millennials need to accept that we're middle aged lol

Hi everyone!Welcome to this video that has been on my mind for quite some time, basically ever since I started our podcast, Just Getting Good, where I interview women over 50.It is something that I want to take seriously as a subject, so I have a very copious amount of notes here with me, facts, stats.Because I think that this is for my fellow millennials, and listen, if there are Gen Z, Gen X boomers, whatever, if there are, I mean, even Gen Alpha, get off this YouTube channel, we cuss here sometimes.There may be people from other generations watching this, but I really want to have a conversation from my generation.millennial to millennial.

I'm born in 1989 which I think puts me kind of smack in the middle of the millennial generation and this is something that has been really weighing on me because I think it is, while I'm always here to defend us as a generation and have been doing it on this channel and elsewhere for most of my career when people were calling us lazy, when they were saying that we were spending all of our money on avocado toast and that's why we didn't own real estate, when they were saying we were entitled, etc. I was always first to defend, and still am, quite frankly.And even for Gen Z. Like, I'm not gonna say that I've never had an unpleasant Gen Z stare encounter in my life, but I also know that to paint with an extremely broad brush on an entire generation that was as gravely impacted by the pandemic, socially speaking, as Gen Z was, or a lot of Gen Z was, I think is deeply unfair.And so even, you know, generations to which I do not belong, I am here to push back against the intergenerational slander.And actually, wait, just kidding.I'm actually also here to engage in intergenerational slander, which is to say, at some point, we are going to need to have a bit of an uprising on the boomers, if for no other reasons than real estate based ones, because at this point, the way that boomers are not only hoarding the housing inventory but also depending on price gains.either their children or selling to private equity in order to retire is unsustainable economically.

And we don't want to hear it, Boomers.When you guys went to college, you could finance yourself doing that by working part -time at the local fast food joint.And you got a job in executive leadership at a Fortune 500 company by going into that company as a teenager and being like, hand me a broomstick, chief.I'm ready to work.So, okay.I will engage occasionally in intergenerational slander.

Mostly to try and get boomers to redistribute their hoarded wealth.If no one else, but to your own children, Jesus Christ.But I'm not here to do that on average, and certainly not to people younger than myself.I really think that few things are more unbecoming than... really crapping on the people who come up behind you, especially because, as we as millennials know, they are often dealing with a completely different set of social, economic, political circumstances than we were.For example, graduating into the Great Recession, a lot of what Gen Z is dealing with right now in sort of the early stages of their career, from AI to a decimated job market to even worse cost of living and inflation issues, are beyond what we ourselves had to deal with.This is not a shenanigansy.

This is really to have an intra -generational conversation with my fellow millennials because I do think we are starting to reach a little bit of a crisis point in terms of our relationship to getting older as a generation.And before I get into the depth of this video, I just want to remind everyone that we don't endorse a lot of financial products here on TFD.We actually will say no to vastly more than we say yes to.But one thing we actually do is promote the products that we ourselves use.If you have ever thought about getting your money together by far the most important first step is accurately tracking and managing your money.For me, that means a really good budgeting app.

I've been using Monarch personally for quite some time now.It is what I replaced Mint with, which I was using fora decade plus before.Mint is no longer with us.Tragically, Monarch to me is absolutely the best replacement.It's actually started by some former Mint people.

It's incredibly intuitive.It doesn't sell your data to third parties.There are no ads.You can use it by yourself or with a partner or even with roommates, et cetera.It's very easy to share expenses and have like a 360 view on not just your finances, but the finances of people that you are in any way sharing finances with.I highly recommend Monarch.

You can try it for free before you use it.We have a link in the description if you use our link.It really, really helps us.If another budgeting system works well for you, stick with it.I love Monarch.Cannot recommend it enough.

I hear every day from people in the TFD community how much they love it after, you know, downloading it on our recommendation.So give it a free trial.It's free.What does it cost you?So as I said, I am here to have a real heart -to -heart as we like to do sometimes on this channel.We are at Christian Youth Camp.

