Gen Z are dipping into their retirements, skipping meals and selling their belongings just to get by, new reports find
Paywall removed: https://archive.is/KNzH9
https://fortune.com/2025/08/29/gen-z-dipping-into-retirements-skipping-meals-and-selling-their-belongings-just-to-get-by-new-reports-reveals/Open linkView original on lemmy.world666
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Millennial here - gen Z has retirement savings???
lol right? Must be nice to afford to put more than your employer’s match into your 401k
As far as I understand, I don't have a 401k. I have nothing. I have never considered retirement to be a reasonable outcome for anyone in my generation or younger, but even still, it's not like I would have been able to save more than a scant couple thousand after decades of work.
You think no adults entering the workforce in the last ~20 years if going to be able to retire? What little bubble are you living in?
The bubble where the entire concept of retirement will be lost. Where society will crumble into wearing tribes fighting over arable land and fresh water. That one. That bubble. The bubble where this will begin in earnest in our lifetime. The bubble that says this fascist wave around the world is just the precursor and that as people get more desperate, things will only get worse.
The little bubble where you don't get a small loan of $1 million on your 18th birthday
Definitely didn't get one of those. Still on track to retire. Your experience isn't as universal as you seem to think it is
Also you have to watch out for those expense ratios. I once worked at an employer where the only funds available in the 401k plan had expenses and fees around 2%. Managed mutual funds statistically perform no better than just cheap index funds. So paying those fees doesn't actually earn you a higher rate of return. But plans with usurious fees are cheaper for employers to provide.
What was so egregious about it is that when I ran the numbers, I found that my employer's 401k plan was actually worse than investing in cheap index funds in a regular taxable brokerage account. The 401k could be contributed to with pre-tax money, but all the tax benefits were cancelled out by being trapped in high expense 401k plans.
I contributed enough to get the match and invested any money above that elsewhere.
Have you looked into the high yield accounts from Marcus (Goldman Sachs). if you have any money Sitting around in a checking account or even Another savings account but you don’t need immediately you should consider this. The APY is 3.65%, which is a lot better than anything a regular bank will do. And you can transfer money between them with their app. of course they also offer no penalty CDs and standard CDs
Not if they're dipping into it at 30. That's going to kill any kind of compound interest.
I'm about to be 29, and have literally zero savings to speak of. I've been paycheck-to-paycheck pretty much my entire working life.
If it's any consolation it took me until I hit 33 for me to have any savings at all.
Anything I put into the account I used for savings went out the same month so I didn't go into an overdraft.
Funny enough the only thing that changed is I passed my qualifications and got my first "real" job... Though I may have also spent the past 8 or 9 years isolated in a way that regular people only got to see during the 'rona times
The best investment at your age is in training/education to improve your take home pay or ability to relocate. Fuck retirement savings, you have to eat for 30+ years to get there first. Invest in yourself, not in the fucking casino controlled by billionaires that is the stock market.
My wife made a career swap 5 years ago after getting a master's degree. We used our retirement savings to pay for the schooling because the ROI was under 1 year.
Ah yes, telling the person that just admitted they're paycheck-to-paycheck to pay for education, perfect.
Training isn't a bad option, though, especially since some jobs will pay you for it. Some trades do paid apprenticeships - the pay isn't great, but it's better than paying for training.
Alternately, manufacturing jobs can be pretty good. I had a friend who got a job working in a factory right out of high school - he started at $20/hour, with a sizeable raise after the first year.
The only way off the hamster wheel of paycheck to paycheck living is to find a way to make the paycheck larger. The entire system is designed prevent you from doing so of course. You can not save money out of poverty wages.
It's counter-intuitive but financially going $10K into credit card debt just to survive, while paying $10K for targeted education/training from disbursed 401K funds is a better use of the money. You can increase your pay by $20-30k or more per year with marketable training/education. If you pay off the credit card it will just come back if you don't increase your wages. Bankruptcy also can't take away the education/skills you've gained.
Swapping jobs frequently for a higher paycheck is required today. Every 1-2 years in your 20's as you fight the experience/poverty wages bullshit. Every 3-5 after that just to beat inflation. When you swap jobs the 401k becomes available for withdrawal. Instead of using it to pay down debts etc., pay for education/training to make the next job pay more. Usually signing up for the minimum amount of the 401K makes almost no difference to your take home pay but a nice little bit of cash at each job change.
"the system is designed to prevent you from saving your way out of poverty" Followed immediately by "go 10,000 into credit card debt to pay for education"
While "Bankruptcy can't take away your skills" it can 100% leave you on the street.
Not really, but that's a myth that credit card companies want you to believe. Creditors really want to be repayed and make a profit. So they want you working, eating top ramen and paying them back. Homeless & jobless = no money for them.
