跟讀練習: Why ‘Making It’ Feels Impossible In The U.S. Now - 通過影片學習英語口語

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This is a mock monthly household budget for an American family in 1985.

If we compare that to a hypothetical budget in 2022, we can see that most expenses scaled with inflation, with a few exceptions.

Rent out of pocket, health care costs, and child care are notably more expensive in 2022, even when accounting for inflation and costs associated with retirement increased by more than 60%.

But these numbers are not accounting for a big X factor consumer debt, such as credit cards and student loans.

Total outstanding consumer credit was nearly $600 billion in December 1985.

By 2022, it was nearly $4.9 trillion.

Debt has been rising over time.

You know, student loans weren't really a thing for baby boomers.

Millennials have larger student loan balances, bigger mortgages, much bigger car payments than their parents did a generation ago.

In addition to more expensive childcare costs, higher prices pretty much across the board.

So that does make it more difficult to set extra money aside or make any long term plans.

We're living in two separate economies.

The American dream that was pitched to the Gen Xers and the boomers is no longer present in today's world.

A lot of people, particularly the working class and the part of the middle class, don't think their children will be as well off as they were. That's a problem.

Many, many people live in what I describe as a break.

Even over the course of the year, they might make enough money to pay for basic living expenses and cover their bills, but if one major thing happens, then they can get behind.

Here's why young American adults are struggling to make ends meet and what can be done.

Millennials net worth quadrupled from $3.9 trillion to nearly $16 trillion between 2019 and 2024, but more than half report living paycheck to paycheck.

A lot in this group have benefited from a strong jobs market and rising wages, and during the pandemic, many people bought a home that made a lot of people wealthier but more on paper.

The disconnect between being rich on paper and feeling well off has been referred to as phantom wealth.

Your net worth has gotten greater, but you're not feeling richer necessarily.

It's taking young adults longer than their parents to meet some milestones, such as living on their own, buying property, and starting a family.

It's a lot harder for young people today to save up for markers of the American Dream than it was for previous generations.

I mean look at home buying, as we all know, we're in historically tight housing markets.

There are very few homes on the market, and those that are on the market are extremely expensive, not to mention expensive mortgage rates.

And the prices of homes has escalated over the last few decades much faster than actual incomes.

So it is actually much harder for a millennial or a Gen Z to save up for a down payment to buy a home.

It's not the overspending, it's the cost of living.

I think the middle class, unfortunately, is dead for millennials and Gen Zers.

Or best case scenario, the goalpost is just moved and it's still obtainable. But you have to make over six figures to have that middle class life.

But people who are older were in a better economic time growing up, because the big difference is what I call the big three: Millennials and Gen Z-ers are faced with outrageous housing prices, whether it's rent or owning, massive monthly college student loan debt payments and daycare.

Freddie Smith made a career shift from actor to realtor and started making content about the state of the housing market.

In the summer of 2023.

I was maybe one of the first or the handful that was able to say, hey, the housing prices hit $420,00, the interest rates hit 7%.

You now need $120,000 to qualify for a home.

And it went viral.

And then it just bled into people asking comments and me making more videos than it got into the boomer versus millennial debate.

And it just kind of continued to grow from there, and it took its own shape.

I had to rebuild my life in my early 30s.

So I'm really relating to the 22 year olds who are building their life, and it's a totally different economy than when I built mine and when I was 19.

Not being able to save for a home has big retirement implications for millennials and Gen Z.

Those who don't own homes, now, those are people who are in real trouble.

They're trying to save, to get their own place.

They're paying high rent somewhere. They're commuting a long distance or trying to work at home so they can save on childcare, or so they can save just on housing costs.

Those living patterns are increasingly what's happening for younger workers.

In the 1980s, the typical first time homebuyer was in their late 20s with a 30 year mortgage.

That would mean they own their home outright by the time they retired in their 60s, providing them with a better chance at sticking to a fixed income in their retirement.

A national housing shortage, high rent prices and competition from wealthier buyers are all making it harder for young adults to buy their first home.

In 2024, the median first time home buyer was 38 years old, an all time high.

You have a lot of people, 25 to 34, who are looking to start a family and cannot find a home for their families.

Maybe the homes aren't where they want them to be inside the city, but even outside of the city, it's been very difficult for young families to find a place.

So I think it's healthy for us to try to find different ways that maybe homeownership doesn't have to be the symbol of the American dream.

