Baby boomers, they're just like us. Or, rather, we're just like them. And by "we," I mean millennials. The inevitable march of time often means turning into your parents, no matter how much you swore you wouldn't. Millennials (and, to be fair, many Gen Xers) are no exception — now that the electricity bill is on you, you get why your dad was always admonishing you to turn the lights off.

Millennials — people born from 1981 to 1996 — have long had a "forever young" air to them. Obviously, they're not going to be young forever, and plenty of them are pushing 40 or already there, but the generation has been marked by a sense of arrested development. The stereotypical millennial is a 33-year-old still living in his parent's basement, lamenting he'll be a forever renter with no hope of retiring.

But the reality of many millennials is starting to more closely mirror their parents'. They're catching up on earnings and wealth, and while they're still behind on homeownership, they're not screwed. It may have taken them awhile to settle down, but they're getting around to it and heading to the suburbs. In short, millennials are looking increasingly boomer-esque, and in some areas, they're doing better than their parents.

Since his father died in 2022, William has spent a lot of time reflecting on how much he's turned into his old man. He followed his career path and became a lawyer. At 31, he's married, like his dad was when he was his age. He doesn't own a home yet, but he plans to buy a place someday soon in his hometown of Philadelphia. And while he's catching up to his dad in many ways, William, who asked for his last name to be withheld to protect his privacy, recognizes he's surpassed him in other areas. For one thing, he's more financially literate than his parents were, thanks to the "whole democratization of finance thing," he said. Not that he's doing anything weird on the stock market, but he knows how to buy an exchange-traded fund. Qualitatively, he's noticed similarities, too, in how he talks, his sense of humor, and how he sees the world.

"You realize that they are much more in you than you were maybe comfortable with, and you see some of the same strengths and flaws that your parents had," he said. "Everyone wants to be their own person, but statistically, I'm doing a version of the same job as both of my parents. It's like the apple doesn't fall far from the tree, to be cliché."

Plenty of millennial apples are looking pretty treelike nowadays. While many weren't dealt the best hand at the start of their independent economic lives, they've done quite a bit of catching up.

The median weekly earnings of full-time workers ages 25 to 34 were $1,045 ($54,340 annually) in 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, up 4% from $1,004 in 1979 ($52,208), adjusted for inflation. For the 35-to-44 crowd, wages are up by 13%, to $1,250 ($65,000) from $1,102 ($57,304).

The oldest baby boomers reached 30 in 1976, while the youngest reached that mark in 1994. They hit 40 between 1986 and 2004. Elder millennials hit 30 in 2001, and the last batch will get there in 2026. Their 40th birthdays started coming in 2021 and will stop in 2036.

Wealthwise, millennials are also doing decently, if not even better than their parents. The Survey of Consumer Finances found that people ages 35 to 44 had a median net worth of $130,380 in 1989, adjusted for inflation. In 2022, that number was slightly higher, at $135,300. Those under 35 are doing better, too, with a net worth of $39,040 in 2022, compared with $18,740 in 1989.

Like William, other millennials are more invested in the stock market than their parents. This may be in part out of necessity — the shift from pensions to 401(k)s means retirement saving requires them to play the markets on their own. The Survey of Consumer Finances found that 63.6% of Americans ages 35 to 44 had stock holdings in 2022, compared with 39.2% in 1989. That number jumped to 54.4% from 22.7% for those under 35.

Even beyond the more passive investing of 401(k)s, 20.6% of people ages 35 to 44 invested in stocks directly as of 2022, compared with 16.5% in 1989. Direct stock ownership for people under 35 hit a record 23.1% in the latest reading, well above the 10.9% of young people who owned shares in 1989. This data seems to back up the sense among some millennials that investing was one area where their parents fell short.

That's the case for Faith Bergman, a 28-year-old who works in fintech and lives in New York. She's got plenty of similarities with her mother — she uses some of the same phrases (they're both particularly fond of "six in one, half a dozen in the other"), is overly enthusiastic about keeping her apartment clean, and attributes some of her outgoing personality traits to her upbringing. But she and her sister are more focused on investing and their financial well-being in the long term than their mom was.

"Investing, especially investing as a woman, has not always been a common theme or practice," Bergman said. "I think it's more of just a lack of awareness."

Rob Williams, a managing director of financial planning at Charles Schwab, said millennials have more access to information and ways to invest than their baby boomer counterparts. A recent survey from Schwab found that millennials started investing at 25 on average, compared with 35 for boomers. (Gen Z is getting into the game even sooner, at 19.) Despite the head start, millennials still bear the scars of their early years. They're slightly less confident than baby boomers in their investing strategies, and they're less assured about reaching their financial goals compared with older generations.

