Millennials and Finance

When I first started this website I didn’t anticipate that millennials would even be part of the demographics for personal finance.  That somehow the millennials were lazy and had no drive due to receiving all those ribbons and awards just for showing up.  I assumed that the upbringing of these kids may have tainted their drive.  Shame on me for assuming.  I don’t have enough data for this site to confirm or deny it but I am sure that if I had been more diligent in looking for market data I would have found differently. 

 

Over the past several weeks, I have found four instances where millennials are very active in personal finance.  The first was an Uber driver that took from JFK to the Marriott Marquis where I was attending the Affiliate Summit East 2016.  The second was another Uber driver from the Marriott Marquis back to JFK.  The third person was a young man who is engaged to my daughter.  Then there is Bobby from MillenialMoneyMan.com.

 

Millennial 1 

 

The first Uber driver was a young lady who had come to New York from Los Angeles about 10 years ago.  At 28 years of age she has already accumulated $275,000.  Quite a sum seeing that she came to New York to go to college, then spent the better part of the next 6 years as an Administrative/Executive assistant.  Well, she found that that she could make better money as an Uber driver so she did that full time.  Her goal is to buy several rental houses by the time she is 35.  It appears that this is in her blood since her father just recently retired at 50 years of age after selling 20 rental houses that he had for years.  If this young lady can accumulate that kind of money in that time period then there is no excuse for the rest of us.  It made me feel like I hadn’t done enough in my twenties.

 

In addition, this young lady pays cash for her cars and she buys them brand new.  I happen to agree with this approach.  There will be another post on this topic.

 

Millennial 2 

 

The second Uber driver was a young man who had a heck of a time picking me up at the Marriott Marquis but he finally made it.  There wasn’t much discussion in the beginning but about half way through the trip we found ourselves discussing such classic readings as Rich Dad Poor Dad and Napoleon Hill’s Think and Grow Rich.  Then he proceeded to drain me of any information I had about stock investments.  So much so that I was exhausted after he let me off.  I am not sure where he was from a numbers point of view but he certainly has a thirst for knowledge.  I am sure he will do well.

 

Millennial 3

 

I received a call from the young lady about her student loans.  She is like a lot of our youth today.  They did the right thing by getting an education but the result of the doing the right thing is to have some crushing loans to pay for that education.  I have heard about our youth being burdened with student loans in the media but it never really hit home until someone close to me was affected.  So, we spent an evening going over the loans.  I could not believe what I saw.  The rates were all over the place and very high. In addition, the amount she had to pay changed from time to time.  I know some of this was done to keep her payments low but how can we figure what she is really getting charged for and how to plan?  There were at least three loans that changed payment every two years and wouldn’t be paid off for 16 years.  When we did the analysis we determined that she was paying back close to double what he had borrowed.

 

Anyway I am proud of her for analyzing this to determine how to pay back the loans with a decent interest rate in a timely fashion. The analysis we did will provide several blog entries to go through the details.  So we will tackle this in upcoming posts.  She also discussed trading in her high price car for a more economical vehicle and using the additional cash to pay down her student loans.  She is now making and taking her lunch to work.  So she is already minimizing expenses so she can tackle the debt.

 

Now, why would I be talking about this in a website devoted to approaching retirement?  Well a lot of us have millennials in our family and it is our duty to help them succeed.  We must make sure that they receive the type of financial education that just doesn’t exist in today’s schools.  Some may look at this and say that it is common sense but let’s face it, common sense isn’t so common.  And the analysis that we did includes skills that we all need.  Skills that we need to manage our portfolios as we take the snap at fourth down.

 

 

Millennial 4 

 

And then there is Bobby at www.millennialmoneyman.com .  Bobby paid off $40,000 in student loans within one and a half years.  He accomplished this all on a teacher’s salary. This is an amazing feat.  Now he is a successful personal finance blogger.

 

Conclusion 

 

I promise to never jump to assumptions like this again.  These kids may be growing up in a different time and possibly even a bit different way but they are still people and still have the basic wants and needs that we all have.

 

What are your experiences with millennials and personal finance?