Courtney Burrell, 37, grew up in a household that resembled the CNBC newsroom.
Her parents looked at company pages and cheerfully explained about stock selection and savings as tickers scrolled on a TV screen behind them. From an early age, she knew what percentage of her parents’ salaries would go into her 401(k) retirement account.
“Money was always in the conversation,” she said.
Parents from Ward and June Cleaver’s era didn’t talk much about money with their kids. But that taboo gradually faded, and subsequent generations raised their families in homes filled with financial lessons.
Almost three-quarters of Millennials born between 1981 and 1996 I grew up in a family that talked about money., according to a recent Forbes Advisor survey and report. In contrast, only 41% of baby boomers remember talking about finances with their parents.
Most Millennials grew up in families that talked about money, but most Boomers didn’t.
Burrell, a millennial Coloradan, credits her parents with inspiring her career.she works As Empower’s financial experta financial services company.
“For as long as I can remember, I’ve been getting checks on my birthday,” she said. “And I always hated getting money for my birthday because they always go to the bank with me and they make me deposit the money right away.”
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Studies like Forbes Advisor point out this general rule. The younger you are, the more likely you are to have grown up in a household that talked about money.
A Forbes poll of 2,000 adults conducted in September found that Boomers (41%) were the least likely to come from households that discussed the economy, followed by Gen Z (55%); Generation X (57%) and Millennials (73%). ).
Another recent study by Northwestern Mutual finds that Americans are learning more about finance at a steadily younger age. On average, baby boomers reported having their first family talk about money at age 22. Gen Xers first talked about money at age 20, Millennials at 18, and Gen Z at 15. The survey surveyed 2,740 Americans in February and March.
I’ve been talking about money since middle school.
“People start talking about money from an early age, which I think is amazing,” he said. chad lewisa private wealth advisor at Northwestern Mutual based in the Chicago suburbs.
Lewis, a 36-year-old millennial, has been discussing money with his parents since he was in middle school.
“We talked about things like credit cards, credit scores, and whether or not you were reliably paying off your cards every month,” he said.
Lewis’ parents opened a credit card in their son’s name, used it to buy groceries, and paid it off in full each month. In this exercise, you learned how to properly use your credit card while building your credit score.
“When I finished school, I had an incredible amount of credits,” he said.
Forbes research suggests that household trends may have peaked among Millennials. If so, Millennials may have their baby boomer parents to thank.
Some business scholars theorize that the reason boomers championed the cause of teaching finance to millennial children is precisely because their parents taught them so little about money.
Baby boomers primarily grew up in households headed by members of the “Greatest Generation” and the “Silent Generation,” born between 1901 and 1945.
Just as these parents protected their offspring from the horrors of war and the scourge of poverty, he said, these parents typically did not discuss money with their children. Mauro GuillenProfessor of Transnational Management at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
“The contrast between the Greatest Generation and the baby boomers is a real contrast,” Gillen said. “One of those generations lived through the Great Depression and World War II, and the other was born into wealthy families.”
boomer command Approximately $80 trillion in assets, according to some estimates. Much of that reward money will go to the children of millennials, potentially the largest transfer of wealth in U.S. history. Experts say this wealth motivated boomers to teach their children about money.
“They really want the younger generation to be better educated about money topics,” said Northwestern Mutual’s Lewis.
Learn to “live within your means”
Trent Long, a 34-year-old millennial, remembers some of his high school friends linking their credit cards to their parents’ accounts. But Long didn’t do that.
The deprivation was a way to “make sure I knew how to live within my means,” he said.
Long grew up in St. Petersburg, Florida, and got his first job at age 14.
“I remember my parents saying to me, ‘There’s always going to be people who are going to be in debt. It could be student loans, it could be credit cards,'” he said. “They told me pretty early on, ‘You need to save every paycheck.'”
co-founder for a long time bunclehe describes the app as “a place to securely store important information like passwords and files, and share it with people you trust.”
If Mr. Long, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Burrell are examples of the 73% of millennials who learned how to manage their finances from their parents, Deacon Hayes could represent the remaining 27%.
“I couldn’t buy it if I didn’t have money.”
Hayes, 40, falls somewhere near the halfway point between Millennials and Gen Xers. He was primarily raised by a single parent. And they didn’t talk much about money.
“It was talked about as, ‘We don’t have that,'” he says. “Debt was just a way of life, at least in my family. My mother financed cars, mortgaged houses, and took trips on credit cards.”
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As Hayes entered adulthood, he fell into a similar pattern of financing car purchases, racking up credit card debt, and taking out student loans. When the 2008 recession hit, he faced financial liquidation.
Hayes adopted new beliefs and eventually joined a movement called Financial Independence, Early Retirement, or FIRE.
“The point was, if I didn’t have the money, I couldn’t afford it,” Hayes said. “Growing up, I thought if I could afford the monthly payments, I could afford it.”
These days, when Hayes and his wife go on vacation or buy a car, they pay in cash. They invest in assets that increase in value over time, like stocks, rather than assets that typically decrease in value, like cars.
Hayes founded the well kept wallet I wrote a book titled Early retirement is also possible!
That’s exactly what he’s aiming for.
“We are completely debt-free,” he said. “We have finished paying off the house.”