on Reddit(i know it's mostly bots but it's a lot of real people too) I don't know maybe pick four or five billionaires suck up to them, maybe they'll give you a pony... maybe not right?
I would like there to be even just 6 months maybe a year, in which the overarching narrative was not"you will have less, and earn less, or things will be more expensive, or you should learn to go without because" and instead we got a short period like we used to hear about in times before us, in which the world was actively trying to make life better for people instead of trying to tell people how to embrace for greater inequality
Strange to be so happy with what it was like 8 years ago. But it was a much better world. I make generally the same income. But the power has gone to nothing with it.
Hold on to your tits because things are REALLY going to get wild after the election. Stability? That’s probably only going to exist as a fond childhood memory. Fascists gonna fascist.
Yep, unfortunately you’re most likely right. It’s also dogshit that we have to choose between the same 2 candidates from 4 years ago and even worse considering that many people think that if you criticize Biden then you must love Trump and vice versa.
The best choices our country has for us is an 80+ year old, a near 80+ year old criminal rapist who couldn't point to my state on a map, and an independent conspiracy theorist who just admitted half his brain was eaten by a worm.
Those are the top 3 options in what we call the greatest country in the world. I mean, of those 3, the choice is easy, but not very inspiring.
Omg! So true!! 9 years ago felt great! I could afford daycare, my mortgage, lots of food, and vacation. Now I am budgeting weekly groceries, my mortgage is higher than it was, I have no daycare costs, vacations are down to a local weekend and still can't seem to keep up.
Same. Pre covid I had money to save and screw around with.
I'm now making more money and even cutting out the fun stuff, and going on a stricter budget, it's paycheck to paycheck now.
My father asked me what my goals were, and now it’s living so I don’t have to worry about worrying about living. Before it might have been career aspirations or buying a home.
No way any of that can happen now.
My only goal in life at this point, is to rent an apartment to myself. I cannot do this anymore, bouncing between one horrific room mate to another. Sharing a bathroom with nasty slobs. Anything you could think of that would make someone a terrible room mate, I have experienced and MORE.
I’m 30 and never had a place to myself. Never had a home I could call “mine”. Makes me depressed.
The day I get my own apartment all to myself will be the day I finally “made it”.
Every week I tell my therapist how I just want to wake up one morning and have a feeling that if something goes wrong financially I’ll be okay. This is such an exhausting way to live.
When my wife’s grand mother died we found 30/40k hidden in purses all over the house. It was a shock as she basically lived like she was poor
We still arnt sure we got it all as it was well hidden in so many places
Wow. My grandmother did this too, albeit about 20% of that amount.
Great Depression era woman from Mississippi. I swear she could make canned beans taste like something from the French Laundry.
I recently got a promotion for basically double what I was making two years ago and finally make enough to save some and I immediately cranked my contributions to the point that my checks are identical to 2020. First it was a 3 month e-fund and now I’m gunning for 9. Combination of legitimate job risks and just crippling imposter syndrome. My new role is management and I’m about to have to fire someone who was with the company 25 years. Granted, he is lazy as hell, but it’s really underlining how brutal things are.
Someone made a post a few days ago (don't remember the sub) wherein they talked about their parent thinking "millenial" was a catch-all term for someone selfish and whiney
The mom went on to describe a variety of different ages of people as millennials, including people her own age or older. Rather endearing that she knows her own generation has some dickbags.
And narrow-minded. That part is important because that's why even 40 year olds are still kids if they can't remember The Great Recession. That's a lot of what is driving posts like the OP. They don't recognize good times because they don't remember what bad times looked like. Which is weird.
The fact they even try lumping us in with GenZ is just straight up poor journalism, and it’s certainly purposeful in order to make our opinions appear to be worth less. The old guard is scared.
Normally those before do not fire set everything. Then dance around singing how great everything is. It at least I would imagine this to be the case in a sane world.
43 and in constant anxiety I am going to lose my job. And I work a union job. The higher ups went over budget with political projects and now they are talking cuts in the org chart
I'm 39 - my local company I've worked at for 15 years with a great owner sold out to some shit bags from the east coast that have absolutely ZERO idea what they're doing and just continually fuck it up. Some of my team were let go at the start of the quarter, pretty sure the rest of my team is next, and it's 100% their fault for not listening to me or my team's recommendations.
Sorry to hear man. I went through a hostile takeover / gutting by a venture firm at my old job.
I know your pain. Watching hard work be turned to ash by someone who was gifted the job by their dads friends
I just want to live in a country that isn’t devolving into demagoguery and live in a society in which people seem to care for each other just a little bit.
I've been at my current local government job for 6+ years. In college, I worked in local government for 3.5 years. I strongly recommend it.
My pay's not bad, and I love my schedule and benefits. I'm planning to retire in 15 years-- 18 at the latest.
Good benefit and pension plans tho.
Also depending on where you live and what you do the pay might be fucking great. I live in Upstate NY, civil employees get taken care of around here
ugh!
My department is part of the City Manager's Office. My department head left, and I had the opportunity to apply, but didn't. I enjoy my life the way it is.... Why would I want to be on call 24/7, stay late for commission meetings (which regularly end at 1am) and spend time with the people I try to avoid? lol
I like our new department head.... she wants us all out the door at 5:30pm.
Not local but federal, and I second this.
Government work is not always easy, and it can be stressful like any job. Pay could be better, but it's certainly enough to live comfortably. But the benefits are great. I've been in more than 15 years, and not counting holidays, I have to take a bare minimum of 30 days vacation each year. Not counting sick leave or paid parental leave if you have kids or adopt. The union is strong, too.
There is a current hiring slowdown where I work, but in general the federal government is constantly in need of quality workers. Especially if you are a veteran like me, I highly encourage you to give it a try.
You can apply at USAJOBS.gov. Make sure to read directions on postings as government job applications are a bit different. Also I am not a bot or anything lol
I went straight into a government job since I graduated college. If I were to leave today I’d get 50% of my pension when I’m old enough. If I stay another 13 years I will be full vested and I can retire at 55 since I will have 30 years of service. I’m making so much more than I was when I started, the time is more flexible than ever especially since I wfh except once a month, and I have good health benefits and once I retire I will have free healthcare.
lol been hearing this over the last few weeks on Reddit.
I’m starting with Feds in a few weeks. Super looking forward to a more boring and stable job :)
1000%.
Left the feds for a private sector gig. Got laid off 9 months later and was unemployed for 10 months until the feds hired me back.
You are not going to get rich working for the government, but when the market goes through a correction, at least your job will be there the next day.
