If you Google Millennials and finance you will get a ton of results that talk about student debt.  And there is certainly no denying that we have a ton of student debt,  The average millennial with student loans is carrying around $28 thousand dollars by the time they graduate.  Add in the difficulty of getting jobs in the fields we just spent four years studying and those loans are just sitting there gaining lots of interest charges.

But student debt isn’t the only financial crisis we face.

When we look at our parent’s generation they had a much different financial situation than we do currently.  Tution rates were around $1,000 for a year in the 80s.  If they followed inflation they would be just over $2,000 today; instead they are closer to $5,500.

The Canadian Real Estate Association shows the average house price in the 80’s around $76,000.  If they followed inflation they would be just under $155,000; instead the average house in 2012 was just under $370,000.

Our grandparents generation for the most part would typically have just one income and a gaggle of children.  Even our parents generation, a typical one-income household could still afford to buy a house.  In Toronto the livable wage in 2008 needed to provide for a family of four was $18.52/hour and both parents needed to work 37.5 hours per week.   The minimum wage was only $8.75/hour in 2008 but currently in Canada the minimum wage is $11.40/hour.

Finding a job with a pension or RRSP contributions right now is next to impossible.  The Baby Boomers will most likely dry up the Canadian Pension Plan that us Millennials will pay into for the better part of our working lives.

So needless to say our adult financial lives will be drastically different from our parents and grandparents.  Therefore, our financial behaviours need to be drastically different from our parents and grandparents (though we could adapt a bit of that shopping restraint our grandparents generation is famous for whenever the new iPhone or whatever other tech device comes out).

Check out our links page for budgeting and financial tools we found really helpful!