12-01-2018, 03:55 PM
Working with a number of Millennials has been interesting, as I saw a lot of the same patterns in their early post-education years that I saw in my own, twenty years before in the first "Bush" recession of the late '80's and early '90's - long stints in temping and retail, while trying to break into more stable work, only to see whole industries collapse when the banks finally faced the truth, and big delays in household formation and declines in home ownership. Over the holiday, I was reminiscing with my brother-in-law about the crazy days of '91 and '92, when several local banks (well, there were only three left in the area - the S&L crisis hit us REALLY hard) stopped issuing 30-year mortgages on local residential real estate, as they were "unable to make money" on a 12% APR loan. The area is still suffering the cascade effects of that bit of short-sightedness, as the region around it has embraced (or at least tolerated) in-migration.
As Strauss and Howe pointed out to Tony Robbins when he interviewed them for his Power Talk(!) CD series, Gen X was only slightly smaller than the Boom, but had much less money to spend, and I'd add, no good options for cutting back. Many of the ways Millennials save today (ride sharing, cord-cutting, and Internet shopping) weren't available to X-ers, so, as the study points out, we have more individual debt that Millennials.
As Strauss and Howe pointed out to Tony Robbins when he interviewed them for his Power Talk(!) CD series, Gen X was only slightly smaller than the Boom, but had much less money to spend, and I'd add, no good options for cutting back. Many of the ways Millennials save today (ride sharing, cord-cutting, and Internet shopping) weren't available to X-ers, so, as the study points out, we have more individual debt that Millennials.
