Generational conflict is nothing new, older generations have always complained about the values and work ethic of their children. In Western popular culture, the Boomer generation is depicted as hard-working, digitally illiterate, and naive, while the Millennial generation is often depicted as entitled, digitally savvy, and lazy. Are these generalizations true, or are they the result of generational projection? When it comes to personal finances, recent studies are starting to reveal the truth.

In 2024, The Harris Poll and Nationwide conducted a survey of adults living in the United States about a variety of issues related to retirement, Social Security, and more. The study is called The Nationwide Retirement Institute 2024 Social Security Survey and gives interesting and valuable insight into the state of retirement savings across generations and their attitude toward retirement in general.

What Does it Say About Leaving Retirement Savings?

While the entire study is fascinating (and we recommend you read the entire thing), we want to focus on one question in particular. This question asked adults about their intentions regarding their retirement savings, and whether they planned on spending it all before they die or if they planned on leaving some behind for their family. Their answers, according to their generation, are below.

“I intend to leave some of my retirement savings and income behind for others.”

• Boomers aged 60+: 39%
• Gen X: 46%
• Millennials: 57%
• Gen Z: 69%

“I intend to spend all of my retirement savings and income to get the most out of my life in retirement.”

• Boomers aged 60+: 61%
• Gen X: 51%
• Millennials: 43%
• Gen Z: 31%

The report did not go into any detail about why the participants responded the way they did or what these results might mean.

Why Are Millennials More Generous?

The data show a clear trend that, the younger the population is the more likely they are to want to leave money behind for family or charity. There is a significant jump from older generations to Millennials with Gen Z leaving them all behind. The inverse is also true, with older generations being more comfortable and willing to spend all their money and leave nothing behind.

These findings fall in line with recent studies that track changing social norms from generation to generation. Many of these studies have shown that younger generations are more likely to embrace compassionate, charitable, environmentally-responsible, socially-conscious, liberal, socialist, and communal policies and practices than older generations. This is in contrast to the Boomer generation which provides the primary support base for populist and nationalist movements (especially in the United States) and more widely supports capitalist, selfish, self-reliant, and ecologically irresponsible policies and practices.

As inheritors of the wealth, stability, success, and world of their parents, Boomers have been called “the largest and most powerful generation in U.S. history” and grew up with one of the strongest attitudes of entitlement in recent history, being the first generation in a long time to say that they were more interested in making money than anything else and treated higher education as a commodity and used it as a vehicle for money generation instead of self-improvement, leading them to believe they were entitled to good grades.

According to social scientist Jean Twenge, this inheritance of the wealth and stability of the previous generation by the Boomers caused materialism to “become the norm” in the United States, associating personal worth, value, and happiness with money and personal possessions.

In contrast to this, the Millennial generation has been called the “unluckiest generation” by the Washington Post (attributing to luck what is almost certainly the fault of deliberate behavior of previous generations) because they have lived through slower economic growth, more recessions, sky-high inflation, higher childcare costs, generally higher living costs, and more student debt than any other generation in history. They are the first generation to grow up with the internet and the first to experience a truly connected world.

Having to suffer through the fruits of rampant, unregulated capitalism has led significant numbers of Millennials to support socialist policies and view capitalism overall with extreme skepticism. This can be seen as a backlash to the materialist values of their parents, especially when it comes to organized religion. In many Western countries, millennials form the base of emerging post-materialist views and movements, including global citizenship, environmentalism, and social liberalism.

The combination of economic hardships while living in a connected, digital world has forced millennials to view themselves as one part of a larger, communal whole, instead of an individual in competition with their neighbors.

Millennials are less likely than previous generations to have children because they don’t have the financial ability to support them nor do they believe it is responsible to raise children in a society that is hell-bent on destroying the planet. Those who do have children, however, take seriously their responsibility to prepare them for success in the world by leaving some money behind after their death instead of forcing them to fend for themselves (having been raised by that mentality, a situation that has often been likened to Boomers climbing the economic ladder and pulling it up after themselves).

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