By Kari Paul
Published: May 23, 2019 9:46 a.m. ET
Many young people today think civilization may not exist when they’re of retirement age. Here are ways to get them to invest for the future.
Illustration/Sam Island
Lori Rodriguez, a 27-year-old communications professional in New York City, is not saving for retirement, and it isn’t necessarily because she can’t afford to — it’s because she doesn’t expect it to matter.
Like many people her age, Rodriguez believes climate change will have catastrophic effects on our planet. Some 88% of millennials — a higher percentage than any other age group — accept that climate change is happening, and 69% say it will impact them in their lifetimes. Engulfed in a constant barrage of depressing news stories, many young people are skeptical about saving for an uncertain future.
“I want to hope for the best and plan for a future that is stable and secure, but, when I look at current events and at the world we are predicting, I do not see how things could not be chaotic in 50 years,” Rodriguez says. “The weather systems are already off, and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to be a little apocalyptic.”
Mental-health issues affecting young adults and adolescents in the U.S. have increased significantly in the past decade, a study published in March in the Journal of Abnormal Psychology found. The number of individuals between the ages of 18 and 25 reporting symptoms of major depression increased 52% from 2005 to 2017, while older adults did not experience any increase in psychological stress at this time, and some age groups even saw decreases. Study author Jean Twenge says this may be attributed to the increased use of digital media, which has changed modes of interaction enough to impact social lives and communication. Millennials are also said to suffer from “eco-anxiety,” according to a 2018 report from the American Psychological Association, with 72% saying their emotional well-being is affected by the inevitability of climate change, compared with just 57% of people over the age of 45.
“The weather systems are already off, and I don’t think it’s hyperbolic to be a little apocalyptic.” — Lori Rodriguez, a 27-year-old communications professional in New York City
Meanwhile, two-thirds of millennials — defined by Pew as the generation born between 1981 and 1996 — have nothing saved for retirement, according to the National Institute on Retirement Security. The millennials who are saving had an average balance of $25,500 and were contributing 7.3% of their paychecks as of the second quarter of 2018, figures from Fidelity showed. While most millennials say they are not saving because they simply can’t afford to, for others it’s about the feeling that they may not have a future to save for, says Matt Fellowes, chief executive officer of United Income, an online retirement investment platform based in Washington, D.C.
“There is a certain fatalism in this population relative to more recent generations,” Fellowes says. “Psychologically, this population has had more shocks to expectations about their futures than past generations. From a perception point of view, I hear a lot of cynicism about the ability to build retirement savings or whether they will be able to retire at all.”
Climate change may also have direct, and devastating, effects on the finances of young people, an August 2016 study from environmental advocacy organization NextGen Climate found. The median 21-year-old college graduate in the class of 2015 will lose over $126,000 in income over her lifetime to climate-change-induced costs and $187,000 in wealth if that income were to have been saved and invested, the study, titled “The Price Tag of Being Young,” found.
A perennial problem
From the chaos of World War II to the draft for the Vietnam War and the looming threat of nuclear conflict during the Cold War, every generation has its own source of doubt about the future, but millennials are uniquely poised to distrust systems propping up the concept of retirement, says Brad Klontz, 48, associate professor of practice at the Financial Psychology Institute. The current generation of young people witnessed the dot-com bubble burst after the turn of the millennium, the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 and the wars that followed, and the stock-market crash in 2008 and the associated housing crisis.
“What happened in 2008 was an incredible financial flashpoint for millennials,” he says. “After watching their parents lose a job or a home, millennials are contending with a deep distrust for financial institutions and the stock market. That brings out catastrophic thinking, because they’ve already seen a catastrophe.”
HT/Dr. Roy Spencer
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The stridency of Climate Change alarmist fraudulent claims of ever increasing impending disaster is resulting in clinical mental illness affecting mood, thinking, and behavior in susceptible individuals. Lori Rodriguez’s delusions illustrate this well.
