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6 Steps For Financial Independence: The Playbook Made for Millennials
Millennials, financially, are screwed. I’m not just talking about being raised on Lunchables and Ren and Stimpy so we spend all of our money on charcuterie boards and drugs. I mean we are inherently disadvantaged in the financial world. We are earning less than previous generations in our jobs, we’re saving less, investing less and everything is more expensive. A recent tweet from infamous NSA whistle blower Edward Snowden highlighted the massive disparity between what millennials are paying to just be alive vs the generations that came before us:
Millennials are staring down the financial barrel in 2021. We’re seeing record inflation levels, crushing student loan debt to the tune of nearly $40,000 per borrower and unaffordable home prices, delaying our entry into the start of “The American Dream.” As a result, we’re delaying getting married, having kids much later in life and upgrading our homes. We also just lived through our second “once in a generation” financial crisis, with the 2020 COVID pandemic serving as history’s most morbid encore to the 2008 housing crash. We’ve seen loved ones go with the pandemic, we’ve seen people, including ourselves, lose jobs in record time and now we’re crippled under the ever-increasing weight of credit card debt.
A natural question to ask after reading all of that might be: “Why in the living hell did you bring all of that up?” It’s simple: because much of the traditional financial advice doesn’t really apply to us anymore. Our parents saw record stock market returns, cheap homes and relatively stable economies for extended periods of time. So today, I’m going to take you through some of the advice that helped me dig out of $9,000 of credit card debt and renting an apartment to being credit card debt free and saving enough for a down-payment on my first home. This is just advice, and everyone’s situation is different. If you need help with taxes, investing or estate planning, please contact a professional. Let’s get into it.
