This is why millennials will never grow up [View all]

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(MarketWatch) Your grown-up children may never hit many of the milestones you’ve come to associate with adulthood — and you can blame their crushing student loan debt for that.

Fully 56% of millennials (compared with 43% of adults overall) with current or past student loans have delayed at least one major life event because of student loan debt, according to a survey of 1,000 adults released Wednesday by Bankrate.com. And a survey of 1,000 current and former students released last year by Citizens Bank came to similar conclusions: Roughly 90% of people ages 18 to 40 (most of this age group is made up of millennials) with student loans say that paying these loans has impacted their day-to-day life, including the achievement of some major life milestones.

Buying a home is the No. 1 thing millennials say they have put off thanks to their student loan debt. The Bankrate survey revealed that 30% of millennials (versus 22% of adults overall) say that student loans have made them delay buying a home. (Incidentally, home ownership for Americans under 35 hit an all-time low last year, according to the Housing Vacancy Survey, which began tracking this data in 1982).

Furthermore, an analysis unveiled last year by John Burns Real Estate Consulting hints at the same thing, concluding that, for people ages 20 to 39, student loan debt caused an 8% decline in home purchases, and that every $250 a month in student loan debt reduced purchasing power for a home by $44,000. And an analysis released this year by credit monitoring firm Equifax and the Federal Reserve Bank of New York declared that “while mortgage debt fell among 20-somethings both with and without student debt, it fell at a faster clip among those with student loans.” ................(more)

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/this-is-why-millennials-will-never-grow-up-2015-08-05