Young people have many financial difficulties.
Housing is expensive. Student loans. Inflation. Cost of daily maintenance. etc. etc.
I know there is disillusionment and concern about financial nihilism among Gen Z, but I trust young people.
This group has already figured some things out.
Wall StreetJournal It shows that people under 30 benefit from tax-deferred retirement accounts:
The share of IRA accounts held by those under 30 has nearly doubled in the last 10 years.
Here’s some more data:
Total IRA contributions among Gen Z investors increased 65% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, compared to 31% for Millennials. According to Fidelity Investments, three-quarters of people 35 and under choose Roths, compared with less than half of those in that age group a decade ago.
This is great news!
Young people are saving and investing for their future. If they don’t stop compounding in these accounts, the wealth will be spectacular decades from now.
The great thing about qualified retirement accounts is that they are excellent vehicles for long-term investments like stocks!
Young people have developed a taste for stocks.
Look at the change in the value of stocks owned by people under 40:
It has increased 3 times since 2020. The share of stocks owned by people under 40 is still relatively low (6%), but it has doubled in the decade.
This is progress.
Here is the distribution of household stock market ownership by various age groups:
Now here is by income level.
If you want to take a glass-half-empty perspective on the world, you could say that younger households and lower-income households (which have a lot of overlap) have much lower levels of ownership than older people and those with higher incomes.
This is of course true.
But these numbers require context.
I wrote a whole chapter Risk and Reward About the history of stock market ownership in America.
In the early 1950s, only 4% of households owned any form of stock. In the early 1980s, this rate was only 19%. Things didn’t really get better in terms of mass buying of stocks until the 1990s.
From a glass-half-full perspective, young and low-income households own more stocks than the entire country at that time. The numbers are moving in the right direction top 10% still owns most of the shares.
Of course, one reason why more young people are investing in the stock market is that housing is so expensive. Unless you’re building equity in a home or saving for a down payment, there’s more disposable income available to invest in stocks.
But it’s also about a fragmentation barriers to entry in financial markets.
Technology makes investing easier. Wages have fallen. Minimums do not exist. Investors are more conscious.
We need more people investing in the stock market. The sooner the better.
This is great news for young people.
Further Reading:
Are Young People Going Crazy?
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