6 financial problems plaguing millennials through no fault of their own

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Millennials often get a lot of blame for lacking financial stability — and when looking at it from the outside, it’s easy to see why.

A recent INSIDER and Morning Consult survey, which polled 4,400 Americans — 1,207 of whom identified as millennials, defined in the survey as those aged 22 to 37 — yielded several results that don’t paint a pretty picture of millennials and their finances.

A decent portion of millennials are delaying homeownership, many aren’t saving enough, and nearly half are suffering so much from paying off student loans that they don’t think the financial repercussions are worth it, according to the survey. 

But when taking a closer look, millennials often aren’t the cause of these financial problems — they’re mostly just dealing with the cards they’ve been dealt. The financial crisis, student loan debt, and a higher cost of living have ultimately impacted their ability to save and achieve traditional milestones.

Here, six key findings from the survey that show just how financially burdened millennials feel, through circumstances they didn’t create.

Nearly one-third of millennials are worse off than they thought they’d be 10 years ago.

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Of those who answered the question, more than half who think they’re worse off financially consider themselves poor, while 34% of respondents consider themselves working class. 

This can largely be attributed to the financial crisis, which led to a tough job market and wage stagnation for the oldest millennials, causing them to delay traditional adulthood milestones as the economy made it more difficult to save, Jason Dorsey, a consultant, researcher of millennials, and president of the Center for Generational Kinetics, previously told Business Insider. 

 

More than half of millennials don’t have a retirement account.

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Millennials often weren’t able to accumulate the amount of wealth they hoped or expected to, especially when it comes to retirement, Dorsey said. One-quarter of millennials who expect to retire between ages 66 and 75 have no retirement savings account, according to the survey. Almost 20% of millennials don’t know when they’ll retire, and 9% don’t expect to retire at all.

"Older millennials are often realizing they’re going to have to play catch-up with their finances if they want to ever be able to retire, but some of them have already decided that they likely will not ever be able to afford to retire," Dorsey told Business Insider.

This is particularly true for millennials born in the 1980s, who are at the greatest risk of becoming a "lost generation" for wealth accumulation, according to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

 

More than half of millennials have less than $5,000 saved.

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It’s also been harder for millennials to tuck money away into a savings account. While 70% of millennial survey respondents have a savings account, 58% have a balance under $5,000. 

According to Business Insider’s Tanza Loudenback, a heavy debt load has helped slim these savings. While many don’t carry credit-card debt or owe less than $5,000 of, nearly 45% of millennials have student-loan debt.

When asked what they would do with an extra $1,000 cash, millennials were more likely to prioritize paying off debt over saving (a difference of five percentage points), the survey found.

See the rest of the story at Business Insider

See Also:

SEE ALSO: Millennials have been called the ‘brokest’ and the ‘richest’ generation, and experts say both of those are true

DON’T MISS: 7 of the biggest financial problems millennials face that their parents didn’t

Source: Business Insider – hhoffower@businessinsider.com (Hillary Hoffower)

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