Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Today, because housing is out of reach, many 28 year olds with decent jobs live at home rent-free and so have loads of discretionary spending that goes to food, drink, and travel.
Would they all own their own homes if they dialed back the $300 a week drinks and eating out lifestyle? Probably not. Doesn't change the fact they spend more on luxury items than Gen Xers or Boomers did at the same age.
When I head out to 17th ave or 4th street these days I'm always astonished at the number of 25 and 28 year olds I see casually splashing out for $16 cocktails and $17 appetizers at restaurants that are a few-times-a-year treat for my wife and I.
How many pricy restaurants and bars catered to 24 to 34 year olds back in the 80s and 90s? Precious few. I lived in this city then, and you had bars and restaurants that catered to 20-somethings, bars and restaurants that catered to people willing to splash out a lot of money, but they were not the same places. A high-end bistro catering to 20-somethings would have been an oxymoron in 1995.
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Oh come now - your astonishment at these youngins spending so much money is really a little bit of jealousy mixed with a little bit of resentment (we all feel it).
Fact is, most young people don't buy $16 cocktails and never go to these types of places. In Calgary and Vancouver, there just happen to be a lot of young people who have made a fair chunk of money and/or whose parents have made a fair chunk of money. Most of the kids you see at these places on 17th have no problem buying a starter condo or home. Most do. Many will graduate to million dollar homes by the time they're in their mid thirties. That's just a fact of Calgary and Vancouver life (and any big city, especially one with an O and G boom or Vancouver's housing).
But that's a minority in Calgary of young people, and across the rest of Canada, it's a tiny minority. Yes, there are some young people faking it, but there are a lot of wealthy people in Calgary and in any big city, so a market develops for them to blow their money like they're in a hiphop video.
Elsewhere in Canada and the US - and even in Calgary - the stable middle class jobs have all but disappeared, leaving a chasm between the average 20/30 somethings who make less than or about $35,000 a year, have large student debts, little job security, and unrealistic prospects of owning their own homes.
I really feel like most discussions of "Millennials" deal with the ones who will likely make it out of the crap cycle eventually: parents with some savings, decent educations, connections. Yeah, they had to do a couple unpaid internships, but they'll likely make it back into the middle/upper middle-class. The majority of Millennials in most places in NA barely check one of those boxes, let alone all three: parents with no savings, a crap education, and no connections is a tough way to start out these days.