Welcome. All points of view are appreciated.
Don’t forget that correlation does not equal causation. Fewer kids per family is generally considered a result of increasing country wealth as we moved from an agrarian society and childhood mortailty has been significantly reduced due to vaccines. For example,
Other Developed countries show similar trends. Since you posted an article about Italy:
So what you are really saying, is that there is no “will” for kids at this point in time, and that’s ok.
The young woman in this article made a linguistic mistake. She isn’t going to save for student loans. Student loans are to be paid down. Does she mean saving for her theoretical kids’ college degrees before they are old enough to attend?
Their total household income is in a good ratio to be able to pay off their student loans quickly. What were they doing with their income if they weren’t aggressively paying down their debt?
This article just sounds like two people who don’t want to prioritize paying off their debt or having children. That’s okay. It’s a personal choice. Why is this worthy of an article in Fortune magazine?
This is an anecdotal and cherry picked description one particular household. One cannot conclude much of anything from a single example like this. There are many families with children who get by on half the listed income (median household income in US is $70k), including some with notable school debt. And there are some families who feel poor and severely financially limited with >$250k income.
Some of the differences between particular families relate to differences in expenses and savings rate. Some of the differences relate to individual feelings, including risk tolerance. Some of the differences relate to personal priorities.
Many families have far more dire and limiting financial situations than having to pay $400/month on a low interest rate debt. However, I can empathize with the uncertainty. Not knowing whether a large portion of the debt will be cancelled and not knowing how long low interest rate on debt will continue makes it awkward to plan for the future.
Gotta start appealing to the younger generation to keep selling subscriptions! (It appears that the author has been writing several such articles.)
My favorite quote (from a 34-year old complaining about getting by while making 3x the median for his city): “We all should make enough to live a comfortable life.”
Well sure, in Lake Wobegone where everyone has above average salary. 
Cracking up reading those quotes! We should all be able to re-model as desired…who can even imagine cooking in a 50 year old kitchen???
Hedonic treadmill is for real.
It’s all our (boomer) fault. We started giving kids participation trophies…so it’s engrained that everyone is a winner, even those on the bench.
Not sure this is generational. There are plenty of Gen X, Gen Z and Millennials in this country who would be ecstatic with those incomes and wouldn’t expect to be able to remodel an older, functional but not pretty kitchen.
This is more about the entitlement of those who grew up expecting to live at the same standards as their parent do currently, as younger adults. When I was 34, I wasn’t living at the standard of my parents or DH’s parents in their 60s. Nor did I expect to, nor did I think something was wrong because I wasn’t.
I wonder if Kelly’s or or her husband’s parents cosigned their home loan or assisted them with the downpayment?
Perhaps the real story that is unlikely to get much reading in the popular press is that:
So a decision to go into debt for college is, for many students, not a very well informed one. For many, it turns out good in the end, but for some, it does not, often for reasons that were foreseeable if they were better informed before.
It does seem that many in Gen Z have a reluctance to work hard. My S gets a lot of peer pressure from friends and roommates about the fact he’s working 50+ hours a week at a job he loves (and going into the office every day), when they are happy to stop after 40 hours (or even less) and go out most evenings, take an afternoon off in the week, or go to Cancun for a long weekend and claim to be “working” remotely.
If you are not prepared to push yourself at work immediately after college when you have no other commitments, it’s hard to see how you are going to have a successful 40 year career that you enjoy.
This might not be unique to any particular generation. Remember that not everyone has a job (or employer) that they love, so not everyone is enthusiastic about working more (especially if not hourly and paid overtime for it).
Not everyone has a job that they love. But when I left college, everyone I knew expected to work hard to prove themselves, even if that was just so they could move onto something better. That just doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.
So I paid back with my wife $350,000 student loans. But I am for some relief for the current generation more so due to the pandemic.
Saying that it’s all priorities and this current generation seems to be all about “me”. I hire many that work in our office and the majority aren’t thinking about having a family at all. It’s about saving up for that next big trip AND sorta, maybe thinking about paying off their loans. I feel like their parent when I talk about starting retirement accounts etc. It’s the next shiny object that is more important and I totally understand this at 22 years old.
Many just don’t want the burden of children. They would rather gain wealth and retire early and take trips. Sounds great on the surface. I realize not everyone “wants” to have a family.
But it also goes with this “if I can’t work the way I want to then screw you” mentality. Over 40 hours? Are you kidding me???, 
… The whole work ethos have shifted. But what about me???.. Attitude.
So sure with this one example they should be able to pay off the loans. I don’t worry about people in the article. I worry about people “really” trying to make it and work 2 jobs and can’t make ends meet.
Society norms have changed and there seems to be a large shift. Of course this doesn’t apply to everyone currently but the shift is palpable.
The issue is that some of the Gen Zers define happiness and/or career success differently than some from older generations might. Certainly their prerogative to create the type of life they want. Life is all about trade-offs and the priority one assigns to various factors.
Decades ago, perhaps before the materialism that was glorified in the 80s, there used to be a quiet sense of pride in living below one’s means and having a nice nest egg. I think that is scarce now.
Not unique to current generations.
Past generations: “Over 40 hours? As long as I get my overtime pay.” “But what about us? [as they cast their union ballots to authorize a strike].”
It is not like the older generations are exempt from wanting the shiny new object, if all of the high income no financial aid parents who cannot afford much for their kid’s college are any indication.
It was scarce then, since it was unusual enough to be the subject of the best selling The Millionaire Next Door book (published in the 1990s, but profiling many who were old enough to have developed their financial habits before the 1980s).
This should be mandatory reading for every parent (or kid) who posts here “My kid is not allowed to major in X. I’m only paying for accounting, nursing, engineering or CS.”
Yes, not everyone has a job they love- or even like. Many people have jobs they barely tolerate. But being stuffed into accounting as an 18 year old before you’ve even learned about the 100 or so careers you know nothing about…
There are plenty of Gen Z people working crazy hours. Just because your S doesn’t know them doesn’t mean they don’t exist. I professionally interact with them.
I think the problem, which encompasses all generations, is having way too many people making reckless financial decisions. The couple in this article took out student loans for a school that obviously wasn’t worth it. Also, the husband in this story is making fast food wages with a college degree. A whole lot of wrong happened here.
Remember the first few months of Covid? Businesses were abruptly shut down. People lost their income in the blink of an eye. I can understand kids in their 20s not having any money saved, but there were plenty of people in their 40s & 50s who were obviously living paycheck to paycheck & beyond their means. There were people in their 40s, driving expensive SUVs, talking on thousand-dollar phones, waiting in lines for hours to get a free bag of groceries because they had no other way to eat. This wasn’t a Gen Z problem. This was a multi-generational problem of people making reckless financial decisions…like the couple in this article.
But some of those “trade-offs” seem to be the product of a long boom where employees were treated with kid gloves because they were hard to replace and at least in wealthy tech firms, granted all sorts of benefits. WFH has just exacerbated the situation for the time being, but employers are clearly watching and will consider all of that when deciding who they will fire if the economy turns down. What happened to all the career advice about making yourself indispensable so no one would want to lay you off?
If you are going to be less productive than previous generations, then ultimately you are going to be paid less. Maybe that’s ok if you don’t ever want to buy a house or have kids. But some may realize they’ve made a mistake when they turn 40 and it’s a bit late to change their minds.