With the recent wave of inflation and higher interest rates and high home prices and high grocery bills and high prices at the pump and high tuition costs—well, lots of people feel tempted to give up.
Why bother? Who cares? You’re never going to have enough to buy a home or retire at a reasonable age, anyway. The deck’s stacked against you.
And you know what, for a lot of people, that’s not untrue.
It’s true that wages have not kept up with home prices, or the cost of living more generally. In some ways, younger generations have faced a tougher, more competitive economic environment.
But you can’t let those larger forces rob you of your personal responsibility and agency and power.
It kills me when I see young people, people in their 20s and 30s, people with so much time, and who somehow already feel defeated, like there’s no point in starting now, like they have no ability at all to improve their financial future.
It’s heartbreaking.
If you’re in your 20s or 30s, even your 40s or 50s, you have so much time. You have so much power to make things better.
Like yes, starting early is fantastic. The sooner you get started with saving and investing, the better. There’s no doubt about that.
But even if you’re starting late. Even if you’re starting at zero. Even if you’re in debt. There are always things you can do to improve your financial situation. And the more you do those things, the more options you’ll have, and the bigger steps you’ll be able to take over time.
If you’re currently feeling hopeless about your finances, that might still sound unrealistic to you.
And that’s okay. It’s okay to feel however you’re feeling.
But don’t mistake that feeling for fact.
Because there is in fact reason for hope. There’s always reason for hope.