Growing up, Emma Conde Waddoups always had two life plans: one if she got married and one if she didn’t. But when she met her then-boyfriend at 21, she found herself navigating big life decisions sooner than she anticipated. She wanted to go to law school and committing to a relationship meant narrowing her law school choices to Utah.
Now 23, Waddoups got married in May and is about to begin her final year at Brigham Young University, where she’s studying political science. As she looks ahead, she’s thinking about the next milestones — law school, starting a career as a public defender, buying a house and having children. Her husband, also an undergraduate student, still has three years in school before he graduates, and she estimates it’ll be five years before she applies for her first legal job. With that timeline and rising costs, Waddoups has started to question whether her plans are financially realistic.
She worries how they’ll afford child care on a public service salary. And buying a home in Utah, where they both grew up, feels increasingly out of reach.
“We definitely had a conversation about whether we will be able to afford a home in the areas we grew up in, or will we have to go to other places that are more affordable,” said Waddoups, who is a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. “I’ve always wanted to be a homeowner, and I think the likelihood of that is different for my generation than it was for my parents.”
For previous generations, the path to adulthood followed a predictable trajectory: earn a degree, land a job, buy a home, start a family.
But for Gen Z, that road map is fraying. Astronomical housing costs, delayed entry into the workforce and shifting career norms have pushed traditional milestones further down the road, or off it entirely. One recent study found that 84% of Gen Z adults (ages 18–27) and 71% of Millennials (ages 28–43) say today’s economic realities like inflation, high living costs and job insecurity are influencing their decisions about whether to start having children or have more of them.
In 2024, the average age of a first-time homebuyer hit a record high of 38, three years older than the year before. More than 70% of young adults say they don’t even want to own a home.
According to this year’s Harvard Youth Poll, over 40% of Americans under 30 report they’re “barely getting by” financially, while only 16% say they’re doing well or very well. More than 70% of Gen Z say they don’t have much hope in the economy at all.
These pressures are redefining what success looks like and when it’s supposed to happen. Even the idea of a lifelong career is being upended by the rise of gig work and artificial intelligence.
The New York Times’ columnist David Brooks reported one college senior telling him he belonged to “the most rejected generation,” pointing to the hypercompetitive process of applying for universities, internships and jobs. In face of these challenges, some are coping by withdrawing from it all: a growing number of Gen Z — one in five, and many men among them — are becoming “NEETs” or “not in employment, education, or training.”
“The things that our parents told us are important—sports games, homecoming, dorm living — Gen Z is starting to say, ‘No, that’s not necessarily the path to adulthood,’” said Julia Myers, founder of Generational Wisdom, who works with families and young adults on financial education.
Still, even amid economic instability and in an era of hyper-individualism, some young adults like Waddoups find grounding in their faith traditions. For her, faith and the safety net of her family and church community help ease some of the anxieties about the future. But faith is by no means a substitute for planning, she noted: “You have to be realistic, God isn’t going to buy you a house. You have to make smart decisions.”
The era of frictionless and intentional spending
That emotional undercurrent is something Julia Myers, a financial educator, encounters often. She points to how digital money and frictionless spending have altered how young people relate to their finances. “What makes things harder is when you don’t learn about money by touching it, feeling it, literally smelling money — it’s only digital,” she told me. Apps like Venmo or Klarna, create a quick dopamine hit but can disguise the real cost of spending.
Unlike earlier generations raised on the mantra of “save first,” Gen Z is coming of age without a clear blueprint for smart spending. “They now have paychecks they’ve never had before, and there’s no clear model for smart spending,” Myers said. As a result, she said, young people are guided by emotions rather than long-term goals when it comes to financial habits.
On average, Gen Z begin working full-time at age 24, nearly a decade later than many millennials, Myers noted. It’s not just when they work, but why that is changing. “They’re not lazy,” Myers said. “It just might not be as important to them.”
For many in Gen Z, money is less about building wealth in a traditional sense and more about crafting a life that feels intentional and driven by what they believe is important. Gen Z prioritize new experiences and eating out even amid budget constraints. And those preferences are often shaped by social media, Myers said.
