A 12 months ago, I located myself questioning whether or not Millennials have been the ecofrugal technology. Although a number of their habits?Like who prefer pump soap to bar cleaning cleaning soap, or the use of paper towels at meals?Seem wasteful, others are virtually greater frugal than the ones of preceding generations. For example, they'll be extra careful with cash, more wary of debt (particularly credit score playing cards), and lots much less involved with logo names.
All this, however, is entirely contrary to the way Millennials are usually pictured in the media. It tends to portray them as, in the words of a cover story in Time, "The Me Me Me Generation": lazy, self-absorbed, and addicted to luxury goods. The New York Times sneers that Millennials think it's "too much work" to wash a cereal bowl. Buzzfeed documents how they've been accused of killing everything from paper napkins to the American Dream.
So I decided it was time to set the record straight. My latest piece for Money Crashers outlines the ways in which this generation is actually very responsible, particularly about money. I outline several useful lessons that my generation, and those before us, could learn from Millennials about shopping, saving, investing, earning, and avoiding debt.
This is not to say that Millennials don't have money problems. They do—although many of them, like low wages and high student debt, aren't precisely of their own making. And certainly there are a few things this generation could stand to do better, like being a little bolder about investing. But on the whole, Generation Y is getting a bad rap from those who are hardly in a position to act superior, and I think it's time for it to stop.
6 Money Lessons You Can Learn From the Millennial Generation
