Why Millennials are financially ruined

frugal.rock said:

Crikey @Sdajii
Sounds like you've had it easy....
You didn't even mention dumpster diving once, lucky sod... lol.

You are one of the characters on here that I would like to have a beer with, one day.

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Haha, I've never eaten anything out of a garbage bin, though in times of desperate hunger as a child I did sometimes eat discarded food people had thrown away, and as a child I also shoplifted food out of desperation, which I still hate myself for and it's painful to type that even now. Funny thing is, as a child I was living in a household which while very abusive and quite the living nightmare, wasn't at all short on money and I was the only person going hungry. I still have an odd relationship with food and it would be fair to say I still struggle with a form of eating disorder, but for the most part I've eaten well as an adult, regardless of how much I'm spending to do it. If I see an animal hit by the car in front of me (or sometimes the one I'm driving) I'll generally take it and eat it. I've literally never met anyone who would eat a wider variety of foods than I will, even after years travelling in the region of the world with the most liberal food culture (I'd say Laos and rural Vietnam would be world champions there, but even those people won't eat some things I will).

Haha, if you'd like to meet up, send me a message. I'll get there eventually anywhere in Australia, though if you're off the beaten track I may need a night or two on your couch/floor. It's killing me being trapped back in Australia but unable to road trip!

over9k said:

It isn't. You forget that we're the boomers' kids. I remember what things were like when I was a kid, and it wasn't even close to what you describe.


House prices are so high that my parents even state that they couldn't rebuy their place on their current salaries at today's price.

P.S - Sdajii, that's brutal man. I feel for you. Mind me asking what happened?

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I don't want to turn the thread into my personal blog and my current situation is a bit raw for me to feel like posting all of it here, but if you're interested, earlier this year I did post in another thread about my other two big slumps, particularly the one where I was wiped out to nothing (in that case I got wiped out, long story, involved a woman, heh. I was living in QLD, things went bad, my car broke down and I gave it away, I used the last of my money to hire a vehicle, loaded what I could fit into it, threw the rest of my possessions into dumpsters or gave them away, drove down to Melbourne with what I had in the hired vehicle (just personal effects, nothing of particular value), about $100 in my wallet and about $600 in the bank. I arrived in Melbourne on the 3rd if January 2008, which turned out to be a challenging year to be bouncing back, but 2 years later I was making about $5-10k per week and about 3 years later I had a portfolio of about half a million AU$. There are obvious elements of that story which felt/feel familiar for me in 2020, and I posted a fairly detailed story about my 2008-2010 inclusive back around April this year, which at this point would be a better read than my current story which is still in the early stages. I'm getting older now and don't want to go through this again in another 10 years or so, so I'll not put myself into such a potentially vulnerable position again. A very brief comment on my current situation... I've mostly managed to get over thinking about it now, but I'd spent three years setting up a business in Asia which would have been very profitable, I knew that as a foreigner I was vulnerable to anything upsetting the system, but bet on there not being some sort of world-changing calamity (I actually wrote something like that in my business projections - 'Unless the world comes crashing down, in which case everything is a write off, worse case scenario is XXXXX, my best case XXX and blue sky XXX'. Around January I was excited because it looked like it was going to be closer to blue sky scenario, I just had the hassles involved with doing business as a foreigner (or sharing a portion of profits by putting the business in a local's name, and the hassles of being attached to them), but this virus thing had me slightly worried, because it seemed to potentially fit the 'world crashing down' clause I'd given myself, which as it turned out, did write everything off. At 40 years of age it did seem risky to put all my eggs in one basket in an offshore business, but hey, we probably weren't going to have a black swan so I probably would have been doing extremely well. Such is life, I'm still here and I'm sure I'll bounce back again. Hey, the last six months has been fantastic. Part of me feels like it has been terrible because I have a small fraction of the wealth I was anticipating a year ago, but at the same time, pretty much everything I have is something I didn't have six months ago.

Smurf1976 said:

The issue isn't about phones in a singular sense but if someone's spending over $1k a year keeping up with the latest phones then whilst not impossible they won't, it's pretty likely that they're going to keep up with fashion in other areas too. Do that and all of a sudden it's not an extra $1k a year for a phone, now it's an extra $10k a year for phones, tablets, laptops, speakers, accessories, TV's, clothes and whatever else all in the name of fashion.