“The internet is the Joneses. It’s no longer the people next door,” said Myers. The result is what she calls a “middle-class scarcity mindset,” an abiding anxiety about maintaining a lifestyle that already feels tenuous. It’s why some young hustlers have taken up “polyworking,” holding multiple jobs simultaneously, just to stay afloat and have a backup plan.
“It’s not about survival,” she explained. “It’s the anxiety of working to maintain a lifestyle that they want to live and that feels out of balance.”
Gen Z is starting early
Even as Gen Z hustles toward a stable and abundant future, many are stepping into financial maturity early in life. The tech-savvy Gen Z are starting to invest at around 19, study says, and 55% of Gen Z own crypto assets.
Juliana Noreus, an 18-year-old from Naples, Florida, who was raised in a family of seven, remembers having to budget school clothes down to the pants and shoes her family could afford. In fifth grade, she joined a financial literacy program run by the Boys & Girls Clubs of America in partnership with the Charles Schwab Foundation that first introduced to her the concept of budgeting and spending.
“I understood that there were certain things that I wanted right now, but it wouldn’t really last long term,” said Noreus, who’s worked jobs at Sonic and for a solar company as a teen.
Now preparing to study financial engineering — a blend of computer science, data analysis and economics — at Columbia University, she’s already thinking ahead. She’s budgeting and tracking her spending and trying to find a balance between essentials and everyday indulgences. “Between me and my peers, we love spending money on food,” she said. For her, food and Starbucks runs are a reward on tough days, alongside fashion finds from online clothing store Shein and H&M. “If we’re not going out to eat, we’re going to the mall.”
Still, her goals go beyond retail therapy. On Noreus’s vision board are a future home, a pet, and now that she’s turned 18, she’s actively researching how to open a retirement account.
For Waddoups and her husband, that financial awareness also started early. Waddoups first learned about Roth IRAs through TikTok. Her husband, now 22, began investing at just 16 and is already thinking about how to build wealth and retire early. “He’s financially conservative,” she said, “and he’s looking ahead.”
Committing to something
When it comes to having children, Waddoups is thinking strategically, trying to find a timeline that aligns with both her professional aspirations and her desire to start a family. “I don’t want to have a kid during my first year of law school, because that’s the most demanding,” Waddoups said. “But with the biological clock, I don’t necessarily want to wait until I’m 30 to start my family.”
This kind of careful planning reflects a broader trend among the Gen Z. A survey from Care.com released in June showed that Gen Z and Millennials are increasingly hesitant about having children, mainly because they are concerned about affordability and the availability of reliable child care. Only 30% of adults aged 18–44 say they definitely want kids, while 44% say they do not. And 68% cite the high cost of raising children as a major deterrent.
For Waddoups, who wants to be both a present parent and a public defense attorney, the tension is personal. “I think that’s hard, when there’s limited paternity leave in those demanding careers for both men and women,” she said.
She also senses that many in her generation are grappling with a deeper kind of anxiety — the expectation to recreate the lifestyle their parents had, despite an economy that no longer supports that level of upward mobility. “There’s always been this idea that each generation should do better,” she said. “But that trend is starting to reverse.”
The economy isn’t even the biggest worry for Waddoups. She’s more concerned about the state and the future of democracy, and its preservation for her own children. “The guardrails of our constitution are currently being eroded in lots of ways,” she said. “That concerns me the most.”
Still, she remains optimistic. Part of that confidence, she said, comes from knowing her family could offer support if she was facing hardship. “That sense of safety net from our families plays a huge role in easing those anxieties,” she said.
Her faith, too, offers a stabilizing force when economic uncertainties have disrupted a once linear path to adulthood. “Having faith that things will work for your good, according to God’s plan — I think that really relieves a lot of anxiety,” she said.
This mindset also helped her make a major life decision: she chose the relationship path which led to marriage instead of pursuing law schools out of state.
As rights of passage for young people evolve, or even fade altogether, Waddoups says faith tradition can provide scaffolding for big decisions.
“I think people in my generation struggle with commitment to any path,” she said. “But I think committing to something is better than not committing to anything.”