But then to counter that, on my own point, I encourage those who can afford homes to buy it because once it's paid off, you're going to have a more comfortable retirement because you're not going to be subject to the ever increasing rent prices.

Many Americans are navigating a new kind of economic instability, which traditional financial advice may not prepare them for.

Rachel Schneider coauthored the book The Financial Diaries, with NYU professor Jonathan Mordoch.

They spent a year tracking the granular spending habits of 235 families.

What we saw was a huge amount of volatility.

That was our core finding.

The majority of Americans work hourly jobs.

And so for them, the amount of money that they earn fluctuates week by week.

I get 30 hours this week versus 45 hours next week.

And so as a result, income is really up and down over the course of a month.

And that flies in the face of all of the budgeting advice we usually give people.

There's a difference between surviving and thriving. And I just think if we're going to claim that we're the richest country, the best country in the world, why isn't everyone who's working 40 hours, 50 hours a week thriving?

How is that possible?

On top of income instability, cost of living is increasingly unstable.

Tariffs have added a lot of uncertainty into future economic conditions.

We don't really know how this is going to play out just yet. And if people start to feel nervous about what lies ahead, then they may dial back on things like consumer spending.

The tariffs are creating uncertainty for those people. They don't know what to do.

Businesses aren't hiring more people.

There just waiting to see.

They have a stable business environment. They can go without stability they can't.

At the same time, the tariffs are going to create a big sales tax on lower income people who spend more on the basics, which are going to go up.

And so that's going to create problems for them too.

What the historians tell us that every single new generation gets complaints from the older generation about how they're behaving irresponsibly, immorally, blaming millennials for spending too much on avocado toast.

It's not. Student loans are a tough job market keeping millennials from buying homes.

It's reportedly avocado toast.

What's one piece of advice for young people out there who are spending their money on on avocado toast and don't have any goals, what would you say to them?

I would say to them, you know, g et as much pleasure out of saving as you do spending.

This kind of advice is usually framed as a warning against lifestyle creep, which is the idea that as people earn more, they suddenly start to spend more, and that's what prevents them from properly saving.

I think that's why there's so much confusion, because you can point to a millennial who spends $1,200 on DoorDash. Not good.

But you can also point to a millennial who's very financially conscious, making 80,000 and is drowning in debt and is living with a roommate and is a lawyer at 29 years old.

That is not right.

If someone got straight A's in school, straight A's in college, got a bachelor's, got a master's degree and is 29, making $80,000 and can't even get their own apartment, let alone purchase a house or have financial stability.

So that's where I think there's something broken in the system.

Even though households have become significantly wealthier, many consumer goods are also a lot more expensive. And at the same time, Americans are now largely on their own when it comes to things like insurance, retirement savings, healthcare. That makes it harder just across the board to feel financially secure.

In some ways, Americans are even more financially vulnerable now, even as prices have come up significantly, consumer spending hasn't really changed that much. And that leaves more Americans relying on things like credit cards to kind of make ends meet at the end of the month.

With economists now forecasting a possible recession in the months or year ahead, there's a greater chance that many Americans won't be prepared for an economic shock.

There aren't so many people in the middle class. There's a big working class.

Those are people who helped elect the president, who wants stable jobs, who want rising wages, who want to be able to do things for their family and improve life for their kids that they don't feel they can do now. But those people haven't seen much respite.

The core kernel of wisdom in the avocado toast issue is make choices about what really matters to you. You spend money on stuff that will be of value to you.

Also, good advice is create a savings habit.

Unfortunately, the way that ends up getting translated to people is you should set aside six months of earnings in case of an emergency.

And most people are like, yeah, that's impossible, that's impossible. It's a huge amount of money. And so and what people then take from that is I guess I can't save.

So I always encourage people, once you do get that promotion, just stay where you're at for a while and just accumulate money, even for just a year.

Maybe buy yourself something nice, but just keep that money for a little while and just enjoy the freedom, because all of a sudden you're not as fearful at work because you got a little cushion.

There are more ways today to upskill than there have ever been before. I mean, there's online classes, certification programs, even, you know, online degrees.

So it is easier today to make yourself more competitive in the job market, which will help if you do feel like your job or job security isn't what it used to be.

There's a societal need here, and some of that is about embracing and understanding that if you are struggling financially, it is not your fault.

