Kids These Days Are More Financially Responsible Than You

I wrote yesterday over at The Washington Examiner:

According to a new study from U.S. News and World Report, kids have taken to heart the lessons hard won by their seniors. Young adults (ages 18-34) are more likely to list saving money, developing a budget, and paying down debts as priorities than are older generations.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, younger generations are also more friendly to online financial tools like credit report alerts and auto-pay options for bills and credit cards.

For the report, U.S. News compared statistics and surveyed financial blogs targeted to young people and found that young adults are more optimistic about the economy than their older peers. Perhaps more importantly, the study found that young people assume more personal responsibility for their finances than do seniors.

Sounds like younger generations have incorporated lessons from their older peers. Young adults start off savvy and sophisticated to the measures that will help or hurt us in the long run, like credit scores and the threat of identity theft.

Perhaps this generation will prove the Boomers antidote, restoring our fiscal sanity and quelling the boom/bust cycle for a few years (or at least taming the Ponzi scheme that is Social Security)!