i'm one of these, and i don't consider myself a millennial.

anyone who's legitimately used a rotary phone (or even just seen one in use) in a non-ironic way should not be considered a millennial.

The last rotary phone I saw for sale was, I think, in the 1980s, the last one I saw in use was in the 2000s. Its quite possible that someone could be a millennial and have used one (IIRC, we used one in my house until 1986 -- the other phones in the house were touch tone -- and only ditched it because we happened to move.)

Really, the oldest are mid 30s, and I think even that is a stretch.

Most sources put the end of generation X as 1980. So unless you want to come up with a micro-generation for people born between 1980-1985, we're stuck in the millennial group.

The thing is that if we stick with a 15 year span, the youngest people who should really be called millennials are around 21 or 22, but it seems like each year the lower bound for millennial grows (I occasionally see news reports referring to children as millennials).

I'm assuming this trend will stop when we settle on a name for the next generation.

Tuition for the college I went to is around ~18% more expensive now than when I went in inflation adjusted terms, the loans you can get now to cover them are around half of what I paid between 1996-2000 (at a state school). I haven't done the math to see how that all breaks out for real cost differences, but I'll concede college is more expensive now.

Also if you've graduated in the last 6 years or less, you've come into a job situation that is phenomenally better than that of someone who graduated from 1990-94 or from 2002-2006, which has probably a bigger impact on your lifetime earnings than your generation (think how capricious that is).

If you're truly ignorant of the subprime mortgage crisis a few years back, you can check out The Big Short (book or movie, but I'm told the book is much better) for good insight into history and mechanics.

Point is that the economy has changed a LOT in the last 15 years, and lots and lots of people suffered. Generation X is not the Baby Boom generation. I think you sound a bit foolish/ignorant appropriating the "Baby Boomers ruined the economy!" rhetoric and applying it to the generation-and-a-half that followed them.

You are trying way too hard to make yourself sound like a victim.

The usual starting point for the Millenial generation is a birth year of 1980; if 36 is "starting 40 in the face", it is not from a particularly close distance.

And that's the absolute leading edge.