Seventy-two percent of Americans aged 19 to 30 say money problems have forced them to put off at least one major financial or life goal. The number comes from a Northwestern Mutual survey of 4,375 adults, and the bottom line is that a whole generation is waiting.
What is on hold
By the numbers: 31 percent of that age group have delayed buying a house, 26 percent have pushed back paying for higher education, 24 percent have put off starting a family and 20 percent have postponed marriage.
Some are doubting the goals will ever be reachable. Thirty-four percent of Gen Z are worried they will never own a home, against 19 percent of all adults. And 20 percent say they may never be wealthy enough to afford children, compared with 7 percent of earlier generations.
“What’s striking isn’t just that young adults are delaying milestones – it’s that many are questioning whether those life events are achievable at all,” said John Roberts, Northwestern Mutual’s chief field officer.
The housing math
The home-buying worry sits on top of historically high prices and an average mortgage rate near 18-year highs, according to federal data. Mortgage Calculator puts the monthly cost of the average home, at the average rate with 20 percent down, at $3,470.95 today. Ten years ago it was $1,952.04.
College has climbed too, though more slowly. Education Data Initiative figures show average public university tuition and fees rising from $8,778 in 2016 to $10,340, an increase of 18 percent. Private tuition is up 42 percent over the same stretch.
A plan, not a setback
Nick Avila, CEO of United Debt Relief, sees a difference in attitude. “Gen Z treats the delay as a plan rather than a setback,” he told The Independent in an email. Older clients described postponing a house as something that happened to them, he said. Younger ones call it a decision they made “because the math did not work.”
Social media adds pressure, said Achim von Bodman, a certified financial planner at Maryland-based Watters CPA. “They see what everyone else is doing in [real] time,” he said. “Older generations just waited quietly; did not talk about it. Gen Z sees a wedding, a new house and a baby on social media every day and it all looks perfect.”
Northwestern Mutual’s study found Gen Z leaning on long-term saving. The group aims to retire at 61, three years earlier than millennials and six years earlier than Gen X, and it began saving for retirement a decade before Gen X and six years before millennials.
