You remember Covid? You know the reason everyone nationwide got a free 6-8 week (about 2 months) “stay-cation”? Well, that “stay-cation” was not as free as everyone thought because we as a generation are paying for it now between today’s excessive cost of living. The youth lack financial independence, and the generational inflation is causing America to suffer.

To start the I think we can all agree that today’s cost of living is insane compared to what it was 6 years ago when the dollar was worth over 25% more, meaning a dollar in 2019 is really $1.25 now (2025), to put that into perspective imagine you just graduated high school and got a full time job making 20 dollars an hour job, pretty good pay for just out of high school, and you decide that you want to surprise the family and take them out for Friday night dinner, you have a good meal and create some memories that will be long lasting. Until you get the bill that reads 150 bucks, it doesn’t click until then that you just spent an entire day’s work (an 8 hour shift) for what? An hour of conversation over food that wasn’t the best and a conversation you could barely understand what was being said at the table because the music was too loud? Now compare that 150 dollars and 8 hours of work to what that was in 2019. In 2019 that meal would have been 110 dollars and 5.5 hours of work. See how much of a difference 25% can be when you are only making 20 dollars an hour?

With everything now costing 25% more than 6 years ago, how do you expect to move from mom and dad’s old house? To put it into perspective the average American who is moving out on their own in 2025 is 36 years of age, while 2019 when the average was 33 years. It may seem like 3 years is not all that long, but if you think about the difference in starting a family, or a respectable career, 3 years is a lot of time. Now compare this to the 60’s when the average age to move out was 23 years, isn’t it crazy how that gap drastically increased over just a few decades?

Sources: https://www.usinflationcalculator.com/inflation/current-inflation-rates/ https://www.imf.org/external/datamapper/PCPIPCH@WEO/WEOWORLD/VEN?year=2019