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Nobody Is Moving, Especially Millennials (nymag.com)
For a fun new entry into millennials are lazy, consider this: According to new data tracked down by Richard Fry for Pew Research, just 20 percent of 25- to 35-year-olds (Old Millennials, if you will) reported having lived at a different address the previous year. From a report on NYMag: In 2000, a full 26 percent of Gen-Xers -- then at the same age range -- had reported making a move in the previous year. In 1963, members of the Silent Generation moved at a 26 percent rate, too. The census data being used here doesn't include college-dorm moves prevalent with 18- to 24-year-olds, so those young'uns are left out of the analysis. The 20 percent rate is the lowest level of young adult mobility in half a century, Fry reports, and all this with millennials getting married, owning homes, and having kids less than previous generations. Student debt and less favorable lending rates may be driving down homeownership -- imagine that -- which further reduces movement. Psychologically, this also means that young adults are more stuck with their personalities and faded of memory compared with their more mobile peers.
We're waiting for the bubble to burst again. Hopefully this time they don't bail out the banks and and the idiots who bought mcmansions. The bailouts (including "Keep Your Home California") prevented me, a responsible, financially stable adult, from owning a home. Prices are over double what they should be in my area.
People don't have roommates, they have roomfamilies.
Millenials have fewer job prospects in general and are less wealthy than their parents were at the same age. This is true by a variety of different metrics. See e.g. http://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2017/01/13/millennials-falling-behind-boomer-parents/96530338/. In the last few years, something, it isn't clear what, has been drastically reducing the resources available to young people. This is combining with cost disease http://slatestarcodex.com/2017/02/09/considerations-on-cost-disease/ in a way that is leaving many people in the young age bracket with far less effective purchasing power than their parents would have had for many things. It isn't completely the case; some goods such as computers and cell phones are far cheaper (and often weren't even available to their parents) but that's a relatively small fraction of their total goods. Some other trends are clear positive, such as the reduction in poverty in the US, and the overall trends throughout the world are mainly positive. See e.g. https://singularityhub.com/2016/06/27/why-the-world-is-better-than-you-think-in-10-powerful-charts/. But the US specific young people are clearly going through a bad time in general.
Clearly we need to mock and make fun of millennials more, previous disrespect has been inadequate to make them flourish just like the good ol' days.
In a slightly more serious note, this was predicted. A fair number of reputable economists warned us of our own lost generation after the 2008 crash. The bottom of the ladder got pulled and the replacement jobs available to low experience young folk are not as relatively good as what was available for other generations. So you have low wage earners with stacks of debt from surviving (how dare they!), and from getting a college degree like they were told was the only good path thousands of times (suckers!).
But it is easier to make fun of how they dress different, and use funny new words (like EVERY generation of young folks before them) than to fix the lack of good entry level jobs, low wages, expensive healthcare, and over priced tuition. It looks to me like society has failed a generation and they have made rational choices to live within their means to the extent possible.
Federal student loans are non-dischargeable. Also, many places run your credit to get an apartment, get a job, get a security clearance, dealers run your credit to get a car loan, etc. So while totally dropping out of the "system" is an option (i.e. becoming homeless), it is hard to have much of a life withing the "system" while not paying your bills.
If you do manage to get an apartment, find a way to commute, and get a job with blighted credit you still face having your wages garnished, or your bank accounts emptied to pay back those federal loans. No money in the bank means you then stand a good chance of not making rent, having your car repossessed, and then losing your job.
Dandy "system" we have, don't you think?
You can get income based repayment options, or get forbearance for a time, but you can't just walk away.
Most of the stuff mentioned I can agree with. But less favorable lending rates? Only a Millennial ignorant of history would think that. Mortgage interest rates are the lowest they've been in 60 years. My generation (gen-x) had to deal with mortgage interest rates double what they are today. My parents had to deal with 17% interest rates. You have to go all the way back to 1955 to see interest rates as favorable as they are today.
With a 4% interest rate on a 30 year mortgage, 42% of your payments over the life of the loan are interest.
With a 8% interest rate, 62% of your payments are interest.
With a 17% interest rate, 81% of your payments are interest.
For just about anyone alive today, there has never been a better time to get a mortgage to buy a home.
There are plenty of reasons to marry and not have kids, such as saving on taxes, insurance, or even just making sure someone has the authority to make medical decisions if something should happen to you.
My wife and I make over $100k together and we can't yet afford a 2b/2ba condo in Orange County, CA within a 30 minute commute to work. That kind of place with a garage goes for ~$500k. Thus, if you don't want PMI, you need to have $100k in cash on hand PLUS financial buffer and moving costs. So we rent. We pay ~$1,845/mo for our 1b/1ba. And there's a catch-- lease renewal increases are around $50, but the increase is lower than the ~$90/mo annual market rental increase over the last few years. So, if you want to move, you're almost guaranteed to be moving into a more expensive apartment.
And there still isn't any inventory to buy. There are too many people buying to turn around and immediately rent out those places.
So, despite out income and despite our savings, we're staying put.
In 1977, the median income for a 30-year-old man was about $10,000, or $41,500 adjusted for inflation [1]. Today, the median income for a 30-year-old man is about $35,000 [1]. The median home sale price in 1977 was about $49,000, or $203,000 inflation-adjusted [2]. The median home sale price today is about $325,000 [2]. In 1977, a 4-year college degree at an in-state, public institution cost less than $4,000, or about $16,000 inflation-adjusted for tuition and fees [3]. Today, that's $38,600.
These are only a few rough indicators, but the point is this: a millennial or gen-xer today makes 84% in real terms of what his counterpart did in 1977; his education costs more than twice as much and has gone from something he could pay for completely with a summer job to more than a full year's salary; the house he's looking at has gone from 4 years' salary to nearly 10 years', and a 20% down payment has gone from about 3 months' salary to about two years'.
These, for example, are reasons that millennials have it tougher than previous generations.
[1] https://cps.ipums.org/cps/
[2] https://www.census.gov/const/u...
[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/d...
[4] http://www.collegedata.com/cs/...