WSJ Your Money Briefing - How Young People Are Coping With Economic Anxiety

Episode Date: May 13, 2025

A generation that came of age in the 2008 crash and graduated into a global pandemic is now bracing for a third round of economic turmoil. Wall Street Journal platform editor Isaac Taylor joins host Julia Carpenter to talk about how he and his friends are delaying milestones, cutting budgets and preparing for an uncertain future.  Sign up for the WSJ's free Markets A.M. newsletter.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Here's your money briefing for Tuesday, May 13th. I'm Julia Carpenter for the Wall Street Journal. Economic anxiety can reshape our financial lives in ways big and small. Some young Americans have already weathered the 2008 crash and the pandemic era shutdowns. Now worried about yet another recession, they're delaying milestones and cutting back on expenses. This feels like it's directly hitting us, our individual budgets, our ability to rent or make down payments, even our retirement accounts. It's in the everyday decisions and the long-term plans that we're having to reconsider.

Wall Street Journal platform editor Isaac Taylor joins me to share how he and his friends are rethinking their plans for 2025. That's after the break. Hey, wouldn't it be great if life came with remote control? You know, you could hit pause when you needed to, or hit rewind, like that time you knocked down that wasps nest. Well, life doesn't always give you time to change the outcome, but prediabetes does. With early diagnosis and a few healthy changes, you can stop prediabetes before it leads to type 2 diabetes. To learn your risk, take the one-minute test

today at DoIHavePreDiabetes.org, brought to you by the Ad Council and its pre-diabetes awareness partners. Persistent inflation, the threat of a trade war, talk of a possible recession, there are a lot of ambient concerns stoking consumer fears right now. But how are young people supposed to make plans in the midst of it? Wall Street Journal platform editor Isaac Taylor joins me to talk about the economic anxiety keeping him and his friends awake at night. Isaac, in your column you describe a recent experience,

a particularly harrowing one, I might add, at your local bagel shop. Tell us to me about that bagel and what it signified for you. I went to grab brunch at this local bagel shop in Jersey City where I live, and before I even went inside, on the front door, they had this huge sign that was basically a warning for anyone coming in that any menu item containing eggs would have a pretty substantial price

increase. And of course, eggs on a bagel, it's not that serious, but it did exemplify the breadth of influence that economic uncertainty is having right now. This economic anxiety you describe, Isaac, what does it feel like? Over the last year or so, it's definitely intensified. Initially, there was more of a sense of, well, I'll get through this, it'll be okay. But now it feels more ingrained, like we're in a new normal of having to be much more cautious about making tougher choices. And your financial life and that of other people

in your generation has already seen its fair share of setbacks. You described coming of age during the 2008 crash and then graduating from college in the midst of a global pandemic. But you wrote, this feels like the first downturn that is having an impact on us directly. How are you seeing that play out?

The 2008 crash felt more distant. It impacted my mother in ways that I was unaware of in middle school. And the COVID-19 pandemic was really a unique moment just in and of itself. But this really feels different. This feels like it's directly hitting us, our individual budgets, our ability to rent or make down payments, even our retirement accounts. It's in the everyday decisions and the long-term plans that we're having to reconsider. And of course, you're not the only one feeling this. You describe how your friend group is always talking about cutting back or rethinking budgets or putting plans on hold. How have your

friends' financial situations changed of late? The conversations are constantly about cutting back on eating out. Friends who used to go eat out every day for lunch are now brown bagging it or just going to McDonald's for a cheaper option, delaying travel plans, and generally just being more frugal. Some have seen their job security become less certain and a little bit more shaky, while others are grappling with the increasing cost of major life steps that they're hoping to take, like buying a house or starting a family. It's a shared sense of pessimism around my friend group and a feeling that the financial stability we hope to have in our late 20s just isn't where we would have wanted it

to be. And it's tough because our emotions are so tied to our sense of security and our aspirations. The first step is acknowledging those emotions, the frustration, the worry, the disappointment, and then trying to step back and look at those things from a more objective standpoint. I'm so glad you brought up the emotional piece of this because emotional decisions and financial

decisions can be so intertwined. Financial decisions can become emotional decisions. Emotional decisions have financial impact. How do we separate those? Creating a budget and really understanding our actual income and expenses and making decisions based on that, rather than solely how we feel in the moment is crucial. It's about finding a balance between acknowledging our emotional responses

and making informed financial choices. For instance, one of my friends, he delayed proposing to his girlfriend because he was unfortunately laid off from his job as a recruiter last year. And he has since found another job, but he hasn't fully recovered, in part because the new job just doesn't pay as well. Delaying big milestones can be painful.

And you wrote about how delaying things like house hunting or trips can feel especially painful for your generation when so much has already been delayed. What have people been putting off or reconsidering? Well, later this year, me and a lot of my college friends were all turning 30 around the end of the year and we had this big trip planned to Tokyo to celebrate our 30th. It was going to be this big 30th birthday bash for all of us to get together. And unfortunately, seven of us originally planned to make the trip.

We're already down to three. And I think it's just becoming really difficult to justify spending any amount of money on a vacation when so many things are in flux. It seems like there's a new headline about a recession or a downturn every day. And it's unfortunate, but I do understand from their perspective, justifying spending potentially thousands on a trip to Japan is just not worth it for a lot of them. I have another friend who lives in the Atlanta area, and he was actively looking to buy a house, but prices increased so much in the last couple years that he has had to delay that, and he's still living with his aunt to save money and hopefully

return to the market at some point in the near future. But as tariffs potentially make the cost of buying a house even more expensive than it already was, that may have to be pushed back even further. With all of this in the air, the economic anxiety, ongoing confusion, how are you planning for the rest of 2025? The focus is going to be on cautious optimism, but also flexibility. We'll likely be prioritizing financial stability

in smaller, more budget-friendly ways to celebrate and connect while keeping a close eye on how the economic situation unfolds. That's WSJA platform editor Isaac Taylor. And that's it for your Money Briefing. This episode was produced by Zoe Kolkin with supervising producer Melanie Roy. I'm Julia Carpenter for The Wall Street Journal. Thanks for listening!