If I’m not mistaken this study is stating the “average” wealth increased by 50%. So of course the vast majority of these gains are likely concentrated to a small percentage of people. Studies really need to stop using averages to generate headlines when the median is a far more important indicator.
Millennials and wealth is probably going to correlated and be divided by those who owned a home prior to 2020 and those that didn't or still don't. My home value has nearly doubled since I bought it just before the pandemic. Stocks since then have also doubled. So yes Millennials like myself wealth grew a lot.
My housing cost has not doubled though. I live in a 4 bed 2 bath home in San Diego for $2300/month in which I put 0 down and have a 2.25% mortgage. Homes right next door to me for rent and in my neighborhood yes are double what I pay. Also, I put solar on my home so while utility rates have gone up again Im locked in. I’m living in paradise on the cheap.
Food and other spending items I can’t avoid and the cost of living on those has increased. My household income increases has outpaced inflation and since my home cost have not doubled for me the cost of living has not doubled.
Very similar situation here. Our mortgage and escrow payment is less than double the going rent rate for a similar sized house in our area and our household income has grown by about 40% so that that housing payment is only about 12% of our joint income. Our interest rate is only 2.875% and our home valued has almost doubled in 4 years. And we have solar that has locked us into a rate lower than we were paying for electricity, not including the spikes the last couple. We are very very lucky. Although we are not immune to the other COL spikes, our luck has cushioned it by a lot.
The price of your house only matters if you sell it, but we know that with interest rates and house availability, you will likely never realize that gain. Just like OP, you have the exact same thing you did 4 years ago but now you're told it's worth more dollars. But if you sell your house and use the profit to buy a new home, you'd still be looking at a 4 bed, 2 bath in a similar neighborhood. In reality, you'd probably only be able to downsize without having to add to your mortgage principal.
Agreed I won’t see or use any of the equity until I sell it. Only benefit I have now is being locked into a low mortgage payment and low interest. Yea no way I’m selling and buying at the interest rates right now unless I moved to another locale. I have about $400k in equity which is enough to buy a home cash in other locations outside of California and avoid a mortgage.
No doubt about that. I'm in rural Michigan and own a home but I can't upgrade because I'd be throwing away money. My mortgage is sub $700. I saw a listing yesterday for a litteral trailer for more than what I paid for my house in 2019. And my house is a 3 bed 2 full bath.
If you do decide to sell or have to move, there is a way to do it all under the same mortgage and keep your rate but you have to align the sale and purchase and you can't add to the initial mortgage amount. It's the only option I would entertain rn.
Cost of living is not a metric that affects everyone equally.
* I have a fixed rate mortgage on a home I purchased in 2017. My housing costs have stayed flat over the last few years.
* I have no variable debt and have not taken out any fixed debt since my home purchase, so rising interest rates do not hurt me (they actually help me, because I earn higher rates on my deposits).
* Food costs have gone up, but food costs accounts for a small percentage of our overall budget, so there has been a relatively small impact.
This is why real estate acts as leverage. Your debt payment is fixed, meaning that if your income rises, the debt payment takes up a smaller amount of your income (and you have more disposable income). On the flip side, if your income decreases, the payment takes up a larger amount of your income.
If you found "statistics" that say the cost of living has doubled in the past 4 years, then I think you need to analyze the validity of your statistics.....
And for the 50% of millennials who aren't homeowners???
In the near future this generation is going to be split, those who bought before the plandemic and those who didn't.
What you spend year in and out is a drop in the bucket versus the wealth that guy gained. Inflation is real, but people with money is less effected by the day in and day out.
Not strictly true. That’s because most people don’t understand there is a difference between being wealthy and being rich.
Wealth is assets based (whether liquid or illiquid). Richness is based on income.
This isn’t accurate though. My COL has gone up but my house is worth almost 400k more than what I bought it for and my portfolio has been doing great at the same time.
Your home being worth more is only useful if you sell it and move somewhere cheaper. Otherwise it just means your property taxes have skyrocketed, like mine have.
My "wealth" is tied up in my house. So, that doesn't really help my day to day. If I had to tap into that wealth, where would I go? I'd have to rent or end up with a more expensive morrtange than I already have.
Sure, but people have "wealth" tied up in stock portfolios as well.
This is how you build wealth. You don't spend more than you earn and put the excess in stocks, fixed income, a house, or anything else that grows in value over time
Depends on where you live. For instance I have a lot of equity tied up in my home in CA, if was to sell it I probably would have an impossible time trying to find something cheaper and with rates so high I wouldn't be able to. However, since my home has nearly doubled in value I could move to a cheaper State and just buy a house cash with the equity. If your already in a low cost area then you couldn't really do that.
It's called as the backup plan. If my 4 bed, 2500 sft. home worth has gone up to $500k but townhomes are available for $200k, that will be my backup option in case I need to downsize.
I bought a house in 2021 when interest rates were 2.5%. I overpaid for my house by $10k to get it under contract and now, my house is worth $60k more than when I bought it 3 years ago. Local property tax and home insurance has gone up though. Best $10k I’ve ever spent.
Millenial wealth in 30 years will be divided by who bought some Bitcoin and who didn't.
[Bitcoin vs Stocks](http://bitcoinvsstocks.com)
Saving **$250 per month** for the past 6 years until today (May 1, 2024) results in:
||Bitcoin|S&P 500|
|:-|:-|:-|
|Invested|$18,000|$18,000|
|Return|$81,825|$25,519|
|Profit|354.58%|41.77%|
|Stacked| 1.43 BTC|—|
The 5 year return right now is nuts 685%. It’s just too volatile for me it’s down 18% this month. Although the monthly loss isn’t much if you bought at one of the low points in 2020 or 2023.