Property owners want somebody with a job, a history of paying rent, and enough income to cover it. I was always able to get a place to live even when my credit rating was sub-500's due to credit card charge-offs.
Millennial here- I'm bout to not have retirement savings.
It'll be the best avocado toast ever though, right?
Until this year, the job market was surprisingly good for Gen Z.
I had 14 grand in a 401k. I had to spend it to survive for a year while I looked for a job. All of it.
Now I know 14k aint shit. But that is where we are.
14k would have been $132k in 45 years when you would have otherwise retired.
The power is in the interest. Even if you max out your 401k in the future it cannot make up for missing interest earnings on early deposits. Having to use it it now means nobody in this entire generation will ever retire, ever.
Just to put it into perspective, if the inflation rate for the past 45 years predicts the next 45 years. $14K today = $55K in 45 years. A $75K household income today would be $294K in 45 years.
So $14K in a 401K saved for 45 years is a pittance and should never be considered a retirement "program". It's all bullshit to decrease and eliminate the cost of actual pension programs.
You don't just put $14k into a 401k, you keep contributing to it. Getting more and more money to compound upon itself.
If you put $4k into it every year (remember, this is pre-tax money and often has an employer match), and it grows 8% per year on average (S&P 500 actually does more like 10%, but we will be more conservative and say 8%), we will also be conservative and assume you won't increase contributions, even as you earn more later in life, then you have $1,546,022 after 45 years of working.
Yes, this is something you can retire on.
Gotta include inflation in there.
$1,546,022 in 45 years with the same inflation we've had for the past 45 years would only be worth $529,400 in todays money.
If you only plan on living for 10 years or less after retiring, then, Maybe.
You only get the 401k when you retire in US? This is not in addition to normal Social Security?
Most of us that are younger than the Boomers or maybe Gen X don't want to count on Social Security because we've been hearing our whole lives that Social Security is on the chopping block because the government is in so much debt. And at this point we kinda just expect that ladder to be pulled up behind the Boomers before we get anything, because that's already happened in so many other areas like home ownership.
I also think people need to remember that Social Security is their own money that they paid in over their lives, and they are owed it back.
And also that even though the US government has a large amount of debt, we've also spent the last 50 years giving tax cuts to the rich, we'd probably be just fine if we went back to a 90% marginal tax rate on the top earners like we had in the "good old days" of the 1950s.
Thinking about it, the chance that Social Security money will be stolen and transferred to the 1% is quite high. Not because of the debt but simply to make the rich even richer. They will probably just say that the current system is not sustainable and move all the money into pension funds controlled by private banks which will then gamble with it pocketing the profits and socializing the loses. But 401k is the same so putting money there is not really a solution. The solution is to run away but obviously not everyone is able to.
Correct, you get both your own savings and Social Security during retirement. The person replying is being a doomer, rather than preparing for his future.
401k will accrue interest (and will rise with the market). It's not just going to be JUST a straight inflation calculation.
It's the opposite actually. The stock market has historically returned an average of about 7%/year after inflation. $14k invested at 7% per year is worth about $327k after 45 years. And that 7% is again, an average rate, so a balancing of the crashes vs. the rallies, and it's after inflation.
I would really rather just have a pension.
But that's too much to ask.
Eh. I've done pretty well with the 401k system. Pensions often just seem like a way for employers to pull a bait-and-switch. Need to work for 30 years at a company for a full pension? They get you to accept a lower wage on that promise, then you get fired at year 29. Or a company recruits a bunch of young workers on a promise of a pension decades down the line. Decades later, when they're about to face a massive surge in those on the company pension rolls, the company mysteriously goes bankrupt. The company owners looted the company, wracked it up with debt, and let it go bankrupt before the pension bill came due, and left the workers holding the bag.
The nice thing about 401ks is that employers can't screw you over after the fact. I don't trust companies to be able to deliver on promises decades from now. With a 401k, they give all they're ever going to give up front, and you can make an informed decision over whether you're being fairly compensated. It's hard to judge the fair value of a pension that may or may not disappear before you're eligible to collect it decades from now. Oh, and employers only retain control over your 401k funds for as long as you work there. After that, you transfer them to an IRA account that is completely under your control.
My partner and I are in our late 30s and have made regular contributions to 401ks and IRAs. At this point, our retirement is fully funded. By this I mean we could choose to never make another contribution, and if we just let our investments sit and grow, we would be able to comfortably retire at age 65. We're still making investments, but only to move forward the date we're able to retire.