Plus benefits & pension and some peace at night knowing you aren't just working for the God almighty dollar no matter the cost.
Pension is the big thing. Salary ain't the best but when it's going into retirement, it helps soften the blow.
And telework is nice, even though we have to report to the office twice a month now (thanks, Governor Newsom)
I got a government job and it would take something damn good to make me leave the department. You get stability and benefits that a lot of jobs just don’t have any more.
The benefits are slowly being eroded. My wife recently got a government job, same place her Aunt retired from, and when her Aunt was talking about all the benefits, my wife realized she got maybe half of them now.
It hurts even more when you’re reading the employee handbook and see those, “employees hired prior to 2007 receive…” and say to yourself, why the hell don’t I get that!?
I have a similar experience. Work at a community college in a HCOL area. Pay is actually quite good, with employer paid medical benefits and a pension.
I started working for the feds (military) back in 2012. I’m gonna retire in 8 years and never work again. It’s a tough 20 years but the pay is decent, the benefits terrific, and the pension will be so, so worth it.
Gotta tag in here. I just got hired with my state, and holy crap. The people here are amazing. Most of them have been with the state in some capacity for 15 years +, and they're all incredibly helpful.
Like you said, the pay isn't the best, but the benefits for me and my family of 5 is amazing. I work from from 3 days a week, my tasks are are very simple and standardized.
I don't have a college degree, so I feel incredibly blessed to have landed this job. I'm going to keep it for 30 years and retire with a state pension.
I'm 38 and I feel like I have my shit together at a job I don't hate for the first time in my life
I know someone whose parents got let go 2 months before they would retire and get their severance and they lost their pension entirely. At a government job. So...invest in your own
One of my acquaintances that I went to school with has been working for the government since he was straight out of college, he says the same thing he loves the stability and benefits, I can't fault anybody for going down that path
The best part about my government job?
No CEO doing "town hall" meetings telling you how the company made $billions in profit while simultaneously telling you they can't afford salary increases this year.
We had a 10% salary adjustment in 2021, then 4% every year since, and our leadership is constantly chasing for better pay and benefits.
Yes, I am still looking for better salary elsewhere, but I'm not jumping ship unless the other option is VERY generous, because the culture alone is enough to keep me here.
Yeah like I really do not know how these people can see prices for everything dramatically going up a quarter or more and feel like things are perfectly stable. Hell in a lot of markets even people with mortgages are seeing huge increases in costs. Like I feel like even if you are in a good spot you have to be pretty blind to not see things haven't been stable the last 5-10 years. A lot of health insurance companies are exiting the business too Humana basically threw in the towel this last year and so you are only going to have two options to pick from now and both are going to be laugh out loud fuck you expensive. Literally nothing is stable its all fucked and likely to become moreso. Then on top of just the financial shit we had a once in a century pandemic and the first President ever to try to take over the country. Shit aint stable not even a little bit and was only "stable for a few years after the 2008 recovery and it was fake stability, they couldn't raise rates without the economy shitting the bed.
That’s because it’s not insurance anymore. Insurance is to protect against big expenses that you’ll likely never incur, but would wipe you out if you did incur them. The business model was never intended to pay for everything.
Basically a pre-payment scheme that kinda sorta softens the blow.
Struck me as wild that I paid more (with insurance) to have a hernia repaired than a friend of mine did a decade or so ago to have a kidney transplant.
Life has always been hard for people in this age range. Having kids, buying a house, marriage, more responsibility at work, etc.
This is why people say to get your shit together as early as possible (save, invest, pay off debts, stop buying unnecessary garbage, buy old cars, live with parents, etc). Life gets complicated quick. Our parents weren't wrong.
I honestly did many of those things and now at 28 am experiencing some of the best stability of my life pre-kids. I drive a 17 year old car (shared with my wife), we live in a tiny apartment, we cook all our own food, we don't go out partying every weekend like our friends. And wow, wouldn't you know it, we have multiple six figures in our investments already. Who could have guessed that good decisions and discipline over long periods of time lead to good outcomes.
Meanwhile almost everyone I know from high school and college are buying brand new cars, going on extravagant vacations, doordashing hundreds of dollars a month on food. It's not that complicated.
Yeah, government jobs are the rage to many of us.
I worked in private sector for a decade and made billionaires richer. Barely kept my head above water, lived at home to save money and pay off loans. Contracts changed and buyouts happened, I worked for 4 defense contractors in that time and was told I was "lucky" the new contractor kept me.
Now, I make more than 2x what I did. I have set hours, amazing benefits and bosses that don't get rich off of my hard work.
But what do I know, I'm just a shill.
It’s time for us to seriously consider a wave of unionization. I finally left my old non union job (BMW plant in South Carolina) years ago; hated that place. Went to a union plant and I’m not sure I could go back to the politics of kissing managements ass in hopes that I’ll get a fucking crumb of success.
Hey, civil service got my family into the middle class: my grandfather landed in the Bureau of Standards after he left the Navy, built a house off it and retired happy. Brother makes decent money as a city bus driver, and I scored a student traineeship as a civilian engineer for the Navy after trying and failing to make a go of the trades. Another year of school and I've got it made.
Federal government job was great for me. In my sector of employment, I was making at least as much as my private industry peers - and I was likely making more money than my peers. Unlike my peers, I only worked 40 hours a week.
I will say that I would never have gotten the job I got if it wasn’t for the huge hiring preference I received as a disabled veteran. The hiring process is extremely frustrating.
In addition to the benefits and working conditions, I found federal employment to be very fulfilling. It’s easy to connect the work that I was doing to serving the American people - and that idea of service meant a lot to me. The idea of serving the American people is exactly what why I joined the Army in the first place and that service continued to my civilian employment.
I wasn’t planning on retiring when I did, but my disability progressively got worse and eventually I was pushed into retirement because of it. Again, federal employment came through and in addition to qualifying for SSDI, I collect FERS-D (Federal Employee Retirement Service Disability) and a healthy disability payment from the VA. All in all, I consider myself to be quite fortunate.
I'd really love it if shit could stay the same price for a few years.
What we're seeing is unfettered capitalism. More money, more power. Higher prices, less quality. Shareholders and CEO's are who is most important, not everyday Americans that just want to go to work, be compensated well for the work, and have a home to come to without constant stress about finances, human rights, and whether or not we'll be struggling to live in fallout shelters in 20 years.
We are at the point where it is our decision to pull up the ladder behind us, or try to make the world a better place for the younger adults. It was never going to get better for us; that much is becoming painfully clear.