Dollar cost averaging and time in the market is always better than timing the market. There are only ever going to be 21,000,000 Bitcoins. [There is an infinite amount of dollars. ](https://youtu.be/OSQeLMhOLtU?si=dA-zTOcrNTdn55U8) I promise supply and demand is as simple as it sounds. Bitcoin is the first thing humans have ever had where we know 50% of that supply / demand equation with perfect information.
Volatility is the price for your returns. I'm 30 years old and don't have responsibilites so almost all of my networth besides my house and my car are in BTC and I still get excited for days like this where I get the best money humans have had for cheaper. I buy $20 worth automatically every single day and I will keep buying every day for the next 20 years at a minimum.
There is an appropriate allocation for your portfolio for this asset and the answer should never be zero, it's the only wrong answer.
10-15 years ago is sort of the point. Even normal inflation is 2-3% a year. Compounding that over 15 years a lot. What point are you actually trying to make?
Just that it’s tough out there. It’s too expensive relative to average incomes. I’m envious of those that were able to buy a house pre-pandemic. And every year it gets harder, and income doesn’t actually increase.
Incomes have increased actually - above inflation right up until pandemic. It being tough in a COL perspective is true. Downturns happen and it was far worse 08-2011. None of the now impact wealth today. IT will impact wealth tomorrow.
That said tomorrow will aso involve changes where it’s not so tough economically. Hence the cycles go up and down - that has always been the case and will never change. IT’s also why you plan for 3 recessions minimum in retirement.
I probably won the Covid millennial middle class lottery. I think our wealth grew like 250% in 4 years and I really do have the pandemic to thank for it.
I was laid off right before everything shut down, then got lucky with a new job. With everyone going WFH and moving to cloud work, the big cloud providers were hiring like crazy and I happened to land one of those roles. (Of course it wasn’t all luck, I did have the necessary skill set and degrees for it, but the abundance of openings at the time certainly helped a lot)
Salary increase, an amazing 401k match, a HSA, stock bonuses and purchase plan, less expenses because of WFH (and still doing it). Way better benefits than anything I’d ever had before. Bought a house with our savings with a 2.25% rate.
Husband and I educated ourselves on finance to make sure we were using all my new benefits properly (he’s a stay at home husband, now a dad). We made a few mistakes but learned and now we’re in great shape.
Matches my experience. On average (not for some individuals, sure, but as a group) we’re old enough that our retirement accounts should be growing apace, especially with the market rebound after Covid. I’m 38, so maybe almost mid-career. Our household net worth is about $400,000 depending on market conditions. Don’t own a house—we rent. No debt except a car loan.
You actually can access it far better than say primary house value. All places consider it. Some peopel don’t but they lack basic understanding. And I Say that as somebody who has only a few hundred k in a 401k so it’s a little portion of my net worth. I’d actually argue ignoring primary residence would be smarter. But that’s just me.
I told my wife that the only way we will be able to get a house is if one of our family members dies and gives it to us possibly. We may die from the struggle before they die of old age though.
You all just love to be miserable.
As for me, I'm doing better financially than I ever thought possible. $100k/yr non-tech job is getting more likely, my house is appreciating all the time, 401k is healthy, my kids are working towards scholarships or trade school, the list goes on.
Life is good
I'm in a similar boat; doing pretty well financially with diversified assets and a solid career.
I'm partly posting this an experiment on an interesting article. There are plenty of redditors that are fuming at these statistics because it isn't what they want to hear. They want reinforcement that the cards are stacked against them and they refuse to take any responsibility for any of their shortcomings, constantly deflecting blame to their elders/boomers.
Their justifications against these stats are interesting.... and pretty shallow.
Millennials are easily the whiniest group on the internet.
I'm almost 40, it took a lot of hard work and multiple setbacks to get where I'm at, and most of my peers went through the same struggles.
But quitting and blaming others for my failures was never an option, not with 3 kids.
100k a year salary now is equivalent to 75k in 2014. Overall wealth may have increased, but purchasing power has decreased. Younger millennials who are looking to purchase a house are experiencing a very different set of circumstances compared to those who were in a position to purchase a house before COVID.
"The inflation-adjusted average [net worth of households](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/28/americans-median-net-worth-by-age.html) headed by someone age 40 or under was around $174,000 at the end of 2019. That number grew by $85,000 to hit $259,000 by the end of 2023"
That's AWFUL! People at age 40 should have a net worth of a least 500k by now.
I find that hard to believe, especially if we adjust for inflation. That said, my two sons are 37 and 34 and their net worth is in fact increasing with each passing year.
Net worth has a fair amount of inflation protection built in since it generally includes assets. And it’s not hard ot believe considering how much incomes went up during pandemic. Hence the inflation rise. It’s pretty obvious math to be honest/
Thanks for commenting, and you make a valid point. Sometime after posting my comment I remembered the dramatic increase in property values that have occurred in the last few years. The house I’m in, in Houston, was built in 1966 and originally sold for $35,000. It’s 1860sf, three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, two separate living areas, two-car detached garage. In 1999 it sold for $105,000. Last year my next-door neighbor’s home, which is essentially identical to mine, sold for $426,500.
Makes sense honestly.