Yes, it requires some discipline and you have to educate yourself. You need to learn about things like investment ratios, index funds, etc. But ultimately it isn't that complicated as people like to pretend it is. And you have to have the discipline to not panic sell when the market drops. It's a bit different if people have to cash out for a financial emergency. But many make really stupid mistakes such as selling during a downturn, trying to time the market, instead of just buying and holding cheap index funds until retirement.
But yeah, we've done pretty well. At this point, barring some catastrophic life-altering scenarios, our retirement is assured. We don't have to worry about an employer pulling the rug out from under us. We don't have to worry about a company going bankrupt. We don't have to worry about being fired shortly before reaching reaching the number of years needed for a full pension. We don't have to stay at a job earning below-market wages for years just for the pension. We don't even have to work some arbitrary number of years; we can retire as soon as our assets are enough to provide for whatever lifestyle we're comfortable with.
And if you're just worried about running out of money in retirement? You can always invest in the stock market and then buy annuities once you reach retirement age.
Pensions have their place. But I think we tend to look at them with rose-tinted glasses. Companies bankrupting their way out of pension responsibilities was an infamous thing not too long ago.
And then one major medical emergency happens... poof!
Same happened with pension though. Get sick and lose your job? Those twenty years you spent earning less than you're worth, just for the sake of the pension? Poof.
And $132K in 45 years will buy you 1 Happy Meal. ;)
Without the toy, because we can't incentivize kids to ask for fast-food meals.
I had $20K a 401K and $15K in school loans when I swapped jobs in my late 20's. Guess what I did with it.
3 years later I was able to purchase my first house because I saved up money instead of paying the student loans.
Right now I should be maximizing my retirement savings according to all the advisors. Instead I am using the money to pay for my kids college so they can start off in life above zero instead of -$50k like my wife and I did.
I figured out a long time ago that there is no way in hell I can retire and remain in the U.S. The system is rigged against me. So my goal for the next 10 years is to learn Spanish.
14k is worth 14k, and you can live a very spartan year on it apparently.
Probably worth a lot less after early withdrawal penalties and taxes.
Yep. Was 18k originally.
Luxury, I had 9.5k and had to spend it to survive for 2 years while I looked for a job.
You got to love that media outlet. They can't even write an accurate headline. If people are skipping meals, they aren't getting by.
Vagrants giving up access to clean clothes, drinking water, and shelter against severe weather just to get by
Teachers sell their blood and organs just to get by
Gen X here, same fucking story.
Yeah what I said last time I saw this article.
Hey, you are responsible for MAGA. Be responsible and do what your forefathers did.
Yeah KEVIN. YOU invented MAGA! YOU (single-handedly, on a Tuesday) brought them into existence, so YOU take them out!
Checkmate! NEXT!
Which generation isn’t doing this? I don’t think it is a generational cadre thing. I think it is a class thing.
I pretty much said the same thing about my own experience then was downvoted to all hell and accused of being a boomer who caused all this. Wth is wrong with people, no wonder we can't escape this shit no matter the generation.
Late babyboomer and early genx are doing just fine for the most part. I mean they've spent the last 5 decades pillaging from their children and grandchildren's futures to keep the stock market booming.
If you put a $100 investment in the S&P 500 at the start of 1980, with dividends reinvested, it would have grown to approximately $17,427.60 by early 2025. This is the reason the vast majority of people who vote for Republicans are 55 and older, because they don't care about anything but securing their own bag.
WHICH CAN BUY YOU A HOUSE IN 1963.
I think the point is the 174x growth, not the final number based on the arbitrary $100. If you'd invested $10,000, you'd have $1,740,000 (simple extrapolation not accounting for dividend reinvesting, it's too early for math)
But a ton of these people got completely obliterated is 2008 too. My point isn’t there aren’t rich people, it’s that there are poor in each generation and the wealth gap is increasing across demographics, even if not uniformly.
There are poor people in each generation but post boomer generations are doing less well off compared to their parents.
I frankly don't see have how new technologies can help post boomer generations. It is just like the French revolution. Each generation is worse off than the one before. Eventually people will revolt.
You only got obliterated in 2008 if you took your money out of the machine.
With the S&P500 as an example, within 4 years it was back to where it was. By now, it's worth 4 times what it was in 2007 at the peak before the trough.
It's all about being able to save. If you can't then capitalism won't work for you. I feel it's worse now, but there's always been the poor and always will be. The world ain't about to get fair any time soon. They just rely on the welfare state a lot more. Which is fine. I suspect some of the people struggling the most just aren't claiming what they're entitled to.
The people who were laid off didn’t have a choice.
And even more made more money than ever with the bounce back. The market recovered its losses within 4 years, but wages didn't recover until 2015-2016.
For adults the poverty level is around 10% all age demographics, however the important thing to evaluate is the difference in wealth.
