Millennials Have Been Branded the “Broke Generation” for Years, but a New Money Report Finds They’re More Likely Than Boomers to Say Their Finances Are Improving
For years, millennials have been portrayed as a generation struggling to achieve financial stability, but a new survey offers a more complicated picture. The New York Post’s August 18, 2026 report highlighted a finding that challenges that familiar narrative: 49% of millennials said they were financially better off than five years earlier. Among baby boomers, the corresponding figure was 40%.
The results suggest that millennials are more likely than baby boomers to feel that their financial circumstances have improved over the past five years. However, feeling better off is not the same as having more money, fewer debts, or greater overall wealth than an older generation. The survey’s findings become more revealing when those distinctions are considered alongside millennials’ changing priorities and continuing financial challenges.
Who Conducted the Survey and How Many People Participated?
The research was commissioned by financial technology company Chime and conducted by Talker Research, with results published in the company’s Millennial Money Report announcement. It surveyed 3,000 U.S. adults, including 2,000 millennials described by Chime as nationally representative. The remaining participants consisted of 500 Generation X respondents and 500 baby boomers.
Researchers divided the millennial participants into three equally sized cohorts to examine differences within the generation itself. The report covered 79 questions across three surveys, including open-ended questions whose responses were lightly edited for clarity and length. Because Chime commissioned the research, its findings are best understood as survey evidence about reported financial experiences rather than an independent audit of Americans’ personal finances.
Millennials Reported More Improvement Than Baby Boomers
The headline comparison is straightforward: nearly half of the millennials surveyed felt better off than five years earlier, compared with two in five baby boomers. That difference suggests millennials were more likely to recognize recent progress in their financial lives, even after years of public discussion about the difficulties facing their generation. It does not mean every millennial is financially comfortable or that every baby boomer is experiencing financial decline.
Published accounts differ slightly on the corresponding result for Generation X. The New York Post reported that 44% of Gen X respondents felt better off, while Fortune’s reporting on the same research gave the figure as 43%; Chime’s public announcement confirms the millennial result but does not include that comparison in its summary. This small discrepancy does not change the broader finding that the millennial percentage exceeded the reported figure for baby boomers.
Feeling Better Off Does Not Mean Everyone Feels Successful
The research offers another important qualification to its headline result: only 30% of millennials described themselves as financially successful according to their own definition. Fortune’s reporting put that figure at 25.8% among Gen X respondents and 26.6% among baby boomers. Millennials therefore had a modest lead in self-described financial success, but most respondents in every generation did not identify themselves that way.
The negative responses also differed across the groups. About 14% of millennials said they were not financially successful, compared with 24% of Gen X respondents and 26% of baby boomers. These results show why recent financial improvement and a broader sense of financial achievement should not be treated as interchangeable measures.
The 2008 Financial Crisis May Help Explain the Millennial Divide
One of the report’s central findings is that millennials do not share a single financial outlook. Chime distinguishes between older millennials, born from 1981 through 1990, and younger millennials, born from 1991 through 1996, identifying the divide as the “Recession Split.” The difference reflects the economic conditions the two groups encountered while growing up and entering adulthood.
Older millennials came of age during or shortly after the 2008–2009 financial crisis, when the recession disrupted employment and household finances across the United States. Younger millennials generally experienced that downturn earlier in life and entered the workforce under different circumstances. The survey documents differences in their financial attitudes, although it cannot establish that the recession alone caused those differences.
Older Millennials Are More Focused on Building Financial Cushions
The report found that older millennials were more likely than their younger counterparts to describe building additional income streams as a response to the inadequacy of a single paycheck. That motivation was reported by 39% of older millennials, compared with 31% of younger millennials. The difference points to distinct approaches to earning and protecting income within the same generation.
These findings help explain why a generation often discussed as one group may actually contain people with very different expectations about financial security. For older millennials, the experience of entering adulthood during a difficult economic period appears alongside a stronger reported emphasis on finding additional sources of income. The research describes this pattern without suggesting that every older millennial has followed the same strategy or achieved the same outcome.
Younger Millennials Have a Different View of Renting and Career Progress
Younger millennials were more likely than older millennials to describe renting as a form of freedom rather than failure. The report put that response at 31% among younger millennials, compared with 24% among older millennials. That difference suggests the meaning attached to a traditional housing milestone can vary even among people born within the same generation.
Younger millennials were also more likely to retain faith in the traditional career ladder, with 27% expressing that view compared with 19% of older millennials. The findings complicate the assumption that younger adults have simply abandoned conventional ideas about professional advancement and financial stability. Instead, their reported attitudes suggest they may be reassessing particular milestones while continuing to value others.
Financial Reality Does Not Always Match What Others See
Despite reporting improvements, millennials also described a gap between their actual finances and the impression they believe they give other people. Fortune reported that 41% of millennials said their financial reality frequently did not match how their lives appeared to others, the highest share among the generations compared. The finding highlights the limits of judging someone’s financial situation from outward appearances alone.
When asked to describe their current circumstances, the two most commonly volunteered words among millennials were “behind” and “overwhelmed,” each reported by 20% of respondents. Another 19% used the phrase “cautiously optimistic,” illustrating how financial confidence can coexist with uncertainty. The results suggest that a sense of improvement does not necessarily erase concerns about money or the pressure to appear successful.