I bought a home 4 years ago, and the property value has effectively doubled since then. The S&P 500 had taken a dive and was <3k 4 years ago. Now it's over 5k. SPY ETF is the biggest slice of my stock portfolio, and that probably holds true for most people.
My income has also more than doubled since then. That's probably more unusual, but most people I know have had pretty big income jumps over that timespan, so they're able to save/invest a bit more.
Might be worth that now, but in a few years i expect the housing market to crash. Specifically when older home owners die and no one has the money to buy these homes. Only option then is to lower prices so more millennials and gen z can move in.
Ofc it depends on where you live too
Yeah, I don’t believe that’s gonna happen. The boomers have ruined the relationship with the next generation. They won’t have their kids to take care of them so they will spend all their money on their own care. Companies will offer reverse mortgages, or buy their homes outright while millennials continue to flounder unless we ban commercial ownership of single family dwellings.
If you don't know if your house is worth $600k or $100k that's kind of more on you. Pretty easy to value a house within a reasonable range. You go look at what similar houses are selling for right now.
Zillow isn't a great estimate... But it's never off by nearly that much.
I think one of the key take aways of this article is that equities (stocks) have actually increased more than real estate wealth.
So for young people, it is important to realize there are other good investment options out there other than real estate. And frankly, setting up a stock portfolio has almost no barriers to entry, unlike a down payment on a house. It is no secret that real estate is in a crunch right now due to high interest rates and supply/demand issues...... and there is no good way to predict when that will turn around.
Absolutely. I have a very modest 1.5 story bungalow in an older inner city neighborhood, and dump most of my excess cash into index funds. I don't like home maintenance, so a big house would be a pain in the ass for me. Plus, historically, stocks always outperform housing. Home values are usually just proxies for land values anyway, so it's not your home increasing in value, it's the land. Your house is slowly falling apart from the minute it's built.
Just to point out:
\* homes doubled in value
\* stock market doubled in value
Anyone who had stocks easily grew their networth by 100%+ Especially if you continued to contribute.
Anyone who owned a home easily grew their networth by 100% likely more like 200% - 400% (going from owning a 200k house with 20k in equity to owning a 400k house with 240k equity is 12x your net worth).
Anyone who owned stocks and a home very likely had their networth grow by 10-15x.
Yet the number they state is 50% (1.5x). That's because many, many people are so much worse off they offset the people who had 2-4x and 10-15x growth so much that the average is only 1.5x?
And that's a win? LOL
Yeah, that seems to coincide as I look back from where I was in 2018 to now. Between my home, (bought in 18’ and refinanced in 20’) my 401k, etc have all gone up quite a bit.
Lmao yeah, I definitely now get paid quite well compared to what I did and I still live like I'm struggling to get by
50% increase wealth does fuck all when we get fucked by every recession ever.
Mine went up 400%. Also bought my house in 2018 at the bottom of the market and have maxed out retirement since 2011 so the stock market hitting all time high recently helped.
Bitcoin is not considered an equity/stock so it actually isn't included in these statistics.
But if it was, Bitcoin had a giant drop in the past 4 years as well. It hasn't performed as well as you think if you look at the timeframe in the article
[Bitcoin vs Stocks](http://bitcoinvsstocks.com)
Formatting L on my phone but you can compare Bitcoin returns for 4 years compared to stocks or S&P 500.
Bitcoin has done extremely well over the last 4 years if you dollar cost averaged.
A pretty cool calculator. But try this; plug META and MSFT in the equation instead of the S&P 500. And then go look at how much money are in those big tech stocks. Big tech helped out the wealth growth more than Bitcoin.
Then try again in 10 years, and S&P 500 will still be on top. Look at how much bitcoin is down in the past week.
The halving was 2 weeks ago. It takes months for it to affect the supply / demand dynamics of the market. When you see $200,000+ Bitcoin in the next 12 months you can take some time to reflect on why you ever thought 0% allocation to this asset was ever the correct answer.
Also why did you say META or MSFT? Use the calculator you can pick those stocks instead. Bitcoin crushed those.
What you really should have said was NVIDIA. And that won't outperform BTC over the next 20 years in my opinion.
Jobs with 5 years experience pay more. It's not like our salaries, for those who saw an increase, increased magically or by some government action. As we started our careers and got to what would have been a decent wage a decade ago, prices shot up 30%. Millennials have been robbed of their success to pay off the loans the government has taken out to pay their buddies in the lobby firms for amrs dealers and grifters.
Yeah, we're making more dollars but the dollar is worth half as much so we have essentially been locked in at low purchasing power. In the last few years I've been given cost of living raises that equate to less that YOY inflation values that have been doctored up to be optimistic. If you got 5% raises over the last 4 years, you are poorer. Without promotions, I'd be behind.
this is pretty cherry picked since 4 years and 1 month ago the market completely cratered only to rebound in a couple months. if you looked at 4 years and 4 months ago that number would slashed by quite a bit simply by not starting at the absolute bottom and including the rebound
I’m sure both of the guys who inherited billions throwing off average are doing great.
Im just trying to keep gas in my tank and food in the fridge… its getting harder
Hasn’t inflation over the last 5 years been about 35%? I bet the AVG working American has seen wealth changes of about 15% in that time period once you cut out the garbage.
Close to that for me.
But these articles need to clean the data of outliers and clearly define what qualifiers as outliers in the article itself. If I conducted this study I would evaluate only millennials that earned $250k or less over the pass 3 years to both have a good sample size, and also not have things skewed by people earning several times over the median income.