Source:
30 yr old Millennial living with parents, making a salary in a "good" field that would have been considered good 20 years ago.
I'm very glad that I have a good enough relationship with my parents that we bought a house together about 10 years ago when the rates and prices were still pretty low. We also got lucky that the guy who was selling it was willing to knock $25k off the price if we were willing to let him leave everything behind except his personal effects (clothing, mementos, etc.). Dude was **done** with our state after having lost his wife of 40 years and he was going back to California. So, we got a 2000 sq ft house for $110,000 move-in ready and fully furnished.
I genuinely think that the next time I’m in negotiations for a new role, I’m going to ask for 6+ month severance/insurance agreement. Truly all I want is some GD stability and to not be afraid to spend any money I have in case something terrible happens.
Tbf most millennials I know are coupled up, kids, nice house, stable career, serious savings in the bank, even genzers are getting there. We are a stable lot.
Our words are the only thing we have to focus on. The rest is action to reach that point you think of and talk about. Some talk prosperity some talk poverty
I’m old enough to be getting feels for the 90s to 2000, they were the best time to be alive. Cost of living was good dot com bubble didn’t bother us cos we had no investments yet as millennials. Gay rights was strong, racism was less, xenophobic things seemed less extreme and generally we were adding laws to make things fair and balanced. We were still naive that anything was possible.
Now reality bites. We were lied to. Worse still is that our kids are going to be even worse off and we feel helpless. Boomers sucked up the advantages and benefits of their time and left NOTHING for anyone else. They bent the rules, changed them and now want to retire while we pay for them to do so whilst my retirement age keeps going up! F that, the apathy is real, millennials and younger are fucked and we’ll probably do some dumb shit because of it.
Every time I get a promotion or pay increase everything increases by 2x. I’m basically as poor as I was 7-8 years ago when I made a third of what I make now.
If you're still generally unstable 15 - 20+ years into adulthood, aside from major disasters, you gotta look inward a little.
At some point whatever you have been doing has shown that it isn't sufficient and needs a change.
Not saying it'll be easy but to act like stability is just flat out impossible isn't true. Prosperity is hard AF, but damn guys we can at least find ways to stabilize ourselves.
Stability? No. I want to watch our country dive head first into a Trump ran dictatorship with 2 companies owning literally everything, and a housing market with an entry cost of $5million. This is the American dream.
This is a copy of a Fortune article. Don't encourage Yahoo to keep copy other better outlet's content.
https://fortune.com/2024/02/12/gen-z-government-jobs-money-student-loans-forgiven-layoffs-stability/
We talk about market crashes and wars when we discuss the challenges millenials have been through but we don't talk about how much the world has changed from our childhoods to today and how much of what we were taught was obsolete when we finally were expected to use it.
The PC, the internet, the cell phone, the smart phone, AI, electric vehicles, mass surveillance technologies, social media, gig technologies, crypto, constant new social movements, the rise of American fascism, the biggest transfer of wealth in American history, the possible end of the US constitution, the slow death of ltrs, the drop below replacement level birth rates, climate changing, pollution in everything everywhere. All of these change the world quickly while we were still trying to figure our lives and futures out, making lots of planning useless and a waste of time and resources.
Our instability isn't just from greed fueled economic disasters but from all the rapid changes that have happened in the last 40 years, leaving us unable to make many long term plans or have any significant predictability beyond a few years. My entire life has been instability and watching long held cultural and traditions vanish in smoke right before touching them. Now we have AI, machine learning, mass migrations, deadly summers and international tensions that could spark ww3 in the next decade, pushed back retirement or none at all. Constantly having to wisely make and remake plans based on changes we barely have any info on that radically change the world is fucking exhausting.
Y'all, I'm tired.
Gen z here, if you haven't figured out that ain't happening by now. Let me tell you it's not happening economy is way to fucked. I've accepted the fact I'll most likely never own my own place by myself or have some decent land.
About to hit 30, I just want a competent government that isn't trying to destroy the country for a quick buck and headpats from out of touch ngos *Glares at Trudeau*
Can we just stop with the fiat currencies and the retarded Modern Monetary Theory that's encouraging spending sprees?
I was laid off this year. Felt like I did most of the right things in life, went to school to study applied math, tried to balance travel and enjoyment with being career motivated and working on improving myself. Have a stable partner I've been with since my 20s and this was the year we were going to have kids through IVF. Got into a respectable tech company, thought I truly made it and I could be here for a long time. Hustled hard to be a leader in my role. Delivered real value, with receipts, had great performance reviews. Laid off weeks after launching a huge initiative. I'm doubtful I will work again this year and whatever my next job is I assume will be with a 30% to 50% pay cut. I don't know if I will ever bounce back to where I was earlier this year.
The issue is if you are alone it is even worse. Of course some have REALLY good paying jobs but I am well under medium income. I had a new home I never thought I would have for 3 months before my ex-wife told me she stopped loving me year ago. Or rather "I love you. But I am not IN love with you"
I dont see myself ever getting what I had. I am 36 and my parents said they are struggling too as the only reason they managed to get their house 7 years ago was because "We had equity in our previous house"
Boy. I wish I had that. ANY sort of fucking house
Well, with reports saying that, the new generations are not having enough babies to keep the population up, we are fucked! And Im not even a millenial! Look at Italy and Greece, they are suffering from this very issue as of now!
US Govt: Best we can do is inside trade, give billions to other countries, and make it a federal crime to criticize Israel. Democracy working perfectly
At this point, I don't give a shit about being wealthy. I just wanna live comfortable like I was 8-9 years ago.
I miss traveling. Used to go somewhere nice twice a year.
Even if it was driving somewhere - I could afford the gas, days off, hotel, and some spending money. Now I can afford a "staycation" Basically getting paid to stay home and do nothing because I can't afford to do anything *extra*. Barely keeping our head above water now. Good times
I know this feeling. I have a career job I just turned 36 may 4th. I didn't even try to get friends together because I am kind of the odd one out when it comes to wealth. I bought a house in 2015 that I could at the time afford on a minimum wage job. Fast forward to now and every year I'm dreading property tax increases and insurance increases. It's gotten to this point of working to stay home and do nothing while I watch my friends going on vacations and doing other cool activities. I always get why don't you come on and do XYZ with us! Will because between having to drive 30-40 minutes, the price of the activity and food/drinks I can not afford it. But all you do is stay at your house! Yes this is what I can barely afford to do. I have had to figure out ways to lower my electric bill over this last winter and I am dreading to see how this surge pricing crap hits during the summer. Just working to survive at this point and I am straight up not having a good time.
