Millennials Who Are Thriving Financially Have One Thing in Common: Rich Parents

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/07/millennials-with-rich-parents/398501/?single_page=true

by minikites • 11 years ago

21 12 11 years ago

theatlantic.com

dummy7953• 11 years ago

The system works!!

madcaptenor• 11 years ago

Is this any different than it used to be?

minikites• 11 years ago

The difference more pronounced now as wages fall and debts increase.

wmil2• 11 years ago

Wages have been stagnant for the past 30 years (inflation adjusted), but education and housing costs have been skyrocketing.

Rent control laws are set up to benefit long term residents, so new workers or people who move to a new city get screwed.

So it's much worse than it used to be. Depending on how far back you go with "used to be".

nostrademons3• 11 years ago

I'd wager that if you look at Millenials who are thriving financially, you'd find a bigger correlation: those who majored in STEM and ended up with jobs in technical professions. Take a look at the math in the article:

"Imagine an individual who earns $50,000 and is shopping for a $200,000 home (the median U.S. income and house price). This person would like to put 20 percent down. If he or she follows the popular financial advice to save 10 percent of his or her annual pay, it’ll take him or her about eight years to have that down payment ready to go. If that same person has $26,000 of student debt, which means monthly payments of $280 based on a 10-year repayment plan, it’ll take this person closer to nine years."

Now imagine that the individual makes $80K instead of $50K, a not unreasonable technical wage even outside of SF or NYC. Even after taxes, he can save the down payment in 2 years.

The financial outcomes of my friends & acquaintances have largely followed their facility with technology. The best hackers are now billionaires; the good ones made a million or two, even if they took the safe path of working at a big company. Even ones who just know how to use Facebook, Word, and Excel do fine in digital marketing specialties. The English majors are struggling hard, often in service jobs.

angersock• 11 years ago

The best hackers are now billionaires

[citation needed]

This is a lie. Hell, even Torvalds is worth less than half a billion. Stallman is basically broke. Carmack is worth less than a hundred million.

Meanwhile, sociopaths and kids with Ivy connections seem to be the ones raking in the money you mention.

nostrademons3• 11 years ago

Drew Houston and a couple early Googlers. I was talking personal acquaintances in the post, not the people generally lionized by the hacker community. There's this phenomena with a lot of hackers where once you make a lot of money, you're no longer cool, mainly because you've made a lot of money. Your day job also tends to shift to managing people, but I can assure you that many of the founders of the big unicorns today are wicked smart technically in addition to being savvy businesspeople.

Beached2• 11 years ago

I dont get their definition of rich. My parents helped me with college, yet I still graduated with the average debt of $29,000 from school, I make less then 40,000, yet I was able to pay off all my loans and debt, while saving more then 30% income towards retirement every year, AND save 8k for a future down payment. However my parents certainly are not rich, unless you define under 70k(pretax)/year combined in income with 2 kids rich..

wmil2• 11 years ago

Where do you live? You can't be paying much rent.

Beached2• 11 years ago

in Michigan, I pay about $950/m for rent and all utilities.

Millennials Who Are Thriving Financially Have One Thing in Common: Rich Parents

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