By Josh Katzowitz, WCI Content Director
When I think of the generation gap that spans from the Baby Boomers to Generation X and Millennials to Gen Z, one of the biggest changes (aside from people under the age of 30 not knowing about Jason Priestley) is their attitude toward work. Now, a new term called “soft life” or “soft saving” is floating in the online ether, and depending on your viewpoint (and probably how old you are), it’s either incredibly healthy for long-term living or incredibly harmful for building wealth and allowing people to retire early.
The idea of a soft life or soft saving is, as The Independent notes, to embrace “a more easy and enriched life” by “veering away from stress and struggle.” That brief statement right there is one that could rile up the older generations (“Nobody wants to work anymore!” one could say. “. . . Back in my day, we were on call for 36 hours straight, and we LIKED it!”).
The soft life trend seems to have started on social media after the entire world experienced the COVID pandemic and all the anxiety and isolation that came with it. As the world emerged from its long-term quarantine, a large swatch of Millennials and Gen Z workers and investors took a different approach to the way they wanted to live.
In a Prosperity Index Study conducted by Intuit this year, researchers found that Gen Z “is not looking to retire early and may not be planning to retire at all.” For Gen Z (those who were born between 1995-2012), it’s less about saving and investing and more about “personal growth and mental wellbeing in the now” with the idea that “they would rather feel more fulfilled now than save for a future that is unknown.”
Perhaps this shift in mentality around work, boundaries, and personal fulfillment shouldn’t be surprising. As a Gen Xer, here’s how I’ve thought about generational attitudes toward work:
- Greatest Generation: They won a world war, and then they came home and worked hard enough to move to the suburbs and buy that $8,000 house to raise their 2.5 kids.
- Baby Boomers: They work until their fingers fall off and suffer burnout as a result, even though nobody knew what burnout was.
- Gen X: A hybrid of hustle culture and the anti-work subreddit. As we get older, a soft life sounds more appealing.
- Millennials: More into boundary setting and doing what’s right for them as individuals as opposed to company goals. That’s not a judgment statement, by the way.
- Gen Z: Less concerned with their future. Not at all concerned with those who employ them.
Of course, those descriptions are huge generalizations, and clearly not everybody will fit into those bullet points. My biggest question, though, is this: Is soft living and soft saving a healthy way to live, or will it simply end where the generations that engage in them can never afford to retire?
What Does Soft Living Mean for Millennials and Gen Zers?
Perhaps soft living and soft saving isn’t a financially savvy decision, particularly for young doctors who have large student loans. But for burnout prevention, setting boundaries between work and the rest of your life and allowing yourself some self-care in the form of a nice vacation or an expensive dinner might be a mentally healthier way to live.
“This is the first I’ve heard of the term ‘soft saving,’ but I don’t disagree with its premise,” Danny, a second-year resident who is part of the WCI series From Fourth Year to the Real World and who is married to another resident physician named Ariel, told me. “We definitely live this way, but I think we view it differently at this point in our lives. The income of a resident is finite, but our youthful years are also the same. Viewing it from a resident’s perspective, we know that we will have much higher earning and saving capacity in attendinghood, and we (more so me, but still true for Ariel) are OK saving minimally.”
Danny and Ariel make a combined $126,000, and over the course of their first two years in the real world, they’ve each accumulated $6,000 in retirement with individual emergency funds of at least $10,000-$15,000 (for now, the married couple keeps separate financial accounts).
The young millennial couple feels good about their savings, and they prioritize living comfortably. Yes, they have about $400,000 in student loans, but Ariel has a season pass to one of the country’s top-notch amusement parks and Danny bought season tickets to the local major college football program. They’re not necessarily skimping.
“In a different branch of the multiverse where we were not expecting to have our income [increase] 3x-4x in the next couple of years, I believe we would absolutely be living differently by tucking money away more aggressively and doing some things differently,” Danny said.
In the Intuit survey, more than half of Gen Z respondents said they have lied about how much money they earn or how much debt they owe. Though this trend might have started on social media (just look at the #softlife hashtag on TikTok that has more than 1.2 billion views), it’s clear that social media also contributes to feelings of inadequacy by its users.
Soft living, then, isn’t only about eschewing your savings goals or not maxing out your retirement accounts so you can travel to Europe on a last-minute deal or spend hundreds of dollars on a price-fixed meal. It’s about living life the way you desire while maintaining your work-life boundaries. It's about feeling adequate in your life.
