Gen X has many redeeming qualities. In spite of their carelessness with their finances when it came to acquiring debt, “…it turns out that they’re more philanthropic than older generations. A new survey from Northern Trust found that Gen X millionaires give nearly twice as much, on average, to charitable causes as their elders. Gen X households are also more generous in their intended charitable bequests, planning to give 22 percent of their estate to charity, compared with 16 percent for Boomers and 14 percent for silent generation millionaires.” 5
This generation is also quickly dispensing with common stereotypes around gender and race. You’ll find Gen Xers shaking their heads or simply being aghast at prejudice and archaic mind-sets. Of course, they are not without their own prejudices: the new elite are those who embrace globalization, multiculturalism, and liberalism. It doesn’t make their prejudices any better, just different. Perhaps not having any prejudices would be against human nature and just asking too much.
Gen Xers also love to learn, and they like work to be interesting. They are good at working independently and actually thrive when allowed to do so. They rarely settle for the status quo. They are typically competent and techno savvy. They are quite entrepreneurial. Their independence and irreverence for the old way of doing things have brought us the dot.com boom and the dot.com bust as well as the mortgage boom and the mortgage bust. They aren’t afraid to step out and try new things, even radical things such as new business models that do not require a profit. OK, so that wasn’t so smart, but hey, at least they are trying some new things. Out of these failures, there are many successes such as… and…, okay, give us a minute. Something will come to us.
Just a little joke, don’t write us letters. Seriously, Gen X has created some great new brands like Google, Amazon, Yahoo, and eBay. They have also proven to be a lot less lazy than originally thought. “The United States has more billionaires under 40 than at any other time in history, and author Bruce Tulgan estimates that Gen Xers create four out of every five new enterprises.
Unexpectedly, generation X is bringing that same entrepreneurial, pragmatic spirit to social ills, creating an array of nonprofit and for-profit organizations to tackle problems. So these past years have brought forth a cadre of new, gen X leaders who have founded promising new ventures.6
On the home front, they have definitely had a positive impact. They’ve reinvented parent involvement and taken it to a whole new level. If there is one thing the children of Gen Xers are not it is abandoned. Gen Xers are determined to make up for the lack of work-life balance their parents had and, in doing so, have become the most involved parents on record. They may be indifferent about work at times, but they are never indifferent about their children, and we’ll see this play out further when we dive into Gen Y.
How Did They Become Who They Are?