Generational Shift in Thinking

Your parents’ generation approached work and money one way. What made you realize you needed to think differently? How does your generation build wealth differently, and what shifted in your thinking?

This is probably going through your head if you’re taking a look at the conditions of the job market and overall economy today. College is expensive, getting a job afterwards is far from guaranteed, and inflation is on the rise.

Our parents had it easy. All they had to do was go to college, and they were pretty much guaranteed a good job that could afford them a home. They could also pay for college with a part time job, so they didn’t even have to think about student debt!

On top of that, houses were affordable and have risen significantly in value. The stock market also had a legendary run these past few decades. As a result, most ordinary people from our parent’s generation have been able to set themselves up for a healthy retirement without needing to have put so much thought in.

All they had to do was follow the system.

Now we can’t even afford to pay for our own college. Minimum wage hasn’t caught up to the cost of living. Debt from both student loans or credit cards has become so common that it’s odd if you’re young and totally debt free.

College is becoming way more expensive, and the job market for recent graduates is looking bleaker than ever.

However, as bad as things are, in some ways, we live in better conditions than our parents.

Sure, it isn’t “easy mode”, but if you approach everything with the correct mindset, you can build an abundant future that is way more rewarding personally and even financially compared to the condition that your parents lived in.

You can do this by curating the mindset around money and opportunities that is uniquely modern and different from how our parents thought and operated.

Back then, the approach around money was to play it safe and wait, and to not question any rules. Wealth was something to be built and accumulated over time, and you could only earn as much as your job paid you. Outside opportunities like side hustles were pretty much non-existent, and launching your own business meant setting up a physical shop with tons of overhead.

Today, playing it safe and following our parents advice is not producing the guaranteed return it once did in the past. However, thanks largely in part to the mass adoption of the internet, opportunities outside of “the system” are not just present, they’re overwhelmingly abundant.

Launching your business is cheaper than ever, with overhead and cost to produce being reduced to nearly nothing, especially if you’re dealing with digital products or software.

While it’s still prudent to be patient and to stack money long term to build wealth, it’s totally possible to create an income arc that is much faster than the career path that your parents were used to through entrepreneurship.

Sure, the headlines and perhaps some of your personal experience are telling you that we’re living in tough economic times. However, there is a growing group of people who focus on the positive and the abundant opportunities that the current market conditions present today.

Equipped with this positive lens, view the world with a fresh mindset and you’ll see that we live in amazing times where you can start and launch a business faster than ever.

Whether it’s an ecommerce store, a SaaS, or even a career in trading, none of these opportunities are asking for a degree, and a wealth of information on how to pursue each venture is just a Google search or AI prompt away.

The most important thing to do is pick one thing, start, and learn along the way.

With this mindset, you (and your parents) will look back and will be surprised how far you’ve gone, and you’ll be proud at the fact that you constructed your own path rather than following the rules of a now outdated system.