The median net worth under age 35 is about $39,000, but this rises to approximately $364,500 for the 55-64 age group.
True, some people made that money back. But crucially, some didn’t. Partly due to market fears causing sales of positions and partly because they just had to retire in that window or because their annuity was invested poorly for those conditions. Some people did get wrecked and not always because they messed up.
But yeah, some people are doing well. More yet in the older age groups as you point out. I’m just saying the problem is more directly linked to class than generation. People need to increase class consciousness if the end is ever to be in view. A poor 50 year old is sinking in the same leaky boat as a poor 20 year old.
I never claimed otherwise.... I'm just pointing out that there are clear overlaps when it comes to class and generational divides. I never claimed there weren't poor people above the age of 55, as I said earlier poverty levels for adults is around 10% across the board. The difference is that the vast majority of people above the age of 55 are in a different class than the rest of America.
You've just described humans in general.
Right? I'm in my 40s and I've razed every 401k I've had to survive and move between jobs.
Millennials be like…
You guys have retirement savings?
This situation in untenable. We need universal basic income. It can be financed if we tax the rich. It won't lead to inflation higher than the extra income. It merely gives small and middle sized companies a way to compete in the economy.
Best America will do is feudalism
I don't know if universal basic income would really do anything in the long run. I don't think it would lead to overall run off inflation, but I dont doubt for a second that landlords would immediately increase rent.
We don't really need more money supply, we need more protections in areas of economics that should rightfully be considered natural monopolies.
If we didn't have to spend so much on essentials that should be subsidized or price controlled by the government like housing, food, utilities, and healthcare, then we'd have more to stimulate other areas of the economy.
Increasing the money supply without implementing mechanisms for regulation is just a complicated economic stimulus for landlords, produce markets, and utility companies.
if you tax the rich, they need to ask for higher prices of the products they sell to still make a profit. this is a partial inflation.
however, small companies run by non-billionaires, like worker cooperatives and local businesses, would be exempt from the taxes and therefore have a competitive advantage. this is my goal.
That's bullshit, they'd make a profit anyway, but it would be less of a profit, the poor souls... and they'd still hike prices anyway.
They have a fiduciary responsibility to the shareholder and therefore will act in a way that maximizes profits. It's just what they do as a consequence of what they are. In candyland this leads to overproduction as companies race for existing markets and seek to penetrate new ones, and as a consequence they end up making a hell of a lot more than what they need, which leads to better access and lower prices for the consumer. In the real world? The classic example of something capitalism is really good at making is a pencil, and you have to hand it to them. Pencils are in fact cheap as hell and very readily available. Food, shelter, and medicine, on the other hand...
I really want to see a change to that fundamental shareholder law, that allows for things like:
A) A company is structured around a particular mission, which may have nothing to do with money in particular, just set up as a "shared goal"
B) Any profit motivations must acknowledge both short-term and long-term. If a company wants to replace their flour with sawdust, then a board member can readily explain this will likely lead to a long-term dropoff in customers and that such an action should be legally barred.
A and B are both technically already possible.
Case A is possible if the organization's mission/goal is written in the organization's charter. The mission has to be set at the organization's founding, however. Changing the mission later is difficult or close to impossible. Note that such an organization might not be profit-oriented, and therefore might have difficulty finding investors, which means it will have a difficult time to start and operate in the world, because investors are typically looking for companies that return a profit at some point in the future. So, the difficulty is really more about finding investors than running a non-profit company. If you can find investors though, you're golden.
Case B is technically already the case. The board of shareholders decides on the company's strategy, and they can decide to favor long-term profit over short-term profits. The reason they often don't do that is because in today's world, there's a lot of structural changes in the world around us all the time (think of all the technology that was developed in the last 50 years alone), and so it's very difficult for a company to keep to a long-term plan at all, so they often make short-term plans instead, which leads to the short-sightedness that you already mentioned. If the world around us was more stable and provided more consistent operating conditions for companies for long-term planning, companies could rely on that and settle down on a long-term strategy. Which has simply not been the case in the last 50 years or so.
What makes a large business more competitive compared to a small one isn't taxation, it's the economics of scale in regards to logistics and production. All of a corporation's activities are already exempt from most taxation, the only thing we tax a corporation for is on their profit.
Being a non profit doesn't automatically make you more competitive, operating at lower cost with higher productivity is what makes you competitive.
Porque no las dos
I mean you could, but what would be the point if housing, healthcare, and food security were a right? UBI is just a bandage some billionaires advocate for just so they don't have to pay for a working healthcare system
Did you mean to say if they weren't a right?
I meant if housing, healthcare, and food were guaranteed, what would be the point of UBI?
