THE MILLENNIAL INVESTOR
until this March, gaining strength: These kids aren’t investing enough in the stock market! The study found 40% are wary – calling investing “risky” – and a quarter are genuinely worried: The word they chose was “overwhelming.” I’d wager the “overwhelmed” quadrant has grown in recent weeks.
Millennial-headed households earn more than adult households in the equivalent age bracket have at any point in the past half-century. What they do with all this wealth will dictate the future of the financial landscape. One recent survey found that millennials are a class that favors real estate investments. (It was commissioned, not so surprisingly, by a real estate firm.) Another study – this one, fittingly, from Investopedia – canvassed affluent millennials and found confirmation for a stereotype that spent those 11-ish fondly remembered recovery years (RIP), from 2009 The generation’s collective financial experience has been one of either chaos and calamity or stretches of productive recovery too calm and consistent to completely trust. Even as millennial millionaires grow in number and weigh what to do with their money, there’s a lingering trepidation. Millennials are making money, and with the oldest of them pushing 40, the whole generational cohort is approaching what are supposed to be its peak earning years – middle age. Millennial-headed households earn more than adult households in the equivalent age bracket have at any point in the past half-century. What they do with all this wealth will dictate the future of the financial landscape. And yet their elders are starting to notice they don’t invest quite the way their parents did...
VOLATILITY FLASHBACKS
COVID-fueled volatility is triggering flashbacks to the early days of the recession when millennials – then at various stages of the slow crawl toward upwardly mobile independence – suddenly confronted a crippled economy. For older millennials, this was the second major setback they’d faced: The first hit just as these now-middle-aged millennials were entering adulthood. Consider that an elder millennial would have been on the cusp of contemplating college when the tech bubble burst at the turn of the 21st century... A sophomore or junior in high school, he would have been forced to confront, perhaps for the first time, how his family’s ability to pay his tuition fees would directly affect his future success and earning potential. And he would have been graduating, so to speak, into this financial awareness during a drastic downturn – learning, all of a sudden, that market corrections dramatically impact the course of our lives. Flash forward a few years, and he’s finishing college – which he probably took on debt to help pay for – when the real estate crash hits just as he’s looking for his first job... Big banks are getting bailed out, and unemployment
32
June 2020
Made with FlippingBook Publishing Software