Millennials, Gen Z & Money
Fun facts: the oldest Millennials are now over 40 years old and make up over half the work force. Gen Z now includes people who are 25 and already into their young careers.
I personally find younger adults in these generations to be very eager to learn about money. They also aren’t, in most cases, held back by decades of harmful self-beliefs. They are looking for mentors to help guide them through their life journeys and often, that includes their financial journeys.
The first question I ask my younger clients is about what they learned about money growing up & how they learned it. 90% of the time, they tell me that they learned nothing about money from their parents and nothing in school. Sometimes they were given everything and didn’t develop an appreciation of how money works. Sometimes they were given little & constantly told that there was never any money. So, their experience with money was often either non-existent, or negative. So, to the extent that Gen Xers and Baby Boomers look at Millennials and Gen Z as entitled and irresponsible with money, they should really look at what they taught their own kids about money.
Full disclosure, I’m a Baby Boomer with one Millennial son and one Gen Z son. Not surprisingly, I taught them extensively about money and continue to mentor them, when asked, to this day. They are doing quite well financially. So, the message here is that your kids will take on the information and values that you teach them. Don’t ignore their personal finance education. And, if you aren’t well educated on personal finances, your first step in helping your kids is to get your own financial house in order. You will then have something to teach your kids. In fact, if things aren’t great, including your kids in your financial journey forward can be a great learning experience for them. You won’t scare them. In fact, they’ll likely want to help. Money should not be a secret. Being secretive about money is what causes many of the problems.
Young Americans today face issues that many of us older Americans never had to face. When people of my generation were young, our parents didn’t give us cars and fancy gifts. If we wanted those things, we were told to get jobs, save up & then buy them. Those of us who had cars, worked hard to get them & learned how money works. Today, in many middle class & higher neighborhoods, you’d be hard pressed to find a parent that hasn’t given their kids cars and expensive gifts. While it seems like those younger Americans are making out pretty well, in actuality today’s parents are depriving their kids of great financial lessons by expecting less of them & giving them too much. Making kids responsible for their own major purchases, by learning the power of earning income & saving up, is a game changer. And kids who work, save up and pay for things value those things much more than they do things that are just given to them.
The cost of college today is a huge, out of control problem. When my generation was young, college was much cheaper & student loans were less available. Often, tuition at state schools was a few hundred dollars a semester. I had several friends that worked near minimum wage jobs that allowed them to pay for their education. That’s extremely difficult these days with state school tuitions often in the $6-10K range per semester. Room & Board can easily double that amount. States have, over the past three decades, gradually reduced their funding of higher education. In addition, with broad availability of student loans, colleges no longer have to offer value. They’re free to charge whatever they want to charge, knowing that students will simply take out loans to cover whatever they ask.
And where are the parents when their 18-year-old kids are contemplating these life altering loans? Where are the college counselors at their High Schools? Who’s sitting down with them & planning out how college can be achieved and paid for without impacting their financial future? Not only are the adults in their lives AWOL on this topic, but often they encourage their kids to take the loans and go to their “dream school”. They’re told that they’ll get a great job after college and pay off the loans. Yikes! So, they sign up for the loans. When they graduate and get an average job, they quickly find out that it’s not going to be easy at all to pay off their student loans. So, when they should be enjoying their young adulthood, exploring the world & finding out more about life, they’re instead stuck paying off their student loans.
This is the situation that I encounter with my younger clients over and over. There’s a lot of hopelessness, fear & frustration. How did this happen to me? How do I fix it?
Fortunately, there is a hope! But if you want to get rid of your student loans or any form of debt, at any age, you have to get very serious about it. You can’t sorta, kinda want to pay off your loans. You have to want to crush them. And you can! Most student loans can be fully paid off in 2-3 years. It requires goals, a plan and a budget that supports the plan. But most of all, you have to want it bad enough to actually do the things that you need to do.
If you’re interested in paying off your student loans ASAP, you can find out how by setting up a Complementary Consultation with me by using this calendar link. We’ll get to know each other, I’ll find out more about your situation, and we’ll determine whether Financial Coaching is a fit. I work with people who are serious about fixing their finances & believe that I can help them. Together, we’ll work to understand your current mindset, cast a vision for your future, set goals, budget & get you back to living life.
Also, don’t forget to subscribe below so you receive emails for my weekly posts.