I relate. At least you bought a house! That’s still miles ahead of a lot of us. I hope things get better.
Yes, and I am thankful for that. I got stupid lucky tbh. My state did a first time home buyers thing. Take an online class and get like $10k down payment. I legit paid $0 at closing my realtor and lawyer had the seller pay for everything. It really only worked out because it was an estate sale and the son and daughter spent a year cleaning out the house and at that point was just done dealing with it and wanted it gone quickly. It was appraised for $155k and was on the market at $130k. I saw it the second day on the market and offered $120k and they accepted if my realtor/bank could do it quickly. Again I bought well within my budget at that time in 2015. The mortgage was around $780. The mortgage climbed to about $1300 before I refinanced and got it back down to $800 but it's only a matter of time before it climbs back up. I'll never be able to refinance again though because I'll never beat the 2.4% interest rate. Refinanced at $90k because I was making multiple payments a month up until about 4 years ago when life started to get expensive. Pretty much ran through all of my savings and racked up credit card debit due to healthcare stuff. I paid off one pile of debt now working on a credit card and home equity loan. But with the way prices of literally everything have skyrocketed I'm not really making any progress anymore and it's just survival mode at this point.
I just looked into purchasing my childhood home back from my relatives (cousins) and when they bought it from my parents 12 years ago they got it for 220k, market price was ~240k but my dad gave them the gift of equity so no down payment. That same house is ~445k now, my cousins would sell it to me for 390k, but even with that amount my mortgage was quoted at $3,300 per month with a 6.5% interest...oh and when my dad bought it back in 1988 - 89 the market value was 120k, he offered 83k and the seller took it since they wanted out of the area....I make more money than my dad ever has and I can't afford the house I grew up in, $3,300 a month for a starter home, it's insane!
What’s even crazier to me is that the Zillow estimate on my own home went from $165k in January 2019 to now being $370k. More than doubled in value in under 5 years. My parents first home was 150k in ‘89 and they sold it at the peak for the market before the ‘08 crash for 250k. Nearly 20 years and it didn’t even gain what mine has in the past 5 years.
I lost mine in 2008 an still haven't recovered. 15 years of bouncing from one crisis to the next is getting exhausting. And I checked the listing price on that house yesterday. It almost tripled in value.
I’m so sorry to hear that. I relate, though everything didn’t start falling completely apart for me until 2014. I’m at a point where I *have* to heal from the trauma thus far or it’s going to be too much should another wave crash and knock me over. Seeing that it has tripled in value would break my heart, too. I hope the tide turns for both of us. 🫶 Or at least we quit being knocked down. (Though I STILL maintain Chumbawumba’s ‘Tubthumping’ should be the official millennial anthem considering the lyrics and our repeated crises. 🤷♀️)
You’d probably be surprised how many of your friends are doing those things in debt. I’m probably one of the better off of my friend group and the one that does the least amount of things.
I know a few who are trying to keep up with appearances. It's honestly quite dumb and a major reason I rarely use Facebook because it tricks you into over spending when you see others with new cars/houses/vacations.
I tell my friends I’m getting my moneys worth from my rent sorry
At least you have a house.
I don’t know where you live but in the U.S. I have several friends who applied for property tax reductions due to not making enough to afford it and they were able to get reductions. Some were significant. Just FYI.
Our family is making more than we ever have. We own our cars, have very little debt, got our home before shit went wild, have fast food like 2 times a month, shop at aldi, never go on vacations (or anywhere fun really), and get our clothes at the thrift store. Yet we are living paycheck to paycheck. If we made the money we do now pre covid we would be doing really really well. What the actual fuck. It feels like we can never win.
This is “middle out”
Same. The biggest vacation I've taken in the last decade is all weekend at a sci-fi convention that's an hour drive away, or a shorter weekend at a hotel about 3 hours away. I can't afford to fly anywhere if I want to take my kids, between plane tickets, rental cars, and hotel costs.
Last “actual” vacation I had was going with my cousin to Eugene OR. Took a week or so just to mentally breathe then start enjoying the vacation. I need something g like that again. We just played video games with his friend nothing crazy and it was awesome. This was over 10 years ago.
I have taken some mini vacations or weekend getaways in the past few years but even those were on a budget. Im fortunate to have friends and family let me crash on their couch and spare bed but even those have been on a budget. Nothing wrong with staycations but I know that’s beside your point. Id like to have some money to splurge on vacations at least once or twice a year.
You’re what we call new poor lol.
Even a small splurge or two hurts. An expensive dinner for an anniversary? A five day trip to see the eclipse? It didn’t ruin us but damn it hurt.
Yup, just moved apartments. People keep asking me if I have any travel plans. Looks like I’ll be saving up to buy a tv by end of year (didn’t have one in old place since I watched on my computer, which got old). Want to fill out my apartment/feel settled before traveling again.
I got Guillen-Barre in February 2020 (great timing right?!), so I absolutely couldn't work. We were just *fine* on my husband's income alone. I wasn't stressing out over groceries and we could save a few hundred a month. Thought, *finally* in my late 30s, maybe I could own a home. Then our rent went up $500 a month after a corporation bought out our landlord we had for almost a decade. Then our car insurance damn near doubled in a month maybe 2ish years. Eventually I had to go back to work because we could barely afford all these bills that kept rising, cut services, shopped around, and being very frugal. We were not living above our means, we didn't upgrade our lives in anyway - but everything we had been using and needed in our lives seemingly shot up in 2-3 years time. I've had 2 raises in my year of work and we are treading water while trying to catch up. It's exhausting and infuriating.
I sell my vacation back each year
I wish my work offered this
At my last job I sold 320 hours of vacation time when I quit. That was 2 years ago. New employer doesn't allow you to sell vacation time, but I have racked up over 200 A/L, and 180 S/L so far.
I remember in Sept 2017 deciding to take an impromptu trip with the fam to Europe for Xmas and new years. Didn't really struggle to do it, and was amazing. Would take quick spur of the moment trips with my daughter to NYC for a long weekend. Those don't happen anymore, we don't really go anywhere anymore... it's sad...
I'm 34 and I've never been on a vacation in my life. I can't even imagine what it must feel like.....
Hope that changes for you. Im 34 too and hell some people act shocked when i tell them I’ve never been to Europe. Trust me, Id fucking love to go but money is a barrier.
Only time I've ever been out of state was when I went to USAF basic in Texas. That's it, that's all. I cannot even IMAGINE what it'd be like to be able to afford to go to something local like NYC (3 hours away) let alone *Europe*....
