Receiving a salary of nearly 15 million VND per month, Thuy Hang (28 years old, Ho Chi Minh City) once thought that this income level would help her maintain a stable savings account. But after a few years of working, the amount of money saved at the end of the month is still not as much as expected. Rent, food, travel, living bills and installments account for a significant part of her income.
Income increased, but Hang's savings almost did not increase correspondingly. This story is not too unfamiliar to many young people living in big cities, as housing costs, living expenses and essential expenses are increasingly putting pressure on income. In addition, access to credit and easy forms of pre-purchase and post-payment also make the accumulation problem more difficult.
According to financial expert Nguyen Thuc Khoa - Founder and Chairman of ERIC Capital, the paradox of "salary increases but difficulty accumulating" stems from both objective factors of living costs and the way young people manage and use money.
First of all, the story of living costs. CPI - the consumer price index reflects the average price increase of the entire economy, but each person has a very different "spending basket". Young people in Hanoi or Ho Chi Minh City often have to rent houses, eat out and travel a lot. These are also groups of costs with significant increases.
For example, in the first 6 months of 2026, Vietnam's CPI increased by 4.38%, but the housing, electricity, water, and construction materials group increased by 6.72%; rent increased by 6.32%; eating out increased by 6.85% and transportation increased by 5.23%.
Therefore, saying that the average inflation is just over 4% sometimes does not reflect the true feeling of a young person living in urban areas. Their personal inflation can completely be at 6-7%. Salaries increase by about 8% but living costs also increase almost correspondingly, so in reality purchasing power does not improve much" - expert Nguyen Thuc Khoa said.
Another increasingly clear issue is the gap between income and asset prices, especially housing. The average apartment price in Hanoi in the first quarter of 2026 was about 128 million VND/m2, in Ho Chi Minh City about 112 million VND/m2. According to calculations by Dr. Can Van Luc, in 2026, a Vietnamese household may need about 30 years of income to buy an apartment.
According to expert Nguyen Thuc Khoa, this greatly affects the saving psychology of young people. Previously, people saved because they saw a relatively clear path: working, accumulating for a few years, buying a house, starting a family, creating assets. But if a big goal like owning a house is increasingly far from the rate of income growth, a part of young people may form the psychology "saving is not known when it will be enough", thereby prioritizing current experiences or consumption more.
Finally, the story of behavior. Spending money now becomes too convenient. Credit cards, 0% installments, pre-purchase and post-payment, shopping applications... make consumers almost no longer clearly feel the money leaving their pockets right at the time of purchase. Each amount of several hundred thousand VND may be insignificant, but added up into a large amount. If you do not have the habit of tracking spending, by the end of the month, many people only know that their account is out of money and do not really know where the money has gone.
Therefore, I do not think that the story should be simplified into young people now spending lavishly. Partly because living costs are really increasing, partly because the goal of owning assets is increasingly difficult, and partly because spending money today is too easy" - Mr. Khoa said.