Sure, millennials may have built up a decent nest egg for themselves, but if there's one trope that defines the avocado-toast generation, it's that they will never, ever own a home. It's certainly true that the 2008 crash and the pandemic-era frenzy put many members of the generation behind the eight ball: The homeownership rate for people under 35 is lower for millennials than it was for boomers and Gen Xers at the same age, noted Jessica Lautz, the deputy chief economist and vice president of research at the National Association of Realtors, citing Census Bureau data. But the situation is also more complicated. The tough early road put millennials behind baby boomers in terms of homeownership, but some are getting to where they want to be. Millennials aren't so much nonmovers as they are slow movers.

As of 2022, over half of millennials were homeowners. Daryl Fairweather, the chief economist at Redfin, told me millennials are pretty close to where Gen X was at their age, and they're closing the gap with boomers, too, even if they're still behind by five to 10 years.

"The baby boomer homeownership rate started to plateau when baby boomers reached the age of late 40s, early 50s. So I think that by the time the oldest millennials are in their late 40s, early 50s, that's probably when they're going to be much closer to baby boomers," Fairweather said. Boomers have been slow to downsize and give up their homes, but that will shift, too, she added, meaning more inventory on the market for younger generations.

It's not necessarily a question of no buying — it's a question of postponed buying. The median age of first-time homebuyers has reached a record high of 38 years old, the NAR says. Back in the '80s, people were buying their first homes in their late 20s. Millennials aren't locked out of the housing market forever; they're just not getting there until middle age.

I know what you might be thinking, or, at least, what I was thinking while going through a lot of this data: Not all millennials are floating through life hunky-dory, on track to catch up with their parents. As with many things in American society, the experiences of millennials are profoundly unequal, said Rob Gruijters, a sociologist at the University of Bristol who has studied the wealth gap among US millennials. Looking at medians and averages can paper over significant divisions within the generation. While wealthy millennials are doing better than their boomer parents, poorer millennials are doing worse.

"There's huge variation in wealth within generations, far more than there is between generations," he said. "Overall distribution of wealth has become more unequal within generations and also across the board."

Much like our quirks and go-to phrases, a lot of the disparity between millennials is influenced by how our boomer parents did, wealth- and incomewise. There's a high correlation between your wealth and occupation and those of your parents, Gruijters said, and in the case of wealth, it's often a matter of direct transmission in the forms of gifts and inheritance. "If your parents are wealthy, he said, "then you're also quite likely to be wealthy." Aging into your parents may be good, in that Mom and Dad have a house and inheritance to pass on to you, or bad, in that they basically tell you, "You're on your own, good luck."

On housing, Redfin's Fairweather told me that where your parents live and who they are have a big effect on millennials' experiences. Housing prices in coastal cities are a lot higher than they are in the middle of the country, thanks to differences in land costs, population density, and availability. So millennials attempting to keep up with their parents who tried their hands in larger urban areas may have a harder time keeping pace. If you're a 30-something making $150,000 a year, buying a home in San Francisco probably feels a lot more out of reach than it does in, say, Janesville, Wisconsin.

"There is a big trade-off millennials have to face," Fairweather said. "Can they really make it in the city or go somewhere more affordable and not have that city lifestyle?"

In other words, it may not be that all the millennials headed to the suburbs want to be there, but in some cases, they feel like they have no choice but to exit urban centers and swallow a longer commute in the process.

"The plurality are moving to the suburbs, but that's where the housing stock is," Lautz said. Some of it has to do with having school-age kids, for example, but a lot has to do with affordability and availability.

Redfin says Black millennials are half as likely to own a home as white millennials, which tracks with the experience of their boomer parents. But while the older generation has since caught up somewhat, it's not clear whether millennials will make the same (still short) strides. It's a case of one generation's wealth seeding the next generation in a country where a significant racial wealth gap exists.

"With homeownership becoming so unaffordable, it's widening that inequality gap by race and, obviously, by wealth as well," Fairweather said.

People buying their first homes have "substantially higher" incomes nowadays than in the past, Lautz said. "We also know that they're more likely to use stocks, they're more likely to use 401(k)s or cryptocurrency for their down payments," she said. "So that would indicate not only a higher income but a wealthier first-time homebuyer who can get into the market."

