feedGen Y & Banking
The Toronto Star recently published an article about Generation Y’s attitude toward retirement plans and banks in general. The interesting bit:
At the same time, the generation born between 1977 and 1994 – also called the millennials or echo boomers – tend not to visit their bank branches and talk to advisers about investing and financial planning advice.
“They are young, have grown up in a technological age and are very comfortable with computers,” says Dmitri Mastoras, regional manager with BMO Retail Investments.
“Visiting their local bank branch is not one of their regular habits.”
The technology piece is huge. Thinking back over the past year, I have only physically gone into my local bank branch twice: once to see if I could get some Euros there (I could, but not a lot!) and once to cash a bond my parents bought for me when I was younger.
Other than that, I do all my banking either online or through the machine. And I think most of my peers would echo that. If there was a simple way to contribute to an RRSP or make investments through the web interface, I might be liable to do it, but — at least with the bank I use — there is not.
It’s a key point when dealing with Gen Y: making us call you is a red light. If we can’t find the info or functionality we’re looking for on your web site, it might as well not exist. The article tends to hint that Gen Y doesn’t invest because it’s not a priority for them, but I suspect it has far more to do with the accessibility (or rather lack thereof) of doing such things without having to either pick up a phone or physically go into a bank.
A postscript on retirement
Also from the above article:
Many generation Y investors might be saving for shorter-term goals such as buying a house or going back to school to further their education rather than retirement.
Financial advisers believe this generation should be taking more ownership for their financial future.
The whole concept of ‘retirement’ needs to change. It doesn’t really make any sense when no one actually considers it likely (or at all possible, really) that they’ll spend their whole life working one job. Also, is it just me, or does 65 kind of seem like it’s a little bit young to just stop working completely?
Photo by benchilada. Licensed under Creative Commons
Tags: money, retirement, savings
Maybe the reason we don’t save toward our retirement is because we’re watching the generations ahead of us lose their savings in 401Ks and mutual funds and shoddy investing strategies. Maybe the reason we don’t save toward retirement is because we don’t see a definite line drawn between our work and our life. Maybe we’re not happy with punching away the hours in a career, biding our time, waiting to do what we really want to do when we turn 65.
In my circle of friends, we aren’t relying on traditional retirement methods. We want to be financially free, not rationed on a smaller salary than we had when we were working. We want our money to work for us, not the other way around. Finally, we want to be free financially much younger, say by 40, for me personally. And what financially free means is that I have the choice to do whatever work I choose because my expenses are covered by my investments.
Holly: awesome comment. I completely agree. It seems like the older generation had a “slog through work and prepare for retirement” attitude which I am completely unable to understand. I want to enjoy my work so much that I don’t want to stop at 65. That’s a goal that makes sense to me.
I don’t know if it’s a generational thing or an individual attitude, but it seems to me like we’re just learning from the mistakes of those that came before us. Which is what our parents/teachers/leaders would’ve wanted isn’t it?
But if that’s true, why do I still feel there’s resentment towards us for it?
Hi. Just discovered your site. I completely agree re: retirement. Plus, wanting to retire assumes that you don’t really like what you’re doing for a living because you want to stop doing it eventually. Sure, when I’m older I might want to slow down a bit, but I do my work because I absolutely love it, not because there’s some kind of pay off at the end.
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