Younger Millennials “want to make sure people know they are spending a lot…” I just took a look up the ladder in my post The Bubble: GenX Meets Millennial, and maybe it’s time to look down the ladder to these young Millennials. Thoughts on the younger Millennial cohort? If you are 17-23, what are your thoughts?
So-Called Millennial 
Love Howe’s response to the study. I haven’t read the study myself but Howe’s critique of a possibly selection bias is pretty reasonable. If you survey the type of students who pursue business degree, and by extension you’re only studying college students, then your results will be skewed.
One thing that I find particularly problematic is the conclusion that young millennials want to “show off” their wealth. I actually think the complete opposite is true. Many are forgoing owning a car, and if they do own cars, they are pretty basic grocery-getter type affordable cars. I think many college educated millennials just want to live comfortably, so the goal is not to own a mansion, but to live in a relatively safe neighborhood with a clean living space.
I’d hardly call that idea entitlement, it’s what all human beings strive for. We want to be able to afford food, shelter, and have a fulfilling job. That’s nothing extravagant in a country of so much wealth.
*My comment ended up being much longer than I anticipated.
Yea, I think Millennials have simple needs for the most part, excepting maybe technology. (flat-screen TVs and Apple products). I would say that a lot of Millennials like to show off their frugality. I personally like to brag about deals, and am impressed with others’ cheapness (within reason). The other day I complimented a friend’s new pleated maxi skirt, and she said it was a $1 from Salvation Army. I was doubly jealous…
I agree with entitledmillennial. College business students? The study definitely should have branched out a bit to get better results–it’s like they wanted to do the study just to prove Millennials are entitled. I’ll admit that I was still in denial while in college, so undergrads might still be ignoring the recession and telling themselves they’ll be fine.
I would be interested to see a study done on slightly older Millennials (maybe 23-29). Once you’re out of college, the world hits you and you realize that difficult decisions are in order. Career vs relationships, for example, because good luck finding fulfilling jobs for two young people in one city. I find myself and my friends (all in the 23-26 range) relating to young adults from the Great Depression. Most people I know shop at thrift stores, are very aware of which stores have the best deals on different products and are very conservative in their spending.
I agree, the age span doesn’t even make sense to me (17-23). If you take 5 years to finish your undergrad work, you could be in school not working in “the real world” up until the age 23. So at the very least, a lot of Millennials hit the real world around 22, so that is the majority of the sampling isn’t so great.
Reblogged this on The Narcissistic Anthropologist and commented:
From my perspective, this is not an accurate portrait of generational life stage value, but rather paints an almost ethnographic portrait of a naive and privileged subculture…especially when you throw in an ironic Instagram feed ( ironic because sometime soon the kids posting will realize their own misinformed douche-ness).
Lol, yes, douche-ness. I haven’t done a lot of research or consideration of much younger Millennials at this point. I agree with @entitledmillennial & @Lauren that I think the sample was not very varied or very wide. Also with the extended start-time of “official adulthood” I think 22-23 is about the time Millennials are in the real world, financially and professionally speaking. So the age sampling doesn’t make sense to me either. I know I’m biased, but I agree with Neil Howe on this one.
Not sure that i really agree with the article. Everybody has pretty much summed up my opinions. Great blog post!
Another thing Schewe completely ignores is student debt, which is probably the defining economic issue for post-college Millennials (well, that and un/underemployment). The majority of graduates have loans to pay off, and that coupled with the near-impossible job market means that, logically, most Millennials simply cannot afford to be entitled. Sometimes it seems as though even living paycheck-to-paycheck is a luxury, what with the plethora of unpaid internships we’re being forced to accept. By limiting his study only to MBA students, Schewe disregards these huge factors and pretty much loses all credibility with his study.