6 financial problems plaguing millennials through no fault of their own

Millennials often weren't able to accumulate the amount of wealth they hoped or expected to, especially when it comes to retirement, Dorsey said. One-quarter of millennials who expect to retire between ages 66 and 75 have no retirement savings account, according to the survey. Almost 20% of millennials don't know when they'll retire, and 9% don't expect to retire at all.

"Older millennials are often realizing they're going to have to play catch-up with their finances if they want to ever be able to retire, but some of them have already decided that they likely will not ever be able to afford to retire," Dorsey told Business Insider.

This is particularly true for millennials born in the 1980s, who are at the greatest risk of becoming a "lost generation" for wealth accumulation, according to a 2018 report by the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis.

It's also been harder for millennials to tuck money away into a savings account. While 70% of millennial survey respondents have a savings account, 58% have a balance under $5,000.

According to Business Insider's Tanza Loudenback, a heavy debt load has helped slim these savings. While many don't carry credit-card debt or owe less than $5,000 of, nearly 45% of millennials have student-loan debt.

When asked what they would do with an extra $1,000 cash, millennials were more likely to prioritize paying off debt over saving (a difference of five percentage points), the survey found.

The weight of student loan debt and its effects on savings is palpable. When asked whether their student loans were worth attending college based on their financial situation, about 21% of respondents said "definitely no" and about 23% said "probably no." Nearly 27% said "definitely yes," while 26% said "probably yes."

Based on the results, those who are paying off their debt seem to feel worse about their decision to go to college, while those who have already paid off their debt feel better about having gone to college.

The rising cost of college may help explain its arguably weakening value — one of the reasons driving the price hike is the demand to go to college, Richard Vedder, an author and distinguished professor emeritus of economics at Ohio University, previously told Business Insider: "The rewards for college have expanded and grown from 1985 to a little after 2000 and sort of leveled off in the past decade."

The "advantage of a degree today is less than it was 10 years ago, because of the rising cost," Vedder said. "The return on investment has fallen."

Millennials also have a higher cost of living to contend with when trying to save — while they've benefited from a 67% rise in wages since 1970, according to research by Student Loan Hero, this increase hasn't kept up with inflating living costs: Rent and home prices have increased faster than incomes in the US.

In the current economy, a six-figure salary may no longer be what it once was. Less than half of millennial respondents who earn $100,000 or more consider themselves rich — about 23% of them think they're upper middle class, and nearly 6% think they're affluent, according to the survey. About a quarter of those earning $100,000 a year or more consider themselves below middle class — nearly 7% think they're poor, and almost 20% think they're working class.

This is also evident of how the middle class is disappearing around the world and "squeezing" millennials out, reported Richard Partington for The Guardian, citing the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). This means millennials may not have the same opportunities as their parents, he said.

While 40% of surveyed millennials who expect to own a home in the future are saving for one, about 31% of millennials said they expect to own but aren't currently saving at all.

While many economic factors have made it difficult for millennials to save, it doesn't help that homes are 39% more expensive than they were nearly 40 years ago, according to Student Loan Hero.

It would take the median earner in the 25 largest US cities between four and 10 years to save enough cash for a 20% down payment on a median-priced home (assuming they're saving 20% of their annual income for the down payment, but most probably aren't), according to a recent SmartAsset study.

Millennial homebuyers are increasingly relying on larger mortgages to buy homes, Loudenback reported. Realtor.com found millennials' down payments are at an average of an 8.8% down payment on a mortgaged home, less than the standard 20% down payment.