So we take a generation that has been essentially subjected to the worst generational economic warfare in modern memory (from the boomers).
Where basic subsistence existence while saddled with bloated college loans, no job prospects, inflated housing costs, exhorbitant healthcare, high food and rising energy/fuel costs...
So basically, those who are "buying more" in the millenials aren't doing it by choice... basic living takes up that much more of their income, which is the definition of economic insecurity. They aren't ABLE to save. Another word for those people is "poor".
But those millenials that aren't "buying more" by some relative percentage of their income are probably... more economically secure. Yes, they are saving because the CAN save and they aren't "poor".
Millenials are definitively less consumerist than boomers. That isn't some pop sociology take, it is basic economics: THEY DON'T HAVE MONEY to be consumerists to the standards of the boomers. You don't need to ascribe it to some superior collective ethos, or arbitrary generational trend.
It's the result of boomer economic warfare on all the other generations. The boomers should have their medicare and social security yanked for what they did to this country.
Source: Gen X-ish, not a millenial.