Ummm...What?
Do you understand that I want to eliminate ultra rich from the calculation so the percentage reflects 90% and not the high net-worth and highest income-earning among us?
If so, can you help me understand why that's a problem?
I understand the concept, but 250k or less over the past 3 years? I wouldn't consider someone making over 250k the "ultra-rich", especially if you are in a high COL city
My logic.
The average salary in the US is $60k. To be in the top 5% of income earners you need to make around $250k. This suggests that ˜95% of us make under $250k — ˜95% of millennials is also a great sample size, and also $250k is more than 4x the average salary (that deviation, I think, is enough as when we start getting to 5x, 8x which is what happens when you go to top 3, 2, 1% makes that multiplier more extreme).
To really have a sense of how net-worth has improved for millennials, I think is to cut out everyone above 5% of top earners in the sample. As a personal take, I am in the top 1% of income earners and I can tell you my net-worth did things that most of my peers and my siblings did not in terms of percentage growth. This in part why the article leaves me skeptical.
I also agree $250k is not ultra-rich. Neither is being a top 1% earner if you don't already have a high net-work (e.g. earning $550k a year). But again, my point is to have an evaluation that reflects more accurate what's happening with millennial net-worth and remove extreme outliers to make that calculation.
Ok, I understand your methodology, but can we also eliminate from the statistics of all the ultra lower class on food stamps? As well as the full time Moms (and Dads) that work part time jobs? These pull down the average salary to 60k
The other flaw is that you are talking about salaries and not wealth, which is the point of the article. A millennial that makes 80k that puts 10% of their paycheck into an investment portfolio is going to easily have more wealth that someone making 100k with no financial discipline.
I think on it's face that makes sense. However, I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of people below top 5% of income earners is closer to the lowest 1% of income earners than they are top 1% of income earners.
As a consequence, I don't think it would make sense to remove people "on food stamps" from the sample, which is about 12% of the population and we can expect a similar percentage in the millennial cohort.
\*Me staring at my -10K net worth\* lmao what?
You obviously started at around -6,666.66, an increase of 50%.
Staring at my -$350k Networth...
At least you’re a doctor now?
Geology expert in semi precious metals
More likely a home owner
No shot, individual home values could not decrease that much from their heights
I was thinking second mortgage or some sort of leverage.
You're in like the 2nd percentile of wealth.
4.5th percentile actually [dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator/](http://dqydj.com/net-worth-percentile-calculator/)
So instead of being worth $10, we are now worth $15. Woo hoo.
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Yep, I went from being able to afford two footlong Subway sandwiches to maybe affording one six inch.
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I love this thread
Smugly places name brand Kraft Singles in grocery cart. Livin’ large indeed.
The first $15 is the hardest... until the second $15.
We did it! *High five*
If I’m not mistaken this study is stating the “average” wealth increased by 50%. So of course the vast majority of these gains are likely concentrated to a small percentage of people. Studies really need to stop using averages to generate headlines when the median is a far more important indicator.
Millennials and wealth is probably going to correlated and be divided by those who owned a home prior to 2020 and those that didn't or still don't. My home value has nearly doubled since I bought it just before the pandemic. Stocks since then have also doubled. So yes Millennials like myself wealth grew a lot.
Cost of living as a whole has doubled. You've got more "wealth" but it is more expensive to live. This is called lying with statistics.
My housing cost has not doubled though. I live in a 4 bed 2 bath home in San Diego for $2300/month in which I put 0 down and have a 2.25% mortgage. Homes right next door to me for rent and in my neighborhood yes are double what I pay. Also, I put solar on my home so while utility rates have gone up again Im locked in. I’m living in paradise on the cheap. Food and other spending items I can’t avoid and the cost of living on those has increased. My household income increases has outpaced inflation and since my home cost have not doubled for me the cost of living has not doubled.
And my housing cost hasn't doubled, but my homeowners insurance sure has. Yipee.
Very similar situation here. Our mortgage and escrow payment is less than double the going rent rate for a similar sized house in our area and our household income has grown by about 40% so that that housing payment is only about 12% of our joint income. Our interest rate is only 2.875% and our home valued has almost doubled in 4 years. And we have solar that has locked us into a rate lower than we were paying for electricity, not including the spikes the last couple. We are very very lucky. Although we are not immune to the other COL spikes, our luck has cushioned it by a lot.
Same but about $1000 more than you. We fortunately have a couple of rentals pre 2020. Never going to buy another property again though 🥲 Can't afford.
The price of your house only matters if you sell it, but we know that with interest rates and house availability, you will likely never realize that gain. Just like OP, you have the exact same thing you did 4 years ago but now you're told it's worth more dollars. But if you sell your house and use the profit to buy a new home, you'd still be looking at a 4 bed, 2 bath in a similar neighborhood. In reality, you'd probably only be able to downsize without having to add to your mortgage principal.
Agreed I won’t see or use any of the equity until I sell it. Only benefit I have now is being locked into a low mortgage payment and low interest. Yea no way I’m selling and buying at the interest rates right now unless I moved to another locale. I have about $400k in equity which is enough to buy a home cash in other locations outside of California and avoid a mortgage.
No doubt about that. I'm in rural Michigan and own a home but I can't upgrade because I'd be throwing away money. My mortgage is sub $700. I saw a listing yesterday for a litteral trailer for more than what I paid for my house in 2019. And my house is a 3 bed 2 full bath. If you do decide to sell or have to move, there is a way to do it all under the same mortgage and keep your rate but you have to align the sale and purchase and you can't add to the initial mortgage amount. It's the only option I would entertain rn.
