Gen Z is fighting an uphill battle, and we know it.
Inflation is consistently outpacing wages each year. The cost-of-living tsunami is rising before our eyes. The usual financial dreams of owning our own homes or being debt-free someday seem to be slipping further from our grasp.
We know there is a difficult road ahead of us to achieve those financial dreams, and it keeps us up at night, with 82% of Gen Z and young millennials saying money is a significant source of stress.
However, even with these difficult financial conditions, Gen Z does have the opportunity to achieve our financial goals by taking healthy risks and avoiding unhealthy risks.
A result of sticky inflation, the affordability crisis, and an ever-elusive American dream is that Gen Z is riskier earlier in our lives compared to prior generations.
On average, we start investing at age 19, which is a large jump from Millennials who started investing at age 25. This early exposure to powerful market growth gives us a huge advantage compared to prior generations.
Our logic is this: if we are risky and win big, then we can achieve those financial dreams and freedom. If we are risky and lose big, then at least we have a long time horizon ahead of us to win back those losses.
However, not all risks are the same.
Gen Z does participate in tried-and-true healthy risk opportunities like investing in market index funds, but we also participate in highly volatile unhealthy risk opportunities such as investing in cryptocurrency, hopping onto “meme” stock trends, and even day-trading penny stocks.
The mania and hype for certain financial moves can often disguise their underlying elevated risk from young investors. For example, Bitcoin has a lot of publicity about being the “future of finance” and a dedicated community of people who say they will never sell.
However, Bitcoin relies on pure speculation and does not have any underlying financial data to analyze, unlike a company’s earnings report for traditional stock investing. This leaves Bitcoin more susceptible to volatile fluctuations in price. Over the past six months, Bitcoin has dropped 45%, impacting Gen Zer’s financial futures (data as of February 2026).
Additionally, financial risk can take many forms, some of which may not be readily apparent.
For instance, Gen Z has an affinity for cryptocurrency investments, which are often held in unsecure “hot” electronic wallets. If someone hacks into one of these unsecure crypto wallets and transfers out the funds, there is usually no recourse for repossessing those funds.
In addition, while traditional stock, bond, fund, and ETF investments have an orderly and entrenched rules-driven settlement process, liquidations from digital wallets can vary widely in timing and amount. These attributes lead to even more financial risk.
Another alarming type of financial risk Gen Z is taking is with our health: a quarter of Gen Z postpones or delays medical care because of expensive treatment costs. By deferring this needed medical treatment, we risk aggravating the condition and negatively impacting our access to and coverage from our health insurance in the future.
While Gen Z has more access to unhealthy financial risks than any prior generation has had before, we also have more access to healthy financial risks than anyone before us.
We only need internet access to cultivate the healthy habits of contributing to tax-advantaged investment accounts and purchasing diversified investments and funds backed by hours of research.
We can also use our vast access to take healthier risks by keeping our investment assets with well-known brokers who have guaranteed asset security. For example, Charles Schwab has a security guarantee where they cover any loss in any Schwab account due to unauthorized activity (unlike a crypto wallet).
For more information on healthy financial risks for Gen Z, you can consult an Apella Advisor and set a gameplan for young investors that stands the test of time.
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Disclosures:
Apella Capital, LLC (“Apella”), DBA Apella Wealth, is an investment advisory firm registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission. The firm only transacts business in states where it is properly registered or excluded or exempt from registration requirements. Registration of an investment adviser does not imply any specific level of skill or training and does not constitute an endorsement of the firm by the Commission. Apella Wealth provides this communication as a matter of general information. Any data or statistics quoted are from sources believed to be reliable but cannot be guaranteed or warranted.