Soaring inflation, stagnant salaries, and a high cost of living are dragging baby boomers out of retirement and back into the office—but young savers are watching and learning. Gen Zers are already putting cash aside for their eventual retirement, Robinhood cofounder and CEO Vlad Tenev has revealed.
“Retirement seemed really, really far away,” Tenev said recently on the Uncapped with Jack Altman podcast, thinking back to his own financial priorities as a twentysomething fresh out of college in 2008. “Now, Gen Zs are opening retirement accounts at 19 years old. So they’re thinking a little bit more conservatively, I think, than prior generations.”
Tenev said the trend might seem strange to onlookers. Many people may assume that young, cash-strapped Gen Zers are frivolously spending their money. But in reality, it’s Robinhood’s older customers who want to be plugged into the “cool new thing,” Tenev noted, while young savers are embracing traditional investment methods.
“You would think with older customers, we would emphasize how stable and how long we’ve been around and all these things, but actually that resonates very strongly with young people,” Tenev explained. “Now, I think [with] Gen Z and Gen Alpha there’s almost this opposite thing happening where the old big storied incumbents are kind of cool again.”