It doesn't take too many years for a pretty substantial wealth gap to open up between that person versus the one who took the $10k, invested it and compounded the returns.

With anything there will be exceptions but a life observation is that "profiling" works hence it's no surprise that marketing, employers, banks and all sorts of people use it either consciously or subconsciously. The idea that someone who acts in a certain way in a given situation won't necessarily but in practice probably will act the same way in a similar situation. Or in other words, most people are fairly predictable if you know enough about their past actions.

There will be exceptions of course as with anything but life experience to date is broadly in line with that. The richest person in the room doesn't stand out in the crowd.

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Absolutely, I figured that it was implied that we weren't just talking about phones, but they were just an example of the mentality of unnecessary spending, whether it's a fancy car, phone, necklace, shoes, house ornaments, smashed avo, etc.

Put it this way, the amount of money the median Australian spends unnecessarily is enough to live comfortably on, and they do it on top of living comfortably.

If you work hard and live uncomfortably, saving as hard as you can, you'll quickly have enough to invest, and it doesn't take too long to get to the stage where you can live comfortably while saving. I'm not the first person to find the obvious solution ("secret") - living below your means until you can comfortably live at your desired standard of living. The further below your means you live, the sooner you'll be able to live the life you want. Australians now feel entitled to a life they can not afford, so do whatever they can to live as close to that life as possible, which means they don't save/invest, which means they never get what they think they deserve, which means they complain about things being unfair, despite having such incredible opportunity.

over9k said:

Is this what the boomers did when they were our age?

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I think you will find most boomers did it hard when they were young, but they certainly didn't do it harder than their parents who lived through the war and post war years.
I know when I was going to school, after arriving in Australia in the mid 1960's, my mother would ask what I wanted in my sandwiches, sugar or dripping and I hated dripping.
I started writing to explaining how hard it was from 1970-1990, but cancelled it because I'm sure no one wants to hear about it.
What people have to realise is, unless you are lucky it is hard to get ahead, that's why a lot don't get there.
If it was easy all baby boomers would be rich and own their own houses, when in actual fact most I know either don't own a house or are still working well into their 60's still paying for one.

Sdajii said:

Absolutely, I figured that it was implied that we weren't just talking about phones, but they were just an example of the mentality of unnecessary spending, whether it's a fancy car, phone, necklace, shoes, house ornaments, smashed avo, etc.

Put it this way, the amount of money the median Australian spends unnecessarily is enough to live comfortably on, and they do it on top of living comfortably.

If you work hard and live uncomfortably, saving as hard as you can, you'll quickly have enough to invest, and it doesn't take too long to get to the stage where you can live comfortably while saving. I'm not the first person to find the obvious solution ("secret") - living below your means until you can comfortably live at your desired standard of living. The further below your means you live, the sooner you'll be able to live the life you want. Australians now feel entitled to a life they can not afford, so do whatever they can to live as close to that life as possible, which means they don't save/invest, which means they never get what they think they deserve, which means they complain about things being unfair, despite having such incredible opportunity.

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You absolutely nailed it there Sdajii.
My first house was bought from one of these sort of companies, but based in Perth.
Then put it on a cheap 3acre block in a country town 200klm from Perth, the next two years I spent fixing it up every spare minute when I wasn't at work, then I sold it and moved.
The thing to remember is they don't move bricks, so there is usually a hole in the middle where the fireplace was. ?

sptrawler said:

I started writing to explaining how hard it was from 1970-1990, but cancelled it because I'm sure no one wants to hear about it.
What people have to realise is, unless you are lucky it is hard to get ahead, that's why a lot don't get there.

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I'm not someone who worships actors and people like that, not by a long shot, but by virtue of being famous there's far more information available about them than there is about most people.

Do some research and to cut a long story short, there's no shortage of people who ended up internationally famous in acting, music etc who've previously lived extremely humble lives. Humble as in living in tiny flats shared with others with no running hot water or even living in a van parked on the street and that's for years not just a day or two. Sure they made it eventually and ended up with fame and $ millions but point is they didn't get there easily, they didn't finish high school then go straight to the top of the music charts or making a fortune from acting just like that.

I mention such people only because most associate them with being seriously rich. They may well be - but only after they've made it and where the lesson lies is that many have a far more humble background. Very few people don't struggle at some point in their lives, even those who are now rich and famous often have a period of that in their background.

