Not if they're dipping into it at 30. That's going to kill any kind of compound interest.

Millennial here- I'm bout to not have retirement savings.

lol right? Must be nice to afford to put more than your employer’s match into your 401k

Until this year, the job market was surprisingly good for Gen Z.

14k would have been $132k in 45 years when you would have otherwise retired.

The power is in the interest. Even if you max out your 401k in the future it cannot make up for missing interest earnings on early deposits. Having to use it it now means nobody in this entire generation will ever retire, ever.

I had $20K a 401K and $15K in school loans when I swapped jobs in my late 20's. Guess what I did with it.

3 years later I was able to purchase my first house because I saved up money instead of paying the student loans.

Right now I should be maximizing my retirement savings according to all the advisors. Instead I am using the money to pay for my kids college so they can start off in life above zero instead of -$50k like my wife and I did.

I figured out a long time ago that there is no way in hell I can retire and remain in the U.S. The system is rigged against me. So my goal for the next 10 years is to learn Spanish.

14k is worth 14k, and you can live a very spartan year on it apparently.

Luxury, I had 9.5k and had to spend it to survive for 2 years while I looked for a job.

Yeah what I said last time I saw this article.

Hey, you are responsible for MAGA. Be responsible and do what your forefathers did.

I pretty much said the same thing about my own experience then was downvoted to all hell and accused of being a boomer who caused all this. Wth is wrong with people, no wonder we can't escape this shit no matter the generation.

Right? I'm in my 40s and I've razed every 401k I've had to survive and move between jobs.

Late babyboomer and early genx are doing just fine for the most part. I mean they've spent the last 5 decades pillaging from their children and grandchildren's futures to keep the stock market booming.

If you put a $100 investment in the S&P 500 at the start of 1980, with dividends reinvested, it would have grown to approximately $17,427.60 by early 2025. This is the reason the vast majority of people who vote for Republicans are 55 and older, because they don't care about anything but securing their own bag.

Guillotine is nice.

People would need to stop using their social media, software, webstores etc.

Yes.

But: people still want to be billionaires, what if they became billionaires themselves after coming up with a new invention?

the media-spread call to "pull yourself up by the bootstraps" was a call for the population to "unroot" and "weed out itself". The people give all of their life force to companies, and when late-stage capitalism ends, people will be laid off and thrown away like empty husks.

The last 20 years have lead to widespread social division [link], isolation ("atomistic society" is a term to refer to a society that consists of many individuals instead of being a cohesive fabric) and loneliness. I don't think people will form unions and fight back.

I think it would be very un-American to help the people in need. The american spirit is one of enterpreneurship and adventure, and standing still and being lazy is unacceptable. The american movement is like the wind, if it stops moving, it stops existing. (it turns into thin air). As long as there's progress to be made and big projects to be realized, people will have jobs and income. America can not last, it can only be first. America cannot stay, it can only go forward, it has to leave. It has to leave the world behind and venture into the stars. Thank you for your attention to this matter.

I learned this lesson when I was in middle school. Our school cafeteria sold students expired food. Not, "Oh it's a few days late, these dates are estimates so it's probably fine." I mean food several months past dates, with obvious changes to consistency and taste. Two examples I vividly remember were moist cheetos and ice cream that looked like foam.

I thought it was disgusting and unsafe. I personally stopped trusting all such school cafeteria food from that point (and never touched it again.) My friends, however, didn't seem to care? Somehow?

Every time a friend took a bite and asked, "Does this taste weird?" I'd examine the food. If it was a packaged food, I'd check the date. Every time, the expiration date would be from last semester. I know this, because at one point I started keeping records in a notebook about it.

But before I started doing that, I encouraged the affected friends to tell the lunch ladies and ask them to exchange the expired package for a fresher one. They refused to. They were terrified of "causing trouble." I was like, "It's just a simple exchange. I'll go do it for you." But they begged me to just stay there and say nothing, like the rest of them. They were so scared to potentially upset someone.

Must be quiet. Must behave. Must not dare consider speaking up for our own well-being, even if it means we must literally eat garbage.

I'll give 'em this, the long-game authoritarians from the 90s and early 00s did a bang up job conditioning the kids to accept fascist rule in 2025. Want to know why so many Americans aren't fighting back? Because we've been raised to accept this abuse. Many are active enforcers at worst, or spinelessly compliant bystanders at best. Anyone outside that spectrum is a trouble-maker that the first group would gladly make suffer (while the second group "minds their own business.")

Wait, do you actually have retirement savings?

I'm on the leading edge of millennial and my retirement plan is to die.