Just Admit It
In a surprise little bit of Gen-Z honesty in an article I read the other day, a 21 year old admitted that she didn't know how to manage her money. However, in a very not surprising Gen-Z move, she blamed others.
“I think it should be banned because for us Gen Zers we were never taught how to manage money properly, Getting a huge influx of money at once, of course, we are going to get excited and are going to blow it all on food, shopping, outings, etc.”
What should be banned you ask?
Fortnightly pay. And for those who think a fortnight is a misspelling of a game, it actually means two weeks. Yes, she is complaining because she can't manage her money over a two week period, and wants to get paid weekly instead - because then she gets paid more frequently. But it is the same amount.
Learn to manage your money. If you know you get paid fortnightly, learn to budget, learn to pay your bills first before "blowing it all on food, shopping, outings etc" -
These people.
She even identified the gap that she doesn't know how to manage her money, but rather than trying to close that gap by improving herself, her answer is to change the system to make her life easier. But, it doesn't make her life easier, does it? Instead, what it would do is help her avoid having to learn what she is going to have to learn at some point anyway, if she wants to have any kind of decent financial outlook in her future. And the future is what is important, so rather than blaming the past and your unwillingness to learn then, make the decision and take the actions to learn now.
"But I want to live in the now, not learn in the now!"
(Real quote from an imaginary Gen-Zer)
And yes, while this story is coming from a single person who may or may not be mentally challenged, the attitude seems consistent amongst the under thirties. Whenever they have a problem, they feel entitled to complain about it and demand someone else fix it. This attitude actually makes sense though, because most of them are incapable of actually fixing much anyway. They have grown up with all the information available to them at their fingertips, but have learned very little beyond the latest consumer trend.
Can't wait until payday to blow it all on Labubus!
For a few years now, the young have been complaining about the bad rap they get due to their money habits, saying that they actually do know how to manage their money, but the world is against them. Sure, the economic conditions are different now then it was for their parents and grandparents, but the world is different in many, many other ways also. They seem fine with consuming streaming passive content for the majority of their life - something their parents and grandparents never did.
The conditions are what they are - learn to live well with what there is. And the irony is, learning to survive well in the current conditions, would almost guarantee being able to thrive in them too, as well as change the overall conditions in a positive way. Because, people would take more responsibility for themselves, close skill and knowledge gaps, and learn how to manage their money, invest their money, and own.
It isn't as simple as stopping spending on shit, there is more to financial wellbeing than that, but whether people are taught in childhood or not, the fact is that as an adult, it is likely going to take more than what a child learned. The learning doesn't stop at school, yet these kids seem to only be willing to learn about the things they like to learn about - even while the things they should learn about go begging.
Put down your phone - pick up a book.
No! no! Not a fucking romance novel to make you feel like true love is out there for you, despite you being too afraid to answer the phone - a book to learn from. And yeah, it doesn't actually have to be a book with paper - an audiobook will do. But spend the majority of your "free" time learning how to make you life better. And if you think having more stable, well-managed finances will help you have a better life - learn how to do it.
And fucken do it.
Stop blaming others for your own unwillingness.
What is good to recognise in the complaint about weekly, fortnightly, and monthly pay cycles is - it conditions us to either spend more, or save more. Sure, it might add up to the same amount, but I would predict that the people who get paid monthly end up having better money management skills than those paid weekly. And in building those skills, more options become available, like investing. And then, the management training kicks in to find a bit more so as to invest a bit more - and it spirals upward.
Skills can compound, just like money can.
But passive consumption doesn't build skill.
I am definitely no expert on managing finances, but I am active in doing what I can to improve along the way. Over the years I have learned a lot that I wasn't taught in childhood, through trial and error, as well as seeking out information to add into the mix. If I was more clever than I am, perhaps I would have done a better job - but if I had done nothing at all and just blamed others, well....
The girl in the article is 21, so she has plenty of time to learn ahead of her. But, what about the people in their thirties - what is their excuse for not knowing by now when the information is potentially right in front of their eyes most of the day? But, no matter if young or old, if unwilling to learn and change - no amount of pay will be enough.
