- Looking for a more affordable and active lifestyle, millennials want a different retirement than their predecessors. The road to retirement has changed for them anyway.
Step aside, boomers: The millennial is imagining a different type of grandma. Rejecting conventional visions of playing gin rummy and bingo by the beach, younger generations are pursuing a more active retirement. Finding dreams of leaving the workforce all the more difficult to attain than their predecessors, those who can kick up their feet are reinventing the wheel.
So finds Edelman Financial Engines in its 2024 report, which was conducted by surveying more than 3,000 adults over age 30, with an oversample of affluent people ages 45 to 70. More than a third (37%) of Americans reportedly desire a different retirement lifestyle than previous generations. People in their thirties are especially likely to want to redefine their era of senior citizenship—at 46%.
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“When I got into this business, retirement was about quitting the grind…playing golf,” certified financial planner Bera Daigle told NBC News. These days “it’s really more about flexibility,” she said, adding that “we don’t know what retirement will look like in 20 years,” and people are thinking about the careers they might want to choose when they’re forced to work into their sixties.
Retirement has changed for millennials
The goalposts seemingly have been pushed back for retirement. Living and working longer, Americans are finding it all the more difficult to save enough while managing a volatile economy and difficult housing market. Of course, many are doing it all without the help of the waning pension.
As inflation weighs heavily on Americans’ minds, many feel that the barrier to comfortable living has too been moved. A whopping 65% of Americans believe they need at least $1 million to be wealthy, a slight decrease from the prior year. As of last spring Americans believe they need at least $1.46 million to retire, up 53% since 2020, according to Northwestern Mutual.
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Many still believe that they’ll make it, as 65% are at least somewhat confident they’ll be able to retire one day. Indeed, millennials are gaining ground as a generation, building unexpected wealth though they may not feel it because of class disparity and the feeling of being locked into their main asset (housing). Still, 35% see retirement as a challenge and 32% say they’ll never be able to “fully” retire.
Seeing that the means to get to retirement are changing, millennials are shifting strategies. Americans are now looking for a retirement that is more active (42%), adventurous (39%), gives room for passion projects (37%), and more affordable (31%). Minimalistic and nomadic retirements are also of interest, according to the report.
Treat culture
Indeed, undue socioeconomic pressure and disasters such as climate change have shaped the younger generations’ shifting attitudes toward their finances and career trajectory. Some of Gen Z’s rejection of the 2010s hustle culture has been attributed to existentialism spurred by global warming.
Feeling like saving up for such great financial milestones is elusive, if not impossible, millennials and Gen Zers have also turned to “treat culture,” or little indulgence purchases, as a short-term salve for economic malaise. Some have even turned to little sabbaticals or “micro-retirements,” when taking note of how some baby boomers are unable to retire when they initially intended.
“I view work as basically a necessity to survive,” Ayem Kpenkaan, a Gen Z content creator, told Fortune. “Why wouldn’t we? We get paid less than previous generations proportionally, we control less wealth, and we have increasingly less to show for it.”
