2/3 of millenials and gen z have placed a bet on sports or polymarket in the last year
I don't believe that buying Starbucks make you poor like the boomers say, but gambling definitely does
Login to reply
Replies (71)
Any sites like polymarket are just money funnels for insider trading…
The amount of ads for betting and gambling apps have gone through the roof last year. Total epidemic
That's an insane number. I'd be curious if the sports bet thing includes kicking $5 into an office bracket, or is it strictly online like Draft Kings. If the later, that's not good.
It's not like they have a path to wealth, so let them have some fun with their fiat. Geez. It's not like the majority of the Boomers weren't gambling. This is the first year Gen Z out-gambled the Boomers (Gen X never did), and they only managed to do it because so many of the Boomers have already died.
I reject this doomer perspective, hasn't ever been more paths to wealth than there is now imo. And gen z with no money out gambling the richest generation who are actually in a position to gamble is pretty Diabolical
To me this is an indication of intelligence and rationality.
I once did a game with some family members that all buy lottery tickets. I invited them (6 of us) to throw in €10 and then we have some anon pick a name from a hat and the winner would take the full €60. No middlemen, no charities taking any of that €10 you out in. None of the 5 other wanted this. They literally unanimously agreed that 1/6th a chance of gaining €50 was a bad deal. But 1/millions chance to win €1M for the cost of €25 seemed like a pretty good deal to them.
A fool and his money shall soon be separated.
As long as they have enough mental discipline to prevent it from becoming an addiction, sure. But... Too many young adults these days can't find jobs with sufficient enough salaries or can't find employment, at all. So the odds don't seem to be in their favor... Atm.
You have a job working for a charity. 🙃
Proud ⅓er 🫡
buying starbucks makes you a poor judge of coffee, at the very least
And the last 4 years I've been building open source without grants? How did I pull that off? A mystery I suppose
My grant changes nothing in my finances lmao, so weird how people bring it up
They're not out-gambling them. The entire retirement system is literally the Boomers gambling that they can skip producing children and burn through their savings like it's going out of style, and still spend 30 years on paid vacation, by printing crazy amounts of fiat money, flipping houses, and buying tech-whatever stocks and Bitcoin ETFs.
They have gambled at such exorbitant rates that it's effectively The Entire Economy, and now they're like, "If you didn't eat avocado toast or bet $80 on polymarket, last month, you could also park your SUV in front of your McMansion and bathe in your stock options."
Most debauched generation ever lectures us on virtue. Part 12, in a series. Next up: _How we all divorced at 50._
I agree with this, for the most part. Idk. Her perspective seems to be one based on already having accumulated enough generational wealth. Or she's just failing to see the potential consequences of what, even, a short-term gambling spree can do to someone savings. Honestly, i thought she was being semi-sarcastic when she wrote that😅.
Buy bitcoin LOL
Yes, if you save money over 20-30 years you will have money when you get old just like boomers. Stocks have been performing better for us (I think we're roughly the same age) than they did for boomers.
i asked a minister is stock market/bitcoin gambling bad . he said something about the gamblers HAVE to exist in order for it to be successful.
so even though it's better for gamblers to reform, they are like the frontier settlers.
they had to start gambling on an "internet bean" in order for the more serious people to start wondering what the hell they were doing and start making fun of them and then finally researching it + writing books.
IMO boomers are not gambling enough and saving government bonds instead. they are trusting the government instead of financing the building of the future!
Like retirees are the ones to determine how best to invest in the future. Gerontocracy gone wild, fr.
That's an interesting take. It's funny because i spoke to a real estate agent about a week ago and we got on the topic of bitcoin, at some point, during our discussion and (keep in mind that this guy said he's been in real estate for 38 years) he even said that bitcoin is a gamble, atm, but seems like it will outpace most markets, at some point in the near future. Not sure if he owns any himself, but he seemed optimistic nonetheless. He also briefly brought up why it's risky to buy gold, atm, which i found... Interesting, to say the least. Especially, when it's coming from a boomer.
yea, funny. i was horrified that my mother bought some pharmaceutical company stock Elli lilly or something.
she was like "what? that treatment costs $6,000 if they come into the hospital"
then i told her how bitcoin is a more positive investment in the future, so she got some of that.
a year later, she hasn't asked my advice again.
I have two adult kids in Gen Z and I can look around and see that they're going to be fine because they chose the right parents. Everyone who chose the wrong parents is basically fucked and should go back and do-over next time.
