Afford Anything - She's Researched Money for 30 Years—and Never Seen It This Bad for Young People, with Beth Kobliner

Episode Date: July 31, 2026

#737: Beth Kobliner has covered personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s for over three decades — and she says this is the hardest she's ever seen it. One in four young people now believe that betting on gambling sites and prediction markets counts as investing. Beth Kobliner is a personal finance journalist and New York Times bestselling author of Get a Financial Life, who served on President Obama's Advisory Council on Financial Capability for Young Americans. In this episode, we discuss: Why unemployment for college grads is now worse than the general population Why the average first-time homebuyer is now 40 instead of 28 How tap-to-pay and neobank apps quietly drive up spending without you noticing Why so many young people believe gambling sites count as investing — and what the real odds say Whether AI is making it harder or easier for young workers to break in Why index funds still beat both active management and a lucky bet, long-term Whether college is still worth the cost in today's job market Whether you're just starting out or already feel behind, this episode makes the case for the boring, unglamorous plan over the tempting quick one — and explains why that plan still works. ⏱️ TIMESTAMPS Note: Timestamps may vary slightly depending on dynamic ad placements. (00:39) Why today's 20- and 30-somethings have it harder than any generation Beth's covered (03:04) The consumer sentiment reading that's worse than the pandemic and the Great Recession (05:14) Why record-low unemployment doesn't mean what you think for new grads (10:23) Why the median first-time homebuyer is now pushing 40 (13:36) The real reason behind the boom in crypto, sports betting, and meme stocks (15:52) The "giving up" factor economists say is driving risky bets (17:15) Why a tiny sliver of prediction-market bettors take home most of the winnings (23:26) Is the "avocado toast" spending story about young people even true? (43:44) How tapping your phone quietly makes you spend more than a credit card (01:04:13) Why financial optimism is rising in countries poorer than the U.S. 🔗 RESOURCES MENTIONED 👉 A free 10-day workbook to work through your money mindset and your next move: https://affordanything.com/fiire 👉 Get Beth Kobliner’s book Get a Financial Life: https://amzn.to/4pXgPfK 👉 A Random Walk Down Wall Street by Burton Malkiel, the index-fund classic Beth and Paula both referenced: https://amzn.to/4bq9IGC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Beth Copliner has been writing and talking about money for 30 years. She says that today's young people have it harder than any generation that she's covered over the last three decades. And she has the data to prove it. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars. Financial Psychology, Increasing Your Income Your Income, Double I Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pantt. I trained in economic. reporting at Columbia, and today, the author of two New York Times bestsellers joins us to talk about personal finance in your 20s and 30s. Beth Kobliner is the author of Get a Financial Life, a book all about personal finance for people in their 20s and 30s. She's also the author of Make Your Kid a Money Genius, even if you're not, and she's a contributor to the New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Oprah columnist for money, glamour,

Red Book. She's a regular on-air voice at NPR, MSNBC, see public radio is the takeaway. She's appeared on Good Morning America, PBS News Hour. You get the idea. In fact, and this is my favorite detail, she once taught Elmo how to spend, share, and save on a Sesame Street special. She graduated from Brown University, lives here in New York City, and we talk today about the puzzle that has confounded me for a long time, which is the fact that the stock market is near record highs and unemployment is low. And yet many people, particularly young people, feel pervasive pessimism. So why? We kick off the interview with that question and we go deep because Beth brings the data.

So for a data-driven conversation on personal finance in your 20s and 30s today, here's Beth Copliner. Hi, Beth. Hi, Paula. Beth, you have been writing personal finance advice for people. in their 20s and 30s since the 90s, how has the experience of being in your 20s and 30s changed since the 90s? Well, first and foremost, I'm no longer in my 20s and 30s, which is such a bummer. No, it's actually good. I think time goes on. It's been such a privilege to be able to mark different people in their 20s and 30s who are starting their lives, graduating from college, maybe or going on to a job right out of high school, whatever it is. Watching that progression over the last three decades has been kind of amazing.

