Key Takeaways
- Millennials are saving at the highest rate of any generation currently alive, but they aren’t saving for a typical retirement.
- Two thirds of Americans don’t have enough money in savings to be able to take care of an emergency.
- Millennials care about financial freedom and life experiences, and are saving money to do things as they go through life knowing they will work in to their later years.
In 2017, Merrill Lynch Edge came up with a study that said Millennials are saving at the highest rate of any generation currently alive, and I know that to be anecdotally true as well. However, Millennials aren’t saving for the classic form of retirement. It’s really about financial freedom and life experiences for them.
If we look at the Boomer generation, they went out, got married, bought a house, had some kids, and are working really hard to then enjoy life later past 65. And that’s been the formula for that generation.
The Millennials have come along and decided that formula is not for them. They want financial freedom, they know they are going to live a long time, and they don’t care if they work until they are 80, but they want to make sure they are saving a lot of money right now so they can have a lot of experiences around travel, entertainment, or fitness programs as they go through life.
That is a big difference, and when you consider how many people are slaves to their money, one great example is a statistic that came out in 2016 that said that fully two thirds of Americans don’t have enough money in savings, that’s $500, to be able to take care of an emergency. Now that’s astounding, but it gives you a feel for the way the formula currently is working for a lot of folks. They are not experiencing financial freedom, they are not experiencing life, and they are kind of a slave to this environment they set up for themselves.
I believe Millennials are looking at that and saying, “I don’t want that, I want to save a lot, but I want to be able to do things as I go along, having the financial freedom to experience life.”
Until next time, enjoy!
Gary