Some of us were actually at those camps.Shout out Young Life, campaigners, anyone, anyone.But we are at Christian Youth Camp and it is time to flip around that chair, maybe flip back that baseball cap, pull up and have A loving but necessary chat.My fellow millennials, I think, are in a really, really difficult position with regards to the concept of aging.As I mentioned, I've been thinking about this subject a lot since starting my podcast where I speak to women over 50.There's a huge number of reasons that I wanted to focus on that for the podcast that I do.

One of which being that I just don't think we listen to women over 50 enough, and I think, quite frankly, they're the most interesting people in our society who have the most interesting stories to tell, and I think I can learn the most from personally.So definitely passing the mic in that respect was really important for me.But another reason that I wanted to do it was because, especially in building my career on the internet and on social media to a large extent,I feel acutely aware of how much ageism you internalize on these platforms without even being aware of it.You know, for example, I would say my most frequently used platform is TikTok, just in terms of what I enjoy.Looking at, I do go on Instagram, but I frankly find that the Instagram Reels comment section is the dark web.

So I mostly use TikTok for my own personal enjoyment, and I have a personal account on there that's really unrelated to TFD.It's just kind of whatever I want to share.One thing that's undeniable about TikTok is that it's geared toward a much younger audience than myself.The largest segment of TikTok users are between 18 and 24.As a 37 -year -old woman, that is a drastically different age group.place in life, and just vantage point through which to see the world.

And I think about that all the time.It's hard not to notice when you are just even passively scrolling the app, you know, people will say something like, Oh, I wasn't even born when the Twin Towers fell or, you know, I was in middle school when COVID hit or whatever the case may be.And that's not a bad thing, right?Like I think that if anything, like I'm in their house when I'm on TikTok, I'm not, people are allowed to be much younger than myself, but it is always a good reminder.And I think anecdotes like that can be fine, but then you have the very insidious side of it where, you know, people will be talking about doing anti -aging regimens in their mid twenties, or people will talk about, you know, sometimes literally someone might say, they'll mention a 37 -year -old speaking about them as if they are truly one foot in the grave in a retirement home, older than the oldest thing you could possibly imagine, right?You see things like that on a very regular basis.

And again, it's very passive.You sort of absorb it by osmosis.You're not seeking it out.But when you spend a lot of time on any sort of very youth -centric platform, and social media is probably the most youth -centric place we can spend our time, much more so than, let's say, your average workplace, or even just the town square, you're going to absorb that narrative.And in going into making this podcast,I was starting to notice ways in which I was, my perspective on aging was starting to be really skewed by that.

I am not exaggerating when I say that hosting this podcast, sitting down with these women, watching the episodes back to edit them, just sort of becoming, I mean, becoming friends with several of them, it has been life changing for me in so many ways.There's very personal ways in which it's been healing for me based on kind of my own experiences situation in life, but it's also just such an extraordinary reminder that so many of the narratives, especially as women, that we receive about aging and getting older are complete bullshit.We literally just interviewed a woman a couple weeks ago who said she did not even start having good sex until she was in her early 60s.Like some of the women I'm friends with from the show who are single, like their dating lives are sexier and more interesting and more frankly hopeful than many of the women I know in roughly my age bracket who are dating or even compared to stories I heard from my friends dating in their 20s.And it's not just for romantic stuff, right?They're also having incredibly vibrant friendships that are in many cases so fulfilling and so embodied that they're not even looking for romantic love.

They're also in control of their own financial destinies.They're starting businesses.They're completely changing their lives.They're moving to different countries.On every level, Doing this podcast has been an amazing demonstration that not only are we not old in our 20s or 30s or whatever, which I think should be obvious, but we're not even old in our 50s, 60s and beyond!Like, we are only old when we stop being curious, when we stop trying, when we feel no longer connected to the world and to the people around us.

It is a good reminder that age is truly a question of how we think and feel about ourselves.We've also talked quite a bit on the channel about how a positive view of aging has just as great of an impact on longevity outcomes as things like diet and exercise.A recent study has shown an average of about seven years of lifespan.being driven by having a positive outlook on aging.We've also seen that social connections are one of the most important aspects to a long life and are one of the most common threads when you look at those so -called blue zones where people are living very long and well into old age.I actually just wrote a whole newsletter all about this because I'm very interested in the science here.

