Feeling Behind in Life? You're Not Alone: Redefining Success as a Millennial in 2025

If you've ever had that gut-wrenching feeling of being behind in life, wondering "What am I doing with my life?" – trust me, you're not alone. 

In fact, you're part of a generation grappling with redefining success in a world that looks radically different from the one our parents knew. In this raw episode, we fearlessly dive into what it really means to thrive as a millennial in 2025.

We'll unpack the hard truths behind the millennial wealth gap, exploring how economic shifts, the student debt crisis, and the rise of the gig economy have fundamentally transformed our world. Discover why traditional success formulas no longer hold up in an age of uncertainty and what it really means to thrive in a "risk society."

But we don't just dwell on the challenges. We also explore practical strategies for building financial resilience, prioritizing mental health, and finding meaning in the midst of modern chaos. Learn how to chart your own course, create your own milestones, and redefine success on your own terms.

Highlights include:

• Unpacking the Millennial wealth gap: why millennials are 40% poorer than Baby Boomers at the same age (2:15)
• The Great Delay: how key milestones like marriage, homeownership & career stability have shifted (6:30)
• Welcome to the Risk Society: navigating invisible, cumulative & irreversible risks in the modern age (15:05)
• Identity vs. Role Confusion: coming of age in an unstable world (18:45)
• The Mental Health Triple Whammy: identity formation, relationship navigation & the psychological load (24:10)
• Your Action Plan: 5 steps to redefine success, build resilience & create change (28:50)

Whether you're facing a quarter-life crisis, considering a career change, or just trying to make sense of these chaotic times, this episode offers a compassionate reality check and a roadmap for rewriting the rules of success.

Tune in for hard truths, practical wisdom, and a healthy dose of humour as we chart a new path forward together. Because you're not behind; you're exactly where you need to be to write your own story.

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Chapters

• 0:00 The Millennial Wealth Gap Explained
• 6:30 Delayed Milestones
• 15:05 Navigating the Risk Society
• 18:45 Identity Crisis in Chaos: Coming of Age in an Unstable World
• 24:10 The Mental Health Triple Threat

Transcript

Jennifer Walter: 0:00

Hi. So grab a drink and let's get cozy on the scenic route, because today we need to talk about well, not Kevin, although that series does nail sight guys but the nagging feeling of being behind in life. And if you see the video of this I'm doing behind in air quotes, you know the one. For me, it's usually at 3am while doom scrolling instagram instead of trying to fall back asleep. For others, um, it's. It might be those during those fun family gatherings when your aunt susan asks again, why are you still renting? Or maybe it's your mom casually dropping, so when do I get some grandbabies? So well, buckle up, because we're about to unpack what's really going on here, backed by some cold hard facts surfing the side of oh, now, this makes sense and zero shame, because we're not in the game for that.

Jennifer Walter: 0:58

There's a different way to think about mental health, and it starts with slowing down. Sometimes, the longest way around is the shortest way home, and that's exactly why we're taking the scenic route. Hi, I'm Jennifer Walter, host of the Scenic Route podcast. Think of me as your sociologist, sister in arms and rebel with many causes Together. We're blending critical thinking with compassion, mental health with a dash of rebellion, and personal healing with collective change. We're trading perfectionism for possibility and personal healing with collective change. We're treating perfectionism for possibility and toxic positivity for messy growth. Each week, we're exploring the path to better mental health and social transformation and yes, by the way, pretty crystals are totally optional. You ready to take the scenic route? Let's walk this path together.

Jennifer Walter: 1:42

Why we millennials feel all broke and why we're not wrong some truth bombs that may or may not make you feel a whole lot better about you and your bank account. When we talk about feeling behind, we're not just in our feelings and our emotions. We are responding to some very real economic shifts that have fundamentally transformed our world over the past decades. Bring up some data. As always, please mind, I'm a white West European sociologist. I'll bring some data for Europe and some for the US. It might look very different in the part of the world where you live, but we see global trends emerging, so, or have emerged. So there you take. Take that with you as we keep on going. Um. So let's dive in.

Jennifer Walter: 2:34

The average malayan household is sitting at about 92,000 in network. That's um. A study by p research in 2019 for the us 92 000. So before you either celebrate or cry into your oat milk latte. Here's the kicker and the important part that's nearly 40 percent less than what baby boomers had at the same age when it trusted for inflation. Yeah, we all cry a little now.

Jennifer Walter: 3:05

Or if you look at the housing market, only 30 of us millennials own homes. That's based on the nir's housing statistics of 2023. For perspective, if you hop over to sweden, um, where 44 of millennials are homeowners. But even the swedes are concerned because that's way down from the 60 to 70% rates their parents enjoyed in the 1980s. Before anyone comes for Switzerland, because it's often the poster child for economic stability, listen to this the lowest income 20% of households in Switzerland are spending half their disposable income just on rent. Meanwhile the highest income fifth only needs to fork over 17.2 for their housing, according to 2021 data. So it's not just like a wealth crack anymore. It's starting to look more like grand canyon. And those are data.

