July Newsletter: Spending, Financial Management and Young People
This month our newsletter will focus on trends around spending and financial management among young people (ages 13-39).
With the Supreme Court’s rejection of the Biden administration’s plan for student loan relief and the news this week that the Education Department will forgive the student loans of over 800,000 borrowers, federal decision-makers fronted the ongoing battle for the financial future of many of the nation’s young people.
Though student loans, which have ballooned to roughly $1.78t in recent years, remain a focus of this battle, young people face some significant headwinds in their quest for financial stability even if we leave aside the potentially revolutionary impacts of AI on the labor market. Nevertheless, the news is not all grim. At this time, the entire Millennial generation is in the beginning of its prime working years, and more Gen Zers join the workforce each spring. Correspondingly, the spending power of young people is growing. As these generations begin to exert more economic and political power, it will be interesting to see how they are able to address some of the larger, generational obstacles they face.
This month’s newsletter will review some of the recent research on young people’s approach to spending, their relative debt burdens, and more. We will then turn our attention to some ways in which the church can support young people, and all people, in achieving a financially stable future. Furthermore, we’ll explore the work of RIP Medical Debt and the ways in which church organizations engaged this organization to relieve the medical debt of large swaths of the country (from regions to entire states). Perhaps this organization can serve as a model for other forms of popular debt relief?
Our Young Adult Ministry Trend Report is a reader-supported publication, and so we kindly ask you to consider becoming a paid subscriber. Our July newsletter is attached below as a pdf document and is available for all paid subscribers. A paid subscription will give you access to our entire archive of newsletters and weekly posts. In June our newsletter discussed recent research on the spirituality and religiosity of young people, while in May we discussed social media trends. In all our work, we aim to bring a deep engagement with trends among young people and what these trends might mean for church leaders.
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