Let’s call it Climate Change Psychosis – an abnormal (irrational fear) condition of the mind that results in difficulties telling what is normal climate variability and what is not. Symptoms may include false beliefs (delusions) and seeing or hearing things that others do not see or hear (hallucinations). When you witness the extraordinary claims being made about ‘Climate Change’ by the afflicted, entertain yourself and others by identifying their delusions vs their hallucinations.
Examples:
AOC “We only have 12 years to save the world.” Delusion.
Greta Thunberg “I can see CO2 emissions.” Hallucination.
The author only found one person to quote regarding climate change and mental health and extrapolated to the entire millennial generation. Maybe more data points are needed to see if the speculation is warranted?
The enormous amounts of money being wasted by government and institutions at all levels on non-existent Global Warming/Climate Change hysteria are so insanely large that it is going to impoverish present and several future generations.
They better save for those increases in electricity prices coming if the Greenies get their way. Also buy candles to survive the blackouts.
#blameTimCook
Want, to see something really scary? Dig up or search for a HS Senior class level book for Chemistry, Physics or Math. Make sure that it is for the typical college prep level class not business level classes they had 30 – 40 years ago. Now compare that book with the ones used today.
After retiring, I considered brushing up on my field of learning, Math/Physics. I had used little of it as my last 20 years of work I was in management. The AP Physics course offered was below that in depth of comprehension than my 1959 HS Physics book. It appeared to be what I would call an Introductory course, similar to the courses I taught while in the Navy that had no calculus other than simple first semester calculus and used only HS level algebra.
I’ve been aware of this since my early teens as our family supplements school textbooks with resources from previous generations, my dad with me (probably the generation of material you had for education) and now myself for my kids.
However, what has become additionally apparent is not just that the subject level has reduced, but the quality has degraded appreciably. My children’s maths textbooks have clear and striking errors in their explanations and examples (and some of the questions too, now that i think about it). Personally, i supplemented my high school maths with Schaums(?), first year University textbooks. The level was clearly higher but i found them vastly more instructive than the prescribed texts.
What a crock.
I have four friends of around my age (64) that I know well enough to know their financial habits. Two were forward looking and careful about money, they are comfortably retired. The others saved nothing, spent every dime they earned and more. They are living lives of quasi desperation in a financial hole with no retirement in sight. Millennials are no different, some will grow up and do what is necessary to gain financial freedom, the others will bumble along making excuses for their lack of discipline.
Every generation is special, to a writer. Afterall, the writer has to write something or he/she has no financial future.
Some will buck the trend and get rich.
always the way it has been
always the way it will be.
let them get on with it
The irony (and perhaps hypocrisy) of using an illustration for a post-apocalyptic world, with the prevalent visual cliche of light snowfall, when it is supposed to be depicting a world caused by Global -Warming-.
I sometimes think that the best thing to happen to me was my leaving
school at 14, and then getting a job. Under the old system, and this was
during the war, 1942, by the time we had got to 14 we had a good grasp of
grammar, writing, science, history, geography, woodwork and metal work
etc .We even found time for P.T. and playing sport.
So why today is it deemed necessary to extend education to 18 years, with
all of its complications of adolescence and rebellion occurring.
Unless of course its the Governments way of keeping them off the “Dole””,
perhaps.
As for University, for most getting a bit of paper does not guarantee a job.
That depends as always on demand for a particular skill, unless of course you
go straight into the Public Service or Teaching.
My son who went to a boarding school in Australia said that he did not really start learn anything useful until after he left school.
One of the Saints said, “”Give me a child until he is seven, then he is mine
for life””, so true. We need to clean out the whole of the teaching
profession starting with the Universities, then perhaps we will have citizens
worth something.
Perhaps Heinlin’s ” Starship Troopers” is the long term answer.
MJE VK5ELL
“Starship Troopers”
The book – not – repeat not – the movie.
Short solar and wind, go long on nukes.
And study Chinese script. You will need that to read the instruction manuals, because all the western world nuclear engineers will have passed away with no one being trained to replace them.
Asteroid so large it has its own moon set to whizz by Earth this weekend
Are you saying I shouldn’t bother paying my Visa bill ?
Don’t use Visa