Why Generation X has the Highest Debt Rate

Wipe our Debt (Photo credit: Images_of_Money)

While baby boomers are now aging, the world is now looking at Generation X, not like the main working force of the nation but as the generation peaking the highest debt rate in the story of the United States and other countries. Though many people define Generation X as the people who were born from 1961-1965 and then from 1979-1984 the true fact is that the name of the generation makes no difference to their reality; the need to downgrade their lifestyles in order to cope with a debt that seems to be a snow balling down hill and seeming that there is no way to stop it.

Gen X, A Better Generation?

Studies conducted by the Urban Institute, the American Enterprise Institute, and the Heritage Foundation among others, state that every new generation is expected to be better than the preceding generation. However, when it comes to finances, the increasing demand for better living standards make it harder for this generation to go alongside with them. People who range actually between the 30 and the 50 years of age seem life is harder than people of the same age during the baby boomer era.

It All Starts at College

Although, Generation X is characterized by a larger number of graduated and undergraduate students compared with the generation that preceded them, financial problems seems to start with college enrollment. However, most of these students are still carrying a debt resulting from private students loans and federal student loans that they have not yet been repaid and seems far the day to get out of this debt. For some of them the problem increases as they obtained online payday loans to finance student expenses while at the campus, propitiating that the high interest rate of these loans asphyxiated their finances.

The Highest Entrepreneurship Rate

Another characteristic of Generation X is the number of individuals that have started their own business or an entrepreneurial project rather than just being employees. While this can be noted as a great achievement, the problem is that in order to achieve their goals, these entrepreneurs have to take out loans or other types of debt that are literally burying them today, making many business fail within the first year of operation.

Being Gen X Might be Disadvantageous

By age, people falling within Generation X are individuals that seem too young to perform certain activities or too old for others. Most of the time, age makes a difference for them when it comes to improving their personal finances, trying to negotiate their debt, and even when they try to reincorporate themselves into the workforce after a failed entrepreneurial project.

Generation X Real Facts

After America's economy collapsed in 2001, Generation X has lost 45% of their wealth and being less financially secure than their predecessors, most of them do not expect to retire, only 41% are aware of the money they would need to do it, but cannot contribute with any retirement plan, nor own a home, and much less a debt that keeps increasing.