And I feel like, you know how every generation feels like, oh, we have it worse than they did? When you graduate from college, you hear, oh, we're cutting back on jobs and you're like, oh, I have it so hard. I have to say that this generation, today's people in their 20s and early 30s have it harder than any generation that I've written about. I looked at the University of Michigan has the Consumer Sentiment Index. And the outlook among young people, 18 to 34-year-olds, is the worst that's ever been. Since they've been tracking this since 1978, worse young people experiencing the economy

and their lives, worse than the pandemic, worse than the great. recession and it's about half of what it was 10 years ago for millennials. So millennials were feeling twice as good as today's Gen Ziers, if you want to call them, or just today's young people. And this is so significant because not only it's the lowest that it's been, but you think of like young people usually kind of happy and yeah, you have struggles and you have things that are new, but you think that you're usually in better shape emotionally than older people. But as it turns out, this is now flipped. And right now 18 to 34 year olds are more pessimistic when it comes to that measure than people in the 55 plus category, which is me. So I think it's almost like a big,

almost freaky Friday switch that young people now are feeling the burdens of the economy and how they see their futures. One thing that has always fascinated me is what seems to be a disconnect between the University of Michigan's consumer sentiment index and actual economic performance because the stock market is at all-time highs. With the exception of a minute in 2020, we have essentially been in a bull run since 2009. Other than a brief, brief dip in 2020, this is the longest bull run of history. Right. How is it that the economy could be good? Unemployment is at 4.3%. All of these major economic indicators are so positive and yet consumer sentiment and sentiment amongst young people in particular

is so low. A couple of reasons for that. First off, if you look at unemployment, unemployment is about 4%. But historically, it's always been that unemployment among, new college graduates was better that they are more likely to get jobs than the general population. According to the New York Fed, the unemployment rate for recent college graduates, 20 to 27, is now one and a half points higher, meaning it's worse than the general population. In the 1990s, the unemployment for college grads, recent college grads, was two points lower or better than the general public. So again, that freaky Friday switch of young people, people who graduate from college did the right thing. They went to college. They were told they'll be getting good jobs because they went to college. Their unemployment rate now is 5.6% higher than the 4%, 4.2% of all workers. Interestingly, there's a lot of sort of questioning about going to college, is it worth it?

Well, those who don't go to college are doing even worse, that their unemployment, rate is 7.5%. So when you dig into the numbers, generally speaking unemployment may look okay, but the unemployment rate for young people is really at a dramatically flipped negative situation for young people expecting to get out and get jobs. And of course, with the stock market, if we're talking of people in their 20s, mid-20s, they didn't have stocks. They weren't putting their money. They were in college. They were investing in themselves. they probably took on a little bit of student loan debt. And in fact, interestingly, we're seeing that student loan debts, median student loan debts have gone down somewhat.

And I think it's because young people in this generation in particular have been bit savvier and they didn't want to get into as much student loan debt that they heard about. So they're making some maybe less expensive school choices. But what the other big issue is credit card debt. this generation people in their 20s and early 30s have more credit card debt than previous generations by a lot. And that's because they're finding it so hard to get jobs and then to, because they haven't reaped the rewards of the stock market, they themselves are having a very difficult time affording lives. And so because of that, they're borrowing more. And there are a lot

of factors that contribute to why people are borrowing more. But I think the sort of painting of the picture overall of the economy looking, okay, looks pretty good. The stock market's doing great. That is not impacting a huge swath of the young people out there who haven't participated in those gains and are really seeing themselves in the most difficult situation of young people have been in at least 30, 40 years. Is there a distinction between, let's say, somebody who is right now, they're 21, they're 22, they're right at the beginning of their career, they haven't made any money yet, so they don't have any assets yet, versus I'm thinking of someone who's even like 29 or 30,

and they've had the last five years of gains, right? Maybe they started investing in the year 20. If you're 29 right now, you might have started investing five years ago. That means you started investing in 2021. So you've seen all of the gains that have come during that time. Is there a bifurcation between early 20s to late 20s? Yeah, I think that's a really good question. To some extent, yes, but remember, when you're just graduating, first of all,

this sort of shift we've seen in young people having trouble getting jobs and it being worse than the general population, that happened a few years ago. So this is somebody who is out of school in the last three, four, maybe five years. That's been something that's been more difficult. Companies are wanting to hire people with more experience and there have been cutbacks and, of course, from COVID and all kinds of changes that these young people who started out four or five years ago were having a harder time to start to begin with. And also, maybe they started and they assuming they had a chance to move back home with their parents, which more young people are doing. And they did that for a year or two. And maybe they saved up a little bit of money. And they started

in a company that has a 401k. Well, it might be that they've experienced the gains of the stock market for the last couple of years. But chances are if they're thinking about, gee, I really don't want to put some in my 401k, but I want to start saving for a home. And then they start seeing, well, the median home buying age is closer to 40 now than it was, in my day, 30 years ago, it was 28 years old. And even for millennials, just 10 years ago, it was 32 years old. That has to do a lot with housing inflation, again, which really benefited the baby boom generation and maybe even a little bit of Gen X.

