Subsidized Survival: The Millennial Illusion

This isn’t the self-made hustle culture that gets glorified online. It’s a generation pretending they don’t need help because admitting otherwise feels like shame and failure.

Even those who look like they’ve made it — shielded by traditional leaning Instagram profiles, steady jobs, travel photos, maybe even a house in a quiet middle-class neighborhood. But quietly, every month, help arrives: a check from mom, a mortgage co-sign, a Venmo for groceries.

There’s a growing economic crisis no one wants to talk about. Entire generations — Millennials and Gen Z — who are supposed to be in the prime of their careers, building savings, starting families, and living like their parents did at this age, are instead blowing through what would have been their inheritance just to keep the illusion alive. Or worse, just to survive.

But what about the ones who don’t have help? Those whose parents can’t send anything, or aren’t around to try? They’re not faking stability, they’re fighting collapse. They’re crashing on couches, living with three roommates in overpriced apartments, moving back home with kids in tow, or slipping into homelessness while still working full time jobs. The illusion only exists if someone can afford to fund it.

What the Numbers Really Show

Real incomes for young adults are flat and even falling compared to previous generations. Research shows that each generations median wage at a given time is lower than the generation before it. Although Millennials’ household incomes at ages 36-40 are still 18% higher than Gen X’s were at the same time, the rate of progress has slowed dramatically in recent decades while wages have failed to meet inflation.

Meanwhile, rent has blown past incomes. As of early 2025, the national median rent hovers around $2,100/month, with Pew Research reporting that the median annual income for Millennials is roughly $47,000 — which results in our nationwide problem of adults not being able to afford emergencies, much less a savings account.

The Federal Reserve’s 2024 Economic Well-Being report found that just 47% of adults aged 18-29 could cover an unexpected $500 expense using only cash or its equivalent (Federal Reserve, 2024).

Millennial homeownership continues to trail behind as they are saddled with student loan debt, low paying jobs, and high rent costs. In 2015, 37% of Millennials owned a home, approximately 8% behind Gen X and Boomers at the same stage (Urban Institute, 2018). Data shows that in 2025, roughly 24% of Gen Z and millennial buyers relied on family money to fund their down payments. More than 1 in 5 recent young home buyers received cash gifts — about 21% — and around 11% used inheritance to afford a house (Business Insider, 2025).

Student loan debt remains crippling, especially when you mix in the anxiety of the Trump regime threatening wage garnishment for student loan repayment. The average borrower carries over $38,000 in federal student debt. Meanwhile, essential costs like childcare, food, utilities, and insurance have risen across the board, squeezing Gen Z and Millennials into borrowing from their parents in order to maintain their household.

That parental support is widespread. A Merrill-Lynch survey found that 79% of parents continue to finance their adult children into their 20s and 30s — what the study called the “family bank.” Nearly two-thirds of parents admitted to sacrificing some of their own financial security and retirement to help adult kids.

This data paints a sobering picture: Millennials and Gen Z aren’t just falling behind — they’re being carried.

The Middle-Class Myth

Corporate media still talks about the “middle class” like it exists in any form that it used to. A decent job, a home you can afford, kids in daycare, a family car and a vacation now and then. But that version of the American dream is gone — and what’s left is a myth sustained by silence and subsidies.

Even the “successful” Millennials — the ones who’ve checked a few traditional boxes and the wife is a stay at home trad-mom — are often being quietly held up. Their parents help with daycare costs. They split car payments or health insurance. They gave them the down payment for their starter house that allowed them to start on second base instead of in the dugout.

This isn’t the self-made hustle culture that gets glorified online. It’s a generation pretending they don’t need help because admitting otherwise feels like shame and failure.

Social media has made it worse. It rewards the image of success, not the truth behind it. We scroll past filtered photos of renovated kitchens, destination weddings, and branded pillowcases — but we don’t see Venmos from their country club parents, the emergency bailout from the retirement fund, or the fear that the illusion could fall apart in a month.

