Two days ago, I woke up to a Twitter Trend called #BoycottMillenials. I genuinely wanted to understand what my Starbucks sipping, Ola rolling, Swiggy eating generation did wrong to be called out as destroyers of the Indian economy.

It all started when Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman built a connection between Ola and Uber with the auto industry crisis. But if you ask me, this comment triggered the already lousy image Millennial are carrying on their back.

It is so easy to blame a generation for economic failure instead of addressing this issue more maturely and trying to understand the root causes. That being said, I think Millennial are smarter than what you guys give them credit for.

  • We are not kids: Let’s start with the fact that every time someone drop’s the word ‘millennial’ we begin making a figure in our heads, a kid in hipster jeans with chains hanging from pocket or a girl in skimpy dress taking selfies.
    The term Millennials generally refers to the generation of people born between the early 1980s and 1990s. That makes the oldest Millennial right now is 39, and that doesn’t sound childish to me.
  • We are not a financial failure: A lot of people (our toxic relatives) look at us and bash for not buying a house or car or keep gold in our lockers for easy dispersal at the moment of emergency (now even government believes the same!)But what they don’t understand is that unfortunately, our generation went through the great recession of 2008, a lot of economical up and downs and to top it over the years rates of properties, gold, automobile industry, tuition fees and cost of living has just gone up. And no, we don’t want to pile up more debts on ourselves, and that’s why we don’t invest in these things.
    So I can sum it up by saying, Millennials went through the recession when they were young (If Oldest millennials is 39 right now makes them 28-year-old back then with no financial cushion fighting economy), and we don’t want to fall in that trap again.
  • We are not Killing <Fill the blank with anything> industry: No, we are not the ‘Zodiac Killer’ or ‘Jack The Ripper’ of this economy. The reason we have started moving toward a place where we go for rented cars, houses, technically entire lifestyle is because of simple fact, availability of funds. I have already discussed how we don’t want to fall in debt traps; I think we go ahead with a lot of Start-Ups / innovative businesses because they provide us with more accessible solutions. We are moving to that side of the economy more aggressively because as consumers who are ready to pay, we all deserve decent services.
  • We are not lazy: When people look at us, they see a PUBG playing person who leaves everything for the last minute to resolve, and it is disrespectful toward people of my generation. A study by Manpower suggests that 73% Millennial work for 40 hours a week and more.

Yes, I know we have been brought up in a tech-savvy industry where a lot of our repetitive processes can be streamlined, a lot of things can be resolved with APIs (Application providing interface) being at our disperse to SAAS (Software as a service) replacing manual work but that doesn’t mean we don’t take our work seriously.

Note: There is a term called ‘Hustle Porn,’ which means glorifying the hours you are spending in the office. Millennials know the difference between work hard and work smart, so next time you call someone lazy remember they have intelligently allocated their work and It is a damaging thing to say to anyone.

  • We are not ‘discrediting’ marriage as a concept: Yes, we understand a lot of dating apps are out there but that doesn’t mean we are spending our time having ‘fun time’ like bunnies with every person we meet, a study suggests that Millenials have fewer partners as compared to previous generations (data is from USA)
    But what is coming out is, due to debts we have be it from college or in general we have tendency of delaying a long term commitment which on surface makes us come out as commitment-phobic people, but when you get into the layers you will understand our loyalty is very much intact it is just our commitments and priorities in life that has changed. We want to be financially stable (like you suggested us to) before committing to someone.
  • We are not financially literate generation: “Ramsey Solutions commissioned a 2016 survey of more than 1,000 U.S. adults to evaluate the state of retirement in America. In the first of a four-part series based on results from the survey, 38% of Millennials reported they already know how much money they’ll need to retire — essentially the same as Baby Boomers, 37%, and Generation X, 36%.”
    “Even though Millennials have had less than 20 years to build their retirement wealth, they are not that far behind many of those who are closest to retirement. Nearly 60% of Millennials have less than $10,000 saved for retirement, but roughly half of Baby Boomers are in the same boat, even though this generation has had as much as half a century to save for their retirement.”

Via Udita Pal

So next time someone says that you have not figured these things out, feel free to send them here. That being said, if you are a Millenial who is finding the financial world difficult we are Salt.pe have ready solutions available for you at your disperse.

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