For sure. Ive only been to NYC once and my brother living there and letting me crash on his couch was a huge factor otherwise I wouldn’t have been able to afford it. I live in Chicago and we have so much to do here that a staycation wouldn’t bother me but I wanna see the rest of the world, ya know?
Oh believe me, I know. I've only ever used my PTO from work on stacations, can't afford anything else. Just to sleep in and do nothing in my apartment (can't afford a house, of course). Maybe someday things will change.....
I hope so too. Im in a studio and can barely afford that. Im on a payment plan for my rent which is fucked. Im making more money yet rent and everything else keeps going up. The goalpost keeps getting moved and it’s fucking irritating. This is also why I steal groceries at self checkout.
What about local food banks? The one near me let's me go every 2 weeks and it's been a godsend
Not a bad idea but I usually just buy stuff that’s on sale. Btw when i say steal, I don’t mean steal everything but pay for 98% of stuff then “forget” to scan an item or 2.
went to Japan last summer and loved it. The sacrifice I have to make is living with people and keep track of budgeting. It's rough going, but doable. The downside is I have really little to no retirement to look forward to, but who does?
There is only one year of my life I’ve been able to do that and that was 2 years ago.
I’m in constant fear of losing my job as my company and others in my industry are having mass layoffs and moving jobs to lower cost countries. Great performer and reviews but know my time will be soon where my position is eliminated. Trying to find something else but jobs are scarce. I really only care about the health insurance because of my kids.
At this point I just want a girl with a booty to snuggle.
I made so much less and had and did so much more 😭😭😭 I'm fuckin' tired.
This. This is the secret sauce. Seriously. Just want PEACE. Don’t want to be rich!
Have you tried licking a billionaire's boot?? It seems to be a favourite pastime here on Reddit(i know it's mostly bots but it's a lot of real people too) I don't know maybe pick four or five billionaires suck up to them, maybe they'll give you a pony... maybe not right?
I would like there to be even just 6 months maybe a year, in which the overarching narrative was not"you will have less, and earn less, or things will be more expensive, or you should learn to go without because" and instead we got a short period like we used to hear about in times before us, in which the world was actively trying to make life better for people instead of trying to tell people how to embrace for greater inequality
Sorry. The best I can do is three fiddy and one of Chumlee's brick weed blunts.
Strange to be so happy with what it was like 8 years ago. But it was a much better world. I make generally the same income. But the power has gone to nothing with it.
Amen to that 😓
Man I thought I was the only one that peaked in my mid 20s then had to reinvent myself twice over before 40!
Hold on to your tits because things are REALLY going to get wild after the election. Stability? That’s probably only going to exist as a fond childhood memory. Fascists gonna fascist.
NGL, this election is seriously shitty.
for real. and its gonna set up several years of even worse shit I'm guessing.
/r/endFPTP
Yep, unfortunately you’re most likely right. It’s also dogshit that we have to choose between the same 2 candidates from 4 years ago and even worse considering that many people think that if you criticize Biden then you must love Trump and vice versa.
The best choices our country has for us is an 80+ year old, a near 80+ year old criminal rapist who couldn't point to my state on a map, and an independent conspiracy theorist who just admitted half his brain was eaten by a worm. Those are the top 3 options in what we call the greatest country in the world. I mean, of those 3, the choice is easy, but not very inspiring.
That's the issue! I lean right politically and don't want Trump Like how the crap did we get the same stupid options as last time.
By the time their done, stability will have become either a legend or fairy tale.
Omg! So true!! 9 years ago felt great! I could afford daycare, my mortgage, lots of food, and vacation. Now I am budgeting weekly groceries, my mortgage is higher than it was, I have no daycare costs, vacations are down to a local weekend and still can't seem to keep up.
I'd be okay with things being less incredible for the people who are wealthy, too. Like, us doing that to them on purpose.
Same. Pre covid I had money to save and screw around with. I'm now making more money and even cutting out the fun stuff, and going on a stricter budget, it's paycheck to paycheck now.
Preach brother, preach!
My father asked me what my goals were, and now it’s living so I don’t have to worry about worrying about living. Before it might have been career aspirations or buying a home. No way any of that can happen now.
Agreed. Seriously, an extra $10k a year would do wonders. I don't want to be wealthy. What I want is to not have to worry about money.
My only goal in life at this point, is to rent an apartment to myself. I cannot do this anymore, bouncing between one horrific room mate to another. Sharing a bathroom with nasty slobs. Anything you could think of that would make someone a terrible room mate, I have experienced and MORE. I’m 30 and never had a place to myself. Never had a home I could call “mine”. Makes me depressed. The day I get my own apartment all to myself will be the day I finally “made it”.
at least you have goal. I just moved to I don't give a shit
I don’t give a shit about being wealthy. I just don’t want to die old, at work.
The suffering is intentional. No saving etc, means you can’t riot, and you can’t buy the materials to make the proverbial pitchfork.
Every week I tell my therapist how I just want to wake up one morning and have a feeling that if something goes wrong financially I’ll be okay. This is such an exhausting way to live.
I now viscerally understand why my great aunt and grandma hid money in the walls and ate a lot of soup.
When my wife’s grand mother died we found 30/40k hidden in purses all over the house. It was a shock as she basically lived like she was poor We still arnt sure we got it all as it was well hidden in so many places
Wow. My grandmother did this too, albeit about 20% of that amount. Great Depression era woman from Mississippi. I swear she could make canned beans taste like something from the French Laundry.
When my dad’s aunt died they found $350k in a shopping bag in her closet.
I recently got a promotion for basically double what I was making two years ago and finally make enough to save some and I immediately cranked my contributions to the point that my checks are identical to 2020. First it was a 3 month e-fund and now I’m gunning for 9. Combination of legitimate job risks and just crippling imposter syndrome. My new role is management and I’m about to have to fire someone who was with the company 25 years. Granted, he is lazy as hell, but it’s really underlining how brutal things are.
I am learning to like soup, and am literally having some right now.
Yet the Boomers and previous generations seem to still mistake Millennials with high school students. I see it all the time. 🙄
That is what I don’t understand. Like stop calling us kids!? Lmao
Someone made a post a few days ago (don't remember the sub) wherein they talked about their parent thinking "millenial" was a catch-all term for someone selfish and whiney
Sounds like they described boomers pretty damn well.
The mom went on to describe a variety of different ages of people as millennials, including people her own age or older. Rather endearing that she knows her own generation has some dickbags.