There are a lot of awkward parts to aging. You lose your cool factor. Your body starts to show more wear and tear. You realize the adult in the room is supposed to be you. It also means you start to think about your parents differently — what they achieved, what they didn't, what they were right (and wrong) about all along.

It can be uncomfortable to admit that you see more of your parents in yourself than you'd like. As much as millennials were supposed to be minimalists, they're loading up on stuff just as much as their stuff-loving predecessors. Politically, just like generations past, many are moving to the right as they age. They may have been reluctant to get married and have kids, but they're still hitting those milestones eventually.

Victoria Lamson, a 37-year-old who works in public relations and lives in San Francisco, acknowledges she was set up for success, generationally — her parents own a business, and they've instilled in her a lot of their traditional values around getting married and buying a home. Like many millennials, she wants to parent her children differently. She and her husband are also trying to travel more now instead of saving all their money for when they retire. Still, she knows her lifestyle isn't really a departure. When her children ask questions, she tries not to give the "because I said so" her parents gave her, but sometimes, she just can't stop herself. "There are definitely the moments that I have said that," she said.

While a lot of millennials may be turning into their boomer parents — just look at those Progressive commercials about it — it is, perhaps, hitting different. In modern history, younger generations have outdone their predecessors, the proverbial idea that you'd end up better off than your parents. But if they bought a home young, went to college, and had solid careers, it's hard to outdo that. Even matching it may feel like falling short.

Millennials are also weighed down by a pervasive sense of precarity. They remember 9/11, and they saw the economic bottom fall out during the Great Recession. They're also facing an uncertain future for government programs such as Social Security and Medicare, and the real winners in the economy are increasingly concentrated at the top.

"Even if they were in some ways keeping up with where they should have been had nothing changed in the economy, the massive fiscal gap that the country's facing is going to land on their heads as they reach retirement," Laurence Kotlikoff, a professor of economics at Boston University, said.

Maybe it will get figured out. Maybe it won't. Millennials' experience tells them to have some concerns.

The good news for millennials, on average, is that they are generally turning out OK, despite the headlines a decade ago proclaiming that lattes would doom them to eternal squalor. The bad news is that OK does not always feel great, especially in a culture where the expectation is you're constantly striving to do more and better.

For many people, there is something at least a bit charming in recognizing their parents in themselves. Millennials' kids are now rolling their eyes when songs from the 2000s come on in the car, just as millennials did when the boomers played their '70s hits. They understand why Mom was always turning the heat down, or why Dad insisted it was very important they know how to change a tire. As much as they complain about boomers being hoarders, they're now staring down their own stack of two-decade-old high school yearbooks.

Millennials aren't the lost generation after all. They're boomers 2.0, with a side of avocado toast.

Emily Stewart is a senior correspondent at Business Insider, writing about business and the economy.

• 2024 was a good year for many of the industry's biggest quant names.
• Players like Renaissance Technologies and Marshall Wace returned more than 20%.
• Cliff Asness's AQR also had a big year, with its multistrategy Apex fund returning more than 15%.

Much like their peers in the multistrategy world, quant hedge funds had a strong 2024.

Algorithm-driven trading firms mostly delivered double-digit returns across different quant strategy types, including "quantamental" funds that blend systematic and human-run qualities into one and trend-following offerings. However, most of these funds failed to match the S&P 500's 23% gain.

In 2024, the biggest and oldest names in computer-run hedge funds led the way, such as Renaissance Technologies, the firm founded by the late billionaire Jim Simons.

The firm's two main funds available to investors — Renaissance Institutional Equities Fund and Renaissance Institutional Diversified Alpha — were up 22.7% and 15.6%, a person close to the manager told Business Insider. Of course, the manager's legendary Medallion fund, which now runs around $12 billion of internal capital, performed even better with a 30% return, Simons' biographer and Wall Street Journal reporter Gregory Zuckerman said in a Linkedin post.

In the UK, longtime strategies for $70.9 billion Marshall Wace and $13.1 billion Winton Group had good years. Marshall Wace's TOPS fund, an alpha-capture pioneer that systematically evaluates ideas and research from humans to create its portfolio, made 22.7%, according to a person close to the London-based firm. The all-quant multistrategy Winton Fund was up 10.3% last year, a person familiar with the firm told BI.

French quant firm Capital Fund Management, which is expanding its US presence, made 14.2% in its Stratus fund, which manages roughly $11.8 billion. The firm overall runs $16.7 billion across its half-dozen strategies, all of which were up double-digits in 2024, a person close to the firm said.