Politicians currently advocating for UBI are doing so as a replacement for things like universal healthcare, not in conjunction with it.
So that goes back to my original comment, porque no las dos?
And that would go back to my response.... What would be the point?
A basic income is supposed to cover basic necessities, if those are already covered what is the point other than driving inflation and driving down productivity?
Billionaires have all our money. Maybe we could ask for it back nicely.
Guillotine is nice.
Free haircuts for the rich! You'll immediately feel 10-12 pounds lighter!
People would need to stop using their social media, software, webstores etc.
But that would be harrrrrrd tho.
Yes.
But: people still want to be billionaires, what if they became billionaires themselves after coming up with a new invention?
I don't understand the question. If you are a billionaire you took too much from society, not matter how it happened.
Yeah, because everything is ridiculously expensive and no one makes any money.
The survey this is based on has a summary page, but they don’t post their survey error estimates. What I can tell, without giving them my email, is that the entire survey was 250 adults. How many of those are “gen z” I have no idea, but if you are generous and say 1/4 that is 63 people considered gen z. The 46 percent that reported dipping into savings would then be about 29.
Just so everyone prognosticating about the state of the economy in this thread is aware, you are commenting on a survey that has a very low n and did not publish any sort of margin of error.
Have you actually read the other comments? Because the majority from what I can see are talking about their OWN experiences, and agreeing with the findings. I myself have done all three things in the headline in the past year.
I also noticed that the dichotomy is "luxury spending" vs. "paying off debt", but that debt could easily have come from prior 'luxury spending', lol.
The source cited in this article is a website that's shilling products, no methodology available at all, that I can see.
Valid
Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose
the media-spread call to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" was a call for the population to "unroot" and "weed out itself". The people give all of their life force to companies, and when late-stage capitalism ends, people will be laid off and thrown away like empty husks.
The last 20 years have lead to widespread social division [link], isolation ("atomistic society" is a term to refer to a society that consists of many individuals instead of being a cohesive fabric) and loneliness. I don't think people will form unions and fight back.
I think it would be very un-American to help the people in need. The american spirit is one of enterpreneurship and adventure, and standing still and being lazy is unacceptable. The american movement is like the wind, if it stops moving, it stops existing. (it turns into thin air). As long as there's progress to be made and big projects to be realized, people will have jobs and income. America can not last, it can only be first. America cannot stay, it can only go forward, it has to leave. It has to leave the world behind and venture into the stars. Thank you for your attention to this matter.
Gen Z has retirements? 🤔
It's amazing how badly small amount of people can treat large amount of people and get away with it.
I learned this lesson when I was in middle school. Our school cafeteria sold students expired food. Not, "Oh it's a few days late, these dates are estimates so it's probably fine." I mean food several months past dates, with obvious changes to consistency and taste. Two examples I vividly remember were moist cheetos and ice cream that looked like foam.
I thought it was disgusting and unsafe. I personally stopped trusting all such school cafeteria food from that point (and never touched it again.) My friends, however, didn't seem to care? Somehow?
Every time a friend took a bite and asked, "Does this taste weird?" I'd examine the food. If it was a packaged food, I'd check the date. Every time, the expiration date would be from last semester. I know this, because at one point I started keeping records in a notebook about it.
But before I started doing that, I encouraged the affected friends to tell the lunch ladies and ask them to exchange the expired package for a fresher one. They refused to. They were terrified of "causing trouble." I was like, "It's just a simple exchange. I'll go do it for you." But they begged me to just stay there and say nothing, like the rest of them. They were so scared to potentially upset someone.
Must be quiet. Must behave. Must not dare consider speaking up for our own well-being, even if it means we must literally eat garbage.
I'll give 'em this, the long-game authoritarians from the 90s and early 00s did a bang up job conditioning the kids to accept fascist rule in 2025. Want to know why so many Americans aren't fighting back? Because we've been raised to accept this abuse. Many are active enforcers at worst, or spinelessly compliant bystanders at best. Anyone outside that spectrum is a trouble-maker that the first group would gladly make suffer (while the second group "minds their own business.")
Millennial but I've been doing this for the last 4-5 years at this point
Wait, do you actually have retirement savings?
I'm on the leading edge of millennial and my retirement plan is to die.
My job has a 401k I was putting into when I started 12 years ago and they allow to borrow against it so I've had to do that to survive for a while now. Whenever I inevitably get fired or leave my job I'm gonna take the opportunity to just cash out and take the huge tax hit because I find it highly unlikely that I'll make it to actual retirement age at this point.
Oh, you'll make it to retirement age, you just won't be able to retire at that age, or ever.
That's what I expect at least.
