CNN.com concluded that 66% of millennials have nothing saved towards their retirement, while gobankingrates.com found that nearly half of all millennials have nothing saved at all. These two polls are not outliers, either: the statistics are consistent, and suggest that the majority of millennials have no savings.
The reasons millennials aren’t saving
Of course, if you ask some people why millennials aren’t saving, they will say it’s because millennials are spendthrift; or because our lifestyles are too expensive for us to save. While this may be the case for some members of this cohort, for the vast majority, millennials’ inability to save is due to basic economic conditions.
The rising cost of living not being matched by rising wages is a major contributor. As a result of this, many millennials aren’t even earning enough to fund their current lifestyle, never mind thinking far into the future for their retirement. The global economy has never truly recovered from the 2007-8 financial crash and, as a result, millennials are set to be a poorer generation when compared to the ones that came before.
How can you save as a millennial?
So, the stats make for grim reading, but you’re not quite ready to concede defeat yet. You want to be able to save money, both for a rainy day and towards your retirement in the future— but how can you do it?
Sadly, there’s no magic cure that will allow you to save more money. The ideas for saving more money are not particularly innovative; they are just fundamentals of personal finance:
- You should look to spend less money and trim back your budget, then save the excess.
- It’s also beneficial to think about lowering your existing debt costs by visiting the likes of debtconsolidation.co and considering consolidating your debts into a single payment. The less you are paying in interest payments, the more you can tuck into a savings account.
- It’s also useful if you take on a side hustle to earn more money— the more you have, the more you should be able to save.
These are revolutionary ideas, but they do work. Remember the fable about the turtle and the hare? The underlying concept applies to bolstering your savings: go slowly, and you won’t go far wrong. Get rich quick schemes simply don’t work, so stick with the basics and you’ll be doing well.
But remember…
Your personal finances and savings are as much about your mindset as they are about the base facts and figures. It may be wise to talk with yourself and accept that the benchmarks you grew up expecting, finance-wise, are not necessarily obtainable in the current climate. We’re already seeing a trend of millennials buying their houses later and later; and many millennials have to move back in with their parents after college for financial reasons.
So when it comes to saving money, do the best you can given the existing limitations. Reevaluating your financial goals to what is genuinely possible in the modern economic climate is a vital part of mastering your personal finances. This should help you focus on what is actually obtainable, which in turn should help encourage your morale and keep you going. Only by approaching your finances with an open mind, rather than pre-set expectations about the money you can earn and save, can you truly master your money once and for all.
Thanks for the link to my blog!