@dreaknowsbest When its time to clock out 🤷🏽♀️😂 #softlife @atika.greene @whoisseanmac @jameshenry #comedyskit #sweetiedarling #trend
More information here:
TikTok Doctors Are Creating Millions of Fans and Making a Huge Impact on Social Media
Can You Spot the Unbelievably Bad Financial Advice on These TikToks and Tweets?
How Does Soft Living and Soft Saving Affect a Young Doctor’s Finances?
More spending and less saving means that young investors who engage in soft living and soft saving can’t build large amounts of wealth. But there has to be a feeling of freedom if you’re not living like a resident and indulging when you can.
“Financial advisor hat on: compounding interest is vital ASAP. Human hat on: good for Gen Z,” Chad Chubb of WCI-recommended WealthKeel told me. “A lot of us could probably use a little bit of this in our lives for better work-life balance. I don’t think I would take it as far as [some are willing to do], but some of this is good. Let’s also be honest with each other: I surely was not making my best money decisions between the ages of 18-25 either.”
Like Danny, Chubb wasn’t familiar with the terms of soft living or soft savings before I emailed him (in fact, I talked to a number of millennials about this topic, and barely anyone had heard of them either). Considering Chubb’s company only works with physicians, it seems like young doctors who are financially literate or trying to become so aren’t truly engaging in these lifestyles. At least not yet.
“We do work closely with our clients to try to find the right mix of live now vs. retirement planning, so in a way, we welcome this,” Chubb said. “But I also need to ensure we are on the same page for the longer term.”
Among Danny’s friends and colleagues, he doesn’t know of anyone who has an aggressive savings plan.
“More frequently,” he said, “I hear other residents tell me about how poor of savers they are, so I believe most other residents are in the same situation as us—probably trying to tuck some money away for an emergency but are going to wait for attendinghood when the salary will 2x-4x to really make a dent in the long-term retirement plan.”
Older generations might believe that soft living and soft saving are terrible ideas for future finances. But I thought this passage from The Everygirl was interesting. Soft living is not an idea based on laziness, ignorance, or apathy. There is a thought process here.
Wrote author Katherine Chang: “It’s not about scaling back on your career efforts like quiet quitting–it’s about prioritizing your joy first, which can mean quitting a toxic job or leaning into the aspects of your job you genuinely love. It’s not anti-work; it just means setting boundaries where you need (work, relationships, housework, etc.) so you feel less stress and more joy in your life overall. Soft living can look opulent, but at its core, it’s a mindset cultivating balance, self-awareness, intentionality, and joy.”
Still, it's going to be tough, if not impossible, to build enough wealth to retire comfortably, especially if you have thoughts of FIRE.
More information here:
Some Sobering (and Scary) Statistics on People’s Retirement Preparedness
How Does Soft Living Relate to FIRE (or Retirement in General)?
One of the main takeaways from the Intuit study is that “soft saving is Gen Z’s response to FIRE (and) hustle culture.” Two in three Gen Z respondents actually said they don’t know if they’ll ever have enough money to retire.
Said Danny: “Part of the psychological pushback against FIRE may have more to do with young people weighing their average current salaries against the increased average cost of living compared to previous generations, higher than average mortgage rates for homes that are way overvalued, and not seeing a path to actually obtain FIRE so then viewing it as unrealistic, and subsequently psychologically telling yourself you didn’t want to do that anyways.”
Maybe, if you’re looking for a soft life, it should be a temporary strategy—not one that lasts for years. Just because you take some time off from what WCI traditionally recommends (living below your means to pay off student loans, saving 20% of your income, building an emergency fund, investing as aggressively as your risk tolerance allows, etc.), that doesn’t mean you’ve doomed yourself to a life of working forever.
Even if you take a breather from the grind and live a soft life for a while, you can still retire (and perhaps even FIRE).
“Yes, 100%,” Chubb said. “Do we miss out a little on the compounding interest part early on? Sure. Not to say student loans are going anywhere anytime soon, but physicians are a group that are already used to a delayed start—whether that is from training; student loans; or, unfortunately, both.”
For now, it seems that soft living exists mostly on social media channels, and most physicians who are considered Gen Z still haven’t reached attendinghood yet. But it’ll be interesting to see if other high earners follow the path set by a millennial lawyer named Tay Ladd who told Moneywise that she was once involved in the so-called hustle culture before she began suffering physical ailments from her lifestyle.
So, she changed her life.