Jennifer Walter: 4:00

But what also happened is our timelines shifted right like our life milestones just got a really bad remix. So remember that need like life timeline our guidance counselor used to show us back in school, the one that went something like graduate, college, land, stable job, get married, buy house, have kids retire with a golden watch yeah, that one. So those life milestones, they have shifted massively. If you look at marriage and family, in 1980 people were saying I do, at the median age of 24 for men and 22 for women. Fast forward to 2023 those numbers have jumped to 30 for men and 28 for women. That's based on the us study by the peer research in 2023. And it might be because we're commitment phobes, but it's just certainly not the case in all of us right. Often it might just be we're waiting until we can actually fucking afford the wedding and the life that's supposed to come after we have.

Jennifer Walter: 5:14

Another big thing is career stability, this kind of like chop hopping right. For my dad, staying in one company for 40 years was the goal. I've switched jobs every few years and that was my normal and it was also my way to get a meaningful raise. So I wasn't just disloyal, I was just doing girl math like real girl math. So and we see this, traditional annual raises often barely keep up with inflation and job changes typically result in 10 to 20 salary increases.

Jennifer Walter: 5:50

And on top of that we had this like whole shift of and rise of the gig economy right. So let's like, what's the gig economy right? Like? Think of it like this instead of having one steady job with benefits, more and more people are piercing, are piecing together their income from multiple gigs or short-term jobs like kind of like freelance on steroids. Right, you might drive for uber between freelance projects or door dashing, or teach online classes or rent out the spare room, like whatever. It is right, um, but the catch is these gigs usually come don't come without any, come without any traditional benefits or safety nets, no health insurance, no paid vacation, no retirement plans. You're essentially running your own micro business, complete with all the freedom and rests um, we have, like the whole.

Jennifer Walter: 6:45

A third big area is the whole owner home ownership thing, which is kind of like moving target and here get things get really interesting or depressing, depending on your perspective. Housing costs in many urban areas now consume over 50 of monthly income, which is insane, right, traditional, the traditional 20 down payment has. Is what has become this mythical, nearly mythical number for many? Um, and, yeah, probably most people wait for their boomer parents to die to make that happen. And right, I just really. It's. Yes, in some case there are individual mishaps, but we need to look at the system and breaking down the bigger picture. So, yes, in similar cases there might be personal mishaps or failures, if you want to call them that I, I mean, have I done stupid shit with my money? Sure did, but this does not like.

Jennifer Walter: 7:57

This doesn't take anything away from the systemic shift. We had right. We had economic policy impacts. Corporate tax cuts have prioritized shareholder profits over worker wages for the past decades. Deregulation has made many industries more profitable, less stable wealth accumulation at the top has created a new gilded age. Right, and we're not talking. This is the thing where we talk about, like hacks, the rich. We're not talking about single digit millionaires. We talking billionaires and like the double digit millionaires. Like no, no one is coming for your. Like little cottage sharon, no, but anyway, like you have student debt crisis. I know this is very specific, particularly to certain areas of the world, um, but if you have, like in the us, if you have 1.7 trillion in student loan debt, this isn't a personal failure. This is. It's a policy choice for perspective.

Jennifer Walter: 9:06

My bachelor's degree in Switzerland like including books, materials and shit, was less than 7k for the three years, or maybe 8k if you count in like bus tickets to and there, like whatever, like I don't even remember the number, that's how insignificant it was. Not saying 7k is not a lot of money, but it's not a hundred thousand. So on top of that, you can't just say, oh well, you know, not everyone needs to go to college. True, I wouldn't believe that. But we see that a college degree went from a ticket to success to a basic requirement. You have so many job, job, job listings now who just require a basic bachelor's degree. And we're not talking about if this is right or wrong right now and might be for another episode. Um, and on top of that, we have the long shadow of 28. Right, many millennials enter the workforce during the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, and those early career sadbacks have compounded effects that echo through decades. Recovery from financial trauma also takes generations, not a year. And here's where things get even more spicy.

Jennifer Walter: 10:23

All these systemic changes have created something social scientist Ulrich Beck called the risk society. Think of it this way Our parents dealt with traditional risks like will I get that promotion? Will she marry me? But we're facing entirely new categories of uncertainty that nobody prepared us for, because they couldn't right. We're not blaming it was, it's just that they couldn't foresee it. They did not also have like a don't know a crystal ball. So welcome to the risk society. Next, experience explains so much about why we're all feeling a bit wobbly these days.