Taraz
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I kind of respect her honesty, admitting she doesn’t know how to manage money, it's more self aware than a lot of people twice her age. But the blame game is a freaking pandemic at the moment
Even if the "perpetrator" is correctly identified, how does blame help in these cases?
precisely, blame wouldn't help
Actually, It was harder for me to move from a weekly pay to a monthly one, and even now with all the investing/saving and bill pay automatized via direct debit and standing orders, sometimes I do go over the budget with the food and clothes money. And I just use a crypto card to get over the wage date with a little bump.
I learned about it the hard way, reading about the FIRE movement and MrMoneyMustache and JCollins blogs. We did not have a lot of info back then, maybe just some books from library. If you want to learn about finances, you will learn. I make it into little games and quests with my underage nephews.
Now it is so much easier, with a basic income, you can literally achieve financial independence by the age of 30-40 instead of retirement at 67. If you start saving and planning by the time you are 18. No excuses. But, you may also need to really work hard for it, and delay some rewards and holidays for later.
For sure it is harder. But, it is also something that can help people grow. In Finland, most salaries are monthly, with only some blue collar workers and kids in fast food getting paid bi-weekly. That tells something, doesn't it?
Exactly!
And this is awesome :) If you have some examples I could use with my daughter, that'd be swell.
And this is where it all can start (or before). But the "only young once" paradigm seems to be well into the forties.
You need to learn about the marshmallow test, when you can have one now or two 10 minutes later. Actually delayed gratification is a skill that can be learned. Ans it is paying of greatly later in life.
I do little choices like on your birthday do you want me to pay you £10 in cash or to transfer £20 in your saving account (that he can access at 18). He always choose 20. Or if any of them needs lets say £200 for a bike, I will be like, save money for a month and i give you as much as you saved towards your bike. Stuff like that.
No salary will be enough for them and nothing will be enough for them, when it comes to competition, in this scenario it is the strongest who always wins. to these young people, even to adults, what life gives them is "not enough" and they do whatever it takes to make sure they have "enough to create crisis, separation between them", to get what they want.
What constitutes the strongest in your opinion?
Good morning Mr. Taraz, it's really just an opinion, but for all humans "it's never enough", and we always agree, to our beliefs and the reason, competing, "to have more".
We really have to get better at teaching basic money skills early on. It would save a lot of people this kind of stress. It's the money skills the schools for some reason refuse to teach that is causing such a problem
I think that schools would do a pretty bad job of teaching this, as they do a bad job of teaching most things. There should be better ways.
perhaps you're right, maybe it'll be the duty of the parents to do this, that is if they themselves have not already messed their finances up since some of them weren't taught too
My generation received ZERO instruction on how to manage money. Zero. I did fine. Everyone I went to high school with did fine. Managing money well only requires that one spend and save no more than what one earns. Make good choices with your money. Simple. Whinge-ing is in fashion.
The same for me. I did an economics course at high school (more at university) but it had nothing to do with personal finances.
And rewarded with social points that have no value.
I've gotten paid in several different schedules throughout my life and while each of them took a little getting used to, I was always able to manage through them. It is sad how willfully helpless people are these days.
"Wilful Helplessness" is a great term!
Every now and then I pull out a gem!
It’s easy to blame the system or others for poor money management but the truth is personal responsibility matters.
Sure, today’s generation wasn’t taught how to handle money in school and that’s a real issue but is that a reason to give up and stay stuck? Absolutely not.
I don't know about you, but I wasn't taught at school either. I don't think anyone I know was.
This is a very powerful point sir @tarazkp. Identifying a personal gap like poor money management is actually a great first step, but growth comes from taking responsibility and making intentional changes. Relying on systemic changes alone might delay the inevitable need for personal development. At the end of the day, learning financial literacy is an investment in one’s own future—and the sooner it's done, the better the outcome will be. Blaming the past doesn’t build the future; learning from it does.
And will take a lifetime of failures and still they might not change.
Seems like that kid struck a nerve with you 😅
Maybe in Finland it's generational. Here it seems cultural. I rarely see people who are able to manage their money really good, most just survive. Thinking ahead and planning is not common at all, at no age, at least here. Neither is problem solving. Improvisation, yes, but really fixing the problem? Forget it.