But this younger generation is seeing first time median home prices is $430,000. versus it was $280,000 30 years ago. That's after you adjust for inflation. So I think the expenses of it's the credit card debt, and I think that that has affected many people, I'd say throughout their 20s. Now, if they got a great job in their 33, 34, that might be a different situation

and they might be close to buying a home. But I think overall there really is something, And the other interesting thing I think about this generation is, and I feel very hopeful for them, is that they are good savers. Part of that has to do with the fact that Secure 2.0 required employers to have the default in a 401k be that you have to opt out of the 401K. So if you're a new young worker and they say, oh, you're in the 401k. you're like, okay, I have to actually sign paperwork to say I don't want to be in the 401K, and that doesn't happen. So that kind of nudge or whatever that you'd call it, it has really benefited young people.

And so many more young people are in 401Ks than versus, say, 10 years ago or 30 years ago. So that's good. They are participating. Those who are in the market are participating more than previous generations in the market. I look back 30 years ago, it was like 32 years ago when I was trying to sell my book. And I was in my mid to late 20s. And I would go from publisher to publisher. And many of them were like, young people don't care about money.

What are you talking about? We're not going to publish this because this is a generation that they're slackers. They don't care about their finances. They're having too much fun being young. And you would never hear anyone say that about this generation, this Gen Z generation, who really, they have health insurance, which is something that my generation didn't have. Right. And that's, again, the Affordable Care Act, up to age 26.

You can get it from parents in various states it's much higher than that. Or they're getting it from their jobs or from the networks. And so they have a lot of pros in their favor. And I think they're a more serious generation. They've seen the handwriting on the wall and being COVID. was such a big life-shifting experience in their lives. So I'd say that the outlook in terms of their attitudes, I think they're being realistic and they're trying to be smart in a tricky world. There seems to be almost something of a contradiction in, on one hand, you've got self-reported pessimism, you've got high credit card debt.

as you noted, there's a higher level of unemployment as compared to the general population. So you've got those factors going on. On the other side, you've got, at least among some people, extreme risk-taking behavior with regard to cryptocurrency, polymarket, kalshi, draft kings. There's this emergence of sports betting or heck betting on television show euphoria. How is it going to end? Right, right, right, right. You've got this proliferation of betting and, combining a lot of things into one question right now, and meme stocks, and crypto, and all of this, like, risky behavior.

Are these different cohorts of the same generation, or is this all wrapped up into the same hypothetical person? I think it is all wrapped up in the hypothetical person. In that, you can say, look, things are tough. I'm scared. I'm going to maybe try to move back home for a couple of years. And we're seeing that inch up a little bit, slightly more young people, more than half of young people, 20 to 24, living with their parents. And it's a little higher than it was a few years ago. But I think there's some behavior that stems from the idea, I'm never going to afford a house.

And I'm being bombarded by social media or just through my friends hearing about these markets that, heck, I could take a flyer on that. If I'm not going to save for a house because I'll never get one until I'm 40. I mean, how old is 40? You just have to say 40. I started a financial literacy curriculum in New York City and I've been talking to a lot of high school students. I mean, you say 30 and their eyes glaze over. But the same person who is feeling nervous about their future also feels like, you know what, maybe I should just take a flyer on 2018, the Supreme Court allowed online getting.

gambling. And now the age in New York, for example, is 21. But plenty of people figure out, young people figure out ways to get on that, even if they're younger than 21. And I think we're seeing a lot of gambling behavior. There are these economists from Chicago who talked about the giving up factor. I've given up. I won't be able to buy a home. I think it'll be so far from now. I'm going to take a flyer on gambling. And we're seeing, unfortunately, and I hear this a lot even from teenagers in high school, and I'll say, well, there was a study done out of the University of San Diego that looked at hundreds of thousands of people, and they found that those people who were doing gambling over a five-year period,

96% of them lost money. And if you look at, say, the stock market and you look at all kinds of ways to look at it, it, but if you look at 15-year chunks of time, 98% of the time you make money. Right. So when you say that, I think it's just explaining that, yes, you're hearing about your friend who made money because that friend isn't telling you when they lost money. And you're hearing, you know, the vast majority of personal finance information for people in their 20s and 30s comes from social media.

