How Gen Z Became So Nihilistic About Money

The "buy everything, own nothing" generation has seen the cost of living soar. They're "vibing" their way into adulthood, and some experts say they've got it right.

My younger sister, Sophie, isn't worried about retirement – but she's not exactly optimistic about it, either. "We've got climate change, war – it's like, are we even going to be here to retire?" she muses on a recent phone call, adding: "I don't necessarily feel worried. It's more like helplessness."

At 23, Sophie falls firmly into Gen Z, the cohort born between 1997 and 2012. She suspects that her generation may never own homes, accumulate comfortable retirement savings or achieve other traditional financial milestones. She's not alone: Gen Z content creators are loudly airing their nihilism on TikTok and expressing frustration at what they call unattainable financial goals. But experts say the disgruntled TikToks don't tell the whole story.

Nihilism rules the algorithm

Ajla Brama, a 26-year-old content creator and social media consultant born in Albania, uses TikTok to unpack the financial pitfalls and "scams" facing Gen Z in the US, including falling wages and a challenging real estate market in which rent increases outpace earnings. "We want to be able to afford a decent living, but we can't even move out of our parents' house," laments Brama in one video sparked by what she calls a "lack of accountability" on the part of employers.

"I get so tired of seeing content saying, 'Oh, if you just saved a little more, if you just invested a little more…' Like, no – people are on the edge. People cannot afford to live, to eat, to put gas in their cars," Brama says.

That's partly why Brama now splits her time between the United States and Europe, where she feels the quality of life is better for young people with financial limitations. "People in the US see countries [like Albania] where the salaries might be lower and think 'Oh, I'd never live there'," she says. "It's true that, in Albania, you might make a lot less, but you also probably won't have credit card debt or student debt, and you'll have healthcare. People [in Europe] are actually living life." (The Global Liveability Index would agree.)

Around the globe, the eldest Gen Z-ers are heading into their late-20s amid undeniable economic headwinds. Per the July 2024 World Economic Outlook update published by the International Monetary Fund, "momentum on global disinflation is slowing", marked by ongoing higher-than-average inflation in services prices, cross-border trade restrictions and central banks' reluctance to initiate rate cuts.

With that in mind, financial negativity isn't just a Gen Z problem. Financial wellness company Brightplan's 2024 Wellness Barometer Survey of 1,400 US-based knowledge workers at global companies found that a majority, regardless of age, report feeling stressed about their financial situation, citing high inflation, rising interest rates and market volatility as complicating factors.

Andrew Roth, 25, argues that Gen Z-ers aren't all doom and gloom around finance – they just approach traditional milestones a bit more sceptically. "[For Gen Z], trust in institutions is at an all-time low," says Roth, the founder and CEO of dcdx, a Gen Z research and strategy firm. In the US, he says, young people feel "their government hasn't earned their trust. Older generations haven't earned their trust, whether that's in regard to climate, gun reform, police reform – young people feel that they are not being listened to."

A 2023 survey from Gallup and the Walton Family Foundation backs that up, finding fewer than one in five people aged 18 to 26 reported having "a great deal" of trust in major US institutions, including the criminal justice system, the Supreme Court, the presidency, big tech companies and the news.

They may be skeptical of higher education, too. In the UK where one year of university costs £9,250 ($11,881), recent data has found the gap in earning potential between graduates and non-graduates shrinking, stress-testing the question of whether a degree is "worth it". In the US, tuition averages $19,068 (£14,844) per year – a cost that has more than doubled in the 21st Century – and recent PEW data found only 22% of U.S. adults report seeing the cost of college as worth it even when students need to take out loans. Only one-in-four said it’s extremely or very important to have a four-year college degree in order to get a well-paying job in today's economy. These feelings are born out in Gen Z enrollment rates. The percentage of US high school graduates enrolling in college has fallen from 70% in 2009, firmly in Millennial territory, to 62% in 2022, according to the National Center for Educational Statistics data cited by a BestColleges review of research. 

The gamification of personal finance

Roth says the social media-driven "gamification" of personal finance – the rise of absurd meme stocks, for example – feeds into an apparent nihilistic approach to money. Take the "girl math" phenomenon of 2023 or Gen Z's unfortunate label as the "buy everything, own nothing" generation; in all cases, the message seems to be: money isn't real.

"With all the gamification, the true importance of personal finance gets lost," says Roth, hinting that the dissociative discourse around savings and success is a bit of a front. "What some perceive as laziness or nihilism might actually be more of a paralysis because there are so many options," he says.

The younger generation still wants to flourish, says Mark Beal, an assistant professor at the Rutgers University School of Communication and Information and the author of ZEO: Introducing Gen Z – The New Generation Of Leaders. "Gen Z does have financial goals," notes Beal. "They are earning money. They are saving money. They are investing money. Some have already purchased homes. They're just approaching [goals] differently. It's not quite as structured and rigid as previous generations – those of us who thought, 'By the time I'm 30, I need a house with a white picket fence'."

Just more than a quarter (26.3%) of adult members of Gen Z owned a home in 2023, according to a report from US real estate company Redfin. Meanwhile, a 2024 report from Britain's National Centre for Social Research found that 81% of Gen Z would buy a home if they could.

Meanwhile, in a recent Consumer Pulse Survey of 3,000 adults representing the general population of the United States, TransUnion found that Gen Z "appeared to be the most stable of any generation" in the second quarter of 2024, with 65% of Gen Z respondents stating they feel optimistic about their ability to manage household expenses over the next year – compared to less than 50% of baby boomers and Gen X-ers.

Still, 57-year-old Beal notes that where his generation might have followed their parents' financial blueprint, the constant barrage of social media content shows Gen Z that there are other things to live for – other goals that might take priority over homeownership or beefing up one's retirement accounts.

"I'm a Gen X-er," says Beal. "We lived to work. Generation Z works to live. They work to enjoy life, to experience life, to travel. They have a completely different mindset – which, as a Gen X-er, I think is the correct mindset. I think they are living a more well-balanced life."

The way Sophie puts it? Gen Z is "vibing".

"I'm just living life, but that's how everyone is," she tells me over the phone, noting that most of her friends are enjoying their early 20s without too much regard for the future. Honestly, it sounds familiar – when I was her age, I was scraping by in a cockroach-infested apartment. She adds: "If financial stuff is brought up, we're all just like, 'Oh, yeah, maybe one day'."

- Author: Lillian Stone, BBC