Whether it’s smashing avocado on toast or being too woke, millennials get roundly criticised by other demographic groups. But there’s one way millennials outperform all other age groups: savings.
According to Zopa, those aged 24 to 39 are more successful at cutting back their spending both before Christmas and after. More than a third of all Brits feel the pinch in January and 16% say that they really struggle to make it through to payday. They cite the usual suspects: too much spent at Christmas, higher energy bills and being paid early in December.
Almost half of millennials (47%) have responded by taking reasonable measures to offset January’s pain, versus 31% of the British population. Those measures are mostly small steps. The top ten more effective are:
- Reducing Christmas spending
- Staying with family over Christmas
- Going out less often
- Not going out altogether
- Not drinking (Dry January)
- Eating vegan food
- Not buying take-aways
- Taking packed lunches to work
- Not buying clothes
As a result of these changes, millennials saved an average of £568 in this period. All told, this generation saved £3.5bn. If all Brits made these small changes, each person would save £391 in January alone. Thanks to their frugal habits, almost one in five (18%) of millennials say that they have even more money in January than normal, versus 6% of everyone else.
How to save
While almost a third of Brits controlled their seasonal spending, they only managed to save an average of £204.88 (spending less over Christmas: £75.27, not going out altogether: £68.52, Dry January: £61.09).
While 89% of millennials say that they want to continue with their frugality throughout the year, these spending habits last an average of five months. If the average Brit acted like a millennial but stuck it out for the entire twelve months, then the savings would be £4,692 over the year, and cumulatively over the decade, £46,920 (want to know how to save £5k without breaking a sweat? click here). With this kind of savings habit, millennials should be looking at investing for the long term — to find the right investment platform for your circumstances, click here. If automated investment floats your boat, use our robo-calculator.
You can almost hear the response next time a joke gets made at a millennial’s expense: Okay Boomer, show me your bank statement.
Photo by Thought Catalog on Unsplash