Smurf1976 said:

I'm not someone who worships actors and people like that, not by a long shot, but by virtue of being famous there's far more information available about them than there is about most people.

Do some research and to cut a long story short, there's no shortage of people who ended up internationally famous in acting, music etc who've previously lived extremely humble lives. Humble as in living in tiny flats shared with others with no running hot water or even living in a van parked on the street and that's for years not just a day or two. Sure they made it eventually and ended up with fame and $ millions but point is they didn't get there easily, they didn't finish high school then go straight to the top of the music charts or making a fortune from acting just like that.

I mention such people only because most associate them with being seriously rich. They may well be - but only after they've made it and where the lesson lies is that many have a far more humble background. Very few people don't struggle at some point in their lives, even those who are now rich and famous often have a period of that in their background.

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This is so true. If you're comfortable you want to stay comfortable so you don't want to risk losing what you have, and don't have a burning desire for more. You've never been genuinely uncomfortable, hungry or wanting, and you literally can't imagine what it's like.

If you're born into great wealth you may keep it or fall into normal comfort.

If you're dirt poor you'll either accept your place and wallow in it, or use your situation as motivation to work harder than everyone else because your need is greater, and you are accustomed to discomfort, hardship and extreme effort, so you don't fear it (willing to take risks) and happily or perhaps ruthlessly strive like others won't. It's a mindset people born into comfort will never understand. If you meet a particularly bright, switched on child in a horrible living situation, follow their life, it'll be interesting.

Crikey this thread reminds me of when I had to sleep in the car just to save fuel a few decades ago.

Didn't even have a shoebox back then, still don't

I think the issue is two fold,

1, the people under 35 today do have the tide flowing against them a bit more than older generations

2, They could over come this tide relatively easily, how ever most receive next to no basic financial education, the everywhere all the time targeted social media advertising can easily lead people a stray when it comes to what it actually good for them.

I am classed as a millennial, and certainly control more wealth then the average boomer, But I had to be very self disciplined to get there, and I can see the traps alot of my generation has fallen into. I mean having the GFC hit right in the middle of when this generation were meant to be beginning careers and beginning investing was a two barrelled blow.

But these things will level out, as older generations die off, one way or another the generations below will inherit the world.

I normally like a lot of your posts @over9k, but this post and that vid are a complete load of bollocks.

frugal.rock said:

As us country bumkins say,
next time the winds blowin the city direction,
we'll chuck a cup of cement powder in the wind with hopes of hardening youse up.

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Are these the same country bumpkins that cry for city folk to donate coins to them every time it doesn't rain for a while ?

Just kidding, but the geography gap seems to be just as big as the generation gap, Boomers seem to think they are harder and smarter than the generations below, and county people seem to have the same hang up against other regions.

MovingAverage said:

I normally like a lot of your posts @over9k, but this post and that vid are a complete load of bollocks.

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At no point in this entire thread has anyone actually made any kind of evidenced, explained, counter-argument/refutation. Nobody. All there's been is the standard "Oh when I was your age I slept in blizzards and lived on three rice grains a day and spontaneously combusted every other week blah blah blah". I mean jesus, the first post literally mentioned smashed avocado. It's a complete farce.

The data's there if you care to look - wages, house prices, loan debt, pick your poison. I've said I'm happy to discuss these things if anybody wants to. What I'm not interested in is getting into the pity-party. I can assure you, if you want to do that, you're not going to win it because none of you know my or my family's background at all and so far all the self-pity I've seen has been utter child's play compared to what my family went through. Unless any of you literally faced death (and nearly did die) due to poverty, you aren't going to win.

It's very hard to get someone to understand something when they financially benefit from not understanding it.

over9k said:

At no point in this entire thread has anyone actually made any kind of evidenced, explained, counter-argument/refutation. Nobody

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I'm really not following what you're looking for?

The improvements in technology, health and safety etc are common knowledge. Hard to put a precise figure on since there's no single thing being measured but surely everyone knows that we're living in a world radically different to that of not so long ago.

That air travel, consumer goods and borrowing money have all become extremely cheap is also common knowledge. It's hard to quote precise figures without using the specific examples you seem to not want given the sheer number of items involved but it's pretty widely known that it has occurred, that those sorts of things are extremely cheap now compared to the past.