@thecorporatedogmom drinking my chlorophyll water & keeping my opinions to myself 🤐 #TheCorporateDogMom #softlifestyle #corporatemillennial #corporatetok #softlife #corporateamerica #womenincorporate
As Moneywise writes:
“While she hasn’t left her high-pressure job, she reevaluated how she schedules her days and set firm boundaries to carve out time for herself and the things she enjoys. Now, she makes her mornings all about herself: a skin care routine, breakfast, Pilates class. She won’t schedule calls during her personal time, and she splurges on things that make her feel good, like working out or vegan meal subscriptions.
And then, when she’s at work, she’s able to give it her full attention.”
She also makes this important distinction about her future.
“I don't see myself retiring at all . . .” she said. “I’m not working to retire.”
Money Song of the Week
Drivin’ N’ Cryin’ was one of my favorite bands as a kid. It probably helped that the lead singer and guitarist, Kevn (not a typo!) Kinney, was a fixture in the Atlanta music scene, and he went to a rival high school in the suburbs (ahem, many years before I did). I loved the band’s music, which was a combination of Southern rock and up-tempo folk music with lyrics that seemed to fall out of the mouth of a blue-collar kid trying to make it in the cold, hard world.
(An aside: I once met Kinney on the side of the stage of a Twilight Singers show at the late, great Masquerade concert venue in Atlanta. I told him I was a big fan. He said, “Thanks, brother.” It gave me chills.)
DNC was more of a regional band (though “Fly Me Courageous” was a modest hit in 1991), and the last time I saw Kinney and company live, it was in the parking lot behind an art store with about 50 other people at a South By Southwest showcase in Austin a few years ago. It was awesome.
Anyway, today’s song is DNC’s “Scarred But Smarter,” which was released on the band’s first album in 1986 and which comments on how unfair life can be but that there’s always a chance to find the correct path again.
Yes, the protagonist in this song seems full of despair, especially when Kinney sings.
“Is it right to wish the poor man rich/Is it right to wish the rich man poor/To hope all that's well is fair ends fair/To wish thy neighbor's life to despair.
Being so mad that I start crying/No pay off for all my trying/To do it right—to never fail/Wishing for a fairy tale.”
But there is hope in the song. As Kinney told AL.com in 2014, the song was about how “nobody said it would be fair before you went out there, but there's always a chance to get started again with a new life.”
Tweet of the Week
It’s one thing to accumulate enough wealth to retire. It’s another thing entirely to let some of that wealth go.
My financial adviser told me I might need therapy when the time comes to start drawing out of retirement savings. #frugallife https://t.co/TsclOeh65l
— 𝔾𝕨𝕖𝕟 𝕄𝕠𝕣𝕚𝕥𝕫 (@gwenmoritz) August 26, 2023
What do you think about soft living or soft saving? Could you imagine yourself engaging in those practices? If you did, could you comfortably retire? Comment below!
[Editor's Note: For comments, complaints, suggestions, or plaudits, email Josh Katzowitz at [email protected].]
I am a millennial surgeon 5 years out of training. I have savings goals and a financial plan. Yes I do sometimes fantasize about saying F everything I am quitting now, but I am not trying to FIRE. Why? Because I am in my physical prime, and now is the best time to travel and enjoy things in life when I can. Our days are numbered and are not guaranteed. You can’t take it with you. Also, if I were to retire super early, like at 40, I would be bored and unless I stumbled my way into another career, I would have no sense of purpose.
I set boundaries at work and my free time is for me. I did not do this when I first started, was always available and always said “yes” like I was supposed to. But, I got taken advantage of, and my mental health suffered as a result. But not anymore. I say “no” more now, and it has made me a better doctor, full stop. I think gen Z recognizes this and is why they also set firm boundaries at work. As a generation, they have astutely realized early on that the reward for more work is just… more work, which for a lot of them still would not make the difference in terms of their prospects of home ownership and other milestones.
The differences in generational attitudes toward work (or what people will accept in a working environment) are fascinating to me. I had a conversation yesterday with a neighbor (who’s in the Boomer generation), and he couldn’t believe that one of his buddies who owns a business was having to contend with younger generations of workers who wouldn’t accept a job unless it had unlimited PTO or unless it was completely remote. He was like, “It’s getting worse.” And I said, ‘Yeah, or it’s getting better. Who knows?”
If there is no labor willing to work under his preferred conditions, that should tell him something about his preferred conditions. You’ve got to pay the going rate for labor or you won’t have labor. Unemployment is really low right now so labor is in the driver’s seat.
Speaking of that, I’ve got a list of demands forthcoming.
This is the problem with letting your employees read your content.
Ha! Jim even without reading your content it seems the whole labor force has found out they are in demand and know their worth!
