Buying a home in the Lehigh Valley December 13, 2023

Elder millennials are stuck in a lifestyle they can’t afford…

  • Elder millennials are facing down slowing wage growth and wealth, layered atop past recessions.
  • And new homeownership by younger millennials is outpacing elder millennials.
  • Yet, elder millennials are still spending, even if they can’t afford the lifestyles they want.

It’s a bad time to be an elder millennial.

Elder millennials — whom Bank of America defines as those ages 35 to 45 — have already weathered a lot of economic storms. They’ve seen two recessions in their adult lives, a pandemic, and an economy that seemed to be stacked against them from the start.

But while the pandemic and its resulting labor market may have offered some economic reprieve, the financial walls might be closing in on elder millennials. That could be chalked up to the lifestyle expectations of a cohort that should be entering a more stable period of adulthood, one that includes comfortably spending, owning a house, and saving for retirement. Instead, they’re falling behind in home ownership, accruing trillions in debt, and still scrambling to maintain their lifestyle.

Some of the blame rests with the recessions that came before.

“The older Millennial cohort is more likely to have been hit harder by the 2008 housing crisis, which potentially set them back financially relative to younger Millennials,” Bank of America Institute wrote in their research on homeownership. As Business Insider’s Hillary Hoffower previously reported, the Great Recession made millennials born in the 1980s a “lost generation” when it came to wealth accumulation. A 2018 report from the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis found that the wealth of millennials born in the 1980s was 34% below predictions.

Story by insider@insider.com (Juliana Kaplan)

Related video: Millenials Are Worried About Their Future Selves (Money Talks News)

https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/money/millenials-are-worried-about-their-future-selves/vi-AA1lkbTf?ocid=socialshare&t=29