The millennial generation, along with generation Z, has gotten a bad rap for being less than savvy with their finances and education. However, this is the media. In fact, these two generations are not spending the way generations past did. They also don’t want the giant debts from college and home ownership with which many have been saddled.
They’re looking for solutions to leverage money as a tool and they look first to technology. This is no surprise because they came into this world with technology. It’s been the babysitter, teacher, and knowledge base for them. So, here, we’ll teach you, the millennial reader, how to use technology for your financial education.
Ways and Tools to Use Technology to Save Money
We’ll make one disclaimer before we get into the meat. We will cover both the ways you can use tech and make tech suggestions to use in order to save and manage money. Financial health goes beyond just savings. It’s making your money work for you. You don’t have to go into high-powered speculative risk, but creating good habits for the future is what we’re encouraging you to do.
Feel in Control
Be informed about your money. Millennials have money stress to the point where it creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by robbing them of concentration at work. If you use an app that gives you instant alerts on your money, you’ll curtail some of that stress.
Most of the time, if you know just what you’re able to spend, when you have to pay your bills and alerts that tell you when you’re about to overdraw your account you’ll feel in control. Mint is one of those apps that will do all of that for you and allow you to have all your information at your fingertips. You can put your financial life on full automation.
Make Business Easier
38% of Millennials are freelancing and more than that are planning to own their own business. This doesn’t mean they have all the training they need to manage their business and personal finances. Apps like Due and Sighted will automate the business finances for you.
You can save all your reports and profit and loss; receipts, orders, returns and more in one place. If you make things easier for yourself by automation you don’t have to go in all directions to figure out if you’re up to speed or going in the red. No surprises mean you’re on the right track.
Invest:
Millennials love to be socially conscious investors. Use a bank like Aspiration to find a great investment. It does this by vetting the investment portfolios of several companies. You’ll know what they care about and be able to invest in something that doesn’t waste resources. When you invest in something that you know is helping the planet or people and worthwhile causes, there’s less stress.
There’s also gratitude. The key is to research as much as possible. Look at reviews and testimonials from your peers to see what kind of result they’ve had. Does the company have a good story? What brought them to invest in this cause and why should you? Are they really active in the cause itself or is it just a financial thing? Look for the transparency and you’ll be able to invest in something you can really feel good about.
Lending without a Bank
Banking isn’t viewed by Millennials the same way generations’ past do. It’s a very sketchy issue for them. Remember that they were brought up with all kinds of banking scandals and a crash or two. They also learned by watching their parents handle bank loans that there must be another way.
They now use technology like Lending Tree to borrow from a peer-based group. Peer-based lending is really hot right now and show no signs of slowing down in 2020 and beyond.
They Don’t Think About Saving
At least not early. According to statistics, they save 2% less than other generations. This is for a myriad of reasons. One of them being the tremendous debt they’re working to pay back. Another reason is they don’t know what they’re saving for so there’s a slight lack of focus. Digit is one of the apps that calculate how much they can afford to save, and it will put it aside automatically. So, again, automation is king.
They Need Help Understanding Money
Money is a daunting subject for most people at any stage of life. You need at least a basic education in personal finance. Fisher Investments’ retirement and financial planning videos can be a fun and effective way to learn about finance. The interactive lessons that are self-paced, so they can easily fit into any schedule.
There are many ways to use technology to learn finance. If you can figure out what type of learner you are, this helps a great deal. Choose something that you won’t zone out on.
You may want to look at podcasts if you like to do other things while listening. You can also take advantage of many finance classes for all levels of teaching platforms such as Thinkific or Udemy. Some are free and some are affordably priced. We suggest that you take advantage of all of them in order to get a totally well-rounded personal finance education.
