Today’s topic diverges just a bit away from the blog’s usual theme of Chinese economics. Instead, I want to talk about a panel I attended last week at the Society of American Business Editors and Writers (SABEW) conference in New York City.
SABEW fall 2015 took place this past week at the CUNY Graduate School of Journalism. As always, business journalists from various legendary publications as well as emerging media outlets gathered and discussed some prominent and timely business trends and ideas. One of those ideas has to do with how to provide millennials, who have entered the college/young adult lives, the kind of personal finance information that they will benefit from.
As a millennial myself, I am just like many other of my peers who have to face the challenges of managing their own financial states with little previous experiences or instructions from those who actually understand their situations. That being said, resources discussed at Thursday morning’s panel, and I will list some of them below, may of great use for millennials, as well as for anyone who is seeking personal finance information in general.
The panel, titled “Millennials and Money,” has its increasing importance due to the fact that student loan debts of the Gen Yers has increased steadily in the past two decades (according to this Economist article in August, student debt in the U.S. has trebled in the past decade, to $1.2 trillion). Soon enough, the same group of young adults with massive student debts will face more debts brought by credit cards. There is a need for personal finance information for millennials to help them figure out how to do certain things right to not get themselves into the financial black holes.
On that note, here are few resources I came across and learned more about on this panel. I think it won’t just be me who find them interesting and useful.
The mission of NerdWallet is to provide truly actionable advice. Unlike personal finance sections of news outlets like CNBC or Reuters, which need to consider the timeliness of the content they put out (they write about pension because pension is a hot topic at the moment), NerdWallet only considers whether or not a specific piece of information provides any practical usage for its users. If the answer to that question is yes, they publish that information, even if that particular topic may not be widely discussed at the moment.
NerdWallet breaks down its information to larger sections, like credit cards, debit cards, investment accounts, auto insurance. It teaches users simple things, like writing a check, as well as more complex ideas of which pension fund works best for individual’s situations. They aim to make themselves a one stop for all unbiased information considering people’s personal finance concerns.
Maggie Leung, an editor at NerdWallet says when people google information, hoping to find answers to personal finance questions, oftentimes they would see results that are put out by organizations or individuals whose opinions are swayed one way or another because of their purposes of advertising and promoting certain products. NerdWallet, whose founder Tim Chen is a young professional in his early 30s, understands the importance of transparency and trust in building its relationship with its users, especially those millennial users.
Farnoosh Torabi hosts a daily podcast called So Money, which Forbes selected as a top podcast for millennials. Torabi said in the panel that millennials, similar to many of its older generations and maybe more so in extent, dislike criticisms. They don’t like people pointing fingers telling them what they did wrong. Instead, they do find inspirations in learning from people who’ve made it work. This is where Torabi realized having guests on her show to talk about tips for success would bring out much better effects to teach millennials how to manage their own finances.
I also heard from the founder of Brokemillennial.com, Erin Lowry. In the about me page of Lowry’s blog, she describes herself as a “26-year-old millennial learning to be a fiscally responsible member of ‘Generation Me.'” Her posts are often sarcastic and witty, but still contains information close to millennials’ thoughts and concerns. One of her recent posts, titled “getting financially naked with your partner,” in my opinion, gives some intimate and serious advice in the process of millennials coming of age and creating families.
At the end, what I really want to say about this topic is, managing my own book while learning to be a responsible adult still is kind of a taunting task for me, even when I have probably one of the simplest forms of financial situation (a checking account, a saving account and just one credit card). My parents, without offering much help, cannot seem to let go of the idea that as an economics student, I’m supposed to be good at this.
The truth is, personal finance is hard to be good at, even for those who’ve had years of experiences ahead of me. Maggie Leung from NerdWallet gave an example of a finance consultant/analyst who’s been in the field for decades and have helped manage millions of dollars for big companies, still admits to her that he doesn’t know how to do personal finance.
Gladly, there are resources out there, in various forms, to try to help millennials with their problems and questions. My personal observation is that, millennials hate to admit they are wrong, and going out and seeking for help means exactly that: they were wrong and they need someone else to step in. But help and advice are not going to just drop on someone’s laps without them paying any attention, but have to be sought out.
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