There's even a study that I absolutely love to talk and think about which is they put a bunch of 50 -something men into an isolated house for a few weeks where there were no mirrors, there were only photos of of themselves from 20 years ago.All of the decor, the music, the TV, etc. that they were exposed to was that of 20 years prior when they were in their 30s.They just let them vibe out for a few weeks and at the end of the study, not only did they report feeling vastly younger, they actually had physiological outcomes that were drastically better than when they started.So our perception of feeling old, feeling decrepit, feeling like we don't have any more value, that has a direct, not just psychological, but physiological impact on our bodies and in our lifespans.

So thinking about that, I think, is always a very important reminder to me.

And this podcast, more than anything else I've ever done, really teaches me that.This is not to throw boomer mothers under the bus as a rule, because many of the women I've been interviewing are boomer mothers.Fucking slay as hell.That being said, a lot of women who were raised by boomer women were probably raised with a lot of really toxic narratives about weight, about age, about appearance, about value, about what women are supposed to do, supposed to wear, supposed to want at different stages of their lives.And we were also often raised by women who maybe weren't in the best marriages, maybe didn't go into having children, really understanding themselves, let alone understanding what they wanted out of life, and pretty much entirely lived through those children, and especially when the children grew up and left the house, didn't really have a whole lot left.This is not true of all boomer women, but boomer women unfortunately

were raised in a context where we were just not living on your own terms as a woman.And sort of choosing your own destiny and opting out of a lot of things was not really presented to women.

It was a very different time socially.Expectations were very different.And also, the economy was a lot more permissive of having families on, let's say, a one blue collar income situation.Like, it was a lot easier to just sort of default into family life.And there was a huge social pressure to do it.

But there was also not even nearly, and by the way, our conversation today is not anywhere near sufficient, but there was not even a fraction of the conversation we're having today around what do you actually want as a woman.But so when I look at millennial women in particular, sort of the third reason that I wanted to do this podcast, beyond getting out of my own ageist impulses and self -critical impulses from being on social media, and also to just really expand my mind as to what life after 50 for women can look like.I think a lot of times when I see my fellow millennials' relationship to aging, I feel a deep sense of like almost kind of secondhand embarrassment toward my own generation that I really want to unpack in this video because I think anytime I'm feeling a sense of like, that's not a good look, I want to take a step back and interrogate that judgment in myself, but also look at the broader social factors that are really bearing down on it.So you don't have to look really far on the internet to see people, often Gen Z, pointing out millennial cringe.Like I've seen countless videos on TikTok that are millennial cringe.I recently did a deep dive into what is called the quote, quirk chungus subtype, which is apparently a defining millennial archetype where you're, you know, a 30 something, if not even older person who is still very into Harry Potter stuff, loves saying the word doggo, and just generally loves infantilizing themselves, being super over the top, sometimes that will come with things like an obsession.

with Disney, a use of the word adulting to describe common adult responsibilities that, listen, no one has ever liked, but we all have to do.This even gets down into the very niche.In the Reddit thread we pulled up here, one of them talks about, quote, Contact with you to gauge your reaction to the bullshit.You're currently viewing that feels kind of excessive I don't maybe I'm trying to think if I've ever done that to a person younger than myself.

I probably have this is also a tiny digression But I do want to kind of hold space for this as a youtuber speaking of the channel in terms of the millennial quirk chungus archetype the like doggo pupper like rub my butt and feed me pizza or whatever the like memes are.the era of youtubers that a lot of uh millennials grew up with like did untold damage just in terms of like our collective sense of humor and means of expressing ourselves like i forget who said this but someone who was a youtuber when i very first started This is like some lore drop so buckle up She referred to youtubers as 30 year old 15 year olds and my my was that true?Like I remember because when we started this channel We were a production of John and Hank Green who at the time owned VidCon which was like the massive YouTube conference still exists But they don't own it anymore So even though we were like a minuscule channel back in like 2015 to 2017 Because we were a production of the people who owned the conference like we were with the band like we had the ultra VIP Backstage passes like we were I mean we were truly fucking Nobody there, but we got to, my partner Lauren and I, we got to really see up close behind the scenes, like name a massive YouTuber from that era.We were around them all the time during these like conferences and whatnot.And when someone referred to YouTubers as 30 year old, 15 year olds, like that was exactly it because we may forget this now, but like a lot of the big YouTubers who were in their, like, let's say late twenties to early thirties,like their audience was like drastically younger than them like often they were literally like their average age was like 13 to 17 so these people were really catering toward children or like pre -teens and You could really see that in the way that they interacted like they spoke and acted behaved as if they were teenagers But they were obviously drastically older than that and one thing about our channel here on TFD is that we have always had a very old audience by YouTube standards like even back in the day our audience was like late 20s early 30s and now it's Roughly the same a little bit older as I've gotten older and you know, the channel's gotten older but like for the most part like we're grown -ups watching this channel and you guys can see that in the discourse in the comments, but like a lot of Internet creators, a lot of the people who really defined a lot of internet culture and by extension millennial culture, they were talking to children and they were talking like children.

