Compared to previous generations, how bad are millennials' finances?

The research looked at adults aged 18 to 34 and compared their finances in a variety of categories, like overall net worth, total debt, and assets, to young adults of the same age as far back as 1989, when Generation X was just entering adulthood. The study found that though their overall net worth was less, many employed Millennials weren’t doing that much worse when compared to their predecessors.

For those who have been able to find employment and housing that they can afford, the recession and the wage stagnation that has characterized the recovery may not have created that glum of a long-term financial picture. “Compared with young adults in 1989, young adults in 2013 were more likely to own homes, stocks, and retirement accounts. Moreover, young adults in 2013 were less likely to have high debt payment burdens than older adults, young adults in 1989, and young adults in 2001,” the study found. And the median value of bank accounts, retirement portfolios, and stocks held by young Americans were equal or higher than the value of the same holdings for young Americans in 1989.