Cliff Asness's AQR meanwhile made 17.9% in its $2.5 billion trend-following Helix fund, a firm spokesperson told BI. The manager's $2.3 billion multistrategy fund, Apex, returned 15.1% on the year.

Graham Management was also up, returning 11.9% in its quantamental fund known as Proprietary Matrix while its trend-following option returned 6.7%, according to a person close to the Connecticut-based manager with $20 billion in assets.

But these managers have no time to rest. Artificial intelligence advancements have firms racing to build out systems and teams to better their processes. A new fund from OpenAI alum Leopold Aschenbrenner has the backing of Stripe's founders and former GitHub CEO Nat Friedman and is "focused on" a type of AI that would match human intelligence.

"The industry is experiencing an information arms race with respect to how much information can be gathered and how quickly it can be processed," a new release from Don Steinbrugge, an industry consultant who runs Agecroft Partners, reads.

"Information advantages are often short-lived, and many managers will continue investing in a host of new technologies."

More firms' performance figures will be added as they are learned.

• Most Americans see economic difficulty as the reality for 2025, according to a new Gallup poll.
• Republicans have a much rosier view of the US economy headed into the new year.
• Nearly eight-in-ten Republicans (78%) believe 2025 will be a year of economic prosperity in the US.

Most Americans are predicting economic difficulty and international discord in 2025, but Republicans are expressing broad economic enthusiasm weeks before President-elect Donald Trump is set to begin his second term, according to a new Gallup survey.

In the new poll, 56 percent of respondents said they believed that the coming year would bring economic difficulty, while 44 percent felt it would bring prosperity. And regarding international conflicts, roughly two-thirds (67 percent) of respondents foresee a year of political conflict, versus the 32 percent of respondents who see 2025 as a more peaceful year.

A majority of Republicans, buoyed by Trump's victory and the conservative agenda that'll be pursed by the forthcoming GOP-controlled Congress, had positive sentiments on virtually every economic and foreign policy topic.

Nearly eight-in-ten Republicans (78%) polled believe that 2025 will be a year of economic prosperity in the US, compared to 40% of independents and 15% of Democrats. And 63% of Republicans believe that 2025 will be a largely peaceful year on the international front, compared to only 28% of independents and a scant 8% of Democrats.

On other economic issues, Republicans are energized.

Among GOP respondents, 88% believe the stock market will climb in the new year, compared to 65% of independents and 46% of Democrats. (Overall 66% of respondents believe the stock market will rise in 2025, compared to 33% who believe it will decline.)

And 87% of Republicans believe prices will increase more reasonably in 2025, compared to 46% of independents and 23% of Democrats who share a similar view.

In 2024 — under President Joe Biden's tenure in office — the S&P 500 rose 23.3% percent. Meanwhile, the Dow Jones Industrial Average had a nearly 13% gain in 2024.

The November election was defined by the state of the economy, with Trump making inroads with broad swaths of voters over inflation and affordability concerns.

Biden last summer stepped aside as the Democratic presidential nominee in part because a poor debate performance against Trump, but one of the president's biggest challenges was his difficulty in selling his economic agenda to an American public that endured noticeable price increases during the COVID-19 pandemic.

When Vice President Kamala Harris became the Democratic presidential nominee, she sought to orient her campaign around economic concerns, laying out proposals to provide tax deductions for small businesses and offer $25,000 in down-payment support for some first-time homebuyers. She fell short in the swing states — notably in the "blue wall" — as Trump retained an advantage on economic issues throughout the campaign.

With Trump returning to the White House, Republicans — who were largely pessimistic about the economy under Biden — are now much more jubilant about what 2025 will offer.

The Gallup survey was conducted from December 4-15 among 2,121 adults.

• US home sales just ended a 39-month year-over-year decline, signaling the end of the bear market, NDR said.
• Affordability issues, driven by high mortgage rates, drove the 3-year decline in home sales activity.
• Investors could take advantage of the setup by buying the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF, NDR said.

The bear market in US home sales is finally over, according to a recent note from Ned Davis Research.

The firm highlighted that total single-family home sales finally turned positive year-over-year after 39 months of consecutive declines.

The 39-month decline in home sales was only outdone by the 43-month decline during the housing bubble from 2005 through 2009.

"But the recent affordability-driven pandemic bear could not be more different than the credit-driven housing bubble bear," Pat Tschosik, a strategist at Ned Davis Research, said.

The main difference between the two notable declines in home sales is affordability.