Do you guys have any thoughts that new attending doctors demand easier hours because their are less equity partnership opportunities being offered? When I started out I worked a lot with the promise of being a partner in a successful neurology practice, and my work would benefit something that I own. now our practice is now sold to our local hospital, and new docs that we interview to join now don’t have any promise of ownership, and I see that translate to “then I don’t want to take call” and other such demands. being 42yo myself and on the borderline of GenX/millenial generation, I can understand the disincentize to sacrifice your mind and body when you are not an owner, but an employee.
I agree. I’m a big fan of ownership and I think doctors work harder when they own their jobs.
I contrast us (Baby boomer married to Gen Xer) with the kids- a millennial and a Gen Z. Older one has good job and limited work hours, plans to work forever and sees no need to FIRE. Also keeps her home/ mom duties much more strictly fair and limited than I was able a generation earlier. I asked the son-in-law if his new half remote schedule was paternity leave: no, it’s offered to everyone or they couldn’t keep enough employees! Younger has already taken a gap year before college and another now- Fulbright- and is in no hurry to “get a real job”. No partner so far as I know and us parents differ on “Don’t give me a transatlantic grandchild please” and “I want my kid and grandkids to grow up in Europe instead of a Trumpian USA”.
However it’s hard to tell being doctors from not, and being raised by less than satisified doctors definitely steered them both away from health care and long hours. When I was envying the vigorous fun and athletic life of my kids- rock climbing and parachuting and partying etc.- I asked myself “Why weren’t we doing all that in our 20s?” [I did parachute but only as a soldier.] I then answered myself, “Oh yeah, med school and residency!!!” I also have a lot less sun damage than I would have from spending my first two decades in polluted/ overcast cities and libraries studying and my next two in the hospital or clinic instead of out of doors.
Now in my 7th decade I can testify that retirement can be boring, and that with time and the increasing risk and/or accumulation of chronic ailments one may be uninterested or unable to do all the neat things one could have done (or did enjoy) when younger. YOLO? Yes. Soft life? I recommend it if feasible, and we won’t know if we saved enough until we have died.
It sounds like the younger generations are much more pessimistic about what the future holds. And why shouldn’t they be? It’s hard for me to be overly optimistic, too. In that sense, it makes more sense to live for the now, I suppose.
Josh, I disagree. We have more reason now to be optimistic than ever. Childhood ravages like polio, measles, tickets, etc are lower now than ever in history. The standard of living worldwide is ever improving. Fewer countries every year have non-potable drinking water. Etc etc. Hans Rosling has a great book about the continuing average improvement in humanity’s lot worldwide called Factfullness. It’s a great read for the disillusioned of our current era. We are inundated with bad news and hyperbole everywhere because that’s what sells, grabs our attention, brings clicks. But the news about the human physical condition is generally…well, good.
Not gonna speak for Josh, but I see it in a more USA-centered viewpoint. Average life expectancy is dropping partially due to large and vocal anti-science and anti-education factions of the population. Housing and groceries and car payments are skyrocketing beyond any pay increases. The rise of Islamophobia/antisemitism/immigrant-hate, women’s rights being stripped, and a presidential candidate openly desiring authoritarianism (and the other candidate also in his 80s) is not a good outlook for our future. I totally understand why the young generation is YOLOing life right now.
Overall, it’s hard to judge young people for being cynical about the future and living in the present. My main caveat with this plan is that I didn’t realize how TIRED I would become putting up with patient, government and business BS as a doctor. I’m not sure if young doctors realize that a medical career has a limited lifespan, due to burnout, downsizing, falling behind in skills and who knows what the medical/government/insurance industrial complex will do to us. You may not have as much time to earn the big bucks necessary to save for a comfortable retirement as you think.
Still, after 20 plus years in medicine. I enjoy my job, mostly, but see apparently relentless deterioration in QOL over time. I took a lot of unnecessary and overconfident financial risks as a young professional and that put me years behind on retirement. If I had instead used that money for adventure I would have been better off, but of course I didn’t have a crystal ball. Just now getting on track for a mid 60’s retirement. Certainly didn’t even know about FIRE as an option and wish WCI had been there when I was younger.
If I had it to do over, I would lean even harder into work hard/play hard as a younger person. I couldn’t WAIT to get to the hard work! I should have travelled and enjoyed life a bit more as a young person. I really thought life would get easier over time…it doesn’t and in some ways gets harder. The more you earn, the more you spend.