Jennifer Walter: 11:05

He pointed out that modern societies are creating new kinds of risks we've never dealt with before. For example, invisible risks like credit scores that can change your life without you even knowing why, like ai or algorithmic hiring that might reject your resume before a human actually sees it. Or just financial algorithms that determine whether you can rent an apartment or get a loan, or any kind of algorithm that depends on how high your use financial algorithms that determine whether you can rent an apartment or get a loan, or any kind of algorithm that depends on how high you're. Or we have cumulative risks if you have. If you add student debt plus housing instability, plus gig economy, you kind of like have a perfect storm of precarity and each setback has a bigger ripple effect because we have fewer safety nets. So the psychological weight of constant uncertainty creates its own problems. Or we have reversible risks. Right, if you start your career during a 20-year recession, that impact is still showing up in earnings. Missing or missing out on early career development opportunities can create lasting career gaps. That also includes if you need to go to military service or if you have a baby or have other caretaking responsibilities. Compounded effects of delayed wealth building has generational consequences. So what happens when you take all these new risks and uncertainties and slam them right into our basic human need to grow, develop and find our place in the world?

Jennifer Walter: 12:37

Yeah, okay, this is where things also again get spicy and where traditional psychology needs a serious update. Remember I think it was, yeah, eric erick from Psych 101, if you took that class a series of psychosocial development outlines eight key life stages, each presenting a challenge that shapes our identity. But if we throw in Beck's risk society, where uncertainty and shifting societal norms dominate, oh, suddenly these stages look very different. So this is, you're on a podcast for millennials. That's why we're only talking about stage eight of eric erickson's um development of like key stages, which is the intimacy versus isolation.

Jennifer Walter: 13:24

This is the young adulthood, years 18 to 40. Um, this stage centers around. For him, this stage centers around one key question can I form close and meaningful relationships if, if, yes, um, yeah, I build it. Can build deep, lasting relationship if not experience as long, less difficulty with emotional intimacy. Hello, it's like we have met before anyway.

Jennifer Walter: 13:53

So so if we look at it like the identity versus role confusion just never ending coming of age story, right? This classic question of can I develop a stable sense of self takes on a new meaning when traditional formulas this education and hard work, equal success no longer hold and it feels like every milestone of making it just keeps shifting, or it's kind of like dangled in front of us like a carrot. Career paths disappear overnight and get replaced with others that may or may not be stable career paths. Who knows? It's too early to tell. Looking at you, youtube influencers and whatnot. Um, and we are navigating risks our parents never imagined and no school book ever told us about. Right?

Jennifer Walter: 14:42

So, as a result, an extended adolescence where we're constantly questioning our choices, stuck in an identity crisis fueled by an unstable world, instead of growing into a well-defined role where we're forced to. Instead of that, we're forced to reinvent ourselves repeatedly, adapting to ever-changing job markets and demands economic instability and digital disruption. Markets and demands economic instability and digital disruption. So young adulthood is supposed to be about building deep relationships. What if we add economic instability and modern pressures? Right, we we have, like dating apps prioritizing credit scores over connection. We have friendships fractured on a financial stress. We have people women with mental load, not just stretching themselves.

Jennifer Walter: 15:35

Since then, future planning feels super impossible when we don't know, like, do we still have a job next month? So financial precarity isn't just about money, right, and this is if you've never been poor in your life. This is sometimes really hard to understand. It directly impacts trust, emotional security, the ability to commit your whole overall well-being. When survival is uncertain, relationships become fraught with anxiety. Financial stress exaggerates existing mental health struggles, making vulnerability and deep connection even harder to maintain. So this is kind of like a whole mental health triple whammy for us, right.

Jennifer Walter: 16:22

So, one, we have identity formation chaos. Right, we're trying to build a stable self in an unstable world yay, go us. We're constantly reinventing ourselves to stay employable and or presentable to partners. Yay, love this journey. For us, never feeling professionally complete or like whole in any sense of way, not even meaningful. Way to right with relationship navigation and uncertainty. Yeah, we're supposed to build, like these super meaningful relationships, but we have trust issues which are kind of to be expected when everyone's financially vulnerable. Um, we were balanced when we need to balance personal growth with your survival. I mean survival comes first right. So, um, also finding community. It is getting increasingly hard. Traditional support structures fade, third, spaces are getting lost along the way. And third, for the triple whammy, we have the psychological load and this constant adaption fatigue. We are just emotionally overwhelmed. Y'all, we're fucking tired. Anxiety over both present and future, yay, and the shame of not meeting outdated milestones. So that was a lot.

