“Are you matching the employer contribution to your 401k?” The words on the screen made me literally laugh out loud.

Context: I went to Reddit to ask for budgeting advice. I am a 36-year-old neurodivergent person with mental health challenges and a boatload of childhood trauma. The same can be said for my partner. As we’ve raised our kiddo (soon-to-be 13), we’ve prioritized breaking cycles. We’ve gentle parented, we’ve made sure that there is always food, we’ve taken vacations (on loans/ credit cards)…one cycle that we have not been able to break is the paycheck-to-paycheck one. Our brains are solidly wired for instant gratification, distraction, and immense difficulty with future planning. Between student loans, car loans, credit cards, and personal loans, we have a collective $110,000 in debt.

Am I putting anything into my 401k? Absolutely not! I’m terrified of cutting down my take-home pay to fund retirement, even by $15 a paycheck! We simply can’t afford it.

According to CNBC, reporting on the U.S. Census Bureau, the 2020 average Millennial income pre-tax was $71,566, and the average Millennial annual spending was $70,146. This includes cost of housing, utilities, bills, debt pay-down, food, travel (even just to and from work), and entertainment/ fun activities. Even without paying any taxes, that leaves those in the median group with a whopping $1,420 a year that is not eaten up by cost-of-living expenses. None of this is recognizing the fact that there is a significant number of Millennials who fall well below that average.

Hell, I have a Master’s Degree and work in a job which requires that Master’s Degree, and I make just shy of $60,000/ year. I have some friends who make more, and many friends who make less. My partner makes about $42,000/ year. This puts us in the high end bracket of Millennial earnings, at around $102,000/ year. We also are lucky (?) in that my partner is a veteran, who had a service-related disability and is deemed 80% disabled by the VA. What a commentary that being disabled during military service is “lucky” for Millennials, huh? All said and done, together, we bring in about $118,000 annually (pre-tax). With taxes, though, our monthly take-home is about $7,975, or $95,700/ year. Yet we are living paycheck-to-paycheck. We have always lived paycheck-to-paycheck. When we started out, our combined income was $19,000/ year, as we were both working minimum wage jobs. Those were days of rotating which months we paid heat and electric, just to keep them both on, and occasionally shop-lifting milk from the store to keep our baby healthy. As our income grew, being able to pay bills on-time and having $20 left over at the end of the month was a win. As income continued to increase, so did cost of living. Some say, “lifestyle creep”, and there is some truth to that, insomuch as “lifestyle creep” means actually allowing ourselves to enjoy some of the money that we spend a combined 80-100 hours a week to earn.

Also important to note, we have only been at our current income level for about a year and a half. Prior to this, our combined income was around $60,000. We have not really taken the time to budget because, by and large, it feels like this is the first time in our entire lives that we can breathe, and we have been relishing in that. Ours is not an extravagant life, though. And, through research for solutions and options, I’ve learned that we are far from alone.

In a recent survey, Millennial respondents estimated they would need to make about $525,000/ year with $1.2 million in the bank to be happy and stress-free. Personally, I don’t know anyone who makes that much cash.

We all know the reasons for this crisis – soaring rent prices, the student loan debt we all took on before we were even old enough to buy beer (legally, anyway), increased cost of living (and just about everything else) driven by corporate greed. The Middle Class is threatened to the verge of extinction in our generation. In the U.S., the median cost of a house is $426,056. Just the mortgage payment on that would run between $2,400 a month and $4,500 a month, depending on down payment and interest rate. Even if you were making $100,000 annually, a mortgage payment of $4,500 would take over half of your pre-tax income. Don’t the “experts” say that that number should be capped at 30%? Yeah. Right.

The situation certainly feels hopeless. I know that I get task paralysis even thinking about where to start when I consider finally trying to pay down our debt and, hopefully, building up some savings so that we can retire at some point before we die.

As it stands right now, our total monthly expenses with rent, internet, utilities, phones, minimum payments on the debts we have, laundry, subscriptions, and medications total $6,362. That leaves us about $1,613/ month for food, gas, and any surprise expenses. Broken down weekly, that is $403.25 a week. I recognize fully that we are in a better financial situation than many of our peers, but this is still unsustainable. A few years ago, we would literally not be able to survive. Our current 2-bedroom apartment is incredibly small, with the bedrooms separated by a single wall, a small kitchen area, a bathroom, and a living room. We live in a small, rural New England area with minimal amenities, no public transportation, and a growing crime rate spurred by the desperation of the unhoused and victims of the Opioid epidemic. Our rent is $1,900/ month. We found one other 2-bedroom when we learned that we had to move. It was $1,500/ month, but the repairs being made after the eviction that occurred literally included bullet holes in the doors and walls. So, here we are.

WHO’S THIS BLOG FOR: The current state of the economy and cost-of-living is not fair. We all got screwed, driven by false promises of guaranteed job security and high salaries with a degree, and the rising cost of living. It has created a true crisis for middle-aged and younger Americans. Even more so if you are without family support, as my partner and I are. If you are a Millennial or Gen Z person who is struggling, my hope is that this blog will be helpful for you at any income bracket. (Other generations are welcome, just realize that my posts will come from the perspective of a leftist human services worker who proudly voted for Bernie Sanders ;)…). It is absolutely infuriating that we are in this situation, but it is our reality. How can we make it work? Is it even possible?

I am bucking down with a budget for the first time in my life. I am going to see if I can dig my family out of this mess, and I am going to share my journey here. My hope is that the things I learn along the way will help others to implement changes get out of the paycheck-to-paycheck cycle, get out of debt, and start to build a life. I can’t help you make $525,000/ year, but I think that, together, we can help each other out to at least get some breathing room. I’ll be sharing progress updates, mistakes, strategies I’m using, meal planning and budget grocery shopping hacks (many of which I learned as a kid in a house with food insecurity and back in those “steal some milk to get through to payday” days), and anything else I pick up along the way.

It’s not going to be easy. Honestly, it’s probably going to suck. But, since this is the situation in which we find ourselves as a generation, all we can do is our best. To quote Gandalf, “all we have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to us.” I want to do better. I need to do better. And I sincerely hope that I can help my fellow midlife Millennials, and anyone else who visits, to do the same.