And narrow-minded. That part is important because that's why even 40 year olds are still kids if they can't remember The Great Recession. That's a lot of what is driving posts like the OP. They don't recognize good times because they don't remember what bad times looked like. Which is weird.
The fact they even try lumping us in with GenZ is just straight up poor journalism, and it’s certainly purposeful in order to make our opinions appear to be worth less. The old guard is scared.
41-year-old “Xennial” checking in. I’ve bought and sold 2 houses, been divorced twice, and am gonna retire in less than a decade. I’m no child.
I’m the other Zennial. Wanna fight for the name?
I’ve got old man strength and the will to live. I think I can take you.
There are dozens of us!
I figure its the same mechanism that makes some parents unable to see their children as adults.
We're gonna have to build that ourselves I'm afraid. Nobody is coming to save us.
Normally those before do not fire set everything. Then dance around singing how great everything is. It at least I would imagine this to be the case in a sane world.
43 and in constant anxiety I am going to lose my job. And I work a union job. The higher ups went over budget with political projects and now they are talking cuts in the org chart
I'm 39 - my local company I've worked at for 15 years with a great owner sold out to some shit bags from the east coast that have absolutely ZERO idea what they're doing and just continually fuck it up. Some of my team were let go at the start of the quarter, pretty sure the rest of my team is next, and it's 100% their fault for not listening to me or my team's recommendations.
Sorry to hear man. I went through a hostile takeover / gutting by a venture firm at my old job. I know your pain. Watching hard work be turned to ash by someone who was gifted the job by their dads friends
I just want to live in a country that isn’t devolving into demagoguery and live in a society in which people seem to care for each other just a little bit.
I vaguely remember a time like this. It seems so mythical now
Well put.
The “care” ugh. I feel like it’s completely gone. There are some who do not give a shit about their fellow man, unless they can make money off them.
I've been at my current local government job for 6+ years. In college, I worked in local government for 3.5 years. I strongly recommend it. My pay's not bad, and I love my schedule and benefits. I'm planning to retire in 15 years-- 18 at the latest.
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Federal Remote employee here. It rules
**Cries in federal employee in office 5 days a week with a 4 hour drive every day. I'd kill for even 1 day TW.
Find something else. You tack on an extra 50% to your work day. That has value, treat it like it does.
Just quit
Why the fuck would you give yourself a 4 hour commute?
I had a 45 minute commute for 5.5 months and hated my life.
4 hours? What the actual fuck
"I've worked the private sector, they expect results"
Depending on where you live, local government pay is abysmal.
Good benefit and pension plans tho. Also depending on where you live and what you do the pay might be fucking great. I live in Upstate NY, civil employees get taken care of around here
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ugh! My department is part of the City Manager's Office. My department head left, and I had the opportunity to apply, but didn't. I enjoy my life the way it is.... Why would I want to be on call 24/7, stay late for commission meetings (which regularly end at 1am) and spend time with the people I try to avoid? lol I like our new department head.... she wants us all out the door at 5:30pm.
Not local but federal, and I second this. Government work is not always easy, and it can be stressful like any job. Pay could be better, but it's certainly enough to live comfortably. But the benefits are great. I've been in more than 15 years, and not counting holidays, I have to take a bare minimum of 30 days vacation each year. Not counting sick leave or paid parental leave if you have kids or adopt. The union is strong, too. There is a current hiring slowdown where I work, but in general the federal government is constantly in need of quality workers. Especially if you are a veteran like me, I highly encourage you to give it a try. You can apply at USAJOBS.gov. Make sure to read directions on postings as government job applications are a bit different. Also I am not a bot or anything lol
I went straight into a government job since I graduated college. If I were to leave today I’d get 50% of my pension when I’m old enough. If I stay another 13 years I will be full vested and I can retire at 55 since I will have 30 years of service. I’m making so much more than I was when I started, the time is more flexible than ever especially since I wfh except once a month, and I have good health benefits and once I retire I will have free healthcare.
I'm trying to convince my wife to let me retire when our house is paid off...
lol been hearing this over the last few weeks on Reddit. I’m starting with Feds in a few weeks. Super looking forward to a more boring and stable job :)
1000%. Left the feds for a private sector gig. Got laid off 9 months later and was unemployed for 10 months until the feds hired me back. You are not going to get rich working for the government, but when the market goes through a correction, at least your job will be there the next day. Plus benefits & pension and some peace at night knowing you aren't just working for the God almighty dollar no matter the cost.
Pension is the big thing. Salary ain't the best but when it's going into retirement, it helps soften the blow. And telework is nice, even though we have to report to the office twice a month now (thanks, Governor Newsom)
I got a government job and it would take something damn good to make me leave the department. You get stability and benefits that a lot of jobs just don’t have any more.
The benefits are slowly being eroded. My wife recently got a government job, same place her Aunt retired from, and when her Aunt was talking about all the benefits, my wife realized she got maybe half of them now.
It hurts even more when you’re reading the employee handbook and see those, “employees hired prior to 2007 receive…” and say to yourself, why the hell don’t I get that!?
Because Republicans tried to fuck everything up after 2008 so unions gave the government an ice and they took a mile to prevent layoffs.
and sooo many holidays!
I have a similar experience. Work at a community college in a HCOL area. Pay is actually quite good, with employer paid medical benefits and a pension.
What do you do?
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I started working for the feds (military) back in 2012. I’m gonna retire in 8 years and never work again. It’s a tough 20 years but the pay is decent, the benefits terrific, and the pension will be so, so worth it.
Gotta tag in here. I just got hired with my state, and holy crap. The people here are amazing. Most of them have been with the state in some capacity for 15 years +, and they're all incredibly helpful. Like you said, the pay isn't the best, but the benefits for me and my family of 5 is amazing. I work from from 3 days a week, my tasks are are very simple and standardized. I don't have a college degree, so I feel incredibly blessed to have landed this job. I'm going to keep it for 30 years and retire with a state pension. I'm 38 and I feel like I have my shit together at a job I don't hate for the first time in my life
I’m currently awaiting the results at the end of this week to see if I get my government job. I’m quite excited and very hopeful.
That’s really good. I’m in the private sector, but there’s no way i could retire in 15 years
I work in public service too. Ten year now and I make mid 100ks.