If I knew that I was never going to buy a home. I was never going to marry and have kids. I was never going to be able to start a successful company (unless I live in North America and am right up against the money spigot). I was never going to get a job making enough for me to save for old age. I was never going to...
Then I would eat, drink, and be merry and put 20k sats on the Knicks because fuck it all and fuck them all. Burn that shit down.
The only way to win a rigged game like that is to refuse to play. And they know it. The Boomers are going to find out that their assets are worth nothing because nobody wants to buy them because they impoverished the young. You cannot steal from your own offspring forever.
I'm Gen X. We're so economically screwed that economists pretend like we don't exist because we don't matter.
i think people are warming up to bitcoin .... maybe it was the gold run and the branding of it as "Digital gold". it seems like people who are interested in commodities warm up to it.
people who don't believe commodities are investments seem less interested.
what were his reasons for saying gold is risky rn?
i hear people excited about silver for batteries.
but i don't know how to calculate the demand versus supply in the long term to make it really scarce.
The younger people all bought Bitcoin and the older people bought Rheinmetall and Nvidia.
they outsmarted us this time :D
but they would be even smarter if they join forces with us now
There are a few Boomers who give a damn about their own offspring and they are passing their wealth down, within the family. Everything else is not gonna happen.
Listen, I like Bitcoin for the anti-censorship and global nature of it. Tired of national fiat surveillance coins. Love getting zapped and organizing meetups for people from different countries without having to worry about complex payment rails.
But, they've been telling me that it's a get-rich-quick scheme since 2021 and it's been more of a get-poor-slowly scheme. 🤣 Young people actually need wealth within a short time span because they need it most when they are young and starting a family. They can't just hodl all of their savings and wait for the moon, or they might end up childless and alone.
Young people need income and wealth that they can actually spend, and they need it most between 25 and 35.
I mean, i wouldn't generalize that, in any way. My dad and this real estate agent i recently spoke to are great examples of how a relative minority of the Boomer population are beginning to place more time and effort into researching digital alternatives as preferable investments over what tradfi "experts" would tell them to invest in. Lol now about your opinion on gerontocracy, yep, i couldn't agree more. They're so terrified of the possibility that they'll croak the next morming, that they're just like "well, this might be my last chance to make everyone as terrified as me".
so they think it's either AI chips or war... that's the future they envision for their grandchildren...
actually, it's probably a good thing to invest in defense tho right for a strong Germany?
Young people should have income from their efforts. They should be able to save up that income within 10 years, and invest it in starting a business and getting out of rentals and marrying. Those are the three biggest predictors for wealth in middle age.
How about the people in this thread claiming that there's never been a better time for young people to gain wealth? That's absolutely preposterous and goes against all economic data, but everyone's like, Oh, totally, I agree, greatest era evah we all getting girlfriends wenn lambo. 🤦♀
There is no girlfriend. There is no lambo. There is just Ramen for dinner and playing poker on your phone in your childhood bedroom while doomscrolling a thread where older, wealthier people are like,
**The problem is them playing poker on their phone.**
We weren't playing poker on our phones, at that age. We were driving to a party at our best friend's apartment in our car. Their friends have no apartment. They own no car. All they have is the phone and $50 on Polymarket. That is the problem.
The AI chips are for the war. It's the same bet and goes along with reinstating the draft.
Sure. But we should be asking why Germany got so weak. What was the money being spent on, if not for national defense?
National defense is the only reason that nation states even exist, after all.
i have a hard time escaping my phone, so i don't know how kids nowadays can do it.
i see them when they don't have video games/phones, and i can see the dopamine withdrawal in their dull faces.
ohhh man, it's so true. i feel like growing up in late 90's 2000s was so much better than now.
theoretically a 25-35 year old doesn't need a lot of money. they are young, energetic, beautiful and if they are involved in their community at all, older folks will bend over backwards to help them. the used car, the plane ticket for the kids missionary trip...
but the older people have to be involved in the community and so do the younger ones...
You tell me to cheer up, but I am at the funerals for the young men blowing their heads off and jumping in front of fucking trains or falling accidentally-on-purpose off of balconies. Go cheer them up, not me.
Tell them they're all getting lambos, bro. LOL whatever. Put $50 on the Knicks.
i'm sorry to hear that... i know those deaths usually spike in the wintertime, but in the summer?! that's serious.
