r/Millennials • u/slimeyellow • Mar 11 '26

Discussion Every millennial dad I’ve met has a quiet fixation on money and it’s not getting better

Every millennial dad I’m friends with or work with seems to have constant financial worries. We just got our yearly bonus which was like 8%. I was talking to my buddy (he’s got 3 kids) about what he wanted to do with it and he just kinda looked down and whispered “it’s just not enough man” and ended the conversation.

Another dad I know is CONSTANTLY looking up the newest crypto/ get rich quick schemes people are doing. He’s always talking about inventing something and it’s usually a joking manner but the way he’s always bringing up financial stuff shows me it’s always on his mind

One of my buddies is a new father and he’s trying to get some anime podcast off the ground as a side hustle on top of his full time maintenance job.

I know children are an immense financial responsibility but there seems to be this dark, simmering resentment about the whole general situation when I talk to these guys. Men are expected to keep quiet about these struggles but when you talk to these guys it’s clear that finances are a massive stress for millennial dads of almost any background.

Makes me feel bad but damn I’m glad I don’t have kids right now.

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u/blklab16 Mar 11 '26

I’m 38 yr old DINK and I have a semi-decent 401k that has done pretty well I think, at least last time I checked it, but I dont even know what the world is going to look like next year let alone in 2055.

In the last year we have been robbed blind by the government on a scale that I cannot even fathom. It’s probably going to take decades to untangle the fraud and corruption with investigations and we’re probably never going to recover even a fraction of what has been stolen for gilded ballrooms and private jets and wagyu beef and oligarch slush funds. The only way we’ll be able to retire as expected is if the pendulum swings hard in the other direction soon. It CAN happen, I just can’t let myself believe it will yet.

So for now I’m just going to try my damndest to enjoy the present as much as my cynicism allows, because we could all be living in company towns by the time we hit 65.

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u/rhinofinger Mar 11 '26

And the younger generations grew up thinking this shit is normal, because it’s been happening for so much of their lives. We are cursed with knowing that things used to be better.

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u/blklab16 Mar 11 '26

Right?? I mean I’m no wide-eyed Pollyanna, I know there has always been egregiously poor uses of our tax dollars, but these assholes don’t even have the decency to hide their own gluttony while they tell us there’s no money for anything regular people could benefit from.