I have 3 kids now 28-35, 2 of whom are young docs (fellow and resident) and one who is a successful young employed business worker. All 3 maintain a better work-life balance than I did at their age—I had an “old-school” group employer and an old-school mentality. My generation likes to brag that we work(ed) harder and we probably were able to make/save more money, but we also (present company included) clearly suffer more burnout. These “kids” have figured out what it took many of us 20-30 years to figure out—you have to take care of yourself. It is indeed a marathon, not a race.
Excellent points.
Even if there is no desire to retire early, the financial independence part of FIRE is a worthy goal. Unexpected stuff happens, and it’s a whole lot easier to deal with that stuff when you’re sitting on a big pile of money.
There’s nothing stopping someone with a physician’s income from doing what they want to do; you just can’t do everything and expect to save money. My first several years out of residency, I had a generous vacation allotment and traveled regularly all over the world. To balance out the travel spending, I lived in a nice but modest apartment and drove the same car that I had since high school. Was able to save & invest approximately 50% of my income while never working more than 40 hours a week. Pick what’s important to you, spend your money on that, and invest everything else so you have options later on when life tosses a brick at your head.
IMO the FIRE crowd often times took things too far…trying to work too hard too early and did burn themselves out. That being said, the “Soft living” crowd can take it too far as well. These people are still very young. They may not enjoy the “soft living” and HAVING to work when they are 45 or 55 or 65 or beyond. People born from 1995-2012 (the dates you reference above) are still not even 30 years old yet. They are young, without health problems and all the energy in the world. Come talk to me in 25 years when they have kids, medical problems and work fatigue/boredom setting in.
Interesting read, thanks for sharing. As a mid-millennial working my way through residency and born to baby boomer parents I can appreciate both ends of the spectrum. My parents very much fit into the classic “boomer” mold of put your head down and work hard, and both are still working into their 70’s, partly by choice. But they also understand times have changed. I think there is a character building nature of “the grind” and being able to push through periods of upheaval or disaffection in the work place that can’t be replicated. There’s no substitute for hard work. But on the flip side, as I’ve talked to more and more older attending’s and paid closer attention to the trends in the medical-industrial complex, there seems to be an inevitable slide towards further consolidation and corporatization of the profession and further loss of physician autonomy. Sometimes I ask myself, did I sacrifice my 20’s and 30’s to be a corporate pawn?
I’ll be entering attendinghood at an interesting cross roads; the pay in my specialty is gang-busters, but reimbursement’s continue to drop (across medicine obviously). This won’t last. I’m still figuring out how my own practice and goals will fit into the macro trends occurring, but at the end of the day I want the freedom to retire and be able to walk away earlier if desired. I want to travel with my family and friends when we’re healthy and physically robust. The best way I see to ensure that goal remains attainable is to bust ass for a few years after training, live like a resident + 20% lifestyle inflation, get my mountain of student loans taken care of ASAP, and build a healthy nest egg. It won’t be easy, but neither was premed, medical school, or residency.
I think some of this boils down to how inflation is disincentivizing savings for many people in the US. Many people are burdened with student debt, aren’t able to save for a house, and see their paycheck buying them less and less every year. They may be able to buy wants for less money, but needs are getting ever more expensive. How can this not lead to a sense of hopelessness about the future? It’s easy to want to embrace the here and now–which you can control with your decisions about work/life balance–when the future seems out of your control.
I’m a millennial anesthesiologist 8 years out of training at a high-acuity tertiary care hospital, mid-sized city.
I generally do not fault younger millennial / Gen Z physicians as they’re acting rationally to the incentive structure being presented to them. Medicine has always been a challening and difficult profession, but today has the added problem of physicians not being in control of their own labor. There are no opportunities to strike out on your own, form your own practice and build something you’re invested in and proud of. The vast majority of physicians coming out of training end up forced to work for some private equity backed employer who uses their license to bill patients while they collect profits. These management firms dictate how medicine will be practiced, how many patients will be seen, what supervision ratios will be and how many hours worked – and their officers/investors are never personally liable for anything. And young doctors know through-and-through that once they find a cheaper labor alternative, they will use it. They quickly realize all concerns outside of financial ones (are we providing quality care? are we proud of the work we’re doing?) are a distant second to the company’s margin. The burnout follows from this. You can work 60 hours a week if you own your labor and are proud of the work you do, but most people won’t be ground to the nub for Blackstone or Apollo’s bottom line.
So when I say younger doctors are acting rationally, they’re all looking to avoid exploitation, make their nest egg, go part time to manage burnout, and/or retire early. We’ve trained far too few physicians for years and next the health care system is going to deal with mass early retirements. Writing is on the wall.