3.6 million Americans will turn 40 this year, and this could drive them crazy if it hasn’t already started.

Third-generation millennials are reaching this critical age, but they are unlikely to become as rebellious as their parents who started buying luxury boats or took flights to Bali after quitting their jobs in their 40s and 50s.

Millennials will not divorce their spouses because most of them have never been married, nor will they tattoo their bodies if they have. This generation will go through a midlife crisis in a completely different way, as their financial capabilities do not allow them to choose.

A 2019 report from the nonpartisan New America think tank, “The Emerging Wealth Gap among Millennials,” showed that the income of those born between 1981 and 1996 was 20% lower than the income of baby boomers born between the mid-1940s and early 1960s, when They were the same age.

Data from the St. Louis Federal Reserve also shows that millennials own an average of $162,000 in assets compared to $198,000 for Gen Xers, those born between the mid-1960s and early 1980s, when they were their age.

poorer generation

Several factors have combined against the millennial generation to make them much poorer than their predecessors, perhaps the most prominent of which is the Internet bubble crisis and the subsequent global financial crisis in 2008, which marked the entry of this generation into the labor market.

The National Bureau of Economic Research has shown that people experience 70% of their total salary growth in the first decade of their careers, and if that coincides with a recession; Their wages will likely decrease by 9% in the long run.

A 2021 report from the Center for Retirement Research also notes that millennials, ages 28-38, have the lowest net worth-to-income ratio of all previous generations.

In light of the decline in the financial gains and savings of this generation, there are many who urge them to undertake bolder initiatives. An increasing number of experts recommend that all people find a new career path approximately every 12 years.

The number of resignations in the United States reached a historic record in the era of Great Resignations in 2021. Meanwhile, the wellness and self-care sector witnessed explosive growth, as its global value today is estimated at more than $ 4 trillion.

But even though millennials have more fitness tools and technology at their fingertips than any generation before them, a Technogym study of 5,000 millennials revealed that many of them feel a “lack of fitness.” Wellness”, only a quarter of them said that their health was “good” or “excellent”.

Stephen Mintz, a historian at the University of Texas at Austin and author of The Prime (of Life: A History of Modern Adulthood) commented that millennials “feel trapped and unhappy about it, but they don’t have a lot of options… they can’t sign.”

middle age crisis

However, the “midlife crisis” is an outdated concept, having been created 58 years ago. Psychologist Elliott Jack was the first to address this phenomenon, which has long been ironically reduced to a flabby stomach and a sense of panic, in an article with the bleak title: “Death and the Midlife Crisis” in America. That was in 1965.

The research that Jack conducted when he was 48 years old showed that the abilities of creative people such as composers and artists decline sharply or change when they reach the age of 35.

He said that a person’s approach to this age transforms anticipation of time from an optimistic practice in which people count the years of their life from birth, to a pessimistic practice in which they count what remains before their death.

Tourist trips help you overcome the midlife crisis

The article had such an immediate impact that it was followed by a series of books and television coverage of the midlife crisis, so much so that a government task force was formed to investigate the suicides of men of this age.

The protagonists of this phenomenon were identified from the outset, so it seemed to be a matter of middle-class white men. This coincided with a wave of social transformations, during which it was no longer strongly discouraged to divorce a wife for engagement with a woman younger than her. Between 1960 and 1969, the divorce rate increased from 2.2% to 3.2%, moving towards its peak in 1980 at 22.6%.

As unbridled consumerism has reached an extent not known to previous generations, buying a fast car has become as much patriotic as it aims to show off. Subsequently; No wonder Chevrolet introduced the Camaro in 1966.

Less spending

Jack saw the silent generation, people born about 10 years before World War II, as the first generation to experience midlife crises, and their baby boomers followed suit when they reached their 40s in the 1980s. Generation X reached middle age at the beginning of the millennium, but this group, which resembles the “Nirvana” band, added a whiff of its rebellion to this phenomenon. If the actor “Ben Affleck” reached forty in the sixties of the last century, it was not likely that he would have taken A tattoo covering his entire back.

This brings us to the millennials who are now in middle age. “The roadmap to life has fallen apart, the guidebook of what you had to do at 25, 35, 50 has evaporated,” Metz said.

So how do new forty-somethings re-evaluate their lives? By reducing spending, of course. Instead of buying a new car, they will buy a bicycle to commute while maintaining their health and seeking to extend their lives, and instead of undergoing plastic surgery, they will explore an exciting hobby, for example.

“There’s this notion that you don’t have to be old in middle age,” said Mark Jackson, author of Broken Dreams: An Intimate History of (the Midlife Crisis) and that exercise and travel can keep you young.

Although these pastimes may be expensive, “they cost much less than buying a (Porsche) or (Bugatti) or taking a girlfriend.”

Thanks to post-pandemic job flexibility, the previous behavior of leaving the family has shifted to moving with the whole family to places with a better quality of life at a lower cost. “If you want to move to Alaska, it’s no longer a dream,” Mintz said. “You can work remotely now.”

Gradual change

As an alternative to divorce, many couples are reconsidering their marital life and the way they share a place of residence. London-based interior designer Francis Sultana says so-called “snoring rooms,” a reference to a second bedroom, have become a popular feature of the homes he designs for his longtime clients.

He indicated that he had been sleeping in a separate room from his partner’s for at least a decade. “It’s a way to maintain happiness, especially if you have different working and waking hours, and in the past separate bedrooms were quite normal,” he explained his perspective.

On the other hand, many do not see any need for the change to be radical. Lucia Knight, director of Midlife Unstuck, which she describes as a midlife career redesign consulting firm, explains, “You now have too many responsibilities that you can’t let go of, so you negotiate each of the 10 responsibilities in your life to get there.” .

Knight works with her clients to make gradual adjustments to their lives rather than sweeping change. For example, a female bank manager turned her stress-relieving hobby of crocheting into a lucrative side business.

As for one of the nurses; She has started working part-time so that she can enroll in an upholstery course, and is considering moving to work in the furniture industry. Knight said that 40 percent of her clients are women, so; This phenomenon is no longer “just for men”.

For her part, Annabelle Rifkin, co-founder of Midult, a website aimed at middle-aged women, said: “I don’t think anyone bothered to study the midlife crisis of women in the sixties…they were women who didn’t receive attention, so they were They are reactions, not initiatives.”

Time control

Rifkin prefers to use the term “midlife crossroads” in the hope that it will allow the conversation about this stage of life to be broadened beyond extramarital affairs, separation from a partner, and the ability to spend money.

For the millennial generation; Reaching middle age is not a cause for panic. Not having enough money to radically change your life may be something that sets you free, according to some experts. If this crisis really stems from your desire to assert that you can control your circumstances and your destiny, then there is one factor that everyone can control; Not the time.

Author Sarah Knight, whose work has reached the New York Times bestseller list, and has written a series of booklets in which she discusses indifference as a way to change aspects of life.