Let me let you in on a little secret: leftists hate personal thrift. They believe saving money is a fool’s errand since their goal is to get you to rely on Big Brother for everything you need for life, which they define as what Big Brother thinks you are entitled to.
Those advocating for a Big Brother world present themselves as selfless protectors of the weak who are eminently pragmatic. But, in real life, they are some of the most avaricious individuals on the face of the earth. While vociferously rejecting all things material, many live entirely consumer-driven lives. Let’s take a moment and check off some of the habits of the average under-45 progressive:
- They like Starbucks, where the average spend per visit is $3-$8, with 49% of revenue from customers aged 25–40. The average Starbucks consumer spends $1,200 to $1,500 a year, with the average even higher for the 18-34 age bracket.
- They depend on cell phones, with 97% of individuals owning a smartphone paying an average of $120 and $160 a month for their plan.
- They demand internet access, with an average monthly cost between $65 and $105.
- They own cars—or at least, 74% of the under-50 crowd do. The average all-in cost of a car today is $965 a month. Notably, in 2024, 1.73 million vehicles were repossessed, the most since 2009, during the Great Recession, according to data from Cox Automotive and Experian.
- Many own houses. 55-60% of adults under 50 own a home, with only 40-45% renting. The average rent today is $1,750- $1,900 per month. For home ownership, the average cost is $3,500 to $4,000 a month (although you’re getting equity).
- They indulge themselves. The under 45 crowd frequently has its food delivered, which runs about $400-$500 a month. The subscription and digital lifestyle add another $50 to $120 a month. Fashion and personal aesthetics rack up another $200-$400 a month. Fitness and wellness memberships, apparel, and such average another $100 a month. Travel and mini-trips are de rigueur among young people, though no monetary figures are readily available.
The best available information indicates that young people under 35 spend an additional $9,200 to $24,000 a year on discretionary spending compared to what a frugal, involved, and wealth-building individual would spend.
“Discretionary” is an innocuous term that is not nearly as appreciated as it should be. Another way of looking at it is that the choices young people make keep them poor in the long run, since they don’t have savings to draw on for emergencies and lifetime planning.
The median average available cash at any given time for someone under 35 is $3,240. Surprisingly, it isn’t much better with age: the median average 75-year-old has ready access to only $9,300. Most Americans live paycheck to paycheck, especially those under 45.
Under-35s have:
- Lower incomes
- Higher student loan burdens
- Higher rent burdens
- Less time for compounding
- Higher discretionary spending (travel, dining, subscriptions)
These numbers are far worse than they were 30 years ago. It’s reasonable to ask what has changed. While I don’t think K-12 ever did a very good job of preparing young people for the financial realities of life, the best available information indicates that most students still graduate without a meaningful financial education. Worse, their parents are frequently as clueless as they are.
Why?
There’s a real answer here, and it’s not “kids these days.”
What you’re seeing is the predictable outcome of structural, economic, political, and educational forces that make it unusually hard for young adults to develop financial competence before they’re thrown into the deep end. I believe that this is by design. It’s not a big jump either to connect lack of financial competence with reasoning in general!
Today’s young adults navigate a world defined by rapid change, economic volatility, and constant digital comparison, which can delay the development of long-term confidence and resilience. Emotional maturity emerges later because the traditional stabilizers—affordable housing, predictable careers, early family formation—arrive later or not at all.
In contrast, adults in the 1970s typically entered stable roles earlier, gaining responsibility through lived experience rather than prolonged uncertainty. Younger adults today are often highly self-aware to a fault, empathetic, and expressive, but struggle with sustained stress tolerance, delayed gratification, and long-range planning. Their emotional landscape is less linear, more adaptive, and more reactive to external pressures, reflecting a world that demands flexibility rather than predictability.
It is not enough to recognize the problem; we must confront an entire system of individuals and groups, from teachers’ groups to dedicated Marxists and to the many who despise capitalism and worked for two generations to ensure Johnny can’t read and understand his history, that he becomes disassociated from other people, that he is wedded to Starbucks capitalism (that is, meaningless spending), and that he never fully matures, including embracing the most mature step of all: marriage and children. Those who foment this infantilizing lifestyle are our enemies as surely as any foreign nation that actively subverts us.
We will be unable to fix the problem so that future generations can return to the lessons, ideas, and principles that guided us for more than 200 years. The Starbucks effect must come to an end as we return to reason, sanity, patriotism, and individualism that is America.
God Bless America!