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The future for many young adults of Generation Z is an uncertain one, and while they might not be directly impacted by the current economy, something has to change.
Gen Z has lived through the events like the War on Terror, the 2007 recession, the COVID-19 pandemic, the Israel-Hamas war and the Trump-Biden-Trump presidencies.
So it figures some of them now look to the future with shaky confidence.
A 2024 report from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation said only 51% of Gen Zers felt prepared for their future.
The future that had been promised to their parents and grandparents of neat, steady jobs with a 401(k) and retiring with a house with its mortgage completely paid off now seems impossible to reach for many.
According to a 2024 Zillow report, the median price of a home in the United States is $360,681. With a 20% down payment, that means a prospective buyer of a home should have at least $72,000 to even start paying off their home.
For Gen Z young adults like me, that doesn’t even sound like a real amount of money one can have laying around. This is especially true in Texas, where the minimum wage has not been raised from $7.25 per hour since 2009.
I’m one of those Gen Z kids who listened to the adults around them all their life talk about the financial stresses weighed on them.
I’ve spent many hours at the dinner table listening to them estimate how much I should make per year, before and after taxes, to survive and how I can buy my first house.
I often leave these financial brainstorming sessions with a pit of dread in my stomach.
How could I pay rent and buy groceries, let alone put in the sizable down payment for my first home?
I was also sometimes bothered by another question: Would I even have a future to worry about?
The prevalence of the internet has allowed the world to see how Gen Z sometimes darkly jokes about how humanity is doomed on TikTok or Instagram Reels. Many of them often are detached from the world around them.
Gen Z aren’t directly affected by things like the recent stock market or increasing prices of houses because they are just now coming into the job market and earning a living. They don’t have skin in the game to care about the fact that S&P 500 is down 20% due to tariffs because they don’t own any stocks.
It doesn’t help that in recent years, the disillusionment of the public with American politics has led many Americans, especially young people, to write off their government as ineffective and uncaring.
These financial problems that Gen Z face were not caused by them and for now, many of them adopt a fatalistic attitude about their future.
Change needs to be made to show this generation that they will have a future to look forward to where they can live comfortably, be happy and be financially stable.