Ah, the old new money versus old money debate; East Egg versus West Egg, the unsinkable Molly Brown versus Ruth Dewitt Bukater, Millennials versus Baby Boomers. Okay, so maybe that last one isn’t exactly the same thing, but the sentiment is the same.
You’d probably expect Millennial households and Baby Boomer households making over $350,000 per year to be pretty different. Baby Boomers having the stereotype of having worked through the ranks from an entry level job, understanding the value of a dollar, and becoming financially comfortable later in life. Meanwhile, Millennial households making over $350,000 are probably thought of as savvy investors or entrepreneurs who got in on the ground floor of a startup that exploded overnight.
It stands to reason, then, that you might see a concentration of those startup Millennials residing in San Francisco while the baby boomers call somewhere like Cambridge, Mass. Home. And while those areas are hotspots for their respective generations (San Francisco has the second highest concentration of rich millennials with 7.8 percent of millennial households earning more than $350,000 a year and Cambridge has 7.7 percent of its Baby Boomer households that earn more than $350,000 per year), neither one is at the top of the list.
In fact, according to Zillow’s analysis of generational income in 73 U.S. cities, the top location on the list is a shared location: Arlington, Virginia. That’s right; Arlington, Va. has a higher concentration of rich Millennials and Baby Boomers than anywhere else at 8.7 percent and 7.9 percent respectively.
Washington, D.C., just across the Potomac River from Arlington, has the third highest share of wealthy baby Boomers and the ninth-highest share of Millennial households making over $350,000 a year.
Along with Cambridge, Ann Arbor, Mich. has more of the old money versus new money demarcation as each city has a relatively high share of rich baby boomer household and a much smaller share of rich Millennial households.
