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Sorry Boomers, young people’s lives are harder today. Here’s why
People in their 20s have it uniquely harder than before, say data and the experts. Here’s what Boomers don’t see when they hate on Kids These Days
Imagine paying ₹5,000, not ₹25,000, to watch Coldplay perform. That’s how much a ticket cost nine years ago, when they first visited India. Imagine paying less for an Uber ride than for an autorickshaw in Delhi. In 2015, Uber Go rides cost ₹7 per kilometre, while autos cost ₹8.5. You could get a flat-white at Starbucks (they launched it in 2015) for under ₹200. It costs ₹350 now. Ed Sheeran played a gig here that year. ₹5,000 could get you VIP Phase 2 tickets then. Now, that amount wouldn’t even get you past the gates of his Delhi gig – ticket prices started at ₹6,500 this year. At big-city restaurants, a single main course is priced in the four digits before GST. Nike just dropped its Alphafly racing sneakers for ₹22,795.
It’s not so much that everything seems more expensive now. It’s that for young people, little comforts are even further out of reach. No wonder they’re always broke.
Cue the Boomer rant. Older folks will quickly say that they saved more, spent less, worked harder and had a better grip on their future when they were young. Give them a cookie for their efforts and sit them down. Here’s why that fantasy doesn’t hold up today.
Jump scares
“Even after accounting for inflation, the cost of living is much higher today than it has been at any point in India’s past,” says Shuchi Trivedi, partner for Economic Development at EY India, the multinational professional services network previously known as Ernst & Young.
A person entering the workforce today or in their first few years in, is likely to have grandparents who lived with their parents until marriage, scrimped to afford one vacation a year, shopped only for a social occasion, but commuted through a liveable city, and pretty much stuck to one job their whole lives. The struggle was real, but life was stable.
“Their successors were salaried professionals who comparatively spent more and saved less,” Trivedi says. This is the sandwich generation, tasked with caring for children in nuclear families and aging parents at the same time. But they lived through the economic reforms of the 1990s, traded up to new jobs in their prime earning years, and had access to home loans, credit cards, mutual funds and health insurance. The struggle was real, but powered by a hope for a better future.
In contrast, for the 377 million people aged between 15 and 29 (the largest generation to ever live in India), the struggle is just as real, but seems more and more like it isn’t going anywhere. Jobs? It’s all boom-and-bust cycles, short-term contracts, layoffs, and companies that reward loyalty with indifference. Start-ups? The odds are sinking: Only six reached unicorn status last year, compared to 43 in 2021. Homes? Rents for a two-bedroom house in seven major cities increased by up to 64% between 2019 and 2024.
God forbid you try to ease the isolation and stress by going out. The parks are crowded, the beach is dirty. Everywhere else, even walking into a pop-up event, costs money (The Lil Flea now costs ₹249 to enter. It’s not even a cover charge). “Gen Z seems to be working harder than others to transform the present into a better future,” Trivedi says.
Small cuts
Being young is not a crime. But for many, it seems like a punishment. Divya Anand, 27, makes ₹85,000 a month teaching dance and yoga in Mumbai. But her commute alone sets her back by ₹15,000. “A lot of my colleagues live even further away and pay more just to get to and from classes,” she says. Factor in the rising costs of utilities and groceries, and it’s hard to keep aside even ₹2,000 to spend on a restaurant on the weekend.
At 19, political science student Shreeya Amberkar has a wishlist for her 20s: “A stable job that I love, but which also allows me enough time to have a life, to meet friends for a coffee on weekends, a movie every fortnight, a concert once a month, an annual family vacation. And enough money to tide over a bad spell.” It’s hardly indulgent. “I’m not even interested in expensive handbags and shoes, but already it seems like a lot. My friends in their 20s took competitive exams, but are only landing internships. I would have added a house to my wishlist earlier. But even renting seems like it will pinch.”
Psychologist Priyanka Varma’s mental-health service, The Thought Co, caters largely to those under the age of 30. Among her pro-bono cases are people for whom even simple pleasures require complicated maths: “Where to buy cheap beer, how to pre-game with food and drinks so they don’t spend money at a gig. They go thrifting not because it’s cool, but because it’s what they can afford.”
Rear view
What Boomers and Millennials forget, when they romanticise their own early struggle and stress, is how many privileges from their era are simply not available to 20-somethings today. Even 10 years ago, in the waning days of low-cost airlines, a Delhi-Goa flight cost as little as ₹1,500 if one booked early enough. They average ₹5,000 now. In 2016, when Netflix launched in India, monthly subscription plans started at ₹500 for up to four users. News websites were free. Uber didn’t have 4X surge pricing. AirBnBs were cheaper than hotel rooms. Zomato didn’t add distance+platform+packaging fees. Ebooks were 80% cheaper than paperbacks.
In a post-disruption world, there are paywalls, platform fees, and premium modes, eating deeper into a fresher’s salary. As hacks dry up, so do escape routes – visas are harder to come by for those looking to move abroad.
Amberkar recalls talking about job opportunities with her mother. “She told me not to worry, that when she was my age, she started off at a bank, and they eventually made her a permanent employee.” When the teen mentioned the costs of going out to her father, “he told me that when he was my age, he made do with a DVD player – I had to point out to him that this was just as much a privilege at the time as the tickets I worry about today.”
Coin base
“Choices for anything to do, eat or buy today are highly information based as opposed to availability based 20 years ago,” Trivedi observes. There are more pop-ups, collabs, coffee-tasting events or heritage walks to sign up for. Budgeting is a matter of looking for coupon codes, flash-discount, happy hours, and the credit card that offers the best buy now, pay later schemes.
Gen Z is also competing with well-settled older Millennials for the same entertainment options. At the Coldplay concerts this year, the minimum age of entry was six years. It opened the already sought-after event to a wider audience. Two families of four each from Chandigarh booked lounge tickets to the Mumbai gig and stayed at a luxury hotel, paying ₹25 lakh for their mini vacation.
And there are new ways to spend. A 2024 report by Snap Inc and Boston Consulting Group suggest that Gen Zs drive 43% of India’s total consumer expenditure. A 2025 study by Perfios and PwC India finds that about one in three “emerging professionals” spend about 30% of their monthly income on discretionary spends (largely fashion and wellness) via buy-now-pay-later schemes.
Globally, young people are already feeling the pinch. The 13th edition of Deloitte’s Gen Z and Millennial Survey polled 23,000 respondents across 44 countries (including India) last year. Their top concern, far ahead of climate change, unemployment, mental health, and crime/personal safety: Cost of living. Three in 10 said they do not feel financially secure. Roughly six in 10 said they lived from paycheque to paycheque.
At The Thought Co, Varma isn’t surprised. “We all went into introspective mode in the lockdown,” she says. “But for teens and young people who hadn’t yet engaged with the world, this only made them more determined to prioritise themselves, live larger, set boundaries and walk away from what didn’t suit them.” Being broke, then, is a feature, not a bug, of breaking free. “It’s not that adults don’t understand this. It’s that, they’re extremely jealous.”
That’s what’s really at play when people accuse 20-somethings of lacking passion and drive. “What they don’t consider is that most people my age have never seen our parents set boundaries between work and home,” Amberkar says. “Now, a decade from retirement, they’re seeing friends and classmates dying of heart attacks. Young people deserve to enjoy their 20s. In this economy, we’re going to be exhausted by 30, anyway.”
From HT Brunch, May 17, 2025
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