Millennials Are Redefining What Financial Success Looks Like
The report also examined what people consider meaningful evidence of financial achievement. Fortune reported that 39% of millennials selected supporting loved ones as their leading marker of financial achievement, ahead of homeownership at 32%. For baby boomers, the leading answers were growing investments, selected by 33%, and having a fully funded emergency fund, selected by 32%.
Those responses suggest that financial success can mean more than accumulating assets or reaching a particular income level. Supporting relatives and helping loved ones remain financially secure may represent achievement for people whose circumstances do not match older expectations of adulthood. The survey does not suggest that millennials have stopped caring about wealth, but it does reveal a broader set of priorities.
Homeownership Remains an Important Goal
Even with different definitions of success, millennials have not broadly rejected the idea of owning a home. Fortune’s account of the survey found that 40% considered homeownership the most important status symbol among people their age, while only 14% said they never wanted to own a home. Those responses indicate that the ambition remains significant despite the practical challenges of reaching it.
Separate housing research provides context for why the goal can be difficult to achieve. The National Association of Realtors’ 2025 report on first-time buyers found that first-time buyers accounted for just 21% of home purchases covered by its survey, the lowest share recorded since its tracking began in 1981. The median age of first-time buyers had also reached 40, illustrating how the traditional route to homeownership has become more delayed for many Americans.
Marriage and Children Remain Part of Many Millennials’ Plans
Homeownership is not the only traditional milestone millennials continue to value. Chime reported that just 18% of millennials said they never wanted to marry, while 20% said they never wanted children, both lower shares than those reported for Generation X and baby boomers. The findings challenge the broad assumption that younger adults are simply rejecting marriage and parenthood.
The percentages reflect stated preferences rather than the number of people who have actually married or become parents. Nevertheless, they indicate that many millennials still see these milestones as part of their possible futures. Their approach to adulthood may therefore involve changing the timing or practical route toward conventional goals rather than abandoning those goals altogether.
Financial Flexibility Is Becoming a Priority
Another finding concerns how much millennials are willing to trade financially to gain flexibility. According to Chime, 67% of millennials said they had made a financial trade-off for flexibility, compared with 51% of Gen X respondents and 35% of baby boomers. Millennials were therefore substantially more likely than the older groups to report making this kind of compromise.
The result points to the importance of choice and independence in how millennials evaluate their financial lives. Flexibility can be part of a person’s definition of success even when it involves sacrificing something else financially. However, the survey figure does not identify a single trade-off shared by all respondents, so it should not be read as evidence that every millennial prefers flexibility to higher income or greater savings.
Many Millennials Are Taking Financial Action for the Next Generation
The survey also looked beyond respondents’ immediate circumstances to their plans for the future. Chime reported that 74% of millennials were already taking financial action for the next generation. That finding suggests many respondents were thinking about their finances in relation to people who may depend on them or benefit from their future resources.
This theme fits with the report’s finding that supporting loved ones ranked highly as a measure of financial achievement. Financial decisions can concern not only personal savings and spending but also the ability to help family members over time. The report’s summary does not establish the exact action taken by each respondent, so the 74% figure should not be interpreted as meaning that every participant was providing the same kind of financial support.
Digital Tools and Artificial Intelligence Are Entering Financial Planning
Millennials are also using a range of resources to manage their money. Chime reported that almost 82% used at least one tool or resource for financial management. The report also found that 16% were already using artificial intelligence for financial planning.
These figures illustrate the presence of digital resources in the financial lives of many millennials. Such tools may form part of how respondents organize, evaluate, or plan their finances, although the survey summary does not establish whether using them produces better financial outcomes. Adoption alone does not prove that someone has reached financial stability, just as using fewer tools does not necessarily indicate financial difficulty.
Separate Wealth Data Adds Another Layer to the Story
The survey’s findings about how people feel are only one part of the wider financial picture. A separate Idaho Business Review analysis citing Federal Reserve Board data reported that millennial net worth had increased by 134% since 2021, compared with increases of 40% for Generation X and 32% for baby boomers. Those figures concern aggregate net worth changes across generations rather than the financial experience of every individual in each group.
The Federal Reserve’s Distributional Financial Accounts provide quarterly estimates of household wealth, including figures organized by generation, income, and other characteristics. Such data can help explain changes in assets and liabilities over time, but aggregate growth does not mean that every household benefits equally. The wealth data and the survey therefore measure related but distinct parts of the financial story.
What the Findings Reveal About Millennials’ Financial Future
Taken together, the findings present a generation that is reporting improvement without necessarily feeling that it has achieved conventional financial success. Millennials were more likely than baby boomers to say they were better off than five years earlier, yet many still described their circumstances as overwhelming or felt that their lives looked more financially secure from the outside than they actually were. The contrast helps explain why positive financial indicators do not always translate into a strong personal sense of security.
The study also shows why broad generational labels can be misleading. Older and younger millennials reported different attitudes toward earning money, renting, and career progression, while homeownership and supporting loved ones remained important parts of their understanding of success. The results do not prove that millennials have solved their financial challenges, but they do show that their story is more complex than the familiar image of a generation that is simply falling behind.