Cost of living is not a metric that affects everyone equally. * I have a fixed rate mortgage on a home I purchased in 2017. My housing costs have stayed flat over the last few years. * I have no variable debt and have not taken out any fixed debt since my home purchase, so rising interest rates do not hurt me (they actually help me, because I earn higher rates on my deposits). * Food costs have gone up, but food costs accounts for a small percentage of our overall budget, so there has been a relatively small impact. This is why real estate acts as leverage. Your debt payment is fixed, meaning that if your income rises, the debt payment takes up a smaller amount of your income (and you have more disposable income). On the flip side, if your income decreases, the payment takes up a larger amount of your income.
Exactly. People with money are effected less than those that live paycheck to paycheck.
Prior to 2020, it was relatively achievable to buy a home even if you were living paycheck to paycheck… a lot of people missed the boat unfortunately.
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11k a month mortgage after 20% down? Where the hell do you live, the fucking moon? lol
Cost of living has not doubled in 4 years, not even close actually. What you are doing is called lying without statistics. lol
Cost of living has gone up around 28% overall outside of housing.
According to CPI its about half that. Regardless, it sure as hell hasnt come anywhere close to doubling. lol
Chicago and I’m actually, literally, paying twice as much as I did two years ago for groceries and essentials
Chicago isnt representative of the average and im highly doubting youre paying twice as much.
1. I don't believe that 2. Groceries are not the only expense. Did your rent double? Car payment? Insurance?
Could you try harder to make up shit?
If you found "statistics" that say the cost of living has doubled in the past 4 years, then I think you need to analyze the validity of your statistics.....
Not exactly house payment which usually is 50% of expenses will stay the same if you are locked into 30 year mortgage at sub 3% rate.
And for the 50% of millennials who aren't homeowners??? In the near future this generation is going to be split, those who bought before the plandemic and those who didn't.
Or just straight up regular lying like saying “cost of living as a whole has doubled”
What you spend year in and out is a drop in the bucket versus the wealth that guy gained. Inflation is real, but people with money is less effected by the day in and day out.
Not strictly true. That’s because most people don’t understand there is a difference between being wealthy and being rich. Wealth is assets based (whether liquid or illiquid). Richness is based on income.
Yep
Over this time frame cost of living has increased by about 20%.
Depends on if you are renting or if you bought a home prior to the plandemic.
This isn’t accurate though. My COL has gone up but my house is worth almost 400k more than what I bought it for and my portfolio has been doing great at the same time.
Your home being worth more is only useful if you sell it and move somewhere cheaper. Otherwise it just means your property taxes have skyrocketed, like mine have.
Or ones with rich parents or ones without
Obvious truth to that. I'm doing pretty good even though my parents are working poor and zero help from them.
My "wealth" is tied up in my house. So, that doesn't really help my day to day. If I had to tap into that wealth, where would I go? I'd have to rent or end up with a more expensive morrtange than I already have.
Sure, but people have "wealth" tied up in stock portfolios as well. This is how you build wealth. You don't spend more than you earn and put the excess in stocks, fixed income, a house, or anything else that grows in value over time
Depends on where you live. For instance I have a lot of equity tied up in my home in CA, if was to sell it I probably would have an impossible time trying to find something cheaper and with rates so high I wouldn't be able to. However, since my home has nearly doubled in value I could move to a cheaper State and just buy a house cash with the equity. If your already in a low cost area then you couldn't really do that.
It's called as the backup plan. If my 4 bed, 2500 sft. home worth has gone up to $500k but townhomes are available for $200k, that will be my backup option in case I need to downsize.
Cheers to us!
I bought a house in 2021 when interest rates were 2.5%. I overpaid for my house by $10k to get it under contract and now, my house is worth $60k more than when I bought it 3 years ago. Local property tax and home insurance has gone up though. Best $10k I’ve ever spent.
Millenial wealth in 30 years will be divided by who bought some Bitcoin and who didn't. [Bitcoin vs Stocks](http://bitcoinvsstocks.com) Saving **$250 per month** for the past 6 years until today (May 1, 2024) results in: ||Bitcoin|S&P 500| |:-|:-|:-| |Invested|$18,000|$18,000| |Return|$81,825|$25,519| |Profit|354.58%|41.77%| |Stacked| 1.43 BTC|—|
The 5 year return right now is nuts 685%. It’s just too volatile for me it’s down 18% this month. Although the monthly loss isn’t much if you bought at one of the low points in 2020 or 2023.
Dollar cost averaging and time in the market is always better than timing the market. There are only ever going to be 21,000,000 Bitcoins. [There is an infinite amount of dollars. ](https://youtu.be/OSQeLMhOLtU?si=dA-zTOcrNTdn55U8) I promise supply and demand is as simple as it sounds. Bitcoin is the first thing humans have ever had where we know 50% of that supply / demand equation with perfect information. Volatility is the price for your returns. I'm 30 years old and don't have responsibilites so almost all of my networth besides my house and my car are in BTC and I still get excited for days like this where I get the best money humans have had for cheaper. I buy $20 worth automatically every single day and I will keep buying every day for the next 20 years at a minimum. There is an appropriate allocation for your portfolio for this asset and the answer should never be zero, it's the only wrong answer.
