this post was submitted on 06 Jul 2025
163 points (99.4% liked)
A Boring Dystopia
12933 readers
894 users here now
Pictures, Videos, Articles showing just how boring it is to live in a dystopic society, or with signs of a dystopic society.
Rules (Subject to Change)
--Be a Decent Human Being
--Posting news articles: include the source name and exact title from article in your post title
--If a picture is just a screenshot of an article, link the article
--If a video's content isn't clear from title, write a short summary so people know what it's about.
--Posts must have something to do with the topic
--Zero tolerance for Racism/Sexism/Ableism/etc.
--No NSFW content
--Abide by the rules of lemmy.world
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
Also a millennial here, on the older side of it. Got employed right after the .com crash.
Save, just save. $50 a month of you can. More if possible. Best time to start was 10 years ago. 2nd best time is now.
Don’t let yourself get stuck in the debt trap. There is no need to keep up with the Jones’s. Family and friends are by far so much better for your mental health than stuff.
There is no reason to get your burrito a chauffeur. Take life by the reigns and walk up and get it yourself. Even better, skip the premium and make one.
If you want to go to college, fantastic, do it. There are still plenty of schools without resort style athletics programs that are very affordable if you look. Community college the first two ear of matriculation is also an option. A lot of community colleges are now free.
If you live in the US, this country has perverted our sense of belonging so that the hustlers can squeeze you for every last almighty dollar. Don't give in. Don’t let them win. Save some money, work on saving yourself.
You are right, but what if rampant inflation makes all of our saving worthless?
These constant cycles of boom and bust have also effectively lost me 10 years on my 401k.
I don't have the same faith you do that the market will even exist in 20 years, let alone my saving will do anything.
Sadly I've talked to 3 or 4 financial advisors and nobody has an answer other than "trust the market".
If you're saving into a total market index fund, your returns should go up in relation to inflation OVER THE LONG TERM.
I've been investing for decades in VTSAX and similar across a few retirement accounts, and while there have been ups and downs, since I don't touch it and keep adding to it in small amounts over time, I've had great success with beating inflation while doing absolutely nothing to manage my investment.
Yes, there was basically a whole decade that didn't do well, the following decade more than made up for the slow returns.
That's just how retirement investments work. You don't look at a single quarter, year, or even decade, you look at your entire working life plus retirement. And the market has always been ahead at those time frames.
I feel like that is unfair without more data.
Did the boomers lose a decade of growth on their retirements?
Relative to them the gen x'rs and millennials have had 1/5 less time for their assets to grow (assuming you save for around 50 years) when compared to wealthier generations. And it was relatively early in their careers when the money would have the most impact.
Yup, there were a large number of downturns over the decades. The 90's and the 00's were squarely in the tail end of boomer retirement years and they ended up just fine.
The great depression bounced back and even if you invested at that time, over the long term you would have come out ahead of you just held onto a total market position.
Pull up any Dow Jones historical chart and you'll see plenty of flat or short term dips, ones that held for several years, but in the end the line still went up faster than inflation.
https://www.macrotrends.net/1319/dow-jones-100-year-historical-chart
Every generation had multiple periods where the market looked poor, but if you don't prepare for the future, you guarantee a shitty retirement.
If you save and prepare for the future, you at least have a chance of being comfortable in your old age.
Inflation makes investments rise too. It's the people without them that are screwed by it.
True, not sure why I didnt think of that.
Maybe I mean any money we have in our savings accounts.
My form of "saving" is to pay my mortgage. I don't know how much houses will cost in the future, but I will have mine. I will have enough.
Friend I’m almost 40, been laid off twice and am struggling despite a 20 year old bachelor's degree and working for a Fortune 25 company. I like the other commenter do not have the faith that the market will exist by the time I’m of age to retire, and if it does I fully expect for the goal posts to have shifted to being 10 years later than previous gens and completely out of any reasonable saving I could do and still just survive.
I appreciate your concern and advice but I’m well past believing I’ll get a relaxing end to this life without a major paradigm shift in the way human beings organize ourselves.