Business 5 min read By Callum Montgomery
US Bank Report Finds Gen Z Still Bets on Traditional Investing as Parental Support Grows
A new US Bank wealth report shows Gen Z and Millennials favour brokerage accounts over crypto, while rising house prices push parents to provide more financial support — often driven by guilt.
Gen Z and Millennials are not abandoning traditional wealth-building in favour of crypto and meme stocks, according to US Bank's 2026 Wealth Report. The bank's wealth executives said the data shows younger generations are actually more conservative than the popular narrative of «financial nihilism» suggests.
Speaking at a briefing on the report, Ryan Nelson, president of Emerging Affluent Wealth Management, said he was not finding evidence that young people have given up on conventional paths to wealth. «By and large, I would say the answer is no. It is still a pretty traditional path. And if anything, it surprises me how conservative this generation is,» he said.
The report found that while nearly half of Gen Z and Millennials find newer investments such as cryptocurrency appealing, only 12% of Gen Z and 14% of Millennials actually hold crypto. Some 76% of Gen Z and 79% of Millennials still believe traditional investing is the best way to achieve long-term financial goals. Two-thirds of them begin their wealth-building journey with a conventional brokerage account rather than a crypto wallet.
Instead, the report points to a different source of anxiety: the difficulty of building wealth in the 2020s, particularly when it comes to housing. Beth Lawlor, president of Private Wealth Management, said the survey had not isolated hard numbers on the «Bank of Mom and Dad», but the underlying affordability maths left little mystery about why parents are stepping in.
With median home prices around $430,000 and required incomes of $130,000 to $150,000 against a median household income closer to $85,000, she said, «the question is how many young people» can afford a home on their own. Lawlor noted that a house she and her husband bought in Maplewood, New Jersey, for $253,000 in their 20s is now worth $2.1 million. «The house didn't change, so it's like how does somebody in their 20s start out with a $2.1 million house?» she said.
What struck Lawlor was the emotional shift among parents. Where a grown child asking for money was once treated as an awkward or resented request, many parents now feel guilt about the economy they are handing over. «I've got to help them because it is so much harder than it was 30 years ago,» she said, describing the sentiment. The old stigma of the «barnacle» child seeking a handout is fading, she added.
The report's published findings support that framing. Seventy-one percent of parents say they feel more responsible for supporting their children financially than parents did in the past, and 68% have already provided or plan to provide financial support for major milestones such as a home purchase. The sense of obligation is strongest among younger parents: 83% of Gen Z parents and 84% of Millennial parents report feeling this heightened responsibility, compared with 52% of Boomer parents.
That pressure is documented elsewhere in the report. Fifty-six percent of Gen Z say they did everything right financially but are not where they expected to be, and 62% say they struggle to make financial progress no matter what they do. Homeownership retains its symbolic pull — 86% of Americans across every generation still call it a marker of financial success — but only 22% of Gen Z non-homeowners who want a home think they will get one within five years, and 29% have already given up on the goal entirely, more than double the 12% of Boomers who have done the same.
Nelson attributed the parental support dynamic partly to older homeowners sitting on refinanced, low-rate mortgages and years of price appreciation. With two-thirds of Millennials and Gen Z starting their wealth-building through a brokerage account rather than a home down payment, parents and grandparents are increasingly helping on the housing side.
The report suggests that the real «nihilism» may not be a rejection of traditional wealth-building by the young, but a rational response to an economy in which the traditional path has become far harder to walk without family help.
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