Eighty-five percent of Gen Z adults say they’ve put off a major life milestone because of money, according to a new TD Bank U.S. survey, the highest rate of any generation the bank surveyed. Millennials weren’t far behind at 79%, while the share drops steadily with age: 66% of Gen X and 57% of Baby Boomers.
Key Points
- 75% of all U.S. adults surveyed have delayed at least one major milestone due to financial pressure, according to TD Bank’s own report on the survey.
- The most commonly delayed milestones overall: paying off debt (23%), traveling (21%), buying a car (17%), buying a home (17%) and saving for retirement (15%).
- The survey polled 2,000 U.S. adults, fielded by Talker Research for TD Bank between June 29 and July 13, 2026.
- Gen Z’s delay rate is 28 percentage points higher than Baby Boomers’, the widest gap in the survey.
The generational gap isn’t subtle. Gen Z adults, many of whom are only a few years into full-time work, are delaying milestones at nearly one-and-a-half times the rate of Boomers, who had decades longer to build savings before facing today’s costs. TD Bank’s data suggests the squeeze isn’t a single bad year catching up with young adults, it’s compounding, with each generation entering adulthood already further behind than the one before it was at the same age.
Homeownership sits right in the middle of that gap, tied with car purchases as the third most commonly postponed milestone at 17%. For a lot of adults now, buying a home has stopped being a life event planned around a job change or a growing family and become a multi-year savings project with no fixed timeline. Debt payoff ranked as the single most delayed goal overall, at 23%, ahead of even travel, a sign that for many people, the most pressing milestone isn’t glamorous. It’s just getting out from under what they already owe.
Marc Womack, TD Bank’s head of client experience, strategy and governance, said in the bank’s own release that financial education and planning “may help people better navigate these pressures, have more productive conversations.” The framing matters: TD’s survey is as much about money’s effect on relationships and decision-making as it is about the milestones themselves, and the bank is positioning financial literacy as the lever most within an individual’s control.
What the topline numbers don’t capture is how many people are quietly redefining a milestone rather than simply shelving it, that’s not something this survey measured, but it’s the logical next question raised by the data. For Gen Z especially, the delays documented here don’t suggest the milestones are disappearing. They suggest people are reaching them later, and on different terms than the generation before them did.