Even the lives that they were presenting were sort of this...Perpetual adolescence.I'm like, I mean, look at me. I'm sitting on the floor of a bedroom, although it is a guest room in a farmhouse in the south of France.So, hopefully there's like a slightly different vibe to it.But like, nonetheless, there was a real sort of perpetual adolescence that was part of that.the language of the internet that millennials grew up on.

And I think that that perpetual adolescence has in some ways translated into an endless nostalgia and a sort of arrested development around how we express ourselves, what we find funny, our sort of sometimes cringe humor.And I think that's a lot of what Gen Z is pointing to.And I just want to say this.A lot of times when Gen Z's are calling Millennials cringe, what they're really talking about is us being sincere, not afraid of looking silly, and like we're having fun.I'm sorry, but call me cringe everyday because to be cringe is to be alive.Like, I'm out here, I'm sincere.

I was raised on sincerity, I will always live in sincerity.I try hard, I show up, I try visibly like you guys.catch me out here trying.I care.I want to do a good job.Sincere in my emotions.

And I love life.And I'm out here living and don't care if that seems cringe to you.Okay?And that's the millennial superpower.Because I would so much rather every day be like overly sincere and somewhat cringe than be like...Like, I don't care about anything.

Like, all of this is wet.When Gen Z acts like trying is cringe or being sincere is cringe, that reminds me of, like, I came of age in the early 2000s in high school where people would call things gay.Like, they would be like, oh, it's gay to do X or Y, and often that would just mean, like, lame or, uh, unappealing, unbecoming, or whatever the case is, like, trying hard in class.Like, you would be - you would be fielding gay accusations if you just, like, tried to get a good grade.Do you know what I mean?Or like you, you had a full backpack instead of like struggling to carry your books.

Like that's, you were feeling gay, quote unquote, gay accusations for everything.And gay didn't even really mean like gay, like homosexual.It just meant like lame.And I feel like that's often like the things that are being called cringe or the things that millennials in high school would have called gay.We need to lose all of these concepts.Cause often what we mean is just like, we're trying and sorry, Gen Z, millennials are trying and we care and we love.

And we laugh, and we live, and we're feeling the rain on our skin.

Suffice to say, the sort of overarching theme of what a lot of Gen Z in particular criticize Millennials, which to be clear, when older people are criticizing Millennials, we're usually still getting a lot of the same lazy entitled participation trophy avocado toast tropes.

From younger people, we're getting tropes that really boil down to self infantilization, an over -reliance on nostalgia, and sort of an entitlement to seem and feel and be perceived as younger than we actually are.And I want to be very distinct here because there is a massive difference between I am not feeling burdened by my age, which I

think very much defines a lot of the women I've interviewed, and I'm living my life on my own terms, regardless of what society is telling me I should be doing at my age, which I think is very healthy, and really trying to reclaim an age that is younger than ourselves.One of the things that I will see a lot, and I think I'm being fed this because I'm a 37 -year -old woman, which is we're starting to get to the age where For some reason, and I swear to God, when my fellow millennial women do this, nothing makes me feel more of an I'm -not -with -them feeling than when they'll post videos or photos of themselves specifically bragging about the fact that they look so much younger than they do.A 20 -something will be getting roasted on TikTok for having sun damage, which is, this is one of the things that I see on TikTok, and I'm like, I've taken unfathomable psychic damage from having to see this, but a Gen Z -er who looks maybe a little more like me worn or leathered, I guess, in the skin than an average 20 -something will be getting fucking ripped to shreds in the comments.A woman will post a video of herself making muffins and they'll be like, why do you look so old?But then some of my fellow millennial women with vastly less decorum and wisdom than I would want to see from someone in my age bracket will come into the comments, post a picture of themselves and be like, I'm 37, by the way, or I'm 39, or I'm 45, by the way.

