Give up flat whites and save? We millennials just don’t know how
Iwould really love to join the chorus of people angrily condemning estate agents Strutt & Parker for their claim that if millennials just cut back on coffees, smartphones and holidays, they’d eventually save the money for a deposit for a house. The remarks were off-colour and insensitive vis-à-vis the relative poverty of youngsters compared with their elders at the same age.
But the estate agents were also right. Take it from me, a millennial who fritters away her disposable income on… just the kind of things that, if nixed from my daily life, would make me thousands of pounds richer over time. Barista-made flat whites only (I simply can’t cope with the high-street chain version – and today I had no fewer than three of the artisanal variety); pre-packaged pomegranate with individual pots of Yeo Valley yogurt (I know, I know, I’ve told you this before), and (admittedly cheap) champagne rather than prosecco are just some of the everyday items I’d never give up for future gain.
Nor does it stop there. I have manicures every few weeks, and go out for dinner far too often, compelled to sample the best fare London has to offer.
Last weekend I spent more than £20 on a plate of pasta and £10 on a slice of lemon tart at the River Café, one of the most needless meals I could have had (though my friend Patricia and I had a whale of a time, gorging while making rude comments about the other patrons).
I have the self-indulgent, short-termist attitude of my
generation – and there’s nothing to be done about it. We don’t know how to scrimp and save in any real way.
This is partly, I think, because many of us simply don’t believe in the long-term mirage of assets aplenty.
Nobody really envisions that with the fractured, exciting but unstable job market facing us, and soaring property prices, that we will ever one day be lords of the manor, like the baby boomers before us, with town houses in north London and Bristol and Edinburgh and Cambridge, and detached piles in Surrey and Hampshire.
So instead, we binge on craft ale, cakes, barista coffee and mini-breaks to Vienna and Milan. It doesn’t help that, to my generation, discipline itself is an alien concept. Our feelings and stress levels have always been paramount, along with our desires and needs; for us,
was no punishment in front of the class for getting the times tables wrong. We were more likely to be asked how we felt about maths...
Security and stability used to be the gold standard of a good life; my generation want excitement and experience instead. So yes, the estate agents were right. There are plenty of savings to be had for us millennials – if only we had the willpower, motivation and discipline. Too bad we don’t. Flat white, anyone?