Open this photo in gallery: Jessica Moorhouse says young people may feel like saving is pointless amid rising costs and economic uncertainty, but there is always hope for the future.Supplied

Jessica Moorhouse is a money expert, financial counsellor and author of Everything but Money: The Hidden Barriers Between You and Financial Freedom.

Five years ago, when the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic, I started fielding a barrage of panicked comments, direct messages and e-mails from followers on social media. The inquiries came from people predominantly in their 20s and 30s, and all were asking me what they should do with their money.

As a money expert who’s the same age as her target demo, I was glad to be able to offer some guidance for the questions my peers were asking, however alarmist: Should they pull out all their investments and hoard cash in preparation for the end of days? Should they go all in on crypto because soon traditional currency would become completely worthless? Should they cancel their plans to buy a home in the city and buy land in a small town three hours away so they can finally breathe? What should they do?!

Five years later, I’m starting to get some very similar questions again, and my biggest concern is that Canadians, especially young Canadians, either haven’t learned some key lessons from what happened – or worse, they don’t care to, and are doomed to repeat the same mistakes.

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For a little background, I’m not just a money expert; I’m also a millennial who is all too familiar with the feeling that the sky is falling. At this point, I’m honestly a bit numb to it.

It started when my dad narrowly avoided financial ruin by choosing to stick with his stable 9-to-5 tech job instead of joining a startup in 2000. When the dot-com bubble burst, it swiftly swallowed that startup and hundreds more like it. Then, there’s the financial crisis that has defined my adult life and those of my fellow millennials: The Great Recession. I graduated from university in 2009, and even though I’m now in my late 30s, it still haunts me. Then a decade later: COVID. And now this: a trade war with our closest ally, with no rules and no stable actor on the other side upon whom we can depend to act rationally.

Just when we’ve put out one fire, another ignites nearby. There’s no safe haven to escape to, no place to relax our shoulders and exhale. It seems there’s no hope at all for the future – just endless distractions on our phones that we can scroll through as we sip our expensive lattes, engulfed in flames while we tell ourselves, “This is fine.” Or at least, that is how many young Canadians feel, jumping from one global crisis to another while carrying the baggage of the ever-rising cost of postsecondary education, groceries, rent and real estate.

It’s no wonder there is a general sense of malaise when it comes to saving and staying out of debt among Gen Z and the youngest of Gen Y. From their perspective, “Save? What for?” is a valid line of inquiry.

And I get it. I really do. I felt a similar sense of despair in my 20s, feeling like no matter how much I saved or how “good” I was with my money, I would never catch up to where my parents were at my age – so what was the point in trying? And now with social media showing us videos of young people sipping champagne on yachts, sharing their outrageous shopping hauls or bragging about earning $50,000 a month by selling their course about how to earn $50,000 a month, comparison really is the thief of all joy.

But here’s the thing: This feeling of disillusionment is not unique to Generations Y and Z. Almost every cohort of Canadians has had to deal with their own world-on-fire-type crisis. Generation X also entered the work force during a period of economic uncertainty in the 1990s; not only was this era followed by a long period of economic expansion, but we also got grunge music out of it. The Silent Generation lived through both the Great Depression and the Second World War, and I think we can all guess why they were so silent – they saw too much. Nevertheless, they too experienced a long period of economic expansion after the war, commonly referred to as the “Golden Age of Capitalism.”

And being an elder millennial, I’ve also seen light after the darkness. The economic expansion that followed The Great Recession was the longest on record until the COVID crash in 2020.

You see, no matter how bad things are, they never stay that way forever. Despite this new period of uncertainty in our relationship with the U.S. and the return of recession talk, even if we’re facing a rough couple of years ahead, I’m still hopeful for the future. History has shown us time and time again that what goes down will eventually go back up. Just take a look at the Canadian stock market. After every contraction follows a period of expansion that reaches an even higher peak than the previous one.

But more than that, we need to remind ourselves how resilient we can be in the face of adversity. Because if we Canadians are anything, it’s resilient.

This is the underlying theme of my work and why I write about money for young people. No matter what kind of obstacles you face on your financial journey, I truly believe you can overcome them. It may not be easy or straightforward, and you may face more obstacles than others who have inherent privileges that you do not. But nothing is insurmountable as long as you can silence the internal noise, believe in yourself, learn the skills, and most importantly take a good look at your personal relationship with money.

For years as a financial counsellor, I would work with new clients and think that my only job was to help them with their money. That’s why they came to me, after all: They wanted to get their finances together, craft a budget, get out of debt and start seeing their net worth go up instead of declining or stagnating. But with every single client, it was never just about the numbers. It was also about the role money played in their personal life and how their unregulated emotions influenced much of their financial behaviours and decision-making.

More often than not, money was a negative presence in their lives. Money always called the shots and made them believe that there was a ceiling to what they could achieve – that no amount of skill or effort could ever change that.

These beliefs don’t come from nowhere. They start in childhood, with that very first interaction with money, and they compound based on the lessons you learned about money growing up, the traumas you experienced or inherited from your ascendants, and, of course, just being a human with an out-of-date operating system incompatible with modern finance, as we all are.

So if you’ve developed a mindset from a young age that has you believing that the world is going down the toilet, that only the rich get richer, that you’ll never be able to elevate your socioeconomic status, and you might as well spend your money freely as if the Earth is about to implode, then that will be your reality.

But what if you’re wrong? What if the world isn’t going to implode? It’s not a bad idea to start saving and investing, while you’ve got ample time on your side, just in case the world continues to exist by the time you retire. And chances are, it will.

What if rich people aren’t the only ones who can get richer? I actually know this to be true because I’ve seen it. Although it’s a heck of a lot easier to build wealth when you already have it, I’ve worked with a number of clients who started out with a negative net worth, but after a few years of dedicated hard work, were able to achieve a six-figure net worth. It’s possible!

What if you are capable of stepping into a higher financial position? For me, this is a rhetorical question, because I know that you absolutely are. You may not be able to see it now, especially if your income-to-expense ratio means there’s nothing left after all the bills are paid – and especially if no one in your family has been able to do it before you. But what most people don’t realize is that money is about more than just dollars and cents. It’s about patience, perseverance, self-confidence and viewing things through a solutions-focused lens while keeping your emotions in check.

I graduated at the height of the Great Recession with a fairly useless film degree, hardly anything in my bank account and a student loan to pay off. After a year of trying to find a job while living in my parents’ basement, things were not looking good for me. But one day, my older sister told me about a personal-finance blog she was reading and I decided to check it out. As soon as I started reading this blogger’s musings about money in their 20s, I felt seen. I felt heard. I was no longer on an island alone. I then found hope amongst a whole community of people sharing their journeys, offering help and support and lifting each other up, no matter what their starting point was.

Hope is what’s carried me through every financial crisis and setback ever since. And hope is what all Canadians, especially young Canadians, need to hold onto to get us through this next roller-coaster ride. Because without hope, what’s the alternative?