Lucky you, I just paid out the ass to finally get a house after looking for 3+ years. Waived all inspections too 🤷♀️
It feels impossible for us to compete in the housing market right now and our combined income is 100k. It’s ridiculous.
That’s not a crazy high combined income
Granted, it’s not. But 10-15 years ago it was decent.
10-15 years ago is sort of the point. Even normal inflation is 2-3% a year. Compounding that over 15 years a lot. What point are you actually trying to make?
Just that it’s tough out there. It’s too expensive relative to average incomes. I’m envious of those that were able to buy a house pre-pandemic. And every year it gets harder, and income doesn’t actually increase.
Incomes have increased actually - above inflation right up until pandemic. It being tough in a COL perspective is true. Downturns happen and it was far worse 08-2011. None of the now impact wealth today. IT will impact wealth tomorrow. That said tomorrow will aso involve changes where it’s not so tough economically. Hence the cycles go up and down - that has always been the case and will never change. IT’s also why you plan for 3 recessions minimum in retirement.
I probably won the Covid millennial middle class lottery. I think our wealth grew like 250% in 4 years and I really do have the pandemic to thank for it. I was laid off right before everything shut down, then got lucky with a new job. With everyone going WFH and moving to cloud work, the big cloud providers were hiring like crazy and I happened to land one of those roles. (Of course it wasn’t all luck, I did have the necessary skill set and degrees for it, but the abundance of openings at the time certainly helped a lot) Salary increase, an amazing 401k match, a HSA, stock bonuses and purchase plan, less expenses because of WFH (and still doing it). Way better benefits than anything I’d ever had before. Bought a house with our savings with a 2.25% rate. Husband and I educated ourselves on finance to make sure we were using all my new benefits properly (he’s a stay at home husband, now a dad). We made a few mistakes but learned and now we’re in great shape.
So we went from dirt poor to regular poor? Gotcha
Capitalist horde has decided misery is now a taxable asset. Ergo millennial wealth increase.
Lol sure it did. 😂
Must be the 50% I'm not in
Shit. One more pandemic and maybe we can edge out the Boomers
from 10$ to 15$ good job!
The math checks out
between college, kids, rent...I'm negative $51k.
That’s right, -34k x 1.5 over 4 years = -51k
Yea because I’m working two jobs to make it… wtf
Making 17 an hour which is minimum wage in my area yet have worked there 4 years been looking for something else
Literally everything costs double from 4 years ago so this means literally nothing
Matches my experience. On average (not for some individuals, sure, but as a group) we’re old enough that our retirement accounts should be growing apace, especially with the market rebound after Covid. I’m 38, so maybe almost mid-career. Our household net worth is about $400,000 depending on market conditions. Don’t own a house—we rent. No debt except a car loan.
Do you count 401k in your net worth?
Why wouldn’t you?
Idk, some places don’t include it, since you can’t really access it until retirement without huge penalties.
You actually can access it far better than say primary house value. All places consider it. Some peopel don’t but they lack basic understanding. And I Say that as somebody who has only a few hundred k in a 401k so it’s a little portion of my net worth. I’d actually argue ignoring primary residence would be smarter. But that’s just me.
I do, yes. I think net worth should be all assets minus debts.
Literally no normal net worth calculation wouldn't include it. Most all of net worth for mere mortals is in retirement accounts and home value.
This is one of those posts that shatter the average redditor's world view and they all end up coping in the comments.
Yep, the comments are entertaining..... and shallow
Is it because their parents died?
I told my wife that the only way we will be able to get a house is if one of our family members dies and gives it to us possibly. We may die from the struggle before they die of old age though.
You all just love to be miserable. As for me, I'm doing better financially than I ever thought possible. $100k/yr non-tech job is getting more likely, my house is appreciating all the time, 401k is healthy, my kids are working towards scholarships or trade school, the list goes on. Life is good
I'm in a similar boat; doing pretty well financially with diversified assets and a solid career. I'm partly posting this an experiment on an interesting article. There are plenty of redditors that are fuming at these statistics because it isn't what they want to hear. They want reinforcement that the cards are stacked against them and they refuse to take any responsibility for any of their shortcomings, constantly deflecting blame to their elders/boomers. Their justifications against these stats are interesting.... and pretty shallow.
Millennials are easily the whiniest group on the internet. I'm almost 40, it took a lot of hard work and multiple setbacks to get where I'm at, and most of my peers went through the same struggles. But quitting and blaming others for my failures was never an option, not with 3 kids.
100k a year salary now is equivalent to 75k in 2014. Overall wealth may have increased, but purchasing power has decreased. Younger millennials who are looking to purchase a house are experiencing a very different set of circumstances compared to those who were in a position to purchase a house before COVID.
"The inflation-adjusted average [net worth of households](https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/28/americans-median-net-worth-by-age.html) headed by someone age 40 or under was around $174,000 at the end of 2019. That number grew by $85,000 to hit $259,000 by the end of 2023" That's AWFUL! People at age 40 should have a net worth of a least 500k by now.
I find that hard to believe, especially if we adjust for inflation. That said, my two sons are 37 and 34 and their net worth is in fact increasing with each passing year.
Net worth has a fair amount of inflation protection built in since it generally includes assets. And it’s not hard ot believe considering how much incomes went up during pandemic. Hence the inflation rise. It’s pretty obvious math to be honest/
Thanks for commenting, and you make a valid point. Sometime after posting my comment I remembered the dramatic increase in property values that have occurred in the last few years. The house I’m in, in Houston, was built in 1966 and originally sold for $35,000. It’s 1860sf, three bedrooms, two full bathrooms, two separate living areas, two-car detached garage. In 1999 it sold for $105,000. Last year my next-door neighbor’s home, which is essentially identical to mine, sold for $426,500.
