How does the age of technology affect the way the “millennial” generation spend their money?
Each generation is raised differently and therefore, taught different ways of living and spending money. The media has a lot of influence on this, but so do the spending habits of their parents, as children will often model what they see as they observe how their parents spend money.
The millennial generation is usually considered to be the children who were born between 1984 and 2002 and are usually the children of the younger baby boomers. These are the young adults and high school students today who take their ear buds and laptops everywhere they go. They will also often have a smart phone or music player and all of the rest of the latest technology. Millennial is considered to be the most technologically advanced generation yet to be born in our society.
Researchers have discovered some interesting spending habits that have evolved with this generation. Some of them are good and some of them will be detrimental for generations to come. Research has found that children who are not quite teens spend more than 40 billion dollars a year and hear about new products on popular websites or from their friends. Almost every teenager is a member of Facebook and many teens do most of their shopping on websites such as Amazon.
Another trend that the millennial generation shows toward shopping is this move from the smaller more traditional grocery stores to the larger super centers such as Target or Wal-mart and trendy stores such as Trader Joes or Whole Foods. They rarely shop alone and love to visit the deli sections of the stores. Millennials often depend on the opinions of their friends when making decisions about where to shop, eat, or what to wear. Their choices of shopping locales are often considered to be more child friendly and offer exotic food options and ample samples of new food.
Unfortunately, the skill of managing their money is not one that is common within this generation because they often share the opinion that they can buy whatever they want now and pay for it later. This leads to putting many of their purchases on credit cards. Many are then not able to pay their credit card bills on time, which in turn leads to difficulty buying a home, a new car, and have higher bills due to the many late fees. This is different thinking from their baby boomer parents who learned how to save and live frugally during the recession of the late 1970s and early 1980s.
Trends in technology have made a difference in each generation as times are always changing and technology is always improving. It is great to shop in various types of stores, to have this advanced technology, and spending time with friends, but spending money that they don’t have will lead to problems for future generations who only model what they see in the generation before.
Kathleen Hubert is a blogger who writes on a variety of different sites. Check out more of her work at car loans.