Unemployment the data's freely available and here it is:


It's still looking pretty good compared to almost the entire period from the early 1980's to the late 1990's. The nature of employment has certainly changed, very few these days work for the same employer for life and most don't even stick with a single career, but they're employed as such.

That the official measures aren't great I'd agree with but they're the data that's available, they're what we have and they don't show the situation being worse today than it was in the 1980's or 90's at the national level. In individual towns it might be but not nationally.

That leaves housing versus wages as where any real debate exists.

If not, then what exactly are you looking for?

Employment and gainful employment are not the same thing, same as we all know the metrics were changed wildly by howard & co. If you work one hour a week the government considers you to be employed now. It's a farce.


Anyways, I never intended for this to be a massive thread all on its own - it was a post in another thread that brought everyone out of the woodwork and the admin moved all the posts/created a new thread with it all, so I'm out from here.

over9k said:

Employment and gainful employment are not the same thing, same as we all know the metrics were changed wildly by howard & co. If you work one hour a week the government considers you to be employed now. It's a farce.

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As an employer of both semi skilled and un skilled the problem as I see it is the employability of millennials.
work and learning skill are just words to the majority of kids we see.
The level of naivety is stupefying. There is a very very small pool of people who can earn their way into a meaningful position with some form of Responsibility.
Competition isn’t there they are all the same. A pool of people —- no a sea of people —- who have no understanding of how to map out their own future let alone the fulfilment of a job offered.

I have a pool of 8 casuals they are rotated only when they just don’t add to our crews.
My guys are ruthless. But out of 30 we get 1 they earn full time.
The way employment laws are these days you’ve got to get full time employment right.
i don’t blame employers hiring casuals at the bottom end of the employment scale that’s the best you can get. Offering full time employment without a proven track record —— in the position offered—— is irresponsible and not fair to those already full time employed.

Here you have to earn it to respect it and those you work with.
You add to the success of those you are working with.
Rubbish attitude spreads like a Cancer. Companies or businesses affected by it are pretty obvious.
Public service is full of it. News flash —— your NOT entitled!

over9k said:

Anyways, I never intended for this to be a massive thread all on its own - it was a post in another thread that brought everyone out of the woodwork and the admin moved all the posts/created a new thread with it all

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It didn't really have anything to do with the economic implications of COVID-19, which was the topic of the thread in which it was originally posted. It's a completely separate issue and one that deserved it's own thread. It has generated a fair bit of discussion too.

over9k said:

Employment and gainful employment are not the same thing, same as we all know the metrics were changed wildly by howard & co. If you work one hour a week the government considers you to be employed now. It's a farce.


Anyways, I never intended for this to be a massive thread all on its own - it was a post in another thread that brought everyone out of the woodwork and the admin moved all the posts/created a new thread with it all, so I'm out from here.

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Nothing has changed much in life, 'you get out, what you put in', there is always those who want to find an excuse for the predicament they find themselves in and wallow around in self pity and then there are others who decide they are going to do something about it.
In Australia there is no excuse for starving, if you are handicapped you are looked after, if you are unemployed you are given money, if you are able bodied there are jobs.
Since the Howard years, we had a massive mining construction boom, that we actually had to fill cleaning positions, with fifo 457 workers from Asia.
Even now in the midst of a nation wide disaster, we have to try and import workers to pick produce our entitled unemployed don't want to do, all it appears they want to do these days is bitch about how hard it is to buy a house in Sydney and Melbourne.
Well maybe they should saddle up and head bush for a job, the mining companies are still struggling to get workers, there seems to be a common word in this thread "work", it has become just another dirty four letter word theses days.
The other chestnut is that older workers wont leave their jobs, so younger people can take them, but they fixed that by lifting the retirement age to 67 might as well blame Howard for that as well.
It's about time the millennials realised there is no one but themselves responsible for their outcome, chase the money, not the lifestyle that comes later.

Joe Blow said:

It didn't really have anything to do with the economic implications of COVID-19, which was the topic of the thread in which it was originally posted. It's a completely separate issue and one that deserved it's own thread. It has generated a fair bit of discussion too.

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Oh not attacking you, just never intended for/thought it would generate such a furore. I would have thought it had a lot to do with economic implications of the virus though as the impacts have hardly been even across society. But you're the admin.

I would have thought that iphones and smart phones were worth more than Tambourines and Guitars,but who knows?

Fancy pants apes. That's what we are. Soon to be dead apes.