You are missing the point that the older people shouldn't need to babysit them and prechew everything and pay all their bills and loan them the down payment on their house. Young people shouldn't be economic housepets.
there is always Alaska
I've heard this exact complaint with my married peers.
The " last frontier" is an option... I do wonder if the boomers and the silent generation had the same complaint against their parents owning stuff forever until they died. It just kinda skips a whole generation because they live so long. The middle generation is serving them until they finally inherit it at 70 and already their kids are grown and wanting something. I don't know if it's a modern phenomenon or if it's always been that way and fueled frontier growth...
People used to go to the frontier because the inheritance was shared with so many siblings. Now, there is effectively no inheritance, unless your parents are gracious enough to give you the money before they die. I know people who inherited with they were in their 70s and died childless soon after, and it's like... this is so pointless.
i should have used I statements/scuze
Genz gave up. They can't gain wealth traditionally, saving's means nothing. They rent everything. Their apartment is rented, their furniture is still sitting on a 30% apr credit card, both cars are financed and every second of entertainment takes time or money from them.
GenZ owns nothing, they know savings has no power. Their work doesn't give them usable benefits or retirement. The best they get is a 401k match so they max that out and call it a day. If they save every dollar at the end of the month in a 10 years they can make a $80k down payment on a 40 year mortgage (just became popular in my area) and continue to rent but possibly someday they can make some tiny amount of money back on that $500,000 2 bedroom 1 bath 1960s home.
They're hoping to hit the lotto because they don't have any other chance of getting out. My friends are just defeated. They know they will be working until they die so I think they just want to take a chance while they can still afford to.
This is devils advocate. Yes gambling is an addiction and I've known some who have it bad, but plenty just throw $100/week at the lotto, scratch offs or kalshi, and go to bed.
I do worry about this... I didn't realize how bad it was. My poor mom, if she can hang in there till retirement should be okay, but I have a feeling GenZ is going to have a big load. Carrying raising children and caring for parents if they don't get their shit together FAST. GenX might be the last of retirement, asset owning era if they can hold on to what they have.
Gen Y has been bigger than Boomers since 2019, and the Boomers have been steadily declining in number and are now smaller than Gen Z and will soon be smaller than Gen X. Remember, the youngest Boomer is now 62 and the oldest is 80. Lots of them are senile or living in old folks' homes, almost all are on fixed income, and they _still_ manage to spend an average of $72/month on gambling.
Gen Z Now Outspends Boomers on Gambling for the First Time
Visual Capitalist
Charted: U.S. Population by Generation
Millennials and Gen Z now make up over 40% of Americans.
I don't know any Gen X people who take retirement seriously. We are just happy, if we can get out of paying rent or mortgages, at some point.
Even the rise in their gambling is only due to the fact that gambling websites have recently been allowed to let them bet on sports _on credit_. Yup, they're gambling on a loan.
Yo, banker, put it on my tab.
I've helped a few GenXers get an IRA (or other tradfi retirements) setup for the first time in their lives in their late 40s... But I'm like hey, you can only put like 7-8k/yr into it, so even if you max it out that's only 120k of deposits by the time your retire... You'll be lucky if you can supplement your healthcare with that, or maybe buy groceries.
Some just assume (or hope :( ) they'll die before it becomes a problem or that they don't plan to retire. And I'm like wtf. I don't think that's going to work the way you want it to...
Yes exactly! And they have built-in accounts with interest on deposits too. So they just bet from their stash over and over till it's empty, but that can go on for a long time. They make sure you have just enough funds to keep you on it. They just jump between apps that give them free bonuses (that capture them)
Yeah, "die young" is the standard retirement plan for everyone under 50. 😂 I'm also betting that I don't make it a day past 65, otherwise I'm screwed.
That's also why so many younger people don't want to work full-time and are so lethargic. They know that they will have to work until they die, so it's like, why work hard? I've got another 60-70 years of work ahead of me and I can't save up and buy anything good, anyway. What's the rush?
Besides, AI will do all of the work and the rich people will get all of the money from that and the rest of us can just chillax and HFSP.
Yeah, they're credit-betting on sports and credit-shopping on Klarna. That's all they got.
XD
> That's also why so many younger people don't want to work full-time and are so lethargic
Yes, and I have quite a few stories about that. I have over half a dozen cousins this age right now, most in the blue collar territory.
But also this is me, but different. Like If I'm going to work my nuts off anyway, and going above and beyond for someone else doesn't get me anything measurable, why not do it for myself, or at least have some fun doing it?