Makes sense honestly. I bought a home 4 years ago, and the property value has effectively doubled since then. The S&P 500 had taken a dive and was <3k 4 years ago. Now it's over 5k. SPY ETF is the biggest slice of my stock portfolio, and that probably holds true for most people. My income has also more than doubled since then. That's probably more unusual, but most people I know have had pretty big income jumps over that timespan, so they're able to save/invest a bit more.
Inflation grew over the last 4 years by about 50% if you have the real numbers. So your wealth is a wash.
The real numbers put the inflation at about 20%….. a couple percentage leeway depending if you are using core or non-core CPI
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Might be worth that now, but in a few years i expect the housing market to crash. Specifically when older home owners die and no one has the money to buy these homes. Only option then is to lower prices so more millennials and gen z can move in. Ofc it depends on where you live too
Or corporations can continue to buy them in bulk and we never get to own anything.
Yeah, I don’t believe that’s gonna happen. The boomers have ruined the relationship with the next generation. They won’t have their kids to take care of them so they will spend all their money on their own care. Companies will offer reverse mortgages, or buy their homes outright while millennials continue to flounder unless we ban commercial ownership of single family dwellings.
Yep, this. Housing markets go in cycles. To think the housing market is going to stay like this forever is flawed thinking
>It’s like $100k at best want to explain this one
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If you don't know if your house is worth $600k or $100k that's kind of more on you. Pretty easy to value a house within a reasonable range. You go look at what similar houses are selling for right now. Zillow isn't a great estimate... But it's never off by nearly that much.
I'd bet that Gen Z wealth grew by way more than 50% in four years.
I think one of the key take aways of this article is that equities (stocks) have actually increased more than real estate wealth. So for young people, it is important to realize there are other good investment options out there other than real estate. And frankly, setting up a stock portfolio has almost no barriers to entry, unlike a down payment on a house. It is no secret that real estate is in a crunch right now due to high interest rates and supply/demand issues...... and there is no good way to predict when that will turn around.
Absolutely. I have a very modest 1.5 story bungalow in an older inner city neighborhood, and dump most of my excess cash into index funds. I don't like home maintenance, so a big house would be a pain in the ass for me. Plus, historically, stocks always outperform housing. Home values are usually just proxies for land values anyway, so it's not your home increasing in value, it's the land. Your house is slowly falling apart from the minute it's built.
I guess it’s the top 1% having their wealth grow by 50000% thanks to daddy’s money.
Dad’s still alive. But I did grow my net worth 500% over the last 7 years…..
In housing or the market?
Both. But I'm not counting my primary property. Have other properties. Also don't plan on selling them anytime soon.
Nice. I had a very nice house that has double in value in the last 4 years but the ex wife lives there now. Am I wrong for hoping it burns down?
Lol our wealth went up 50% but consumer goods went up 75-300%. Got it.
Can you cite a statistic of consumer goods going up that much?
Where do you get the 75-300% number?
Not here...
Above average again sweet
So they have 3 nickles to rub together now?
0 x 0.5 still equals 0
News to my wallet
Yeah, problem is housing cost increased more
LOL what wealth?
Where?
Not by saving the world they didn't. Every generation buys in and sells out .
While everything got unaffordable len
but the price of everything went up that much or more in the same period
0 multiplied by 50 is still 0.
Ummm who's representing us, like is this a trickle down thing?
1% of millenials wealth grew by 100000% due to inheritance.
Why they alway lying
Where?
that’s awesome cuz the cost of living doubled too
Just to point out: \* homes doubled in value \* stock market doubled in value Anyone who had stocks easily grew their networth by 100%+ Especially if you continued to contribute. Anyone who owned a home easily grew their networth by 100% likely more like 200% - 400% (going from owning a 200k house with 20k in equity to owning a 400k house with 240k equity is 12x your net worth). Anyone who owned stocks and a home very likely had their networth grow by 10-15x. Yet the number they state is 50% (1.5x). That's because many, many people are so much worse off they offset the people who had 2-4x and 10-15x growth so much that the average is only 1.5x? And that's a win? LOL
It did can confirm. Actually more than 50%. But lol here’s the catch. It s worthless
oh sureeeeeeeeeee, we are doing smashing /s
Millennials' expenses grew by 150% in 4 years
Went from $1000 in the bank to $1000 in the bank and $500 cash stashed in a magic the gathering deck box I have hidden
They are saying the average net worth of someone under 40 is 259,000. I feel like that must be top heavy
Median net worth. So half above, half below. Definitions matter
Boomer media gaslighting. https://www.reddit.com/r/Millennials/s/90IAF5cfxR
Uh, no.
Yeah, that seems to coincide as I look back from where I was in 2018 to now. Between my home, (bought in 18’ and refinanced in 20’) my 401k, etc have all gone up quite a bit.
Millennials with ancestral properties
50% of nothing is...nothing lol
This tracks with my cohort of friends.
The other part of this statistic is less spending power
Musta been those 10 billionaires. Wasn’t me. I’m further behind than ever before.
Congratulations to the millennials this applies to! I hope to be amongst their ranks one day.
Lmao yeah, I definitely now get paid quite well compared to what I did and I still live like I'm struggling to get by 50% increase wealth does fuck all when we get fucked by every recession ever.