I figure that I'll be able to retire when I have my house, and all other debts paid off in full, and I'm collecting my government pension (we have a national program here in Canada). And that assumes that the pension payments can cover my day to day and month to month expenses, which, at this point, with inflation the way it's going, I have absolutely zero confidence that it will be enough.
So I keep working and working, and creating value for shareholders.
Im Xer and my wife is to. We are doing that now to some degree. We were actually sorta trying to dejunk but now we are scared we might need something and not have the money to buy it so not getting rid of stuff as much.
I'm currently downsizing homes, and while staying with family, doing the one thing I swore I would never do, paying for storage.
When we find our next place we won't be able to afford to refurnish if we sold all the furniture. I feel you.
BIG BEAUTIFUL BILL :\
And it's only going to be more beautiful once people are dropping dead due to medicaid and RFK Jr.
Stupidly expensive cost of living in some countries and even certain regions.
I feel bad for 20 year olds now. Shit would have made me kill myself had I had to pay rent at these prices back in 2008. I barely survived on 300$ a week paychecks then. How are people even doing it today?
We're not and trying to stave off the urge
It ain't just them its everybody
I wonder if this really is the majority in america..its weird, I dont really see it here but im guessing a lot of people I know are getting parents help. I am seeing more homeless in my area all the time though but that does seem mental health related as well
If you knew for a fact that you'd never retire, you'd go a bit insane as well
From me and my husband's family, 5/6 kids (late millennials and gen z) have absolutely fallen back on moving back in with Mom and Dad in order to made things work. Probably one of those could have made it work otherwise, and the one that didn't have help lives in a tiny house. We've all been working the whole time, it's just between crazy rent hikes, health issues, and hurricanes it just hasn't been realistic to thrive (or in some of our cases thrive) without help. There's no social safety net.
Most of my friends (we're in our 30s) really want to start families and genuinely just can't afford to. We couldn't if we weren't receiving support from family. Childcare is just prohibitively expensive (especially on top of rent and insurance).
Gen Z where? I'm guessing the USA?
I don't see a clear reference to where those surveys where conducted.
It's like Gen Z is going through a divorce. Exactly where I was after mine.
I got to keep my retirement. But if I want a house I'm going to have to dip into it. If the goddamn bubble would pop it wouldn't be a problem, but here we are.
@[email protected]
As a Zennial (the microgeneration between Millennials and Gen Z), I already skip meals and ditch my belongings in a frequent basis. It's far from "getting by", though: it's just so I hopefully get to finally retire from my daily, boring job as a "biological vessel operator/manager" sooner 😄
The NYT article that the one above alludes to also suggests Gen Z has generally very high savings rates, which of course makes it more likely for people to have to dip into these savings if there's no financial buffer.
y'all got retirements and belonging??????
It's a vicious circle :
Retirement?!?! Hahahaha!
no shit, same old story
Having a 401k doesn't make you a capitalist, you don't own a meaningful amount of capital.
It doesn't make you a liberal either, unless you think any peasant in the 1500s was a monarchist if they didnt run away to live in the mountains.
Wtf kind of take is this? Having to feed yourself under capitalism doesn't imply you support capitalist ideology (liberalism) or own significant capital (are a capitalist).
Spending all your money to shelter the homeless or teach children, while admirable, doesn't make you anti-capitalist, unless you're doing it as part of a larger project to dismantle capitalism.
I haven't finished my morning coffee yet, but it'll probably be the smartest thing I do all day.
What the fuck are you talking about?
Be normal.
wow, thanks for proving my point,
.worldfucking fash instance.
Those things cost money so... Yeah, I guess it could?
Money is theft…
I'm done entertaining this fash instance.
You shouldn’t have to be forced to fiat yourself for food, shelter, and knowledge.
You're like a caricature of yourself.
Go back to lemmy.ml or lemmygrad.ml perhaps and leave us alone.
You sure are a belligerent, domineering asshole for someone with "AntiBully" in their name.
When you ostensibly feed people at these food banks, do you check their pockets for change first so you can screech "capitalist" at them instead of giving them food?
Fuck off with this gatekeeping purity shit.
Worse, I say: “Thank you for being here. How are you doing”? And feed them whatever we have left in the bank.
I meet folks where they are at, not where they mint coins. Now. Who linked the Stalinists? And who hasn't reclaimed their stolen labor?
You have a ways to go to meet anyone where they are at.
> overuses the term "fascists"
Yup, we definitely have a tankie here. Now call me a cracKKKer too!
You're not answering the question. I’ll just have to assume you want to send folks to wards.
