Since childhood, you’re taught and told what all you need to do to live a successful and prosperous life. At least the kind of life that the society wants you to live that is. Study hard, get the grades. The grades get you into the so-called top colleges and the top colleges get you the coveted jobs. The coveted jobs are what will finally get you the big bucks that you want since childhood, allowing you to live the life that you’ve always dreamed of.

As millennials, we’ve all, at some points in our lives have been guilty of following the template. Slogged hours at tuitions, stayed up nights studying for the never-ending tests and whatnot. Practically, our educational qualifications should be directly proportional to our money-making ability, right? At least that’s what we’ve been taught for a long time. Sadly, that’s anything but the case.

Educated Yet Unemployed

The findings by the Centre for Sustainable Employment at Azim Premji University share some startling numbers. It brings to light the unfortunate condition of millennials in India, in spite of them following the conventional playbook to the tee. The number of people who are unemployed in the country and possess a bachelor’s degree stands at 9 million. The unemployment among the well-educated is thrice the national average! This can be attributed to various factors such as the prevailing unemployment situation in the country, as well as the mediocre quality of education on offer at most colleges. 

Millennials Low On Money!

However, the struggles of millennials don’t just end at unemployment. While several reports tend to label them as reckless, as ones who don’t spend money wisely and are entitled pricks, the truth is something very different from that. It revolves around how millennials, in spite of being more educated and having spending habits similar to earlier generations, still have less money than the generations before they had at this age.

According to a report by the Fed published in November 2018 "Millennials are less well off than members of earlier generations when they were young, with lower earnings, fewer assets,” the study said. Millennials born in the 1980s are at the greatest risk of becoming a "lost generation" for wealth accumulation, according to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis. As of 2016, people born in this decade had wealth levels 34% below where they would most likely have been if the financial crisis hadn't occurred, the report found.

Poor Financial Planning and Money Management

However, not all factors that have led to millennials being broke have been brought upon them externally. Some also have been brought upon them by themselves. Millennials have given rise to a culture of aspirational spending. It involves spending a greater amount than they normally would, to live a lifestyle that they perceive to be as popular. This includes spending lavishly on vacations, going out, restaurants etc. just to fit in with the social group and avoid the dreaded FOMO (Fear of Missing Out)

Not only this, the lack of financial planning and knowledge amongst the younger generations surely works to their downfall when it comes to them managing their finances. An ICICI Lombard study stated millennials, on average, spend 69% of their salaries every month. A large number of millennials don’t know manage their funds, simply because they don’t know how to or haven’t been taught before. “I’m a management student. Yet I’ve never learnt in class on how to do my taxes or being specifically taught what to do with the money I have kept idle,” said Varun, a BBA student in Mumbai.

So if you’re a millennial who’s reading this, you have all the right to be a bit annoyed with the system for giving you the short straw!