To Be 30 Today

At 30, your parents owned a home, had job security, and were building wealth. At 30, you're drowning in debt, paying half your income in rent, and wondering if retirement is even real.

What happened?

This isn't about avocado toast or financial irresponsibility. It's about structural economic shifts that fundamentally broke the path to adulthood. Born around 1995, today's 30-year-olds inherited student debt that functions as a life sentence, housing costs that make homeownership fantasy, a gig economy that destroyed benefits and stability, and wages that haven't kept pace with the cost of simply existing.

To Be Thirty Today exposes the betrayed promise through data, international comparisons, and lived experiences. From the death of starter homes to algorithmic rent pricing, from the credential arms race to the retirement mirage, it reveals how policy failures in housing, education, labor, and healthcare created a generation left behind—then blamed for their own struggles.

But this isn't just about documenting injustice. Discover survival strategies, political movements gaining traction, and what other countries do differently. Learn why childcare became a luxury, why the wealth transfer never came, and how the subscription economy quietly drains thousands annually.

Being 30 used to mean arriving. Now it means surviving. Here's why—and what comes next.