So they're hearing, and there's some great stuff on social media, and they're great influencers who are trying to give good information. and there are some that are just salespeople and they're really good salespeople. So when you hear about prediction markets and how, and that you only have to be 18 years old, so that's really, and it feels so like, well, I could guess at that. But the Wall Street Journal did a great report on these prediction markets. They wrote about how two-thirds of the winnings on prediction markets go to one-tenth of 1% of the accounts. So you have a 10th of 1% of the people betting are winning two thirds of

the winnings. And they write about how they're sophisticated traders who look at vast amounts of data and aren't guessing the way most people are. It's a bit of the Wild West out there. And they're now some interesting situations with insider trading and what people are using non-public information. And the biggest indicator was people in their 20s and 30s, there was a poll that found that one and four young people think that gambling sites and prediction markets are a form of investing. Wow.

And that's where it's like very problematic. And it's just what is investing. And that's why it's so important to reiterate things like that statistic that, well, over the next five years. years, if you're gambling, you're going to lose 96% of the time. We're seeing addiction problems with gambling. We're seeing a lot of young people. I'm talking to 15, 16, 17 year olds who are certainly aware of what's going on with gambling and could use an older siblings account. It's very, it's very concerning, I think. And then there's a lot on social media on cryptocurrency, which can sound like this amazing

opportunity, but it can also be extremely risky, extremely volatile. And if you're starting out and you're in your 20s, maybe a diversified index fund might be something that would bring you to the goal of where you want to be in 10 years from now or longer. In tough times, there's a desire for a quicker fix. So I think those two can be held in one person's mind that I know things are tough. I know I'm going to be somewhat more prudent. I'm going to take on lower student loans, perhaps, or figure out what I'm going to major in and look for jobs ahead of time. I think there's a lot of change of attitudes, but I also think it can lead to you feeling more fragile and like, oh, that does sound like a good deal. I am going to put my money. Maybe, you know,

Paula will wear her gray sweater, so I'm going to vote for that one. There's one. There's one. interesting study I read about how when you feel like you have an edge, you have like an insider track to something as a gambler, you're more likely to lose. In other words, there's sort of almost an arrogance or a feeling that, oh, I think I know this one. You're more likely to lose. So it's very difficult. And I feel for young people because on one hand, they're pretty savvy. when I was talking to young people in high schools about financial literacy, I'm like, what do you think of like a celebrity? If a cool celebrity told you about personal finance, like, we don't care. We know they're getting paid. On the other hand, though, when you're seeing someone like enthusiastically pitch some sort of prediction side or gambling side or cryptocurrency or meme stock or some investment at you, that sounds so great and the person's telling you how great it is, it can be seductive. Right. So it's really an interesting time for young people, but I am really hopeful. I really do think that this generation, because of the tougher times, they're going to be smart in the end. But it's hard. And I think uncertainty has always led to a lot of fragility. If you're uncertain about the future and nobody knows really what AI is going to do. Goldman Sachs released a study that said 25% of working hours will be eliminated because of AI.

I don't even know exactly what that means. I don't even, I don't know, just Goldman Sachs now? Let's call them. I don't know. But it's such a unknown landscape that we're in now and people of all ages. But I think young people starting out in particular are seeing it and they're certainly feeling it. With regard to AI, the impact that it may have, and it's still early days, but the impact that it may have, particularly on people in their 20s and 30s, there's a bull case and a bear case, right? Because on one hand, it's harder to be an entry-level employee. Those are the jobs that get automated away first. On the other hand, young people generally are seen as more tech-savvy and better able to be. to adopt and embrace new technologies.

And so if you're looking for a more tech-enabled workforce, you don't hire the 55-year-old. I mean, age discrimination is real. You don't hire the 55-year-old. You hire the 25-year-old. Yeah, I just don't know. And unless you only need one 25-year-old to set up the system, and then you need the experience of 55-year-olds

who can enter their data and their knowledge into whatever the system is, We just don't know. I mean, it is fascinating to clawed. You go and clod and you hear what all that. It's amazing how much information is there. And of course, we have to filterate what's hallucinating and what's not, but it's getting better and better. And it's hard to know exactly how it will be used and who will be hurt the most.