Jennifer Walter: 17:54

Here comes the second important part your action plan. Because what you have now is the knowledge, but knowledge without action is just trivia. So let's talk about what we can actually do. Please take what works for you. These are broad suggestions, dear Lord. No, not one size fits all solutions. That's what one-to-one coaching is for. Look out for the things that resonate with you or that spark curiosity and joy that's my advice and then go wrong with it. So first category redefine success on your own terms. Create your own milestone map that reflect your current reality. Right, yes, you can dream, but like also keep it anchored in where you are right now. Set achievable quarterly goals instead of distant life markers. Break it down. Maybe break it down to really like your next actionable step. Document your progress to remind yourself how far you've come and question inherited definitions of success, celebrate unconventional achievements or any fucking anything that feels like a fucking achievement idea.

Jennifer Walter: 19:29

Ideas for the second category financial resilience. Explore alternative arrangements. Maybe you can share or exchange services with your neighborhood or people online. Looking at stable, multiple income streams, what can you do? I mean, maybe a site, a gig, a part of the gig economy serves you for a while. That's okay. Learn about investing in wealth building outside traditional paths. Create an emergency fund based on what you need for your life. The third bucket create community power. Ideas here would be warm. Or join accountability groups. Maybe it's money or for career or it's just kind of like a network group where you all want to go. Again, explore cooperative business models. What can you do together? Or build a skill sharing network where you can help out. Create a mutual aid system for your community within your community it's really about go local. Or collaborate on resource sharing initiatives.

Jennifer Walter: 20:56

Bucket for mental health and digital well-being acknowledge that reality of the reality of financial trauma for you, explore it. Or another idea and this is this I think this is for all of us get real about what you're consuming online. Right, if someone's trying to sell you their lifestyle. They're probably selling you a fantasy. Do a massive cleanup of your instagram feed. Unfollow every single lifestyle influencer who is making you feel bad or ashamed or behind and who's also trying to sell you their, their version of success through like a two thousand dollar mastermind. Right, um, and remember those perfect morning routines and passing income promises and trad wives whatever whatnot are usually backed by trust funds or a massive debt. Find affordable therapy options right, because untangling from societal pressure is real work at all, like financial trauma that comes, that may or may not come with it for you. That everyone can do and cannot do more can always do more of. Is practice self-compassion, um, or build support networks that understand your reality and where you're coming from and who aren't trying to sell you anything like real community bucket five as always, your sociologist, hard at work.

Jennifer Walter: 22:25

Engage in systemic change. Stay informed about economic policy. Vote in local and national elections. Support organizations fighting for economic justice. Advocate for workplace changes, workplace safety, mental health, initiatives in the works, in the workplace. Share your story to help others feel, feel less alone and feel seen.

Jennifer Walter: 22:48

So bottom line is your journey, your rules, right. Success isn't really a destination. You've never made it. It's a journey, it's a scenic route. Get it and yours gets to look different. It's okay.

Jennifer Walter: 23:07

Whether you're reading, you're listening to this while hiding from your kids in the bathrooms I see you or dreaming of a career pivot, or just trying to make it through another Tuesday. Remember, please, like you're not behind, you're exactly where you need to be and release the shame because that traditional roadmap it's isn't. It isn't just outdated, it was written for a world it doesn't exist anymore and instead of trying to follow someone else's direction, it's listen to your. Listen to you and what you want. And you know what.

Jennifer Walter: 23:48

If you, if you're still listening to this podcast, you've already started it. You started by being here learning and questioning the status quo, so you want to create change together. Rewrite it. Take stock of what you actually want, not what you think you should want. Pick one of the suggestions I've listed earlier, like one of the action one, two or three action steps, whatever you feel you have the capacity for. Start implementing one thing, just one, it's fine. If you have the capacity to do two or three, it's fine. Come back, let me know how it went, how it's going for you. I'm rooting for you always.

Jennifer Walter: 24:37

So if you want to hear more real talk about money, mindset and making it work and everything between, subscribe to the scenic web podcast. Wherever you get your podcast, your daily podcast needs met. A new episode drops every Tuesday, serving up the perfect blend of practical whistle and potty humor. Because who says personal growth can't be fun? It's hard, yes, but it also can be fun Sometimes. But hey, so feel free to join our community of fellow Senior Girl Travelers who are redefining success on their own terms. We would love to welcome you there. Success on their own terms, we would love to welcome you there. And just like that, we've reached the end of another journey together on the CineGroot podcast. Thank you for spending time with us, curious for more stories or in search of the resources mentioned in today's episode, visit us at cinegrouppodcastcom for everything you need.

Jennifer Walter: 25:29

And if you're ready to embrace your Cineic route, I've got something special for you. Step off the beaten path with my scenic route affirmation card deck. It's crafted for those moments when you're seeking courage, yearning to trust your inner voice and eager to carve out a path authentically, unmistakably yours. Pick your scenic route affirmation today and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead I certainly am today, and let it support you. Excited about where your journey might lead, I certainly am. Remember, the scenic route is not just about the destination, but the experiences, learnings and joy we discover along the way. Thank you for being here and I look forward to seeing you on the scenic route again.