Lizzy Marvelly: Global financial crisis, now Covid-19: Millennials doing it tough

Many millennials crave a sense of financial stability, so scrimp and save at every opportunity. Photo / 123rf

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What's it like to start your career during a global recession and start your family during an even bigger global recession? Ask your nearest millennial. As someone smack-bang in the middle of the generation seemingly everyone loves to hate, staring down the barrel of a Covid-19-induced financial downturn, I can't help but feel a sense of deja vu.

Millennials, born between 1981 and 1996, have now lived through two (or potentially three, for those born before 1987) major economic downturns and we're not yet 40. Many of us emerged from either secondary or tertiary education into a job market that was lacklustre at best. Some of my friends, bright and well-educated though they were, left university and struggled to find jobs. Some of our classmates were forced to work for minimum wage in other sectors until the financial climate improved and there was space for them in their chosen fields. Some faced unemployment and housing insecurity. It was a bumpy entrance into adulthood. One that likely shaped us in ways that will be enduring across our lifespan.

Fast-forward a decade or so from the global financial crisis (GFC) – reported to be the worst financial downturn since the Great Depression of the 1930s - and millennials are now aged between 24 and 39. We're variously new to the labour market, getting married, starting families, or have a few kids at home. We are, in short, still very vulnerable to economic fluctuations. Of course, everyone is to some extent, but add the stress of what's forecasted to be a deeper impending recession than the GFC to a new baby on the way, a few kids dependant on your precarious income, a massive mortgage in an overheated housing market, rental instability because you can't get into said overheated housing market and/or being the "last one on" as a junior at a new workplace (and thus, the first one off) and it's easy to see why millennial stress levels are rising.

I don't intend for any of this to come off as a moan, rather to provide context beyond the usual besmirching of millennials as frivolous, smashed avocado-loving egomaniacs. We're anything but. In years to come, I expect that millennials will be thought of as one of the most financially risk-averse generations. From our entrance into adulthood, we've been acutely aware that the economic rug can be pulled from underneath our feet at any time. The impending Covid-19 recession (or, perhaps more likely, depression) is just another example to us of how fragile our financial wellbeing is.

We tend to fall into two rough camps: those who crave a sense of financial stability that we deep down know we'll likely never have, so scrimp and save at every opportunity and make the safest investments we can; and those who have made peace with the impossibility of financial security and decided instead to live their lives renting, eating smashed avocado and enjoying their lives within their limited means. Both camps want the much-maligned "work/life balance" – because we're well aware that money isn't everything. If you know that your financial stability can be ripped away from you at any moment, why would you bother working yourself to the bone to earn more in order to acquire more – more that can be taken away from you?

In my experience, the first camp is the larger, and I fall broadly within it (though I'm not immune to the odd splash purchase – because YOLO). Generally speaking, if I'm given an opportunity to save money, I'll take it. To the point of stupidity. I caught myself a few months ago comparing the costs and quantities of the various brands of dried thyme, running rough calculations in my head to determine which gave me more bang for my buck. In the end, I saved about 45c and wasted probably seven minutes.

I remember people laughing at their grandparents (who grew up during the depression years) for doing similar things. I'm not laughing now. Now, facing this new economic threat (particularly as a freelancer in the arts who will almost certainly experience a loss of income over the coming months) I wish that my grandparents were still around to share tips on depression-era thriftiness.

Like many other millennials, I'm afraid. I'm afraid, but not surprised. When significant financial turbulence occurs during formative stages in your life, it's difficult to ever truly feel financially secure. We entered the job market at a precarious time, and we're now facing raising our children in a time of struggle. Many of us will lose our jobs over the next few months. Those of us overrepresented in the gig economy may lose all of our sources of income.

All of which calls into question the common millennial stereotypes. If we're eating smashed avocados, it's out of apathy towards an economic environment that has pummelled us over and over again. If anything good comes out of the GFC and the impending Covid-19 recession, hopefully, it'll be a generation that makes financially responsible decisions to reduce the potential for further economic disruption during our lifetimes. That, and (particularly given the Government's very Keynesian measures to try to keep the country afloat) a rethink of capitalism as we know it.

In the meantime, I'm just glad I saved that 45c for a rainy day. I suspect it's about to start pouring.