I just don't think we know. In the mainstream media, there tend to be a lot of headlines around young people are giving up on the prospect of ever buying a house and therefore they're engaging in a lot more small time spending, the latte, the avocado toast, the trip to Bali with your friends. They're engaging in immediate luxuries out of a sense of giving up on the big stuff. Is that actually happening or is that just headline? I'm sure it's happening. I'm sure a lot of young people are doing that. But like we know from debt information, certainly historically, a large portion of credit card debt was before the Health Care Act was due to health care expenses, that there's always the headline or you're going to have $100,000 in student loan debt.

The median right now is about $20,000. Certainly there are outliers. But talking to younger people, I see a little. And maybe they're just doing this for me. Like, I'm going to be more responsible seeming. But 30 years ago, the expectation to travel around the world and it just wasn't happening. So flights are much cheaper now and people can do things in a less expensive way and remote work. People can get a job in one city and move to another city.

And that can be a smart thing to do if you're working in an expensive city and you're allowed to work remotely in another city. And I've seen kids talk about, so I think there are hacks that young people can do, but I don't see this profligate spending. I mean, I remember when I was in college, the big thing in the 1980s, they would hand out in early 90s, they'd hand out credit cards to anybody who would walk by. And all you'd do is sign your name, no credit check. It could be anyone. You'd 18 and you'd get a credit card no matter what. And usually they'd give you like a free t-shirt or a frisbee and that seemed like such a great thing at the time. And so everyone graduated that I knew with a lot of credit card debt.

And you'd say, what did you spend that money on? It's like, I don't know. Was it like pizza or makeup? Like people couldn't even put their finger on what they spent that money on. I'd say today the close to $3,000, $2,800. amount of credit card debt young people have. We're looking at some of the basics. You know, you graduate from school, you don't graduate from school, and you, you're paying your bills. You're paying for, if you're living at home, maybe you're chipping in and giving your parents some money

or buying groceries. It's not to say that this is the perfect generation then they're really, but I think one of the big, big changes is access to not credit. credit cards. People aren't giving credit cards right away. You have to be 21 to get a credit card unless you have a job, then you can be 18. And there are all kinds of ways of getting a credit card. But I think this whole notion of frictionless finance really leads to more spending. In the sense, we know the studies show that when you use a credit card, you spend twice as much as then when you use cash. Of course, no one uses cash anymore. And we know now when you tap your phone, you use more money than when you use a credit card because you're getting further and further away from the actual

paying for something. That idea you buy something, you get change, or if you buy something, you don't have enough money, you have to put it back because you're running out of cash. Those days are gone. Like, anytime I pull out a few dollars at a cash register, I get this total eye roll by everyone, including the salesperson. I'm like, ah, cash. So now tapping your phone, It's like a magic wand, but really is like no sense of, and this is not this generation's fault. It's the technology we gave them. But the idea of being frictionless, it's so easy that it's so easy not to think about it. I just met a friend's small children who I was giving them coins and they didn't know, and these are really smart little kids.

They didn't know the difference between a quarter and a dime because they don't see change. It's all plastic or phones more likely. So that idea of frictionless finance can be a new mindset. Evolutionarily, how are we thinking about money? Are we thinking about it's something that we have, it's no longer in our wallet. It's something that's on a phone. That has led to it being much easier for people of all ages, but particularly young people, to spend more. I think there have been some advantages of the technology, automatic savings.

I mean, nobody, I used to get my paycheck and you'd go to the bank and you wait on the line and then you talk to the teller and you take out a certain percentage. Now it's direct deposit. 99% of people have direct deposit right into maybe a checking account and then they could automatically put 10% of it into a high-yield savings account. That's the hope. rather than getting 0.1% on your money, you can get 3.5% on your money. And then you have your employer take the money directly out of your paycheck and put into

a 401k that maybe has matching. That's a fantastic return. If it's 50 cents on every dollar, then you're getting an immediate 50% return on your money. That's another great way of using technology to set all this up, paying your bills so you get your bills paid on time. A lot of that is really advantageous. So it's a dual-edged sword, I'd say. The other big trend that I'm seeing is the neobanks and peer-to-peer apps and which can be the peer-to-peer apps. It's a great way of transferring money among friends or among family members. The problem is a lot of young people have quite a bit of money in their Venmo and they're not getting interest on that money. Or there are other apps where you can switch for the interest rate, but you might not get the

interest you want to get. It's a little more tricky. With some of the neobanks, they are not federally insured institutions in their own right. They have some partnership with a bank. There is a difference there. And then there's a difference. And just to jump in. And so neobanks examples include acorns and chime. Exactly. Just for people who never heard that term. Oh, yeah. Thank you. And they have wonderful interfaces and great ways of like to figure out your budgeting. But being aware, look, federal insurance, deposit insurance came about for a reason. A lot of these places say, well, we have a partnership with a bank. And there's been a case of a situation where people are still waiting for to get some of their money back because of it being a neo-bank. So it's good to be aware. And also, more and more, a lot of these sites are looking to be the hub of your financial life. You pay your bills with them and then you invest with them. So with a click of a button, you can put your money into all kinds of investments.

