Buckle Up, Buttercup

The economy you grew up in isn’t the one you’re about to face.

The economy has a long memory, even when people do not. Those born in 1965 and 1995 share the same country and currency, but not the same definition of “normal.” One entered adulthood when money had weight and time was part of every transaction. The other came of age when money moved like information and time felt optional. Both were right within their own eras. Only one of those eras still exists.

The 1965-born adult began working around 1985, in the aftermath of the high-inflation years that had scarred their parents. Interest rates were high enough to make saving rational. Wages rose slowly, and loans carried consequences. The cycle of growth and contraction was visible and steady. When markets overheated, they cooled. When debt piled up, it was cleared. They lived through Black Monday in 1987, the recession of 1990, the dot-com collapse, and the financial crisis of 2008. Each followed the same pattern of expansion, overreach, correction, and recovery. Recessions were not surprises but weather systems that came and went.

By the time COVID-19 arrived in 2020, they had already spent thirty-five years inside that pattern. The initial collapse looked familiar, but the response did not. Markets rebounded almost instantly. Policy intervention replaced the usual slow repair. For the first time, they watched an economy recover not through time and productivity, but through unprecedented liquidity. To them, it felt less like the end of the world they knew and more like a pause in the natural cycle—a suspension of economic gravity that could not last.

The 1995-born adult entered the workforce in 2015, near the end of the longest expansion in modern history. They inherited an economy built on low inflation, low interest, and instant liquidity. Capital was easy to access, and failure often came with a second chance. Growth was steady enough to feel like gravity. When COVID-19 arrived, they experienced their first real contraction. Yet instead of years of rebuilding, they saw markets rebound in months. Stimulus checks filled the gap. Asset prices exploded. The entire cycle of crash and recovery compressed into a single fiscal year.

That event shaped their instincts. They learned that every crisis has a quick fix and that markets bend to intervention. They also learned to measure success through motion rather than accumulation. The habits that once belonged to traders—constant vigilance and rapid adaptation—became everyday logic. But these instincts only work in an environment where credit is cheap and liquidity can always be created.

If the next decade reverts to the older rhythm, those habits will collide with limits that feel unfamiliar. Inflation will stay higher for longer. Interest rates will no longer be tools for fine-tuning but constraints that slow everything down. Debt will regain its cost. A business plan built on permanent optimism will meet the friction of actual capital. The 1995-born adult will discover what the 1965-born adult has always known: that time itself can become expensive.

It would be a mistake to assume this transition will feel gentle. It may unfold as drag, a gradual loss of momentum that makes growth feel heavy, or it may break suddenly. The economy has a way of compressing years of adjustment into weeks when expectations are out of sync with reality. We have to escrow for both possibilities: the slow correction that tests endurance and the sharp correction that tests nerves. The first erodes confidence over time. The second reorders it overnight. Either way, the result is the same: an economy that once again demands patience, discipline, and real productivity.

Mortgages will be harder to get. Rents will rise faster than wages. Growth will take effort. The gears of the economy will turn again, but with the sound of resistance. That sound is not failure. It is the sound of proportion returning.

The adjustment will require a different skill. Adaptability, which once meant reacting quickly, will now mean enduring slowly. The ability to wait will matter again. So will saving. So will understanding that compound growth takes years, not quarters.

For those who grew up in the era of rescue economics, this may feel unfair. But nothing about it is new. It is the pattern that shaped every stable society before the era of cheap money. The 1965-born adult has lived within that pattern long enough to recognize its return. The 1995-born adult is about to meet it for the first time.

The message is not punishment. It is calibration. When the cost of time comes back, value becomes visible again. The next decade will reward endurance, not immediacy. Buckle up. The ride may be slower or sharper, but it will finally be real.