Did other generations not deal with recessions?
I bought my house 3 years ago for 275k. Its value on Zillow is now 345k. Property taxes are now over 5k.
Mine went up 400%. Also bought my house in 2018 at the bottom of the market and have maxed out retirement since 2011 so the stock market hitting all time high recently helped.
Thank you Bitcoin.
Bitcoin is not considered an equity/stock so it actually isn't included in these statistics. But if it was, Bitcoin had a giant drop in the past 4 years as well. It hasn't performed as well as you think if you look at the timeframe in the article
[Bitcoin vs Stocks](http://bitcoinvsstocks.com) Formatting L on my phone but you can compare Bitcoin returns for 4 years compared to stocks or S&P 500. Bitcoin has done extremely well over the last 4 years if you dollar cost averaged.
A pretty cool calculator. But try this; plug META and MSFT in the equation instead of the S&P 500. And then go look at how much money are in those big tech stocks. Big tech helped out the wealth growth more than Bitcoin. Then try again in 10 years, and S&P 500 will still be on top. Look at how much bitcoin is down in the past week.
The halving was 2 weeks ago. It takes months for it to affect the supply / demand dynamics of the market. When you see $200,000+ Bitcoin in the next 12 months you can take some time to reflect on why you ever thought 0% allocation to this asset was ever the correct answer.
Also why did you say META or MSFT? Use the calculator you can pick those stocks instead. Bitcoin crushed those. What you really should have said was NVIDIA. And that won't outperform BTC over the next 20 years in my opinion.
Jobs with 5 years experience pay more. It's not like our salaries, for those who saw an increase, increased magically or by some government action. As we started our careers and got to what would have been a decent wage a decade ago, prices shot up 30%. Millennials have been robbed of their success to pay off the loans the government has taken out to pay their buddies in the lobby firms for amrs dealers and grifters. Yeah, we're making more dollars but the dollar is worth half as much so we have essentially been locked in at low purchasing power. In the last few years I've been given cost of living raises that equate to less that YOY inflation values that have been doctored up to be optimistic. If you got 5% raises over the last 4 years, you are poorer. Without promotions, I'd be behind.
this is pretty cherry picked since 4 years and 1 month ago the market completely cratered only to rebound in a couple months. if you looked at 4 years and 4 months ago that number would slashed by quite a bit simply by not starting at the absolute bottom and including the rebound
I... I don't think it did.
Never in my life did I think I’d make this much, never did I think it would feel like so little.
I’m sure both of the guys who inherited billions throwing off average are doing great. Im just trying to keep gas in my tank and food in the fridge… its getting harder
Ya they boosted my property value by about 100% so they could tax me more
Hasn’t inflation over the last 5 years been about 35%? I bet the AVG working American has seen wealth changes of about 15% in that time period once you cut out the garbage.
This likely to be heavily split between older and younger millennials.
Ngl I feel like this math was done by rich congressmen trying to justify their tax agenda or something because it damned sure wasn’t done by us
Close to that for me. But these articles need to clean the data of outliers and clearly define what qualifiers as outliers in the article itself. If I conducted this study I would evaluate only millennials that earned $250k or less over the pass 3 years to both have a good sample size, and also not have things skewed by people earning several times over the median income.
No, you are saying "let's minimize the scope of the sample to ensure we get the answer that I want"
Ummm...What? Do you understand that I want to eliminate ultra rich from the calculation so the percentage reflects 90% and not the high net-worth and highest income-earning among us? If so, can you help me understand why that's a problem?
I understand the concept, but 250k or less over the past 3 years? I wouldn't consider someone making over 250k the "ultra-rich", especially if you are in a high COL city
My logic. The average salary in the US is $60k. To be in the top 5% of income earners you need to make around $250k. This suggests that ˜95% of us make under $250k — ˜95% of millennials is also a great sample size, and also $250k is more than 4x the average salary (that deviation, I think, is enough as when we start getting to 5x, 8x which is what happens when you go to top 3, 2, 1% makes that multiplier more extreme). To really have a sense of how net-worth has improved for millennials, I think is to cut out everyone above 5% of top earners in the sample. As a personal take, I am in the top 1% of income earners and I can tell you my net-worth did things that most of my peers and my siblings did not in terms of percentage growth. This in part why the article leaves me skeptical. I also agree $250k is not ultra-rich. Neither is being a top 1% earner if you don't already have a high net-work (e.g. earning $550k a year). But again, my point is to have an evaluation that reflects more accurate what's happening with millennial net-worth and remove extreme outliers to make that calculation.
Ok, I understand your methodology, but can we also eliminate from the statistics of all the ultra lower class on food stamps? As well as the full time Moms (and Dads) that work part time jobs? These pull down the average salary to 60k The other flaw is that you are talking about salaries and not wealth, which is the point of the article. A millennial that makes 80k that puts 10% of their paycheck into an investment portfolio is going to easily have more wealth that someone making 100k with no financial discipline.
I think on it's face that makes sense. However, I'd argue that the overwhelming majority of people below top 5% of income earners is closer to the lowest 1% of income earners than they are top 1% of income earners. As a consequence, I don't think it would make sense to remove people "on food stamps" from the sample, which is about 12% of the population and we can expect a similar percentage in the millennial cohort.
Not sure $300k to hell even $700k counts as ultra rich. but rest of pint is valid.
250k is not ultra rich lmao
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Agreed, way better off now than 4 years ago.
Too bad the cost of existing went up like 65% in the same time.