Whereas the affordability index rose 53 points from 2005 through 2009, it plunged 39 points from 2021 through 2024, driven by high mortgage rates and ever-rising home prices.

"Homeowners, locked into low rates and unwilling to move, added to low supply and higher prices," Tschosik said.

Additionally, the stocks of homebuilders outperformed over the past three years, compared to them underperforming during the 2005 through 2009 stretch.

The recent rebound in home sales activity suggests to Tschosik that the housing market should thaw in 2025, enabling a rebound in durable and home improvement spending.

For investors, that means the iShares U.S. Home Construction ETF could be a worthy addition to portfolios for next year. The ticker symbol is "ITB."

"We are watching ITB for an upgrade. If inflation fears are overblown, the recent ITB correction could be a great buying opportunity," Tschosik said.

The ETF has declined by more than 15% since fears of a rebound in inflation gripped the market in late November.

The top holdings within the Home Construction ETF include home builders D.R. Horton, Lennar Corp, NVR, and Pulte Group, as well as home-improvement retailers Home Depot and Lowe's.

• Brennan and Erin Schlagbaum switched from index funds to ETFs in October 2024.
• Vanguard's new automatic ETF investing prompted the conversion.
• The ETFs they switched to have a slightly lower expense ratio and may be more tax-efficient.

Brennan and Erin Schlagbaum built a seven-figure net worth by investing primarily in three Vanguard index funds.

For years, more than 95% of their stock-market money was in the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSAX), the Vanguard Total International Stock Index Fund (VTIAX), and the Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund (VEMAX).

In October 2024, the millennial couple said they moved 100% of their index funds to ETFs within all of their accounts in response to Vanguard rolling out automatic ETF investing, allowing investors to schedule recurring investments. Previously, Vanguard investors could not make automatic investments into or out of ETFs.

ETFs and index funds are similar — in fact, most ETFs are index funds — and can offer long-term returns, diversification, and cost savings thanks to low expense ratios. One key difference is how they're traded: ETFs can be bought and sold throughout the trading day, while index funds can only be bought and sold once a day at the close of the trading day. ETFs also typically require a lower investment minimum. You can buy a Vanguard ETF for as little as $1, for example, whereas most Vanguard mutual funds have a $3,000 minimum.

It made sense for the Schlagbaums to switch to ETFs for two main reasons.

"The first is, the expense ratios on the actual funds themselves are slightly cheaper, so there's a savings there," Brennan told Business Insider, noting that it's a very small difference.

Secondly, ETFs may offer tax savings when compared to index funds. ETF investors are taxed only when they sell the investment, while investors who own mutual funds — and index funds qualify as mutual funds — are liable for paying some capital gains taxes when a fund sells assets and realizes a gain.

"Given the nature of an index fund, this doesn't really occur much," noted Schlagbaum. "However, it can, and I'd like to eliminate it entirely if I had the choice."

As for the actual conversion from index funds to ETFs, Schlagbaum's experience was "super easy," he said. "You can call Vanguard directly, and they can do it over the phone, or you can just go in the platform, and all you do is swap the funds for the same exact ETF. For example, our biggest holding — VTSAX — the equivalent ETF is VTI."

The equivalent of their VTIAX holding is VXUS, and the equivalent of their VEMAX holding is VWO.

Notably, the conversion did not trigger a taxable event, he added: "Typically, if you're in a taxable brokerage account and sold out VTSAX, you'd have to pay capital gains on that move. But because Vanguard rolled out fractional ETF shares as part of their roll-out, they basically shielded all taxes from any investors that make this move."

Just because he's putting his money into ETFs doesn't mean his strategy is shifting. Schlagbaum is still playing the long-term, buy-and-hold game — and he's not dismissing low-cost index-funds, by any means.

"If you stay in index funds, it's not going to make or break you long-term," he said. The way he sees it, the ETFs he converted to are very similar in terms of their holdings, just slightly more tax-efficient.

It's difficult to quantify how much the move could save him in the future.

He said the difference in the expense ratio is "super minor." VTSAX, for example, has an expense ratio of 0.04%, while its equivalent ETF, VTI, has one of 0.03%.

As for the capital gains aspect, "that's very dependent year-to-year based on the manager that's holding that fund and how they buy and sell and the transaction activity within that fund, so it's impossible to calculate that."

If he had to estimate, "Long term, I would say it's probably a six-figure move, which isn't that big over a 30- to 40-year period. But, it's like, why wouldn't you take it? It's low-hanging fruit in my opinion."