Earlier this week, financial publication MarketWatch published an article titled “Money Milestones: This is how your finances should look in your 30s.” In it, writer Alessandra Malito says that, according to Fidelity Investments, by age 30 one should have saved a year’s worth of salary, and by age 35 those savings should have doubled.
Confusingly enough, the article goes on to explain why millennials do not have these savings (crippling student debt, inability to buy a house, etc.) and then says they should have these savings anyway. “It’s important to be saving for retirement while doing all these things at the same time,” writes Malito, quoting some rich dude whose parents probably paid off his college degree and gave him a down payment on his house.
By “all these things,” the dude meant this: accumulate a year’s worth of salary, keep saving money while paying off student debt, open a Roth IRA, and start saving for kids’ education. Zero advice is provided on how to reconcile this laughable to-do list with the fact that an alarming amount of millennials are living paycheck to paycheck.
MarketWatch made the mistake of sharing their article to Twitter, where the painfully honest responses reflected what financial life for millennials (without trust funds) is actually like.
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