And it's like, first of all, bitch, Rarely, rarely are you posting a photo of yourself to flex on how young you look and you actually do look that young.

Also, you're often posting the best photo of yourself that's been edited or filtered or whatever.But even if you were like fucking Jessica Alba, who will look, I guess, 31 until the day she dies at this point, which congratulations to her.Even if you are one of those women who genuinely looks Age -defying.How uncouth to go into not only any video in any social space and essentially dry -beg for compliments about how young you look, but also to do it specifically to dunk on a younger person who looks a little older than their chronological age.Like, have some dignity.Anyone who posts a video on social media, especially a platform that's mostly populated by, like, early 20s

-somethings and straight up asks people how old they look, like, you deserve to be told that you look horrible.Like, I just, what are we doing?Like, even in the best case scenario, have some dignity.Why are we doing this?

And again, even if it goes well for you to ask how old you look or to try to stunt with how old you look, You are reinforcing the exact same narratives that I sincerely hope that we are growing out of as a generation, which is to not over -index on your physical appearance as an arbiter of not only how young or old you are, but the kind of life that you get to live.Like, one thing that was really notable about my podcast with these women is that often the stories I was hearing from these women about living these really fabulous, dynamic lives that, yes, surprise, surprise, do involve sex and romantic love and desire and all these things, they are not women who look 20 20 years younger than they are.They have wrinkles.They have gray hair.Their bodies are not in the exact same place before 50 something years and however many kids.They look their age because it is not about having to imitate youth perpetually to be desirable.

What we need to focus on is our mental age and the limitations that we place on ourself as a result of that.So anytime you are Essentially again dry begging for compliments about how young you look you are automatically feeding into the most toxic narratives about what it means to get older or this idea that as a woman especially you need to sort of earn your keep in society by looking younger than you actually are.We also as Millennials in addition to over indexing on things like nostalgia and self infantilizing and you know obsession with the appearance of youth if not necessarily the life of youth we are also we have a lot of bad habits that you know for example when you look at our average screen time compared to that of like a gen z like we do have a lot of these same very anxious habits that we often associate with people younger than ourselves i'm part of that by the way i took like six weeks off of tiktok for example because i was really unhappy with my screen time and i'm very happy to say that i became literate once again in that period and i'm prettymore books this year than I've read in many years prior and that feels like a real victory to me.But it's not to say that only young people are, you know, Capable of being obsessed with things like technology or of quote -unquote wasting their time or diminishing their attention spans But often when we look at the criticisms that are made about Gen Z about them You know having the Gen Z stare having no attention span being unable to you know Concentrate on something or ever be bored like Millennials have a lot of those problems, too It is certainly not unique to Gen Z So I think it's also an imperative for us Millennials to be very honest with ourselves about like we're the first to criticize often the sort of horrible Gen Z habits, especially as it pertains to technology.And yet again, you look at the studies, you look at the numbers, we're not that far behind in terms of technology really dominating our lives.

It's a joke to say that like Gen Z can't do anything without asking Chachi PT.I know plenty of millennials for whom that's true.Plenty.Although I would say more often they use Claude.But I've done a lot of talking about what I don't like and what has really pushed me to want to change the way I think about aging, especially as I myself get older.I do want to have Like, hold some space and empathy here for my fellow millennials, even as I make these criticisms.

So, I am a unique situation for a millennial economically, right?Like, my socioeconomic status is much higher than the average millennial's.When you consider the factors that I did not grow up with money, I'm working in an industry that is very much the first time for anyone, it's not like..I was grandfathered into any kind of industry, and I don't have a college degree.So statistically, I should be living a very, very different life economically than I currently do.

