The World’s a Mess. So They’ve Stopped Saving for Tomorrow.

In a tumultuous time, many adults under 35 have stopped playing it safe. Instead of banking as much of their pay as they used to, they’re saving less, spending more and pursuing passion projects or risky careers.

Nimarta Narang, 27, said she was prudent about almost everything until the end of last year, when she had an epiphany: “I don’t want to spend my life being so careful and cautious.”

For most of the coronavirus pandemic, she couldn’t travel to Bangkok to see her family. When she finally made the visit, she was struck by how much she had missed — her mother’s 50th birthday, her grandmother’s funeral, her sister’s engagement, her father’s beard going gray.

“Coming back to the U.S., I realized I needed to do things differently,” said Ms. Narang, a literary editor at Brown Girl Magazine.

One thing she had always wanted to do was to live in New York. She packed…