By Kayla Olaya
Helena Osborne, 28, invests in exchange-traded funds (ETFs) and bonds and has a rapidly growing share portfolio in Australian and international markets. She represents the growing cohort of Millennials (aged 28 to 43) who are increasingly investing their money as the dream of paying for a home deposit from a savings account slowly dwindles away.
“You’ve got a generation of people who are saying housing is the first thing that my parents have told me to buy. But when I look at it, I can’t do the numbers because I’ve got the student debt that my parents also didn’t have, and I’m really struggling. How am I going to do it?” Osborne says.
Helena Osborne is one of a growing cohort of Millennials keen on investing.Credit: Wayne Taylor
“Housing has become less approachable, less affordable, whereas investment has given me the opportunity to get ahead of my finances.”
Millennials make up nearly half of all investors on the Australian sharemarket, according to the ASX. Recent research from BetaShares Direct, based on data from 52,000 homes, shows that Millennials and Gen Xers (aged 44 to 59) had the most capacity to invest, based on an analysis of spare cashflow.
According to the data, on average, Millennials had $24,500 ready for investment and Gen Xers had $31,700. The survey found these generations also had a strong interest in investing, especially among those with higher incomes. Baby Boomers, on the other hand, had $12,500 ready to invest, the survey said.
Millennials are also changing the way they use money. A Commonwealth Bank survey from 2021 found 43 per cent of Millennials were investing their money instead of spending.
Millennials are also the most active property investors, a different CBA report says. The generation represents nearly half of all new property investors in 2023. Gen X accounted for 37 per cent of investment property purchases in the same year.
Investing was overwhelmingly becoming the option Millennials were opting for to ensure financial stability before retirement, said chief executive of ETF platform BetaShares, Alex Vynokur.
“There is appetite to invest, despite the fact we have a real issue today in terms of our cost of living escalating. If you look at Gen X and Millennials who have investment capacity and the income to invest, their main motivation is the future,” he said.
BetaShares recently announced zero brokerage fees on its ASX300 investing platform, a move Vynokur said was focused on helping customers harbour long-term wealth creation.
Betashares CEO Alex Vynokur says despite escalating cost-of-living pressures, Gen X and Millennials are keen to invest. Credit: Janie Barrett
“We’ve been a manager of ETFs for the last 14 years, and we are managing a very significant pool of capital, just short of $45 billion on behalf of more than 1 million Australians. Many of those are Millennials,” he said.
“What we’re seeing is that Millennial investors are much smarter than sometimes they’re given credit for. We actually have seen Millennial investors become one of the largest adopters of ETFs.”
Vynokur said Millennials tended to be more open to taking investment risks, including taking a liking to cryptocurrencies.
Four in 10 Millennials in Australia own cryptocurrencies, according to cryptocurrency exchange platform Swyftx data from 2023. The survey also found that more than 20 per cent of Gen Zs owned cryptocurrency.
Osborne said her generation had to get ahead by investing if they wanted a greater chance of financial stability and freedom, while her parent’s generation hadn’t faced the same pressure.
“For me, and I think plenty of people – our parents, our grandparents – they didn’t really speak about money at home. If they spoke about it, it was about keeping your money in savings, whereas now, you’re not going to get where you want to if that’s all you do,” she said.
“I’ve got friends who are younger, even kids of older friends in their young 20s, now they’re thinking about money like I never used to. The age of investment is going down as a result of previous generations thinking: ‘I need to buy a house when I’m really young to get into the market’. There’s this rush of trying to get in.”
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