I consider myself like a very not nostalgic person because I feel in many ways that my life has gotten significantly better with every passing year, that I enjoy it more, that I'm doing more of what I love, that I know myself better, that I just feel happier and more fulfilled with each passing year, which makes me nota very nostalgic person.That is a huge privilege, right, especially economically.For a lot of people when you are aging and economically you are not where you want to be or you are not where you need to be from a purely financial sense, like it is very difficult to feel better with age.That is also a huge privilege on the health front to be, you know, able -bodied and relatively good health, to be at a good place for your age bracket on all of these factors that is a huge advantage when it comes to not being overly nostalgic or not you know waxing poetic about how much better things were at a different time in our lives.For me like my early to mid even late 20s like I was still very much muddling through figuring things out and things weren't as good for me as they are now.

That is not the average trajectory of a lot of Millennials so I do want to just kind of name and make space for the fact that the millennial, the quirk chungus millennial who can't grow up and is obsessed with the appearance of youth, for a lot of millennials, that physical appearance, that, you know, skin care routine, that glow, all of that is kind of what you have because you don't have a lot of the other typical markers of what we would consider to be an adult.There's also, as we've discussed before on the channel, a strong correlation with physical appearance and beauty and how much you stand to earn from one Harvard study, quote, above average beauty earn about 10 % to 15 % more than workers of below average beauty.And the size of this beauty premium is economically significant and comparable to race and gender gaps in the US labor market.So there's a very economically valid reason to wanting to optimize for your beauty.And as much as I don't like to see it when millennials are coming online to brag about how young they look, I also understand from both an ageism perspective and a sort of looksism perspective, there's a real economic value there.And while it may seem like an oversimplification to link our economic immobility to our cringe slash seemingly childish habits, I do think there's truth to it.

for most Millennials buying a home does feel impossible or at least currently out of reach as to things like having a family like I am someone who is Identified as child free by choice in part because I want to be clear that like this is an active choice on my part We're not like battling infertility or other things but I also have to acknowledge that for a lot of Millennials even if they wanted to have children and could have children physically like that is an economic impossibility either having children at all or the number of children that you would ideally want.A lot of the things that we typically associate with getting older and being in a different phase of our lives is really, really out of reach.But I think there's also this effect of, if you cannot buy into some of the typical markers, like owning a home, having a child or multiple children, being in a certain place in your career, et cetera, what you're going to spend on are the things that you're able to spend on.So for example, take travel.Millennials spend less than average per trip than their boomer parents, but they take a lot more trips.One McKenzie report said, quote, And for millennials, prioritizing experience spending is tied to identity.

Quote, for previous generations, travel was a status symbol.And not to be really bleak about it, but you can't klorna your way into owning a home, but you can klorna your way into travel.You can fund an entire vacation on credit cards, buy now, pay later.You could even put literally things like groceries on buy now, pay later apps.And it should be noted that food spending, including things like takeout and going to restaurants, are also part of the massive spending difference between millennials and Gen Z and Gen X and boomers.Young people spend way more on food, especially quote unquote fancy food,

it's easy to understand why like an You know, no offense, but kind of out of touch boomer would be like see that's why you don't own a home It's because you're constantly ordering takeout and it's like I'm a Sita you are never going to be able to save up a down payment and I think a lot of Millennials and Gen Z or have made that calculus and are like well, I might as well enjoy myself I might as well just keep engaging in the things that I am able to afford or at least finance I do want to be clear and I am going back to the budgeting app here that I mentioned the beginning of this video because it is so important to say there are two categories of Millennials economically there are the Millennials who genuinely are in a position where things like home ownership, having children, etc.Maybe.out of their reach financially completely.And there are high earning millennials.I do want to hold space for that, that many millennials are actually economically doing well.Many of them are here in this audience.

However, there is also a middle ground of people who may not be super high earners.They will often be earning less than their parents did.However, they could still do things like own a home, or have children, or engage in those markers.And I think it's really, really important to be honest with yourself about what is possible for you and not just engage in total nihilism.But for the people who are engaged in nihilism, To be clear, I fully was.I got myself into severe credit card debt through the nihilist thinking of, like, well, nothing good will ever happen for me financially, so I might as well just, like, buy whatever I want and, you know...