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People often feel a lot of shame and distress when their financial lives are not going smoothly.

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And yet a lot of what they're experiencing is not the result of anything that they have done or could have done differently. It is the result of choices we as a society are making.

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And can we make those choices in a way that will allow me to be financially stable and upwardly mobile?

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And then I also think the reality is that societal change is slow, and any one individual does have to make their financial life work as best they can.

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In this moment, we're going to see people cohabitating with friends for longer and coming up with creative ways to share childcare across families, because that's what it's going to take to make it work. And actually, we're going to see, I think, some real benefits in community that could come out of that. So to look for the silver lining of, okay, I might not be able to be as independently financially stable, but what does that mean for the interconnections I can and should create with other people?

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為何這個影片是絕佳的英語口語練習素材？

這個探討美國年輕人經濟現狀的影片，語速適中且用詞貼近日常，非常適合用來練習英語口語和提高英語發音。影片中既有對資料的客觀陳述，也有個人經歷的分享，句式豐富卻不復雜，能幫助學習者熟悉自然的英語表達邏輯。無論是準備雅思口語練習還是日常交流，都能從中學到實用的表達技巧。

拆解自然表達，學習地道口語

我們來看看幾個典型句子：

“It's not the overspending, it's the cost of living.” 這句話用了“it's not... it's...”的對比結構，簡潔有力地強調重點，口語中常用這種句式來澄清誤解。
“The disconnect between being rich on paper and feeling well off has been referred to as phantom wealth.” 其中“on paper”和“phantom wealth”是生動的習語表達，形象地描述了“賬面富有”的狀態，學會這類短語能讓口語更生動。
“Not being able to save for a home has big retirement implications for millennials and Gen Z.” 這裡“have implications for”是正式但常用的搭配，比“affect”更精準，適合在討論嚴肅話題時使用。

這些句子之所以自然，是因為它們符合英語的表達習慣，用簡單結構傳遞複雜資訊，同時融入了口語化的短語。

跟練步驟：用“shadow speak”提升口語

想要通過這個影片練好口語，可以試試以下看YouTube學英語的方法：

先完整觀看影片，理解內容大意，標記出自己不熟悉的詞彙和句式。
選擇3-5句感興趣的句子，逐句播放，每播放一句就暫停，模仿發音、語調甚至語速，進行“shadow speak”（影子跟讀法）。注意模仿說話人的重音和停頓，比如“the big three: housing prices, student loan debt, daycare”中，冒號後的內容需要適當停頓，突出重點。
用手機錄製自己的跟練音訊，然後與原影片對比，找出發音和語調的差異，反覆練習直到接近原聲。
嘗試脫稿複述句子，甚至用自己的話總結影片內容，檢驗是否真正掌握了表達邏輯。

堅持每天練習15-20分鐘，不僅能提高發音和流利度，還能積累實用的英語表達，為雅思口語練習或日常交流打下基礎。

影片中的語法

說話人最常用的結構，並附上影片中的原話：

結構	影片中的用法
現在完成時 have/has + 過去分詞 — 過去發生但與現在仍有關聯的事	have benefited · has been referred · has gotten
定語從句 who / which + 從句 — 補充說明人或事物	people who are · Those who don · those who can
被動語態 be + 過去分詞 — 強調發生了什麼，而不是誰做的	was pitched · can be done · has been referred

什麼是跟讀法？

跟讀法 (Shadowing) 是一種有科學依據的語言學習技巧，最初開發用於專業口譯員的培訓，並由多語言者Alexander Arguelles博士普及。這個方法簡單而強大：您在聽英語母語原聲的同時立即大聲重複——就像是一個延遲1-2秒緊跟說話者的影子。與被動聽力或語法練習不同，跟讀法強迫您的大腦和口腔肌肉同時處理並模模擬實的講話模式。研究表明它能顯著提高發音準確性，語調，節奏，連讀，聽力理解和口語流利度——使其成為雅思口語備考和真實英語交流最有效的方法之一。

影子跟讀法: 閱讀完整分步指南 →

跟讀練習: Why ‘Making It’ Feels Impossible In The U.S. Now - 通過影片學習英語口語

選擇練習模式

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為何這個影片是絕佳的英語口語練習素材？

拆解自然表達，學習地道口語

跟練步驟：用“shadow speak”提升口語

影片中的語法

什麼是跟讀法？