Kerry Hannon

Yeah, I say you got this.

Here's what you need.

First of all, one super positive thing, Robert, is that most Gen Xers are in their peak earnings years.

So this is a time in life where you do have income coming in.

You have the cash flow in order to take control of this.

So if you, in fact, are in this situation, you need to just boil it down.

And we've had lifestyle creep, right?

It happens.

You may have done budgets when you're getting started in your working careers or were you buying your first home or something.

But the fact is you need to really get down and say, how is my lifestyle, you know...

It kind of explodes in a way.

So how do we get control of this?

How can we, A, pay down that debt?

Do we just go through and really be hard-boiled about it?

And it's not easy to do.

No one wants to do a budget.

But it is really your first step in finding where you can make change happen.

So those are the two things that I think are super important.

The other thing is Gen X actually has quite a bit of home equity.

So this is a positive that as you move forward, it's a possibility that you've got, you know, it's not in your retirement account, of course, but you have other assets that are in your favor to help you secure a potentially financially secure retirement.