No, but a lot of leftists like you really like to burn all bridges the moment of small inconveniences, or stuff some now dumb then teenager, now troubled adult said, and everyone else must follow suit, because
When most people say they don't want "woke", they want to avoid being dragged into a stupid internet harassment campaign, which is no different from what chuds use, and technically originating from them. Yes, first "cancel culture" event was Project Chanology (before that it was showing "internet sluts" that "actions have consequences" and turning them into "an hero"-s), and 4channers growing out of "edgy" humor but not the board's insufferability brought it with themselves into progressive spaces.
Take a fucking look into the mirror! Not everyone has the energy to do charity work on top of a 40 hour work week. It's nice of you to use your privilege the right way, just don't expect everyone to follow suit!
I can do that. For money!
Honestly chuckled at the ref.
🤝
Imagine changing your core beliefs because you think someone on the Internet said something mean.
Give me a fucking break.
This is fascist rhetoric. But given that I’m seeing again from another
.worlduser, and notdbzer0.comI’ll assume your attitude is “Welp, I’ve stolen more money from more dumb people, and I’m not going to lose my possessions to the folks I stolen labor from, so, long live Chairman Trump!🤳”Btw, who propagandized the “fences”?
Now it's mandatory you answer how, because you just admitted to be a larcenist.
M8, is your attitude going return the surplus value the “business owners” stole from laborists they hired, or are going to continue pretending you're not a larcenists of magnitude bigger than private equitors?
So when the robber barons bought the 🇺🇲, and started the world wars, and the entire arm races, I'm supposed not call death merchants death merchants, and I cannot be disgusted by death merchants, or am I supposed to accept my death encampment?
So basically, you wanted instead to disgressively victimize yourself to lemmy, that it is ok to steal Palestine, and every Dutch Colony via genocide.
How goes your Greenland genocide?
Nha mate I am just an assistant-accountant working my ass off for a semi shitty wage after studying for decades.
Then you don't “work with business owners” you “help the larcenists steal from workers, by the person ensuring the larcenists continue oppressing workers.”
Studying for yourself and comrades is fine, but to waste decades studying how make larcenists continue being the rich, while you wage, off their theft, is unfair, right?
Now reread my plea from the beginning, because I’ve ousted actual fascists ITT, capitalists, and good knows what other sociopaths that downvoted me instead of saying “maybe the anti-oppressionist is saying something truthful about we can do right now to make each other live better lives.”
Are they really?
https://healthactioncouncil.org/media/i5qj3qah/2025-hac-white-paper.pdf
Yes, really. The HAC/UnitedHealthcare obesity paper shows that diet is one of the root drivers of the epidemic, and even recommends employer interventions like making healthy, non-processed food more available and addressing social drivers of health. Skipping meals doesn’t mean obesity isn’t real, it often means people are forced into poor nutrition or cheap calories because of cost and access, which are major confounding factors.
They voted for this. I'm glad to finally see they are getting what they wanted.
Really? I voted for this 10 years ago when I was selling belongings to keep from going homeless? I voted for that at (lemme check) 17?
This isn't a new problem, this has been a problem since before Gen X was born.
The US is, and has been for decades, Absolutely Fucked™
I mean America didn't really vote for this. Between ramp and gerrymandering, election fraud, and a generally anti-democratic voting system, America isn't a democracy.
No no no. America is a perfect democracy in which everyone has a fully informed and equitable say in governance.
If the legislature is crippling the economy while the President crushes dissent with a massive paramilitary force, it is only because the people being impoverished and oppressed choose this for themselves.
They'll have an opportunity to do things differently in two years, when we have another perfectly fair and equitable and fully representative elections cycle, at which point they will once again be responsible for everything that happens afterwards.
Only a Russian Wumao or a North Korean Iranian bot would say such a thing. You're trying to trick us into not voting! Well, I'm not falling for it. I'm going to vote. And then I'm going to blame everyone else, since our democracy is perfect and everything bad is the fault of my neighbors for not voting the way I did.
While its not a fully functioning it is a democracy and they did vote for it
Is that not typical for every generation during and after their schooling years?
My parents experienced that, I experienced that, my kids experienced that.
You know what? here in the late 1930's early 1940's boys were often sent away from home to live and work on a farm at the age of 12! And they often slept with the animals even through winter. These were not bad conditions for the time, it was normal!
But since then the wealth and living standards have increased tremendously.
There is no way it should be necessary for anyone in USA to skip meals today. But USA is such an unfair society, that some people have a million times more than others. There is no way that is socially justifiable. Nobody should be either that privileged or unprivileged.
Ikr, a shit country has a 70 year old retirement age and only fascists would support it
Most Americans are in debt. A lot of debt**
True, but I wrote "have" because I didn't want to count things like debt. People with debt still have things, and sometimes people living like billionaires also have debt so their net worth is close to zero.
The meaning was what they "have" money to spend on themselves, and some people "have" enormous privileges, disregarding whether it's their own money or not.
