With marriage, kids and a house increasingly elusive, we asked readers for their other financial benchmarks
- Millennials talk about the high cost of dating
- Why single people are hurting the economy
- The Student Debt Project
There was a time when the rituals of induction into adulthood were joyous celebrations: married bliss, nesting in a new home and having kids. Like a series of professional promotions, each step signaled more status, more responsibility, more as the kids like to hashtag it #adulting.
Now, adulting is fraught. The conventional timelines dont work anymore. The reason is money: its in scarce supply. Marriage, houses and kids are all too expensive that middle-class cliche of the $20,000 wedding, $200,000 house and well-supported kids are beyond the budget of many young Americans. Any millennial who has more than $10,400 in the bank is rich by comparison to others his or her age.