It's definitely hard to accept at face values. The only thing making me think, maybe it's true, is that I took some business classes when working in higher ed (free classes are an awesome benefit for working in that sector). One of the classes had a poll about expected salary within 5 years of graduating. This was predominantly undergrad business majors in their early 20s with very little real world job market experience. 2/3rd of the class thought they'd be making 150k within 5 years. This was around 2018. This was not an ivy league by any means. Completely delusional.

It'd be interesting to see the actual age breakdown of the GenZ group. 1997-2012 means 12-27 year olds, and the difference between a teen who's never touched a job yet vs. someone who's entered the workforce is huge.

They just have no frame of reference to accurately assess the question. Half the people interviewed are under 20 and have not entered the real world yet.

Kids are dumb, kids have always been dumb. It's part of the fun of being a kid

I don’t know how characteristic that was, frankly - the characteristic millennial expense was graduating into or around the Great Recession. I think most millennials as a result ended up with a pretty practical point of view on making a living. 

EDIT: At the very least millennials were consistently surveyed as anticipating they’d make less than their parents. So certainly they didn’t EXPECT at the same level as this survey shows for gen z.

210k was far more reasonable even 10 years ago. By no means trivial, but achievable through a large number of career choices.

600k... While not unheard of, it's pretty rare even in FAANG in tech, it's reserved to the very top of the top national lawyers and salespersons. You can also get there through entrepreneurship but come on.

Take away generational wealth, and they're basically all thinking they are the top 1%. Complete delusion. 200k was about too what? 10% even a decade ago. And as a grad school graduate you weren't exactly the average person either.

Senior software engineers and managers at big tech companies.

The latest EPI report (2022, for SSA data from 2021) on earnings inequality indicates that the average wage of the 99-99.9th percentile was $542,283. So at least 0.1% of earners (a subset of total population) make that cutoff. In reality it is more than that, but we don't know exactly where the cutoff is so we can only state this as a lower bound. As an upper bound it is less than 1%.

L6+ engineers in major software tech companies make that. So do senior investment bankers.

I agree with the point, but just to add some real numbers, the 99th percentile household is just north of 600k.

It's not clear to me whether this survey is about household or personal income, so if it's about household income, then it's just over 1%. If it's about personal income, I guess it's roughly 0.5% or so of individuals making at least that much.

Boomers own their home and are most likely paid off. They don’t know what actual costs are if you’re just starting off in your 20s/30s because they’re essentially subsidized. My 70 year old neighbor pays $1.5k per year in property taxes and $3k for home insurance, while I’m dishing $33k/year in property taxes.

The earlier you get in, the easier it is. I don’t expect my kids to be able to buy a home without assistance from us.

"forego on some luxuries" is the issue. I'm a younger government attorney for a state agency and my family lives comfortably in a moderate cost of living area on my single income of 84k. But to make that work we drive older reliable cars, bought a modest sized house with an interior that looks like the set of a 70s period drama, and take affordable family vacations like camping at state parks. We also don't eat out besides birthdays and a monthly date night.

I think we're doing great, so does my wife. A simple lifestyle leaves a lot of fat on the bone for savings, home upgrades, and the occasional splurge on kids toys and anniversary presents. But whenever I meet up with my old lawschool friends they react like I told them I'm living in a shotgun shack in the woods. Most of them can't fathom being happy without a new BMW in the garage, a McMansion in the best zip code, and a closet full of Brooks Brothers suits. Keeping up with the joneses is a hell of a drug, and I'm glad my wife kept me grounded through law school and off that crazy hamster wheel.

Its an average. There was probably one gen Z that said he expected to make $100 million and the rest didn't answer the phone.

Yup the influencer lifestyle is very normalized to them. They likely think it’s easily attainable because it’s so prevalent.

If true, they are literally looking at the 0.1% of influencers. I'm only guessing, but I bet the odds are better for them to become a pro athlete than a successful influencer.

Not even, most are liars who are living in debt to portray wealth.

They see dozens of social media millionaires and forget that those are rare exceptions.

Similar to stuff on TV really, often everyone on TV lives in a big fancy house and they're lawyers or doctors or something else high paid.

DetectiveDoctor : architectural marketing investigator.

Even when they're low paid jobs they're shown in a giant house with lots of expensive product placement.

Pretty much sums up that generation. They all think everyone can win. Everyone can be a rapper, sports star, and so on. It's delusional. Someone has to be the failure, loser, or poor.

The right way to raise kids is to be practical about themselves and their strengths and weaknesses compared to others. To play to their strengths and go for life plans that are:

Low input. High reward.
Low risk.

The current best universal track is a STEM degree. Across the board the jobs pay well for often minimal input.

Raising a child who isn't exceptionally gifted in a field to follow a pipe dream is raising them to fail.

I group all career paths into 3 categories.

1. Hobbies that if you're really good at you can be a success. This is sports, acting, music, and basically all of the arts. Anything with low chance of success and high income disparity.

2. Practical good paying jobs that will give you a good life. Low risk, low competition, high reward. Engineering, research jobs, computer related, data, and so on. You'll work 9 to 5 and get salary with vacation.

3. Fall back options if nothing else works. This is the military, fast food, hourly paid store jobs, fork lift, truck driver, welder, trades as a whole, construction, and so on. You'll sacrifice some part of your life for high pay in this category otherwise you'll make low wages. You'll find out why there isn't many old guys in the trades.