However the game theory does still work, if everyone defects then companies might be willing to pay for "good workers" too, so Im sure there is a supply-demand problem here, but it still means that's a needle in a haystack level of probability.
That seems to be the case. And I think it was less about the run up to 5k and more about the sudden drop over the past three months or so, where bitcoin proved itself a better safeguard; Boomers are far more focused on short-term gains than they care to admit. Most commodities focused individuals are definitely more open-minded when it comes to bitcoin. I can't really argue against that.
Most boomers i know are trapped in this immovable mindset that securities are still all they need, which may be true in the short-term, but what happens to their "gains" when foreign and domestic interest in US treasuries drops and mass selloffs begin to occur? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I believe it was Japan and China that have been selling off huge amounts for years now. Also, what if these companies that they have invested in over the past 20-30 years keep raising the prices for all their goods and services to the point where they erode their own customer base? Lol or what if they actually do perform an audit of Fort Knox (never going to happen) and find out that it's empty? What would that mean for their investments in gold ETFs?
Trump's refusal to perform the audit that he claimed he would once he entered office again. He apparently saw that as a big red flag. I imagine he's looking more into gold companies instead.
That I can't help you with. Sorry. Honestly, I don't keep up that much with the mineral market anymore.
Sure, but I would like to add that people have a innate tendency to overlook the impact that peer groups have on their children; even as they reach adulthood, temptation still rears it's ugly head on occasion.
Okay, but that's your response to those particular scenarios. There are plenty out there who won't react in such a way. That's the truth...
I agree with all of that.
Millenial/Gen X, since so many still can't come to an agreement over when our generation ends🤷. And, unfortunately, that's true. They should just relabel us as the "The Invisible Generation".
I wish the Boomers would just admit already that they never actually "fixed" the economy for anyone after '08.
> The only way to win a rigged game like that is to refuse to play.
That's it. That's the mic that Genz dropped and everyone pretends they didn't hear it.
Yea, the Boomers won't be remembered well.
It's the weirdest thing. We literally just don't really exist.
Yeah, I prefer working on what I care about. My income just gets taxed to death, anyway. Might get a part-time job to subsidize my cocaine and hookers, as the Germans say, but that's about it.
XD
We say that here too.
They get on these political talk shows here and bitch that young people don't want to work because we're all stupid and lazy, and it's like,
**takes slow, delicious bite of avocado toast and goes back to working for no pay**
It is a really strange phenomenon. Now, feel free to debate with me on this, but i think it's largely because the majority of our generation has given the younger generations nearly identical financial "advice" as the Boomers, who are arguably the most detested generation, at the time being. And, rightfullly so, imo. Look at it like this: Boomer financial advice = Gen X/Millenial advice. There's virtually no disparity, for the most part. And that's what Gen Z seem to hate.
But why don't economists or politicians notice our existence? You would think _someone_ would know that we are here.
They know we're here, but there really is no practical reason to acknowledge or listen to us, from their perspective. That's a narrative that corrupt governments and corporations have been exploiting for a long time. It's far more nuanced than most people understand. So, I'm just going to give you my brief semi-subjective opinion on the matter:
1. It is largely due to our generation's seemingly small impact on economic growth in relative to the Boomers. But, that is a false narrative, imo. We created the "Digital Age" that we all rely on; our children included. The majority of our generation still seem to abide by and spread the tradfi narratives that they themselves were taught by their Boomer parents. A huge mistake on our part. In other words, Gen Zers may be somewhat dismissive of us because we didn't... I guess you could say "market" our cultural, technological, and societal contributions as well as our parents' generation did. It's a matter of sociological and economic disagreement that many remain unaware of.
2. Naturally, the first point i made will lead to a lot of skepticism from those who are struggling financially; regardless of age group. This only strengthens and validates their prudence regarding our "advice" and feedback.
3. We're now beginning to be viewed as something of a practical dilemma in their eyes.
Just a personal opinion.
Yeah, we worked on such amazing projects, but nobody cares
And what do you think about this title, minus the typo?
Aargh, too long! Nice pic, tho.
Hmmmm... Okay😁.
Yep. The boomers see their provision of the necessary resources to build the digital infrastructure as a reason to take credit for all that we created. "Well mofos, that ain't how life savings are supposed to work." You dyin', we ain't🤷
Half my friends bet on sports.
You can't actually watch sports in Australia without seeing gambling advertisements for at least 5 different companies.