The Recession Generation: An Examination of Millennials’ Money Management Habits

Abstract

Given that many of today’s undergraduate students experienced the Great Recession during a highly impressionable age, it is reasonable to suggest that the event may have played a significant role in the development of their financial understanding. Although many younger millennials still depended on parents financially during the period of economic downturn and may not have experienced the effects of loss and related stress as strongly as older family members, exposure to those struggles may have influenced the money management tendencies that now characterize their adulthood. This study examines the financial management practices and the overall effectiveness of those practices as perceived by a sample of undergraduate millennials. It also tests the hypothesis that the most significant economic event in the last decade had a visible effect on the development of financial management practices that millennials use today.