Millennial, what do you want? — RAW

DISCLAIMER: As with all my posts, this is simply my view on things, and should in no way represent fully anyone else’s perspective. It should only aid you in shaping your own perspective.

I recently came across the following article: http://time.com/4748357/milennials-values-census-report/, and it sparked some thought as to what it really is that I want and value compared to those older and younger than me.

I was born in the late 80’s, and was incredibly blessed in the opportunities that my parents were able to provide to me. Although they themselves did not have much money in the beginning (my parents were on welfare when they first had children), they throughout my life invested in my education, sending me to private schools and enabling me to join many after school extra-curricular activities. I played 3 different sports through high school, had tutoring, and also took music lessons. All indications that I had much more than most people in this world, and with that I was able to go to an ivy league school and secure a very well paying job before I even graduated college, which I did with two degrees in Business and Biology. I then spent 5 years traveling the world through my job, working in 3 different continents and over 10 countries, being exposed to other cultures and ideas at a breadth and depth that very few others get to be.

What is the point of all this? The point is to give you a picture of the context that I have in forming my conclusion to focus on professional advancement right now instead of personal advancement.

To better define what I mean by professional vs personal advancement, here is what I mean:

  1. Professional advancement: this is defined as advancing your career, specifically working for promotions, higher income, better benefits, more job security, etc. All in all increasing your monetary prowess or influence (if you are a politician).
  2. Personal advancement: this is defined as developing your personal relationships with friends and family and yourself as a person. This includes continuing to build deep relationships with friends, finding that special someone to spend the rest of your life with, spending more time with family, working on hobbies, and investing in personal health. All things normally considered to be sacrificed for professional advancement excluding some small exceptions.

In the end, this is the classic work/life balance.

What the article sited above seems to point out is that Millennials, the generation I belong to, care much more about education and “economic accomplishment” with marriage and children being less important. And this is true for me, and I would actually push the concept further.

It is not that I don’t want a family or don’t want to find someone to spend the rest of my life with. I very well actually found someone I wish I could spend the rest of my life with, it is just the prospect of providing my future family with the same opportunities that I had is exponentially more expensive than when I grew up. A simple look at some of the largest drivers of cost for a family to live like I did reveals the economic burden it is today:

  1. House: ~6,500 USD/month. To buy my childhood home today it costs just over $1 Million dollars, which with 10% down and a 30 year mortgage, you are looking at 6,500 USD per month in costs. By the way with the way the housing market is in my neighborhood, without an all cash purchase most likely above asking price you won’t get the house.
  2. Children’s education: ~4,500 USD/month. Calculating having two children in private school, not including any extra costs for children (buying textbooks, school supplies, fees for trips, etc.).

With just those two expenses, it would require you to have a household annual income of just over $270,000 dollars in California. Mind you this does not include any expenditures for food, utilities, transportation, clothes, and household purchases. This all before even considerations for entertainment. Now with a double income household this is possible, but honestly outside of being in some professional service or highly risky startup where will you find as a 30–35 year old couple a combined salary close to that figure. The kicker is I grew up in primarily a single income household, meaning my mother was always around to provide the care and guidance on a daily basis that me and my siblings greatly benefited from, along with my father being home for dinner most nights. These types of situations were already nearly unseen during my childhood, and now it is near impossible.

Now, this situation is admittedly incredible aggressive. A $1 million dollar house is very expensive, and private school is not the only option by any means. But this paints the picture where compared to our parent’s generation the world is exponentially more expensive now than it was before. And everyone has beaten to death why it is that way. Education, real estate, and health care inflation has been out of control, and average salaries have not been able to keep up. But then what is the answer? These costs show absolutely no signs of slowing down, and just going to cheaper alternatives in housing, health care, and education are not going to work.

So I focus on making more money. It is as simple as that. As a parent does, they fight for the best for their children, and I will want to make sure I am in a good place to provide for my family in a way where they will have even more opportunities than I did, not less. The other side though is that elsewhere in the world precedence has been set for marrying and having children later. In Asia it is not abnormal for men to be married only after 35 years old, and in fact i personally have attended multiple weddings of people above 37 getting married for the first time.

What is interesting is to think of what the implications of this movement will be. Specifically I see three things happening:

  1. Less parent involvement in children’s development: The answer moves to creating dual income households to afford these expenses and longer work hours for those in higher paying jobs. This leaves a growing generation of kids that do not have the parental guidance that past generations had, leading to much higher experimentation and pushing of social limits at a younger age. This will lead to greater both negatives and positives in this world. I predict drug use at younger ages will grow, and our current problems with jail overcrowding and opioid addiction will continue to be a problem while a number of new problems will arise. But along with these problems, we may see a coming of a brand new age of artistic expression and creative solutions. Children will not be as limited by social norms enforced by the past generation as we were, and this may lead to a level of freedom of expression unparalleled by any other time in history.
  2. Brain drain of the US and developed markets: More and more talent is moving internationally where cost of living vs. salary disparities are much smaller. Thus top talent will be attracted to global emerging market hubs like Hong Kong, Shanghai, Singapore, Tokyo, Bangalore, Lagos, Buenos Aires, and Sao Paolo. Although the top talent will still come to the US for top tier educations, with restrictions in immigration laws and the rising trend of nationalism, these top talents will return home and find much greater success. We will lose diversity and breadth in exchange of ideas, where other markets will benefit from that loss
  3. Larger occurrence of genetic based diseases/complications at birth: Because people are waiting longer and longer to have children, there will be higher risk of genetic defects in the population. Studies show autism to be linked to the age of the father at conception, and for many years it has been known that there is a higher risk of miscarriages at older ages for women. Although there are great advances in medical science to fight these trends, medicine does not move nearly as fast enough to stem the size of the growing tide in my opinion. Assisted reproductive treatment although being a very long established set of treatments (starting with artificial insemination in the 1700’s) although seems generally safe is not fully understood and still has slight indications of very small increases of health risk (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1472648313005397). But as medical science has done always, with a greater problem greater resources will be directed to it to solve the problem.

The world will definitely be a very different place in the next 25 years, but the key is to not look at how the world will be worse off because of it, but to look at in what ways the world will be better and see how we can excite that growth further.

)
Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade