AARP’s LifeTuner initiative released a report today about how young people deal with their personal finances. It’s pretty interesting, the report, entitled “Personal Finances: The Final Frontier of Social Media,” is based on a national survey of 1002 young adults (aged 18-34). Here are some of their findings:
- 57% of young Americans consider their financial situation to be the biggest concern in their lives.
- 66% rate their own financial situation as fair to poor, and almost half (43%) expressed concerns about their ability to make sound financial decisions.
- Nearly eight out of ten young people (78%) have debt of some kind. Credit card debt(36%) – considered “bad debt” by most financial experts – is by far the most prevalent form.
- 68% of respondents admit that finances have caused stress in a relationship or friendship.
- While in many cases social media sites (e.g. Facebook) have lowered or eradicated the social boundaries around certain topics, finances remain a taboo subject. In fact, peopleare more likely to discuss relationship status (61%), politics (43%), their health (23%),and their weight (20%) than their financial situation.
- Among those young adults who have sought advice online, 85% report being more confident about their ability to manage their finances
They did this report in conjunction with their launch of a new financial resource site, www.lifetuner.org (this one is actually interesting) that could help a lot of us. I was playing around with the site this morning and the tools are solid – the ‘cost of credit’ tool was eye-opening. I know in theory how much interest you pay on a credit card, but this tool takes an estimate of the total interest you’ll pay if you buy something on credit and make only the minimum required payment. For example – a cup of coffee might cost you $4 but if you buy it on credit and only pay the minimum, you’ll pay $5 in interest at the end of the day….that’s an expensive cup of coffee!
Helpful tools are good – this site seems helpful but check it out for yourself.
~Mary