Bucket we ball type vibes like that's how I got into credit card debt That's why I started this entire channel in the first place was because I had gotten myself into a terrible place with money And I wanted to really like work my way out of it So I'm never gonna like co -sign the idea that it's just truly not possible for a lot of people However, that is the way a lot of people think I also want to just flag We have Cara Perez a friend of ours a friend of TFD's who hosts videos on the channel Sometimes you've probably seen some of them She is someone who is very moderate income and she's actually doing a video soon about saving up $200 $50 ,000 while never earning more than $50 ,000 a year in part because like she genuinely does live a very frugal lower to middle income life and is reallyfocused on um financial health and growing wealth and doing all these things on that modest budget so I do want to say that like it's a lot harder there are a lot of sacrifices required but like she would be the first to say that she lives like a very rich life in a lot of ways and like really enjoys her life and is fulfilled um but she is on a lower income like that's just the truth.So there is a huge middle ground here.And I don't want to, again, ever co -sign total nihilism, especially when it's not warranted, but that is the mentality that a lot of people, including millennials are operating on.It's like, well, nothing good will ever happen.So I might as well enjoy myself.

I also want to acknowledge that we are dealing with a student loan crisis that just simply did not exist in the same way.And that is leading to a lot of things like, for example, about 18 % of 25 to 34 year olds living with their parents, which is a percentage that outside of the pandemic, we have not seen since 1940, AKA literally the end of the the Great Depression.And even when millennials are doing things, we're often doing them, quote, out of order.According to the US Census Bureau, quote, the share of Americans who are both married and own a home by age 30 has shrunk from 52 % in 1960 to just 12%, according to new data.And a shocking collapse that has the potential to impact the future net worth of these couples as well as the long -term health of the housing market in US economy.And while the death of the, quote, love nest, the traditional first abode of newlyweds, might seem like little more than a change in lifestyle choices, economists say that it signals a fundamental breakdown in the traditional path middle class security.

And as I mentioned, the child free choice movement has gained real traction in recent years, including for people who could afford children, but millennials do still want children for the most part.It's just the timeline in the economy.A quote, a 2023 study found it's still far more common for people to want children than to plan to stay child free.And that most prospective parents want more than just one child.What's different from the past is that people are increasingly pushing back the ages at which they have those kids often into their thirties and beyond, which can be a gamble because as a 2018 New York times survey reported about 25 % of respondents said they had or expected to have fewer kids than they originally wanted because they couldn't afford them or ran out of time to have their own.number of children.

People of color in the US often say they want large families but end up with smaller ones, a sign that not everyone is able to achieve their ideal scenario.On the Reddit thread that I posted, one of the commenters was talking about how millennials have a tendency to boohoo the economic circumstances or political situation that we came of age into when previous generations were having to deal with things like multiple drafts or the Great Depression or all of these other massive factors and that Gen Z is dealing with all kinds of economic problems that literally didn't exist for us as millennials, as I mentioned earlier on.And that comment really stuck with me for a lot of reasons, because I think one of the things that I've really learned from not just my own life, but especially in doing this podcast is that to some extent, every generation and the specific concoction of social, cultural, economic factors, et cetera, that we're dealing with kind of exist in a vacuum.Like everyone's situation is totally unique.And when I look at, for example, the way that.Gen X and boomer women came into the world and were raised and how they navigated marriage and families and all of that.

There are ways in which their economic circumstances were way better, but there were also ways in which they were way more hindered than my generation of women.And it would be kind of impossible to take a one -to -one examination and say which is better.I, as a millennial woman who, for example, is happily child -free, who owns her own business, who's been able to really carve her own life for herself on a lot of terms that were much less available even a generation or two ago, would not want to switch places.However, if I were a woman who was really aspired to family life and even potentially the stay -at -home mom life, you almost undeniably would have been better off even 20, 30 years ago just because the economic circumstances to be able to raise a family on a single income were drastically better.You will never be able to perfectly account for which generation had it worse.And then even within all of those generations, there's always going to be a ton of other factors that weigh into whether or not it was better or worse.

