C laire*, 42, was always told: “Follow your dreams and the money will follow.” So that’s what she did. At 24, she opened a retail store with a friend in downtown Ottawa, Canada.
She’d managed to save enough from a part-time government job during university to start the business without taking out a loan. For many years, the store did well – they even opened a second location. Claire started to feel financially secure.
“A few years ago I was like, wow, I actually might be able to do this until I retire,” she told me. “I’ll never be rich, but I have a really wonderful work-life balance and I’ll have enough.” But in midlife, she can’t afford to buy a house, and she’s increasingly worried about what retirement would look like, or if it would even be possible.
“Was I foolish to think this could work?” she now wonders. She’s one of many millennials who, in their 40s, are panicking about the realities of midlife: financial precarity, housing insecurity, job instability and difficulty saving for the future. It’s a different kind of midlife crisis – less impulsive sports car purchase and more “will I ever retire?” In fact, a new survey of 1,000 millennials showed that 81% feel they can’t afford to have a midlife crisis.
Our generation is the first to be downwardly mobile, at least in the US , and do less well than our parents financially . What will the next 40 years will look like? Claire was raised by a single mom who worked as a librarian. .
