I’ve recently read some interesting articles about Millennials – it seems, while there are still the nasty articles that talk with certainty we will never amount to anything, more and more people are talking about the real issues we face and how it’s changing us. For me and many of my friends, we are becoming more alike to our grandparents than our own parents – despite still being extremely close with our parents.

Additionally, we are increasingly cynical about politics and economics – this NYT article points to a variety of issues and concerns that are leading many of us away from either political party. It was an article in Alternet, though, that inspired me to write a bit more about my generation and how we’re doing, because I didn’t think it went quite far enough.

(Note: Millennials are also known as Generation Y, and Wikipedia states that it includes people born in the the late 1970s to the early 2000s)

The article did point out that almost everyone who isn’t a Millennial has, at some point, considered us pretty much useless as a group. That’s pretty awful, considering these people are the ones that raised us:

Wall Streeters bemoan that only 32 percent of millennials consider themselves entrepreneurial (compared  to 41 percent of Gen-Xers, and 45 percent of baby boomers). Time thinks we’re narcissists. The Christian Science Monitor is nervous that “ The Millennial Generation Could Kill the NFL”  – because, sissies that we are, we really don’t like seeing people suffer long-term brain damage. Meanwhile, the New York Times says — more or less every week — that we probably don’t have much of a shot in the real world.

I don’t want to speak for every person of my generation (although the majority of people my age that I know feel and behave as I do) so I’m going to share my own view of life right now, and how I am in no way like what these judgmental writers and commentators say. I’d like to dispel some of the myths and stereotypes about people my age, and lay out the reality of what my life is like – especially compared to my parents.

Many people say we grew up “entitled.” I don’t speak for everyone, but here is more about what “entitled” looked like to me as a young person:

• My Family: My parents had good jobs at General Motors, but they worked (and my mom still works) in a factory. They did not make a ton of money and they had hard jobs – but they did it to take care of us, just as other families have for generations. They worked at the jobs available to them to provide food, shelter, and better opportunities for us.


• My Time In High School: I was an incredibly hard worker, and so were all my friends. I was a straight-A student, Valedictorian and in just about every extracurricular and/or sporting group at some point in high school.


• My Brother: He was not a straight-A student, so he had to work while he was in high school. College was difficult for him, so he eventually dropped out for awhile and worked a crappy restaurant job – long hours, high stress, and terrible pay. He decided to go to back to school for nursing and thrived – he’s now an RN at the Cleveland Clinic. It was too soon for him to go to college right out of high school – he needed a different path, and that was never discussed or offered to us. The pressure by larger society to go to college immediately was oppressive, and alternatives (community college, vocational, etc.) were pretty much swept under the rug.


• My Time In College: My college experience was different than most – I attended most of undergraduate in London, and then went straight into my MBA. I took the initiative to do something different, to have unique experiences, and learn in a dfferent way.  I worked multiple jobs while taking a full course load, and graduated Magna Cum Laude. All of my friends have stories that reflect this kind of hard work and initiative – it’s puzzling to me how we are defined as “lazy.” “Lazy?” – I don’t think so. 


• My Time After College: I worked retail jobs and did an accounting internship my first year back in the States – no one cared about my experience abroad. I was humbled immediately – the sense of “entitlement” I may have had was gone when I was working in the mall and seeing all my old classmates from high school. Here was the girl who’d had this glamorous life abroad, now working in fine jewelry at JC Penney. Ha!


• My parents helped me. Am I spoiled? I don’t think so – because I am grateful, and I know I’ll be helping them when they are old and can no longer care for themselves. 

There are a lot of people in my generation from the lower- and middle- classes. Many of us didn’t have parents with white-collar jobs with lots of professional connections. I’ve had to do everything on my own as far as career development and progress – including move away from my family in Ohio to Atlanta for more professional opportunities. Spin it any way you like – that’s just a shitty thing to have to do and a major life change at a young age. Many of my friends have done similar things, all in their early 20s. 

I taught myself how to budget on the minuscule salary I earned at my first “real” job in Atlanta, and I taught myself how to network when I knew I needed to get a different job. I learned how to negotiate for more money and better benefits. I went through a layoff, in which I learned even more about money and financial management, and I became more frugal.

As I did all of this, I began to see that the game was rigged against people like me and that my life would be very different from the ones my parents had as adults. While they had been poor growing up, and wealthier as adults, I became aware that I would likely experience the opposite. Maybe not in the same degree, but retirement was never going to come for my generation. That’s right, I’ve said it – if you’re a Millennial in the middle class or lower, you’ll likely work until the day you die.

It doen’t matter if you’ve got a 401k – it won’t be enough to retire on, no matter what anyone tells you. It can supplement, but there will have to be other income and for most us that will mean some kind of work or job.

These realizations made me disillusioned with government and business. As I read about money from corporations used as influence and saw it leading to laws that favored them, and hurt me, I began to realize the value of becoming self-sufficient.

Baby Boomers (my parents) were raised by The Greatest Generation who cooked, gardened, sewed, performed their own home improvements, shopped locally, recycled, and were community-focused. Millennials were raised by Boomers who had more disposable income than any other group of people in the history of the world, and so they paid for all of those services rather than do them themselves (of course, two people working outside the home cannot be discounted as a factor).

As a result, I didn’t learn to sew, do home improvements, fix my car, grow plants, etc. As I’ve learned more about the state of the world around me, and seen the poor quality of food and other goods, I’ve become more interested in learning how to do things for myself. I’ve learned that less consumerism makes me happier and saves money, and that investing in quality items to reject planned obsolescence is a way to vote with my wallet. I’m witnessing this attitude becoming prevalent with more of my generation. There is a shift happening where people really do want to take care of the environment, take pride in the food they grow, prepare, and eat, and make their own household items with recycled materials and forgotten skills.

Lazy? Entitled? Self-serving? Spoiled? I think not. The last time my parents were in town, my mom brought me gifts which was very nice – but there was nothing there that I absolutely needed. She also offered to buy me a chaise lounge that I was eyeing in a store – which shocked me. I had no need or space for it, and was certain that I could find better uses for a few hundred dollars (student loan payment, rent, etc.). But my parents have guaranteed incomes in retirement in a way that I never will and so their attitude towards money and things is very different from mine.

I’m focused now on learning to grow more of my own food, cooking simply at home with wholesome ingredients, practicing sewing to make items for my home and also as gifts, fixing things around the house myself, and spending money at local, independent restaurants and shops when I do go out for things. I’m more frugal, conscious, aware, self-sufficient, and happy than at any previous point in my life.

I ask every one who is older than us to please stop demeaning us – we may not be as career-obsessed as other generations, but we ARE hard-working. We are looking for ways to improve our lives, not just our wallets – we know that a job in Corporate America doesn’t necessarily mean a fat wallet, as wages continue to decrease. We know we need to find other ways to provide for ourselves, and so many of us are learning the skills our grandparents used to survive hard times.

We may not be the group to save the world – but I would argue that we are working every day to save our families and our communities. Judge us if you will, but be prepared to be surprised.