In 1837, Hans Christian Andersen published a short story about an emperor who cared more for clothes than for anything else.
Two swindlers arrive in his city claiming to weave the finest cloth in the world, with one remarkable property: it’s invisible to anyone who is stupid or unfit for their job. The emperor can’t see it, of course. His ministers can, but none of them dares say so, because saying so would mean admitting they were stupid or unfit. So they all admire the colours, praise the pattern, and the emperor sets off on a grand procession through the streets wearing nothing at all.
The crowd joins in. Everyone has heard about the magic cloth, and nobody wants to be the fool.
Then a small child calls out: “But he hasn’t got anything on.”
What makes the story last isn’t the swindle. It’s who sees through it. Not the experts, not the courtiers, not the grown-ups with reputations to protect. The child, who hasn’t yet learned which things you’re supposed to pretend.
Which is a fair description of what the historian Eliza Filby has been noticing about the youngest generations.
Filby writes perceptively about how each generation relates to money and work, and her recent pieces describe a younger cohort steadily losing faith in a script the rest of us were raised on. Study hard, go to university, get a good job, buy a house, pay into a pension, retire at 65. It worked well enough for many of their parents and grandparents. Gen Z, she argues, has watched it fray, and simply stopped believing it. The British Social Attitudes survey backs her up: the share of people who think a university degree isn’t worth the time or money rose from 14% in 2005 to 34% in 2025. Starter jobs, meanwhile, have roughly halved in a decade.
Gen Alpha, the children born since around 2012, are growing up further still from the old script. AI isn’t a novelty to them; it’s simply part of the furniture. Filby suggests they may become the generation of algorithmic literacy: raised inside apps and platforms, but increasingly aware of how those platforms are built to shape what they do and buy. They also think their parents are behind on technology and hypocritical about screen time. As she puts it, with some delight, “the kids are wise!”
And they may well be, because if you step back, a good deal of the script the rest of us followed was never a law of nature. It was a set of conventions, built for a particular time.
Earlier this week we wrote about where the idea of a fixed retirement age came from: a Depression-era campaign and a century of politics and budgets. The other chapters have similar origins. A forty-year career with one employer was a product of the post-war economy. A three-stage life, education then work then rest, was designed around life expectancies that look short today. Filby notes that around half of Gen Alpha are expected to live to 100. Lynda Gratton and Andrew Scott made the point years ago in The 100-Year Life: stretch a life that far and the neat three-stage model simply stops fitting.
So what, exactly, have the young sussed?
Not that money doesn’t matter. If anything they’re anxious about it. What they’ve seen through is the idea that there’s one sanctioned route, and that following it guarantees the destination. They’re right about that. There isn’t, and it doesn’t.
For the families we work with, often parents and grandparents with considerable wealth to pass on, that has a practical edge. The help the next generation needs may look different from the help we needed. Paying for the old script, the degree regardless, the deposit on the first flat, isn’t wrong, but it may not be enough on its own. What tends to matter more is the stuff that keeps options open: time for money to grow, which is why we’ve written before about families starting pensions for children while they’re still very young; the freedom to change direction without starting from nothing; and honest conversations about money in a world where children increasingly spend it through apps and game currencies they never physically hold.
The child in Andersen’s story didn’t know more than the adults. He just hadn’t learned to pretend.
That’s worth remembering the next time a grandchild tells you something you’d rather not hear.
We help families in Hook and across Hampshire, Surrey, Berkshire, Sussex and Kent think about how wealth can help the next generation, on their terms rather than ours.
Altor Wealth Management LLP is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA number 769033). Registered office: Landmark House, Station Road, Hook, Hampshire RG27 9HA. This article is general information, not personal advice. The value of investments can fall as well as rise. With thanks to Dr Eliza Filby, whose Substack essays on Gen Z and Gen Alpha informed this piece.