Those who do, are incredibly successful. It's actually much easier than it looks to create a profitable business here - if you're able to plan ahead and invest your money somewhat wisely, you're already 20 steps ahead of the competition.
Looking at the debt problem (which is a part of spending), I don't think it's generational. Even my father is still paying off debt because he was never smart with money, and never learned. Luckily, we had my mother, so here we are.
The situation might be getting worse, I agree - but the resistance against learning and getting your life together is not exclusive to gen Z at all.
Culture plays a big part in it for sure. Generally it seems, warmer cultures are less able to plan economically. I think it comes down to necessity. Don't plan ahead in Finland, and freeze and starve to death in the winter. Not an issue in warm countries as there is no need for great shelter, and food is plentiful (historically).
My parents were both terrible with money in different ways. Lessons learned are hard to relearn for me.
I think this is where "necessity" has come into it. Earlier generations seemed to have less safety net to fall into. When everything is rubberised, the cost of falling is cheap, but the lesson for the need to stay upright, is never learned.
With that I agree fully, I think you read my post about how the scarcity-experience of my grandparents shaped my frugal approach to life, fueling my eventual success.
It does make sense to see it that way. The safety nets in our societies have been way too comfortable these days. Instead of holding for a second and then bouncing you back, some people are making their beds in them.
Blaming others won't fix personal problems, be it finance, education, or budgeting, in fact, any kind of problems. The 21-year-old saying fortnightly pay should be banned is really just avoiding the fact that she needs to learn how to budget. There's a saying in my locality here that goes,' the money a child gets will be squandered on bean cake' that's just the literal meaning, though. The figurative meaning is that no manner is the amount of money a child gets, is going into spending.
No matter how hard the past was or whether money skills were taught at home or school, as adults, it’s our job to learn and grow. As adults, we have no excuses for our misfortune as we must take responsibility and grow in the process.
We are even lucky these days as information is everywhere now, on our phones, podcasts, and books, unlike before that we only get information or enlightened through the traditional way, but many people only focus on entertainment instead of learning useful life skills.
At the end of the day, managing money isn’t just about spending less. It’s about learning, taking responsibility, and making better decisions step by step, be it as an adult or Gen-Z. In fact , Gen z has a lot to learn from us as adults. It also depends on the kind of environment the young adults grew from. Family also has a way of shaping us into a all round grown adult. There are always a lot of things to learn as learning never stops. It is a continuous process.
It is a good saying. Immaturity is rife these days, with childish behaviour ranging into the 30s and beyond. Do you see this in your schools?
I think that we who receive monthly salaries might develop a better budgeting skills, as we must learn to allocate our funds reasonably over a month or a longer period.
What I believe is that today's generation have easy access to all the luxuries of life which is being consistently provide to them by there elders. This comfortable access to everything has really spoiled them because they are taking everything for granted, getting influenced by the luxurious and costly things which they see on social media, they get after it and want it at any cost.
During the time of previous generation, there was not that good access to everything we really needed to work hard and then get some hard earned money, so we had an Idea that it's not easy to use that hard earned money so quickly and easily but rather save it for future purposes and spend as much required and moreover at that time I don't think there was any sorts of competition for showing off your luxuries, everyone lived a good and normal life.
The example of that girl is because of this case only, she's getting influenced by others luxuries and want it in her life as well and maintain a level and status but she's forgetting that all these things are just for short run, in the long run what matters is the money which you saved carefully and can help you in every situation either worst or best because you never know what's going to happen tomorrow, so you need to be ready and causious..!!
Generation Z is really different. They haven't experienced much hardship, poverty, or impossibility. They are used to convenience and consumption. Naturally, they are not living life in the right way. Their habits will cause major problems for the world in the future.
Fucktards.
I don't understand why some people enjoy shopping so much. I could understand if people would enjoy getting more money by investing. But I don't enjoy spending money at all. I waited about a decade to buy new glasses. I bought new pants recently- because my old ones were barely usable.
Managing one's finances is so important! I am glad I have an interest in maths/stats since young and it just felt so natural to tabulate my expenses and doing budgeting when I was growing up. The compounding effect is really significant, and I am glad I started my personal journey at a young age.