I get that we have large amounts of debt and don ' t exactly have the easiest path to riches but your interpretation of this graph is entirely unsupported . You ' re saying that we ' re fucked because we don ' t have money when compared to older generations . Older generations have had a longer time receiving income whereas millennialist are generally just getting out of college . In fact , this comparison is comparing millennial at likely they ' re poorest period of their lives fresh out of college versus generations which have had 20 years to build a career , invest , save , etc . E didn ' t mean to be so caustic . What I ' m trying to say is that this data alone is not enough to make any useful interpretations . Now , 8 we can see graphs for the last 20 years and compare how millenials are trending at this point in their lives versus Gen X , baby boomers , 3 etc then we can learn about how our generation is progressing . Because at the end of the day , our generation is still just becoming adults . We ' re in the very formative and early stages of our life cycle and so the true insight would be to compare how our economic development matches that of others .