This edition of the newsletter is brought to you by our friends at Fruitful.
I started writing about millennials and money nearly a decade ago because I didn’t like the avocado toast narrative that we were all bad with money. Somehow, even though millennials are all grown up, that storyline hangs around like a bad odor. Publications are always eager to talk about the many financial challenges we face—student loan debt, soaring housing prices, stagnant wages, rampant inflation, blah blah blah—and how we’ll essentially never amount to anything.
I’m not saying these challenges don’t exist—they do. My problem has always been with the idea that a generation is a monoculture—that because we were born between the early ’80s and the mid-’90s, we are somehow all latte-buying, job-hopping, overly sensitive, failure-to-launch snowflakes who expect to receive praise and a participation trophy for everything we do. (Side note, this Buzzfeed list made me laugh.)
The most recent article that annoyed me was a piece in The Wall Street Journal earlier this month about millennial HENRYs (High Earner Not Rich Yet) who are earning six figures but don’t feel rich. Look, the truth is $100,000 doesn’t go as far as it used to, and housing and childcare is very expensive. But the piece was still tone deaf and left millennials looking ridiculous.
While I take issue here with the millennial stereotypes, the same can be said of what’s written about boomers, Gen X, Gen Z, and now Gen Alpha. I come from a traditional media background, and I’m not looking to put it on blast. These are just not the kinds of stories I see myself telling at The Purse.
I feature individual women in Home Economics because I want to tell unique stories. Each of us has a different path to financial success—and still, those journeys can be so relatable/inspirational/just plain fun to read. I am so lucky so many people are willing to share—it is a privilege to tell these stories and change the narrative one woman at a time.
And on that note, on to today’s Home Ec, which features a teacher earning six figures who owns her own home. She’d be a model millennial, except she and her husband are Gen Xers. Oops!
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Age: 45
Location: Massachusetts
Relationship status: Married
Age of partner: 49
About me: I’m a teacher and mother of a three-year-old. I live with my family in a Boston exurb.
Income:
- Your job title/salary: Teacher, $101,000
- Partner’s job title/salary: Carpenter, $50,000
- Your monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $5,512
- Partner’s monthly take-home pay (paycheck amount after taxes and other deductions): $2,881
- Additional monthly income: $300 from my small therapy private practice
- Total monthly income: $8,693
