In Dialogue: Bobbi Rebell On Becoming A Financial Grownup

The world has changed rapidly over the last couple of years, but sometimes it’s safe to say that we Gen-Xers (and Boomers) don’t always have our finger on the pulse of what our kids (and their kids, in some cases) might be going through. In fact, we may have missed just how much they’ve fallen behind, not only over the last two years but the last 20; Millennials, as accustomed as we are to talking about them like they’re college kids, are far removed from those heady days of carefree irresponsibility. They graduated into the worst economy in almost a century, that is, until they faced their second “once-in-a-lifetime” economic disaster just a decade or so later. As a result, Millennials, and increasingly Zoomers, have never had what we might regard as a “normal” adulthood, and they face challenges we never encountered, from mountains of student loan debt (which they took on when they were still in high school) to cryptocurrency and meme stocks. Even those that were taught the basics of finance likely never had a chance to apply them before they no longer held true. Meanwhile, the economy itself continues to contort into new, unpredictable, unwieldy shapes.