@Anonymous wrote:
Wow I never thought of this as a possibly. I just always hoped the beaten in index fund advice would keep increasing in value. Never thought I'd ever have a problem selling it.
I follow a much more conservative plan for my investment (although I have 6-12% of my net worth in crypto but I have been there since 2012 or so!). I keep about 16% of my net worth in the stock market and rebalance it annually if I can without a tax punch.
I also have a little sis who is a millennial (she's in her early 20s) and none of her friends have a dime in the market and they're not poor kids or anything. All have good jobs, great educations, nice comfortable living but they're totally stock market dumb. Few of them have more than $500 in savings. At least 70% of them have student loan debt they will likely never pay off (6 figure debt). I have no idea how they'd ever buy a home even. It's amazing to me, I am so thankful I dodged the college bullet out of high school (on purpose and this was back in the early 90s that I made the choice to not waste 4 years in a useless university).
The last gal I dated really seriously was the antithesis of the millenial but she was in her early 20s and had saved and invested her way into being worth over a million on paper. No college debt, no luxury spending on boots and purses, no fancy car. The gal I'm dating now is in even better shape, millennial as well -- but all of her friends from college have 6 figures student loans, weak to no 401K and are constantly "depressed and full of anxiety" about their financial future. It amazes me every time I meet some of them how they can afford Amazon purchases and $300/month on their phone+cable+netflix habits but don't have two pennies to rub together...
The thing is, my generation in our 20s were insane spenders, too. It's not just millennials, it's whoever is in that age range, but right now it does lool more scary because I didn't know a single person who graduated with the equivalent of 3 years annual income in student loan debt that can't be BK discharged. So the difference was when we went to college (my generation), most of us went to night school and worked a day job, or had two part time jobs to at least cut the debt down. And college was $20,000-$25,000/year, not $60,000 a year for a master's in digital basket weaving application writing with no job future.
College crushed the millennials, for sure. And no act of Congress is going to fix the trillion dollar mess because most of Congress (like me) is invested in SLABS and other student loan investments. Student loans made me lots and lots of money for 10 years, but it made millionaires out of politicians deeply invested in that predatory trash.