There’s an epidemic of pretend independence going on — and it’s just kicking the can down the road.

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The Long-Term Cost

The consequences of all this aren’t coming someday — they’re already here.

The economy is shrinking, tariffs are coming due, and the dollar hasn’t been lower in recent memory. We’re watching two generations edge into adulthood with no cushion, no runway, and no safety net — and we’re still chastising them for being lazy. But the real cost of this pretend prosperity is coming due.

Retirement will be a fantasy for many. Without savings or home equity, millions of Millennials and Gen Z adults will hit their fifties and sixties with no assets to fall back on — and parents who are either gone or living with them now after spending through an inheritance while they were still alive. We’re not just heading toward a retirement crisis, we’re walking into it with our eyes closed.

Family formation is collapsing. Birth rates are down, marriages are delayed and abandoned entirely, and millions of people are choosing not to have kids — not because they don’t want to, but because they can’t afford to. The American family isn’t eroding because of LGBTQ+ rights or “cultural decline.” It’s being priced out of existence.

National debt is skyrocketing. While elected officials fight over tax breaks for their billionaire donors, it’s Millennials and Gen Z who will be stuck holding the bill. This generation didn’t cause the 2008 financial crash, didn’t bail the banks out, didn’t green light endless war spending, and didn’t vote for the giveaways that created historic wealth for the top 1%. But they’ll still be expected to pay for it — without ever having had a real shot at building wealth of their own.

Civic collapse is on the table. How do you sustain belief in a system when it has failed to deliver on every promise it made to you? You can’t build patriotism when people are burnt out and broke. You can’t build national pride on food delivery apps and debt collectors. We’re becoming a nation in decline — not because we ran out of talent or drive to be great, but because a select few at the top decided to build an economy where they bleed us dry for a second yacht.

The middle class isn’t “shrinking,” it’s been fucking obliterated. It’s hollowed out from the inside while the shell is being taped together by our parents to pretend like everything is fine. And if we keep pretending like everything’s fine, we’re going to crash harder than anyone is ready for.

We Did What We Were Supposed to

Millennials and Gen Z did everything right. We stayed out of trouble. We worked hard. We got the degrees. We became the most educated generations in American history — and we were told that if we did these things, we’d have a shot at the American dream.

Instead, we inherited a broken economy rigged against us from the start. Octogenarian politicians who continue to get rich off insider information. We got record debt, exploding rent, impossible housing markets, unaffordable childcare, collapsing healthcare, and wages that haven’t kept up with inflation — much less ambition.

And somehow, we’re the ones made to feel ashamed. For moving back home. For needing help. For not owning a home. For struggling in an economy that wasn’t built for us.

Bullshit.

This isn’t a personal failure — it’s a generational crisis. A collapsing system held together by subsidies, silence, and the filtered self-deception of “just tryin’ to keep up.” A political class kicking the can down the road while blaming young people for not having more.

We have to stop lying to each other. Stop pretending we’re all okay when we’re not. Stop judging people for the same struggles we’re hiding ourselves. The truth is, no amount of budgeting or bootstraps is going to fix what we are dealing with.

Because if we don’t address this crisis, we can’t solve it. We’re going to sleepwalk into a future where no one can afford to live, retire, or raise a family — unless they’ve got parents who already did all three.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

We can elect leaders who actually fight for working people. We can demand a government that treats housing, healthcare, childcare, and education as rights — not luxuries. We can reform taxes, raise wages, and make sure no one’s future is held hostage by a select few corporations or their bloodline.

We deserve better. Not because we’re entitled — but because we kept our end of the deal.

We did what we were supposed to. Now it’s time to build a system that finally shows up for us.

Evan Fields is a veteran who writes the News from Underground Substack and the Lincoln Square newsletter, Fourth & Democracy, which comes out Tuesdays. Read the original column here.

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