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Not surprised. My wife and I make more money than we ever have and I feel like everything is out of reach. Inflation is through the roof. And wages haven't come close to keeping up. We're fortunate both of us make mid $20 an hour.
For someone starting out I have no idea how they could manage. If I was starting out today straight from highschool I'd most likely be homeless
You know you read things like this and you don’t have to spend much time working out what’s wrong
I was earning mid twenties in warehouses in the 1990s
Meanwhile food is 3x and housing is 10x
This is why everything is fucked. Wage stagnation and extreme price hikes is leading us back to indentured servitude and slavery via arresting poor people for the crime of being poor (homeless).
I give up
According to a inflation calculator, $25 an hour in the 1990s would be almost $64 an hour in 2026.
eyup. feel I got to some milestones about 10 years after it should be and now unemployed about 15 years before retirement just hemoraging savings.
I'll never know retirement.
im pretty sure you will like me. it will be retirement but what it will really be is poverty.
I'm exactly on the same page. Huge leaps in wage, but my life is moving backwards.
Are they actually surprised?
Even the previous generation were delaying and skipping milestones.
Pikachu face: late stage capitalism.
I’m firmly in the millennial camp in my mid thirties and I have two pairs of couple friends who’ve had kids. It could absolutely be my friends circle, but most of us are in the trades or have advanced degrees (most of the people who went the college route also have more than a bachelor’s, because that alone wasn’t enough to get a job) and we just can’t make it work. Many of them want kids, but they want to be able to provide for them first, so they’re just waiting
I was in the waiting camp so long I expired. Technically I could still have a kid(?) - but don't want to be 60+ at a graduation party.
Just make sure you won't regret of the decision / indecision and you will be okay.
That’s the thing: if you really want kids, you’ll regret not having them. If you really want kids and have them without being able to afford feeding and clothing them, you’ll regret that even more.
I see so many people with kids - if they can make it work...
The point is for children you will sacrifice your current lifestyle. No leisure time, double shifts, insane expenses.
We all want the ideal: you work 8 hours go home and be with the family, while the other parental unit took care of everything - then you go to a move; every weekend you watch a ball game - go out to dinner every once a while, get new clothes once a while, take vacations every year.
But it won't happen.
There is a reason why most romantic fiction shows one party as independently wealthy. No one wants to see the overtime shifts and gig economy - and being one paycheck away from being homeless, doesn't create romantic feelings.
We’re already working double shifts without leisure time, so there’s no slack to cut. That’s the problem. People who really want kids know that kids require sacrifice, that’s the one thing everyone talks about with kids. If you don’t have any more holes in the belt, trying to tighten it won’t help.
Do those people with kids make it work, or are they doing their children a disservice by being emotionally and literally unavailable to them because they’re trying to make sure they don’t starve? I hope most of them make it work, but I know it’s not all of them. Unfortunately, crossing your fingers and hoping you’ll make it work doesn’t seem like a responsible choice to many of us when failure would so greatly impact an innocent person.
Just Gen Z? I'm an elder Millennial and I feel like I'm doing this right now.
Hell Yeah 36 years old, still no kids, because life was a fucking survival
Meanwhile the Epstein class is wondering why the emaciated cow won't produce any milk.
Yes, Gen Z "is doing that"... It's them actively doing that... That's how we are writing the headline, inferring choice or preference... Not, "Gen Z can't have milestones" not "The Epstein class ate all of Gen Z's deserved, basic, human milestones" no... Gen Z is delaying.
The essential struggle is a class struggle, not a generational one. The billionaires love it when we blame boomers, Zoomers, Xers, etc., instead of blaming billionaires.
Or maybe just questioning if there's any point in achieving them at all.
I'm Gen x. I don't have kids, a home, or any of these so-called milestones. Probably never will. We're all fucked.
Life milestone should be violent revolution. Otherwise nothing will change.
It was hard enough as a millennial getting to the point I'm at and it's still not easy. I feel very bad for Gen Z. They're getting fucked over
As a kid I heard people talk about how Japanese culture was being destroyed because they're overworked, and how they didn't really have a way out of it politically. I always thought that would be us eventually. I didn't know how true that was until now. The only way out of this mess is through it, and people with money completely understand this.
