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Jim Cramer, the CNBC host who’s reportedly worth at least $150 million, thinks Gen Z is buying too many $14 margaritas at the bar he owns in Brooklyn. And while we’re all for giving millionaire baby boomers like Cramer less money, it’s important to remember Cramer’s track record for advice—like the time he told everyone to buy ethereum right before it tanked.
“One of the problems I see about Gen Zers—they’re not frugal enough,” Cramer said in a CNBC video posted Wednesday.
“They almost seem like that they’ll always have a lot of money even when they don’t have a lot of money. They have to change their thinking,” Cramer continued.
Cramer then went on to hedge his criticism and say he wasn’t calling for everyone to eat instant ramen all the time. The TV host just thinks he’s giving practical advice and doesn’t believe young people when they complain about the high costs of college.
“I saw money spent as if it grew on a tree. I saw five $14 margaritas [consumed by] one person,” Cramer said. “I saw multiple beers to the point where it was 40 bucks.”
“Don’t have that second margie, the third margie. When you confront them they say, ‘well, but student loans,’” Cramer said about young people he’s supposedly spoken with.
“On the one hand you’re saying you’re allowed to have all the margaritas you want, but on the other hand you say, ‘I can’t invest, I have student loans,’” Cramer said.
Where does Cramer want these young people to invest their money? He doesn’t say precisely in the new video, but he’s on TV just about every day, which means people hear a lot of investment advice from him. Take the cryptocurrency ethereum, for example, as just one investment opportunity Cramer was recently promoting.
On April 28, when ether was trading at $2,900, Cramer said, “I think ethereum is terrific. I’m a believer. And I think you could easily get 35-40 percent.”
How has ether been doing since Cramer gave out this advice? In reality, ether has crashed and currently trades at $1,092. If you invested $100 in ethereum when Cramer told you to buy, you currently have about $37 worth of ethereum. But if you’d spent that $100 on margaritas for you and all your friends you’d have had a great fucking time—provided you didn’t go to Cramer’s bar.
What other excellent advice has Cramer doled out recently? The Mad Money host said everyone should buy stock in Netflix on January 3 of this year. Netflix’s stock price was $597 on January 3, down about $100 from its all-time high of $700 just a couple of months earlier.
How’s Netflix’s stock price doing these days? It’s currently trading at about $178. Again, if you skipped the margaritas and invested your money in the things Jim Cramer told you to invest in, the only thing you were saved from was a potential hangover.
Or take the theater chain AMC, which Cramer told people to buy the stock on September 9, 2021. The stock was priced at $35.54 at the time and is currently trading at $12.60.
The list goes on and on when it comes to bad bets Cramer has peddled over the years. In fact, some people have floated a trading strategy called the “inverse Cramer” since he’s had so many bad predictions. And don’t even get us started on the fact that the average student loan debt in the U.S. is around $39,000. That’s over 2,786 margaritas at Cramer’s New York bar.
We’re not saying it’s bad to be frugal. Live your life and spend your money however you want. But every time wealthy baby boomers point to relatively inconsequential expenses—whether it’s avocado toast or margartias—and say that’s why young people have money problems, they’re either lying or they’re dumb.
Baby boomers can’t seem to grasp the idea that they enjoyed incredible economic benefits tailored to their personal growth and existence in the second half of the 20th century. And if they haven’t figured it out by now, they’ll never get it. You didn’t accumulate wealthy because you’re particularly frugal and a genius. You had plenty of societal support along the way, whether you want to admit it or not.
