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“Some Generations Are Born Lucky. Some Ain’t.”
New paper from the St. Louis Fed (that’s a thing?) on how your age affects your income. Let’s start with something basic that no one ever really acknowledges, best I can tell: unless you have an inheritance or work in about 4–5 specific fields, it’s typically pretty hard to have a boatload of money before you’re 40–45 or so (and even then, it’s hard). You gotta work your way up the chain, and stuff like vacations/kids/horrible decisions around going to happy hour and staying till 10pm will cut into your finances. I make a decent salary relative to what I do, and I still often feel like I’m paycheck-to-paycheck. I’m 34, if you care.
Here’s the methodology behind everything:
The paper, by William Emmons, Bryan Noeth and Ray Boshara, draws on surveys of 40,000 families that the Fed carried out between 1989 and 2013 to examine the all-important role that your age plays in how much income you make and how much wealth you accumulate. It offers a few clues as to how young people can game the system and end up like their wealthy…
