Angry old white Australian male and proud of it!, page-64

There are plenty more temptations in life for young people from a financial perspective. A huge amount of options and choices available to them that were never available to their parents or grand parents.
Part of the problem should be attributed to them and their spending/saving ratio for sure. I agree with that point.

That said, I know quite a few youngin's that have done really well even before they turned 18. Put away 30-40k working part time jobs with some help from their parents along the way ( no rent etc ). But, they are probably the exception as they are mad savers and their parents set the example. A lot of kidults I know have been shown some pretty bad financial habits by their 50-60 year old parents.

On the other side of the coin, they have some serious headwinds. HECS debt is a big issue and getting bigger. The other big issue is the cost of living in the cities. Cities is where most of the opportunities are. Where most of the education facilities are. Where most of the employment is. It's a bit of a vicious circle.
Why are houses so expensive in Melbourne and yet so cheap only a 150ks away in the country ? Jobs, that's why.
So, how does a person who is entering the casualised workforce afford a house in the big cities ? The houses are no longer 3 times average wages as they were back in the day. They are 7-10 times. That is a major hurdle to get over. Most in cities now hope to scrape and save to get on the property ladder and then hope that the real estate boom continues. We are going for a nation of house owners to a nation of renters has has happened many years ago in the US and Europe in the big cities.
People have to work two jobs these days to make ends meet.
Think back to the days when most married women didn't work. It wasn't that long ago. Now try and think of a woman that doesn't work today.

The boom that has been created largely by baby boomers and is indeed the main reason most of those baby boomers actually have any wealth. They didn't do anything special. They just bought a house that has gone up in value well beyond expectations. Arguably that has got out of control.

Compounding this is the easy money that's available. In your day you simply couldn't borrow money for anything like you can now. Do you really want people to go without curtains and carpets like they did in the past ? There's a lot of common sense in borrowing money for those types of things that I would call essential.
Having your kids driving a decent safe car as opposed to an old bomb would also be an essential I reckon. For this they need to borrow money and I reckon that's ok.

Then there's the modern business model which is to lend money and consume. This model has been created by the baby boomer generation. That's not a criticism of baby boomers per se. That's just a fact. This modern society of borrow,spend,consume has been heavily promoted for the last few decades by the boomers who are the seniors in the business world and in government.
When baby boomers were younger, the idea of paying things off was drummed into them by their parents who had experienced world wars and depression. That's why a lot of them are where they are.

But, those same people that were brought up in that frugal way have created this new world of cheap, easy money with huge amounts of things to spend it on. It's a bit rich ( ) to place the whole blame on the young.

Kids growing up in households where borrowing and spending is the norm could hardly be expected to do any different.

In fact, baby boomers, thanks to crazy increases in their house value, are spending like crazy. The old days of your grand parents living a very humble retirement are gone. These days they are buying 4x4s, caravans , going on round the world trips, taking the grandkids to Bali for holidays etc.

So, before putting all the blame on the young, maybe we should look inwardly at how we got to this point.