Like, for example, if you are a black American, You can only go back so far before, regardless of any other circumstance, your life would have been materially worse because you would have been dealing with a level of discrimination that is just legally not even the same.Like, the actual legal infrastructure has completely changed.This is not to say that Black Americans do not face an enormous amount of discrimination today, that that doesn't bear out hugely on their economic prospects, but like, we can see a hard line in the sand between Let's say the mid to late 1960s and, like, everything that came after it, just in terms of functional practicality.Like, I think there was a comedian who was like, I can't get into a time machine and go anytime before 1985.So, even if the economic indicators..

for a certain generation were better, like let's say in the 1950s and 60s, where the middle class like exploded in wealth and prosperity.And we had things like much higher marginal tax rates for the wealthy, which were undeniably economically better than what we have now.We also had things like redlining.We also were very clearly, even things like the GI Bill were unevenly distributed and were discriminatory.Even when we point to our greatest times of economic prosperity, the question becomes for whom?Because it certainly wasn't that way for everyone.

And there are also very real factors that have remained continuous through generations.Like for example, the federal minimum wage has literally not changed whatsoever since before I started this channel 10 years ago.So like clearly there are also through lines that exist across generations.I do think that the fact that so much of millennial sort of cultural education, we were really the first generation to be kind of Raised alongside the internet and so many of the defining voices of the internet were defined by their youth or their proximity to youth.And I think that that has had an untold impact on the way millennials perceive ourselves.And when you combine that with like the ruthless ageism of a lot of the social platforms we see today, like it totally makes sense why this perpetual nostalgia would kind of be part of how millennials perceive themselves.

themselves or perceive themselves.I want to wrap this up by saying that a lot of the economic forces are very real.I would never ever deny that, and that's why I wanted to like in large part dedicate a lot of this video to acknowledging why a lot of Millennials would have a very difficult relationship with aging.However, that being said, I think it is upon us as a generation who really got dealt a not good hand economically, but who also had the advantage of not living under the same social strictures that a lot of older generations lived under, who were able to think more independently, choose our own paths a little bit more, prioritize different things, question things, opt out.One of the things that we have to question most vigorously and really lead the charge on is decoupling our concept of aging from A, how we look physically, or B, any really toxic notions of what a certain age should be.One of my recent guests on Just Getting Good talked about how she hates language like, you know, 50 is the new 30, or, you know, feeling like you're a younger age.

She's like, no, no, no!I am my age, but that age gets to be what I want it to be.And that is how I want to see my fellow millennials really leading the conversation and rethinking it.Every time I see a video of an older person who looks their age on social media engaging in something that we think, older people don't do or shouldn't do, whether that's wearing a mini skirt, or going out dancing till late, or going to a concert, or, you know, dating, including people younger than themselves, or, you know, packing up their lives and moving, or whatever the case may be.Whenever I see that and the person visibly looks their age, I...Nothing makes me happier because I think this is what we need to see.

Anti -aging, I think, has been a really toxic thing for our culture for so many reasons, especially for women.But most of all, because it completely misses the point.We should be against.aging as we've currently defined it, but what we should be against is this inevitable slide into irrelevance or thinking that we've made our choices and we have to live with them forever, or that we have an increasingly limited number of things that we can do or be or think.I want us to really think about anti -aging from the perspective of anti the narrative of aging, anti the social impositions and restrictions of aging.And remember that that has nothing to do with how many wrinkles or gray hairs you have.

Remembering that that is entirely a question of your self -perception and what you allow of yourself and what you allow of the people around you.I will end this on my begging begging my fellow millennial women to stop posting pictures of themselves and either asking people how old they think they look or flexing on how young they look compared to someone else.Stop it.What does that Michael Jordan mean?Stop it, please, or whatever he says.Stop it.

Like, it's so undignified.And even if you look 25, you immediately feel like you're already in the crypt, baby.Like, if that's your outlook on life, like, you're gone.Like, Forget how young you look, like you're mentally dead.So stop obsessing about how old or young you look.Start obsessing about the prison of ageism in which you are unnecessarily keeping yourselves.

Lose the over -reliance on infantilization and nostalgia.Keep the wonderful joy and sincerity that defines millennials.No more intergenerational hate.More intergenerational lifting us up.Steal the homes from the boomers.Don't let them sell them to private equity.

That's it.That's my spiel for today.Watch Just Getting Good.Feel better about aging.Love you guys.Have a great day.

Talk soon.