Seems to me that the mindset thing is a valid point, but it's mostly saving pennies when you need hundreds of dollars. Not doing door dash might cut food costs by a few thousand a year, buying a refurb phone might save a few hundred, but realistically, does that make a dent on a house deposit? Does it cover college? Does it allow meaningful retirement savings?
I’m not trying to pick on you individually, but this paragraph
100% contrasts the difference between the generations. I want to point out the resignation and soft-nihilism in so brief a few words.
It acknowledges that “sure, there’s a way to save a few pennies, but I NEED hundreds of dollars”. Older generations worry about the pennies, the dollars solve for themselves.
I would tell the young people to start thinking and acting like millionaires, it’s very easy. A millionaire would make $1,000,000 per year, right? That’s $500 an hour. EVERY reader here might not be able to EARN $500 an hour like a millionaire, but there is something they can do once a week, every week of the year to SAVE $500 over the course of a year with only an hour of effort. That stuff really, really adds up and your labor saving $500 in an hour is so much easier than getting a gig that actually pays you $500 for an hour of your time.
Examples of things I do once a week where I know my one hour of effort is going to net me $500 or more over the course of a year.
1.) Refactor my insurance policies once a year, grabbing all the discounts to shave $500.
2.) Grab the stuff I’m tripping over that I do not want and put them on FB marketplace to grab $500.
3.) Sweep every penny out of every savings/checking/ROTH/401k sitting as cash and make sure they are invested into some instrument such as an S&P 500 fund. (I literally do this when I see as little as a dollar sitting idle)
4.) Go do an oil change, vacuum a car, replace a filter rather than going to the dealer.
5.) Clean the gutters, mow the lawn, clean all the windows. (Each costs nearly $500 and I can whip through a couple in an hour avoiding contract labor)
6.) Prep and cook 20lbs of meat, enough to avoid eating out 4x for a family.
7.) Fight my property taxes by writing an appeal to the board of review.
8.) Cancel two streaming services.
9.) Review the top 100 class-action lawsuits in the country, apply for the 3-4 that I qualify as a class.
10.) Have a wish-list of luxury items wanted. Delete things on that list you no longer want that have been on it for 6+ months, do a quick search on FB marketplace to see if you can find one of the items for 1%-5% of the budget, repurpose the budget set aside for that item.
11.) Schedule an amazon return of something you regret buying over the last 30 days.
12.) Call UPS and FedEx, speak to sales, complain that the shipping rates are too high, get them reduced by 35% on an introductory offer for the next 6 months.
13.) Repair or service something that defers its replacement by a year or two.
14.) Clean the cars and junk drawers for change once a year, deposit $250 in coins that were sitting around.
15.) Follow up on your side hustle to see if you can close one more transaction.
16.) Apply for a better paying job, update your resume and send it out, connect with 3-4 influential people in your network you’ve neglected recently.
17.) Recalculate your tax withholding and report that change to your employer so you are not withholding too much of your income.
18.) Refactor the personal budget to sweep more into savings.
I guarantee that if you speak to the average GenX or baby boomer, they have another 50 examples of similar things to the above that they do to “chase pennies”. The pennies add up and it’s way easier to save $500 than MAKE $500. The younger generations have the nihilism of the top paragraph where its “damn it all, it’ll never work out anyway, I need thousands and I’m not going to waste my time with the little stuff”.
It’s all about the little stuff. Older generations have no sense of entitlement and are willing to sacrifice minor pleasures with pragmatism. This is why the older generations got to amass wealth, we’re doing a task list like above while the younger generations are watching sports or playing video games on their off hours.