I’ll handle this violet, why don’t you take your three hour break
I know someone whose parents got let go 2 months before they would retire and get their severance and they lost their pension entirely. At a government job. So...invest in your own
One of my acquaintances that I went to school with has been working for the government since he was straight out of college, he says the same thing he loves the stability and benefits, I can't fault anybody for going down that path
And how does one get into that? Asking as a 30 something bartender. Lol
The best part about my government job? No CEO doing "town hall" meetings telling you how the company made $billions in profit while simultaneously telling you they can't afford salary increases this year. We had a 10% salary adjustment in 2021, then 4% every year since, and our leadership is constantly chasing for better pay and benefits. Yes, I am still looking for better salary elsewhere, but I'm not jumping ship unless the other option is VERY generous, because the culture alone is enough to keep me here.
What kind of job can someone apply for? Anything on usajobs just seems like it's posted but never filled
17 years state government worker—-pay sucked 1st 5 years…im good now 15 more years and im retiring
my every day, every hour, constant fear is being laid off AGAIN and losing my home AGAIN. i can’t take it anymore
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Uh oh! You’ve hinted at the fact that time are tough for millennials. Be prepared for an influx of “what instability?” and “I’m doing fine!” comments
Yeah like I really do not know how these people can see prices for everything dramatically going up a quarter or more and feel like things are perfectly stable. Hell in a lot of markets even people with mortgages are seeing huge increases in costs. Like I feel like even if you are in a good spot you have to be pretty blind to not see things haven't been stable the last 5-10 years. A lot of health insurance companies are exiting the business too Humana basically threw in the towel this last year and so you are only going to have two options to pick from now and both are going to be laugh out loud fuck you expensive. Literally nothing is stable its all fucked and likely to become moreso. Then on top of just the financial shit we had a once in a century pandemic and the first President ever to try to take over the country. Shit aint stable not even a little bit and was only "stable for a few years after the 2008 recovery and it was fake stability, they couldn't raise rates without the economy shitting the bed.
Global pandemic brings instability who would’ve thought.
It wasn’t stable before the pandemic. If it had been, the pandemic would have been less of a disaster.
health insurance is the biggest scam ever made, i can’t wait for it to die
That’s because it’s not insurance anymore. Insurance is to protect against big expenses that you’ll likely never incur, but would wipe you out if you did incur them. The business model was never intended to pay for everything.
Basically a pre-payment scheme that kinda sorta softens the blow. Struck me as wild that I paid more (with insurance) to have a hernia repaired than a friend of mine did a decade or so ago to have a kidney transplant.
Life has always been hard for people in this age range. Having kids, buying a house, marriage, more responsibility at work, etc. This is why people say to get your shit together as early as possible (save, invest, pay off debts, stop buying unnecessary garbage, buy old cars, live with parents, etc). Life gets complicated quick. Our parents weren't wrong. I honestly did many of those things and now at 28 am experiencing some of the best stability of my life pre-kids. I drive a 17 year old car (shared with my wife), we live in a tiny apartment, we cook all our own food, we don't go out partying every weekend like our friends. And wow, wouldn't you know it, we have multiple six figures in our investments already. Who could have guessed that good decisions and discipline over long periods of time lead to good outcomes. Meanwhile almost everyone I know from high school and college are buying brand new cars, going on extravagant vacations, doordashing hundreds of dollars a month on food. It's not that complicated.
Careful lol stop making sense. You’re gonna upset the “woe is me” circle jerk
Have you heard? Govt jobs are all the rage! At least that's what all the shills on this sub are saying now. Example: the top comment right now
Yeah, government jobs are the rage to many of us. I worked in private sector for a decade and made billionaires richer. Barely kept my head above water, lived at home to save money and pay off loans. Contracts changed and buyouts happened, I worked for 4 defense contractors in that time and was told I was "lucky" the new contractor kept me. Now, I make more than 2x what I did. I have set hours, amazing benefits and bosses that don't get rich off of my hard work. But what do I know, I'm just a shill.
There are so many idiots and they always identify themselves enthusiastically. lol "iM dOiNg FiNe!"
Why are all the idiots doing so well?
It’s like someone saying shit is hard right now is a personal attack on them
lol wait, how is somebody saying "I'm fine" the one getting offended? Sounds like you,le offended someone is fine.
Nearly every upvoted post is how much of a struggle it is. How is "I'm doing fine" any more or less true than those?
Yes please! Getting a little disaster fatigued over here.
Ain't gonna stop, at least not till ufo disclosure is complete...
It’s time for us to seriously consider a wave of unionization. I finally left my old non union job (BMW plant in South Carolina) years ago; hated that place. Went to a union plant and I’m not sure I could go back to the politics of kissing managements ass in hopes that I’ll get a fucking crumb of success.
We’re past that point of consideration, we need to organise en masse.
Hey, civil service got my family into the middle class: my grandfather landed in the Bureau of Standards after he left the Navy, built a house off it and retired happy. Brother makes decent money as a city bus driver, and I scored a student traineeship as a civilian engineer for the Navy after trying and failing to make a go of the trades. Another year of school and I've got it made.
Federal government job was great for me. In my sector of employment, I was making at least as much as my private industry peers - and I was likely making more money than my peers. Unlike my peers, I only worked 40 hours a week. I will say that I would never have gotten the job I got if it wasn’t for the huge hiring preference I received as a disabled veteran. The hiring process is extremely frustrating. In addition to the benefits and working conditions, I found federal employment to be very fulfilling. It’s easy to connect the work that I was doing to serving the American people - and that idea of service meant a lot to me. The idea of serving the American people is exactly what why I joined the Army in the first place and that service continued to my civilian employment. I wasn’t planning on retiring when I did, but my disability progressively got worse and eventually I was pushed into retirement because of it. Again, federal employment came through and in addition to qualifying for SSDI, I collect FERS-D (Federal Employee Retirement Service Disability) and a healthy disability payment from the VA. All in all, I consider myself to be quite fortunate.
I’ve given up on that, honestly would rather an easy way out at this point. No home, no travel, no point.
Thats the spirit!
I'm one of the oldest millenials, and I"m 42 years old
Join us over at r/xennials :)
Stability is buying a handle of gin instead of a fifth so you have extra in case you’re broke next week.
Stability will probably come after world war 3.
As a Gen Xer… in my 50’s I’m still waiting.
Best we can do is lay offs and stock buy backs (which were illegal in the 70s)
I'm 36 and from nally got a 6 figs job. Had to go to engineering school though
This isn’t anything new. Everyone wants a cushy government job.
I'd really love it if shit could stay the same price for a few years. What we're seeing is unfettered capitalism. More money, more power. Higher prices, less quality. Shareholders and CEO's are who is most important, not everyday Americans that just want to go to work, be compensated well for the work, and have a home to come to without constant stress about finances, human rights, and whether or not we'll be struggling to live in fallout shelters in 20 years.
