20- and 30-somethings are in a financial mess. Is it because we’re dumb, arrogant or simply uneducated?
Today, people in their 20s and 30s are more educated than ever before. Some 85% of those aged 25 and older hold a high school diploma, and 27% have a college degree. This generation of adults is also, of course, the most technologically sophisticated to date, with about half using cell phones for text messaging and 90% on e-mail.
And yet stats indicate our generation’s financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match. Only 52% of high school seniors passed a recent national financial literacy test, meaning adults entering the work force do not know enough about basic budgeting, interest rates or taxes to make sound decisions for their own lives.
Do any of you 20s and 30s remember being taught anything more about money other than how to balance a checkbook in elementary school? My mother actually remembers financial responsibility classes throughout school that taught you about credit, debt, intrest and more. She went to a public school in a tiny rural town.