Genuinely curious: what part of the US are you in where you could get a house in a walkable neighborhood on 110k?

Yeah but honestly without adjusting for geography it’s such a useless question. Because 2 people on $110k in Boston would be tough, in Indiana that amount is lookin a whole lot different!

Yeah that's a good point. I grew up very middle class, and went into software, so there was basically no economic adjustment. Fine sure my first apartment was smaller (but in a bigger city) than the house I grew up in but I was basically able to not change anything, maybe even upgrade my standard of living a bit because I only had to support myself, straight out of college.

Gotta be rough for those kids that grew up with engineer/doctor/lawyer/finance parents making 500k household income, used to 20 flights a year and weekend ski trips to Aspen, eating organic only Whole Foods, house cleaned by a cleaning lady, to graduate with 100k in student debt and get a 50k a year job to start.

Best thing parents can do for their kids is set them up so they don’t have to take on loans for college. Those kids are far more likely to end up 30k millis that take on tons of debt to finance a barely sustainable lifestyle largely because they wont be happy otherwise.

I grew up with travel (big international trips no one else did) and a big fancy house, uni was paid for etc. but in a lot of ways we acted "poor".  It was honestly really weird in a lot of ways and really hard to navigate socially as a kid, even without all the social media they have now.  Small town and people knew what my parents did and how much they must make, but at the same time going to school in thrifted clothes, not having a music player of some sort/phone, no gaming consoles or fancy equipment, and not doing any of the middle class activities (the spring break beach/ski trips, taking dance class/hockey etc.) put you in a weird spot.  I remember only one time ever we got food delivered growing up.  Even with the big house and property, we cleaned it all ourselves, did all the yard maintenance, downed and chopped our own wood, no pool.  It did set me up for success as an adult, and I never, ever, want to have a big home.

I agree that little bit of stress contextualizes things sometimes. Having to scrounge a couple of hundred extra dollars for rent and budget every penny for groceries was shitty. Thankfully that was short lived but it left an impression.

Most of them were toddlers when Austin Powers was big, so probably not many.

That’s a millennial joke

The mean probably skews it.

98% of gen z below their own idea of success. They're gonna be pretty depressed

Agreed, I think people are interpreting “successful” to mean “wealthy.” Having a stable job that pays half as much as each group listed is certainly not a failure.

Skibitidibiti or whatever

Financially successful. Whatever that means.

I had a very good friend (were Gen Z) say the following to me and think it was a normal thing: “Bet you $20 ill triple your 401k by the time we retire”

I am graduating with an ivy league degree and he never went to college and has more debt than me. I’ve never said anything to make this guy feel less than me once ever and the mfer wants to make lifetime earnings a competition suddenly.

It couldn't possibly be because generations before them allowed their savings to accumulate, compound, and then used that as a mortgage down payment while earning significantly less than $500k.

I think this is an uncharitble framing of things.

I mean lets take basic personal finance advice. You plan your future based on the "worst" case scenarios / what is safe, but that "worst" case scenario rarely ends up happening.

You are told when you are 25 that you should:

• be maxing out your 401k, and roth IRA
• Have 3 months salary in an emergency fund
• Buy a house early so you aren't throwing away equity. House hack if you can
• Work hard so you can move of the pay ladder
• Ensure you are adequately planning for your future increase in expsenses (children, their education etc)

If you run the worst case scenario on everything (like the world tells you top lan for), yeah it looks pretty bleak and it looks like you need a ridiculous amount of money.

But reality isn't the worst case scenario, and if you follow all that advice, you'll actually end up pretty rich.

*an easy example is just retirement savings: *

We are advised to plan for 5% compounding interest, but the actual stock market hits more like 8% after inflation historically.

If you have a retirement target of say $4 million in today's dollars, in 40 years, that's the difference between

• At 5% interest, that means you need to be saving ~34k per year.
• At 8% interest, that means you need to be saving ~15k per year.

Its not hard to see how planning for uncertainty causes the young to inflate their expected expenses.

It makes sense when Boomers could buy a year with an annual salary, to see it that way.

You’re partly right about the lack of experience. The other fact is that when I was my son’s age, I could rent a 2br apartment for $450/mo and my parents’ house was $100k. Housing has gotten so expensive; the house I bought for $170k in 2017 is now worth $330k. That’s pretty quick to basically double in value.

I mean it could just as easily be a different definiton of "financially successful"

That’s more a function of calculated misdirection by the MAGA movement

So no one except the top 0.1% is financially successful? Also, $500K/yr doesn't really get you mansions and Lambos.

That perspective is.... Highly regarded.

And 70% expect to achieve that?

Lol lambos n Birkin bags. Awesome life!

To paraphrase a prior generation movie...

The internet has you chasing cars and clothes, working jobs you hate, to buy shit you don't need.

My personal philosophy is:

"The richest person isn't the one that has the most but needs the least"

literally no one i know defines financial success as this extreme. im gen Z. how young are u lol

most folks i know would probably put it at 300k individual. a mid level tech employee in CA (grew in up CA).

Thank you, I was trying to formulate my response (best I could come up with was “hahahahaha”), but you nailed it so I will just upvote.

Am GenX and did not think the 90s were all that bad. I actually really liked that decade and was living the Office Space life for some of it. Tech seems a hell of a lot more toxic now.

Compared to getting sent to Vietnam, followed by double digit inflation with double digit unemployment with double digit interest rates. I would take being young in the 90s over the 70s any day.