A 30-year-old in Manhattan felt ready to consider marriage, but knew he couldn’t afford a wedding.

And in Brooklyn, a couple, at 32, confronted a generational conundrum: stay in their hometown as their parents age? Or move away to start a family?

Forget the kids.

The 30-somethings are not all right.

“Everyone I know around my age is feeling the weight of the burdens of this economy and what it takes to live a nice, comfortable middle-class life,” said Dan Iammatteo, 31, a marketing director in the Bedford-Stuyvesant neighborhood of Brooklyn.

And their angst is intensifying. People in their early 30s constitute the largest age cohort in the United States, and their frustrations have emerged as a potent force reshaping cities and their politics and demographics.

Nearly two dozen people in their early 30s said in interviews that the image of adult life that they had been promised turned out to be a sham.

Many work full time and earn enough to cover the cost of basic groceries (even if it means trips to three stores). But their salaries are losing ground to inflation, and their health care costs are skyrocketing. They’re cutting back on salon visits, social activities and fresh fruit runs — and they feel priced out of adulthood.

On Thursday, the long-running Harvard Youth Poll found for the first time in its history that more young Americans expect to fall behind, rather than surpass, their parents economically.

https://www.nytimes.com/2026/10/25/nyregion/30-year-old-angst.html

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5914804&forum_id=2#50204846)

You are going to have to get a roommate if you refuse to look for a spouse in your early 20s.

(https://xoxohth.com/thread.php?thread_id=5914804&forum_id=2#50204896)