The only way out is revolution, which begins with the people, mass class consciousness, and organized leadership that can help steer the movement in a positive direction. This is why grassroots organizations of disciplined workers are so critical, they can help us accomplish the tasks of educating, agitating, and organizing.
My wife and I decided that we didn't want to put children into this world. I did the snip snip recently. It just feels way too bleak. Can't imagine putting a child through that.
Well yeah, millennials also severely delayed and fuck all has been done to improve things. Add in a few pandemic school years on top of it
My cousin and his wife want kids but they're both almost thirty and there's no way they can afford children any time soon. I feel so bad for them because with how life is going for them, it's not looking like they'll be able to be parents. I'm not parent.aterial and the thought of being a parent disgusts me, but it is heartbreaking to the people I care about not being able to achieve their dream of starting a family
It's the end of civilisation in the first world, in slow motion, and you've got front row seats
"Civilization"
We gatekept basic necessities to coerce the working class into wage slavery in times of unprecedented abundance. Fuck these extra steps, let's just be honest with each other like we were in the jungle.
The use of the term "milestone" or "goal" when the article talks about how these are neither for a growing percentage of the population is interesting.
I mean, an unachievable goal is still a goal.
A goal is something you seek to achieve. Looks like a lot of people are no longer seeking to achieve the things previous generations have attempted to convince them to chase.
It can be very hard to disentangle the cause and effect of 'not wanted so it doesn't count as a failure to not get it,' vs 'can't do it, so won't say I want it,' vs 'might want to do it but everyone and everything is getting fucked so hard these days and I don't want to watch my kid get fucked, so not going to bother having one.'
Best thing you can do is to participate in as little of the mainstream economy as possible.
We are witnessing something very fascinating happening. Big companies fat on their earlier success are shedding workforce. At the same time AI has made people productive enough to need less staff than before. This is culminating into high unemployment.
Necessity is the mother of invention. There will be new, smaller businesses. Spend your money there if you have it. Just accept that some thing won't be as good as what a big company produces.
What the fuck is mainstream economy?
The normie economy. The economy everyone got into because everyone else got into it.
I (superior) prefer this other, more niche economy. Well, for now until more Normie's get involved.
I know I'll probably never not live with family.
Im just glad your family is there for you instead of tossing your ass out and saying "you deal with it".
“When I was young we just had the kids even though we didn’t have the space or money. We just figured it out and made it work”
“Yes we were able to buy our own house at the age of 12. No, my kids don’t talk to me anymore, why do you ask?”
These are seeds of fascism, right there. Numbers like these are mutually exclusive with democracy.
Ten years ago, the average home, at the average mortgage rate, and with a 20-percent down payment would’ve cost $1,952.04 per month. Today, that monthly cost is $3,470.95, according to mortgage data site Mortgage Calculator.
The real barrier people rarely talk about is down payment.
Apartment rent and small house mortgage aren't that different, and mortgage stays mostly the same. The only part that changes is property value keeps going up so taxes and insurance keep going up.
If it wasn't for that, first and last payment would be exactly the same. It's even a frequent complaint of boomers with paid off mortgages, because you never stop paying those things.
Even people with paid off mortgages would benefit from lower housing costs.
No fucking shit. I both do and do not get why it takes "experts" to say this shit. Everything is fucked, what do you expect? Yeah, yeah, having an expert say something notifies people not connected to the affected people, but come fucking on.
This shit makes me so angry because it feels like there are a bunch of people with their heads up their ass that just came out for their once a decade deep breath only to realize something fucking changed while they were napping in their colon. Can't fucking deal with this shit.
They need an expert to write it in such a way to make it seem like Gen Z is making a choice about these things that "hurt" all the CEOs, instead of, you know, having all of their choices stripped away from them to force them into finally becoming a commodity instead of a person.
I think catering to family life is a non goal of european governments since they smell clankers could generate wealth for the few.