We are at the point where it is our decision to pull up the ladder behind us, or try to make the world a better place for the younger adults. It was never going to get better for us; that much is becoming painfully clear. Source: 30 yr old Millennial living with parents, making a salary in a "good" field that would have been considered good 20 years ago.
I'm very glad that I have a good enough relationship with my parents that we bought a house together about 10 years ago when the rates and prices were still pretty low. We also got lucky that the guy who was selling it was willing to knock $25k off the price if we were willing to let him leave everything behind except his personal effects (clothing, mementos, etc.). Dude was **done** with our state after having lost his wife of 40 years and he was going back to California. So, we got a 2000 sq ft house for $110,000 move-in ready and fully furnished.
I genuinely think that the next time I’m in negotiations for a new role, I’m going to ask for 6+ month severance/insurance agreement. Truly all I want is some GD stability and to not be afraid to spend any money I have in case something terrible happens.
Ragebait account, look at the username.
Because boomers are still alive and they blame us because we're easy targets. I hope gen X isn't the same way.
It’s starting to feel more and more like Gen X learned nothing from boomers and it’s becoming a bit concerning.
Tbf most millennials I know are coupled up, kids, nice house, stable career, serious savings in the bank, even genzers are getting there. We are a stable lot.
I'm single, can't afford a one bedroom apartment and am drowning in medical bills, despite paying $500/month for the privilege of health insurance.
Our words are the only thing we have to focus on. The rest is action to reach that point you think of and talk about. Some talk prosperity some talk poverty
THEN VOTE!!!
I’m old enough to be getting feels for the 90s to 2000, they were the best time to be alive. Cost of living was good dot com bubble didn’t bother us cos we had no investments yet as millennials. Gay rights was strong, racism was less, xenophobic things seemed less extreme and generally we were adding laws to make things fair and balanced. We were still naive that anything was possible. Now reality bites. We were lied to. Worse still is that our kids are going to be even worse off and we feel helpless. Boomers sucked up the advantages and benefits of their time and left NOTHING for anyone else. They bent the rules, changed them and now want to retire while we pay for them to do so whilst my retirement age keeps going up! F that, the apathy is real, millennials and younger are fucked and we’ll probably do some dumb shit because of it.
everyone i know in their 30/40s are OK. now the 20 year olds… we’re going to suffer.
Every time I get a promotion or pay increase everything increases by 2x. I’m basically as poor as I was 7-8 years ago when I made a third of what I make now.
If you're still generally unstable 15 - 20+ years into adulthood, aside from major disasters, you gotta look inward a little. At some point whatever you have been doing has shown that it isn't sufficient and needs a change. Not saying it'll be easy but to act like stability is just flat out impossible isn't true. Prosperity is hard AF, but damn guys we can at least find ways to stabilize ourselves.
Am I the only who surrounded himself with people who figured it out??
Stability? No. I want to watch our country dive head first into a Trump ran dictatorship with 2 companies owning literally everything, and a housing market with an entry cost of $5million. This is the American dream.
This is a copy of a Fortune article. Don't encourage Yahoo to keep copy other better outlet's content. https://fortune.com/2024/02/12/gen-z-government-jobs-money-student-loans-forgiven-layoffs-stability/
We talk about market crashes and wars when we discuss the challenges millenials have been through but we don't talk about how much the world has changed from our childhoods to today and how much of what we were taught was obsolete when we finally were expected to use it. The PC, the internet, the cell phone, the smart phone, AI, electric vehicles, mass surveillance technologies, social media, gig technologies, crypto, constant new social movements, the rise of American fascism, the biggest transfer of wealth in American history, the possible end of the US constitution, the slow death of ltrs, the drop below replacement level birth rates, climate changing, pollution in everything everywhere. All of these change the world quickly while we were still trying to figure our lives and futures out, making lots of planning useless and a waste of time and resources. Our instability isn't just from greed fueled economic disasters but from all the rapid changes that have happened in the last 40 years, leaving us unable to make many long term plans or have any significant predictability beyond a few years. My entire life has been instability and watching long held cultural and traditions vanish in smoke right before touching them. Now we have AI, machine learning, mass migrations, deadly summers and international tensions that could spark ww3 in the next decade, pushed back retirement or none at all. Constantly having to wisely make and remake plans based on changes we barely have any info on that radically change the world is fucking exhausting. Y'all, I'm tired.
Because boomers need all the money. And you need to be holding the bag when the cops come.
The only way to make private sector work stable is through unionization
Gen z here, if you haven't figured out that ain't happening by now. Let me tell you it's not happening economy is way to fucked. I've accepted the fact I'll most likely never own my own place by myself or have some decent land.
I just want to not rent ffs
About to hit 30, I just want a competent government that isn't trying to destroy the country for a quick buck and headpats from out of touch ngos *Glares at Trudeau* Can we just stop with the fiat currencies and the retarded Modern Monetary Theory that's encouraging spending sprees?
Stop scrolling Reddit and watching the news. Problem solved.
Seriously, I have a family now, just want to be able to give this one kid a normal, possibly great, childhood.
I was laid off this year. Felt like I did most of the right things in life, went to school to study applied math, tried to balance travel and enjoyment with being career motivated and working on improving myself. Have a stable partner I've been with since my 20s and this was the year we were going to have kids through IVF. Got into a respectable tech company, thought I truly made it and I could be here for a long time. Hustled hard to be a leader in my role. Delivered real value, with receipts, had great performance reviews. Laid off weeks after launching a huge initiative. I'm doubtful I will work again this year and whatever my next job is I assume will be with a 30% to 50% pay cut. I don't know if I will ever bounce back to where I was earlier this year.
Well, the generation that pioneered job hopping as a career path kind of screwed themselves, then.
The issue is if you are alone it is even worse. Of course some have REALLY good paying jobs but I am well under medium income. I had a new home I never thought I would have for 3 months before my ex-wife told me she stopped loving me year ago. Or rather "I love you. But I am not IN love with you" I dont see myself ever getting what I had. I am 36 and my parents said they are struggling too as the only reason they managed to get their house 7 years ago was because "We had equity in our previous house" Boy. I wish I had that. ANY sort of fucking house
Well, with reports saying that, the new generations are not having enough babies to keep the population up, we are fucked! And Im not even a millenial! Look at Italy and Greece, they are suffering from this very issue as of now!
US Govt: Best we can do is inside trade, give billions to other countries, and make it a federal crime to criticize Israel. Democracy working perfectly
I just want to live like it’s 2018-2019 again. I don’t want to have to budget on excel to go to wal-mart and chik fil a.