Love this video. Stephanie and Derek are just two of our current students, who happen to live in Adelaide. But we have students from Los Angeles to Auckland, and many places between, who want to challenge a failing economic narrative which is not fit for the 2020s and beyond. pic.twitter.com/WgB09kj0l9
Our student @JanineRogan is a best-selling financial feminist author, podcaster and speaker. We are so very proud to have students like Janine on the MML/Torrens program. As I keep telling everyone, they are an amazing bunch. pinktaxbook.com
[Applause]
[Music]
how would you feel
if with just one summer of full-time
work you could pay for your university
courses
and your living expenses and still have
some money left over for beer
if you're sitting here thinking
yeah that was my experience
then you might be a baby boomer born
from 1946 to 1964.
but if you're sitting here thinking
wow
that would be amazing
then you might be a millennial like
myself
born from 1981
to 1996.
my mother and i
had very similar
professional experiences
we both attended the university of
alberta and graduated with our
accounting degrees hers in 1982 and mine
in 2014.
we would both then go on to earn our cpa
designations at the same large
accounting firm
you could say
the apple doesn't fall far from the tree
but the truth is
the world was a much different place for
her
than it was for me
university cost my mom just twelve
hundred dollars per year whereas my
business degree
was eight thousand dollars per year
a 567
percent
increase
my mom's starting salary was eighteen
thousand dollars
which was generous if you compared it to
the cost of her first home
coming in at a hundred thousand dollars
or five times her annual income
my starting salary at the exact same
company
was 41 000 a year so just a little bit
more than double hers
but the cost of my first home
was 600 000
that's 14 times
my starting salary
millennials face unprecedented financial
hurdles when it comes to building wealth
the average student debtor graduates
with 46
000
of student loan debt
and their starting salary
is just 54 000
millennials have to work three times the
number of hours
that their parents did
to earn enough for just one year
of post-secondary
and housing in 2021 has skyrocketed
with the average cost of home ownership
in canada
at over 700
000 dollars
millennials will not be able
to earn and build wealth
the same way that their baby boomer
parents did
the wealth gap between these generations
is compounded by wage stagnation and the
gender wage gap
wages have been stagnant
and even on the decline for the past 40
years
and the wage gap compounds this further
white women earn just 84 cents on the
dollar
and if we add any level of
intersectionality the gap just gets
wider
with women of color
earning just 62 cents on the dollar for
the same
work
as men
these
economic factors are compounded by this
notion of being self-made
not accepting any help from the outside
or pulling yourself up
by the bootstraps
but what happens
if you don't have any boots
or your boots just
aren't as big
how do you pull yourself up to have a
comparable lifestyle to the generations
before you
this 19th century phrase
was originally coined to describe
something absurd
and that's exactly what it is
to pull yourself up by the bootstraps is
frankly
impossible
but our society continues to tell
millennials
to stop being so lazy
or entitled
and to just work harder
pull yourself up by the
bootstraps as an aside when i pitched
this to ted
an older white man came up to me after i
was done
to tell me
that i was wrong
this was not what the millennials were
experiencing because the millennials in
his life
did not experience the same things of
the ones i was describing
what i should have told this gentleman
at the time was that there are five
economic factors that millennials face
when it comes to financial instability
wage stagnation
the gender wage gap
the housing crisis
inflated post-secondary costs
and child care
these five
have contributed to millennial wealth
plummeting
when the baby boomers were our age they
held 21
of the wealth in the united states
fast forward
the millennials currently only hold 4.6
of that wealth
in 1989
the baby boomers average net worth was
86 000
and just 25 years later
the average net worth of the millennials
is just six thousand dollars
now this isn't about who had it harder
it's about understanding the differences
between these two generations so that we
can empower young people
to build wealth
in different ways
so how do we fix this
how do we support millennials in their
wealth building journey now that we
understand the differences
the road to financial stability
is different today than it was 20 years
ago
but there is a role for all of us to
play
in the wealth generation
of the next generation
for my millennials
here are two things that you can do
right now for your finances
number one
negotiate your salary
it can sound like something so small
but in actuality even a small increase
in your starting salary can mean
hundreds of thousands of dollars
later on in your career
just a 5 000 increase
can mean 700
000 over the course of your career
and number two
investing
with housing prices
being at an all-time high the
millennials aren't going to be able to
see the same gains in the housing market
that our parents did
we might not even be able to afford
houses
but we can start investing
and not investing
could mean giving up
3.3 million dollars in potential gains
you can start with just a small amount
even as small as 25 or 100 dollars to
start your wealth building journey
and for my baby boomers
here are three things that you can do to
support us as well
number one
building sustainable and accessible
cities
we can do this through public transit
and multi-generational housing
and building communities like this
brings us all together
number two
affordable and accessible child care
child care is a huge financial burden
for many millennials
2020 brought us the birth of our first
child
and child care is going to cost us
sixteen hundred dollars a month
or a hundred thousand dollars
before he enters
grade one
this is why policies like ten dollar a
day daycare are so
critically important
and number three
we need to vote for our daughters
and our sisters
and our mothers and our friends
we have to make this world a more
beautiful place for the most
marginalized of women
we can do this through ditching the pink
tacks things that women pay more for
than men things like shavers and shampoo
and pens
yes
even pens
and we can vote for inclusive
representation that will allow us to
close the wage gap
building these policies into our
community allows us to support wealth
generation
for the millennials so that they aren't
left behind
imagine a world
where wages
have kept up with inflation
minimum wage would be four dollars an
hour
or fifty thousand
dollars a year
we index things like tax brackets and
tfsa contribution room limits why are we
not indexing minimum wage
in our fictional society we have
affordable and accessible child care for
all supporting
every new parent
we don't even have to look that far to
find great examples of this quebec has
seven dollar a day
daycare
and sweden has
480 days of parental leave to use
before a child turns eight
and lastly in our fictional feminist
society we finally close the wage gap
we can do this through mandating that
companies disclose fair and equal pay
with daily fines if they fail to do so
like they do in iceland
and we can ensure that women have access
to their opposite sex colleagues average
compensation
to ensure fair wages like they do
in germany
we can
build a society that doesn't leave the
millennials behind
and we all
want to build a society that is better
for our children
one with less financial anxiety
and less dread when it comes to managing
our money
and right now the millennials they feel
left behind when it comes to building
wealth and having a comparable lifestyle
to their parents generation
but we can flip the narrative
on how we build wealth
we can build a world and a society
that supports the changes that have
happened in the financial industry
over the last 30 years
and in doing so
we will have a happier
healthier
and wealthier world
what if your children
could attend university
be paid a living wage
and yes still have some money
left over for beer
thank you
Modern Money Lab as a charity could have looked for money from greenwashing investors but we didn't. So getting these courses going with such amazing lecturers has been even harder work than it might have been. Every hour so far has been worth it. The students are the proof. pic.twitter.com/w8FZ6yUWZB
Modern Money Lab as a charity could have looked for money from greenwashing investors but we didn't. So getting these courses going with such amazing lecturers has been even harder work than it might have been. Every hour so far has been worth it. The students are the proof. pic.twitter.com/w8FZ6yUWZB
My book 'The Pink Tax: Dismantling A Financial System Designed To Keep Women Broke' is now available for pre-order 🤯 Check out pinktaxbook.com for links to @amazon & @barnesandnoble (Chapters soon!)