We are the richest country in the world.
We are the host nation to some of the richest corporations in the world.
True, but it's super frustrating that OP just accepts that being poor right out of school is a typical thing for families, so it's okay. Like, fuck no, it's not okay and it hasn't been. Instead of an excuse, it should be a call for change.
They didn't say it was OK, just that it has been the case forever, which makes the article essentially pointless or at best like the Mitch Hedberg joke "I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too"
I disagree, it seemed like they were saying it was okay by the way they worded it. Maybe not okay, but just the way it is.
On another note, what is your username in reference to? Is it a show I"m not familiar with or maybe the constellation?
Indirectly the star system / black hole, by way of the two Rush songs about it (well, one about it, then the other about a Greek-inspired mythological tale set in it)
Rush - Cygnus X-1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B94Lxmot-k4
Rush - Cygnus X-1 Book II: Hemispheres https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J0zN0VjA3As
Oh cool, that's a fun rabbit hole to go down. Thanks for the links.
Pretty much. Some people here seem to be having a hard time with reality.
Infected by parasites, yes.
These issues are not unique to your country.
Again, we are the richest country in the world and we don't even have universal healthcare, abortion is banned in a lot of states and our billionaires pay very little taxes.
There is no "we" here.
Are we the richest? I mean—per capita? Because if we are, then it’s our spending that’s the problem.
Only in a sense so vague that it loses all meaning. You can look up studies comparing the actual wealth of different generations at different ages. Millennials were worse off than Gen-X and Boomers were at the same age, and Gen Z are worse off than Millennials at the same age. The average wealth of the average 30 year old has, in-inflation adjusted dollars, declined markedly over the last several decades.
This should be common sense. Consider just housing. The median home price has gone up much faster than the median income. People who already own homes have benefited substantially from this. But the only way homeowners can earn above-inflation rates of return is if housing is becoming more unaffordable.
Uhm no? In most freaking countries you would have more money to spend during your school years or just after it. Either because school is cheap/free or it's cheaper because you can continue living at home, etc etc
Just because it was common, doesn't mean it can't get better.
I'm not trying to shift blame here, but I'd be curious to see stats on how much needless spending these generations do compared to those prior.
We definitely do pay more now for shit but at the same time, I wonder if latter generations can't go without some of their creature comforts.
The younger generation is already going wothout homes and healthcare. How much more do you think they should give up?
I can afford a lot of tiny electronic doodads year to year. I could save it all for decades and not get close to a home or a decent retirement.
Everything you want, nothing you need.
Ok, but what does your avocado toast budget look like?
/s
Well, back in the day a dozen people would live in a tiny ass house. I'm not saying this is ok, but I realize y'all gonna vote my comment that way anyways like you did on my original one.
🤷♂️
What are you, a paid shill? Shut the fuck up.
Someone is a touch sensitive. Need a hug?
Yes. Come closer.
Ok
Our economy would collapse without this "needless spending".
Been watching Caleb Hammer’s financial audits. It’s amazing how much people spend on shit they don’t need, then find the credit card bills are so high they miss payments.
Basically every single guest walks out with a budget that gets their self-inflicted bad debt paid off in 2-10 years.
That channel is for entertainment purposes only
The people featured on it are not representative of the population as a whole. He specifically picks extreme cases to maximize entertainment value
Of course he only picks the biggest train wrecks, wouldn't be fun to watch otherwise.
Regardless, there are lessons to draw from the channel. I know quite a few people in my personal life who have self-inflicted financial difficulties. Door-dash should be a sometimes thing; your car still works, you don't need a brand new one; you don't need to live in an expensive city; your current phone is 2-years-old, you don't need a new flagship, etc, etc.
If you have unpaid bad debt, these are the types of things you need to seriously consider no longer spending money on and instead pay off the bad debt that keeps you down.
I have never once in my life paid for an uber to deliver my burrito.
I don't even order takeout outside of being social gatherings with friends.
I've been driving for eight years and only ever owned two cars, one I had to get rid of because I couldn't afford to pay for it to be repaired, and the other was dirt cheap because it had a dodgy crash sensor.
I have NEVER had a credit card.
But do tell me how frivolous financial choices are what's making me poor, because you seen it on TV.
It's definitely not the complete lack of protections on livable wages and how inflation has been above wages for my entire lifetime.
Sounds like you don't have unpaid bad debt. Given I specifically said to seriously consider the above "If you have unpaid bad debt" then, it doesn't apply to you. Not sure why you are being hostile about something that even I said doesn't apply to you.
I used to watch Caleb when he started out but good fucking god every episode now is just him screaming at people. There's no content worth watching there for me anymore.