Millennial here - gen Z has retirement savings???
this post was submitted on 02 Sep 2025
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lol right? Must be nice to afford to put more than your employer’s match into your 401k
What the hell is an employer match?
- Millennials, probably
As far as I understand, I don't have a 401k. I have nothing. I have never considered retirement to be a reasonable outcome for anyone in my generation or younger, but even still, it's not like I would have been able to save more than a scant couple thousand after decades of work.
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Not if they're dipping into it at 30. That's going to kill any kind of compound interest.
I'm about to be 29, and have literally zero savings to speak of. I've been paycheck-to-paycheck pretty much my entire working life.
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Millennial here- I'm bout to not have retirement savings.
It'll be the best avocado toast ever though, right?
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I had 14 grand in a 401k. I had to spend it to survive for a year while I looked for a job. All of it.
Now I know 14k aint shit. But that is where we are.
14k would have been $132k in 45 years when you would have otherwise retired.
The power is in the interest. Even if you max out your 401k in the future it cannot make up for missing interest earnings on early deposits. Having to use it it now means nobody in this entire generation will ever retire, ever.
Another thing to consider is that 45 years of inflation and probable economic issues will likely lower that return, possibly lower than today's purchasing value.
Plus people need the money in the first place, meaning those who need the money the most have the least. So either way it's a bad deal for funding retirement beyond some extra spending money for people who had money to begin with.
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Just to put it into perspective, if the inflation rate for the past 45 years predicts the next 45 years. $14K today = $55K in 45 years. A $75K household income today would be $294K in 45 years.
So $14K in a 401K saved for 45 years is a pittance and should never be considered a retirement "program". It's all bullshit to decrease and eliminate the cost of actual pension programs.
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I had $20K a 401K and $15K in school loans when I swapped jobs in my late 20's. Guess what I did with it.
3 years later I was able to purchase my first house because I saved up money instead of paying the student loans.
Right now I should be maximizing my retirement savings according to all the advisors. Instead I am using the money to pay for my kids college so they can start off in life above zero instead of -$50k like my wife and I did.
I figured out a long time ago that there is no way in hell I can retire and remain in the U.S. The system is rigged against me. So my goal for the next 10 years is to learn Spanish.
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You got to love that media outlet. They can't even write an accurate headline. If people are skipping meals, they aren't getting by.
Vagrants giving up access to clean clothes, drinking water, and shelter against severe weather just to get by
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Gen X here, same fucking story.
Yeah what I said last time I saw this article.
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Which generation isn’t doing this? I don’t think it is a generational cadre thing. I think it is a class thing.
I pretty much said the same thing about my own experience then was downvoted to all hell and accused of being a boomer who caused all this. Wth is wrong with people, no wonder we can't escape this shit no matter the generation.
Late babyboomer and early genx are doing just fine for the most part. I mean they've spent the last 5 decades pillaging from their children and grandchildren's futures to keep the stock market booming.
If you put a $100 investment in the S&P 500 at the start of 1980, with dividends reinvested, it would have grown to approximately $17,427.60 by early 2025. This is the reason the vast majority of people who vote for Republicans are 55 and older, because they don't care about anything but securing their own bag.
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You guys have retirement savings?
Yeah, because everything is ridiculously expensive and no one makes any money.
Billionaires have all our money. Maybe we could ask for it back nicely.
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The survey this is based on has a summary page, but they don’t post their survey error estimates. What I can tell, without giving them my email, is that the entire survey was 250 adults. How many of those are “gen z” I have no idea, but if you are generous and say 1/4 that is 63 people considered gen z. The 46 percent that reported dipping into savings would then be about 29.
Just so everyone prognosticating about the state of the economy in this thread is aware, you are commenting on a survey that has a very low n and did not publish any sort of margin of error.
Have you actually read the other comments? Because the majority from what I can see are talking about their OWN experiences, and agreeing with the findings. I myself have done all three things in the headline in the past year.
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Soon there will be a critical mass of people who have nothing left to lose
Gen Z has retirements? 🤔
I had to cash out my 401(k) while looking for a job. Thought I was on the start to a good track, but the house of cards collapses easily.
Sending applications that make you enter the information multiple times, have some ATS system with poorly implemented OCR autofilling among other issues. The chance to even have a chance at a job via interview is ridiculous.
To add insult to injury, at my previous job most people were referred by relatives or hired a VERY long time ago. It seems the world just hates anyone under 40? Including those damned millennials, right??
It’s fun to be expected to break your back for a system when nothing rewards you.
Millennial but I've been doing this for the last 4-5 years at this point
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It's amazing how badly small amount of people can treat large amount of people and get away with it.
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Im Xer and my wife is to. We are doing that now to some degree. We were actually sorta trying to dejunk but now we are scared we might need something and not have the money to buy it so not getting rid of stuff as much.
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Stupidly expensive cost of living in some countries and even certain regions.
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