Whereas the advice, I would say, is take a pause and take a moment. That was what was built into the system from only 10 years ago where you have some of your money, hopefully in a high yield savings account and some of your money in your company 401k and then some of it in a no load index ETF like from Schwab or Fidelity or for Vanguard and I don't work for any of these companies. I don't get kickbacks from any of them. But the idea that there's sort of a separation that was already designed for people and you had to think about well this will be my retirement money and this will be my home deposit money and this will be my index fund money for the future.

When it gets all put together and, oh, I could just press a button and it's a great interface and it could bring people to a situation where they're acting more impulsively rather than thoughtfully. Right. And it dovetails back to, I think, a wider challenge that all people, but certainly young people in particular, are facing, which is with this proliferation of there are so many more players in the finance space. There's so much more fintech. Like, I mean, acorns and Venmo and capital with a queue.

PayPal. Yeah. Cash app. There are all of these new players in the space. And there are all of these new sources of information, TikTok and Instagram. And, Those are simply delivery vehicles that some of the content, as you point out, some of the content on there is quite good. Yes. And some of it is not. Right. And when there's a lack of overall financial literacy, you don't necessarily know enough to be able to separate the good from the bad, the wheat from the chaff. And you also don't know enough to be able to separate banking with acorns from banking with Chase.

Right. And the pros and cons. Right. Yeah. Chase will give you 0.1% on your money. So what is important? I was, yeah, you're so smart, I have to say. That is such a perfect way of explaining it.

It can get overwhelming. And especially if you don't know the history. And not that everybody needs to crack open a book and read the history of finance. I was in a classroom. It was really amazing with as New York City teachers are teaching not just my curriculum, but all kinds of curriculums to young people. but this class was a class where the teacher was talking to kids about deposit insurance and where it came from. The kids were like, what?

You mean, if we have $250,000 and the bank goes bust, we get our money back? She's like, yeah, and this is how it came about in the Great Depression. And they were like, well, what about this company? And it's like, no, you don't get it back. And it was just this sort of revelation of, hmm, the government could do something. something pretty darn good for people. And that was a development that took place during the Great Depression and there were run on banks and understanding that and understanding the value of what are the tradeoffs we're making as a society. And I do worry about misinformation and the people

giving information. Maybe they don't know really the history of what was going on. I mean, I I had a kind of revelation when I was first working, writing personal finance. And it was interesting to me. First of all, I worked at Money Magazine, which was owned by Time, Inc. And there was a really clear separation of church and state. That was something that was drilled into us and the advertising people were over there. And then we were the out of people and we were over here. we were very clear that we were never supposed to write something positive or negative on purpose

about one of our advertisers. It was really a separation. It was unbiased information. And I feel like I can't even count, you know, more. I don't know. I think consumer reports is still unbiased. I know they have their testing kitchen or their way they test things and that's not influenced by outsiders, but there's been a real change in how we get information. And part of it is young people like, yeah, we know there's a bias built into it. But still, even if you know there's a bias built into it, how do you hear the clear information? How do you know what's the truth? And there is a truth.

There are some concepts like putting money into a no-lo, load index funds with really, really low expenses. Historically has been much better than putting it into something with high loads and lots of expenses and an actively managed fund because if you compare the two, the index fund or the index ETF has done better than the actively managed. So that kind of information is much harder for young people to tease out. Yeah. And the challenge is that kind of information is not.

the type of thing that goes viral. Are you telling me, I'm not going to go viral? Like index ones, yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it's true. I mean, yeah, it's not built for virality. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's got to be someone who could make the fundamentals cool.

It sounds so old fogy. But the truth is, there are basics, like in anything in life. If you want to make friends, you have to be. nice to people or kind to be. I mean, there are, maybe I'm wrong, but there's some basics in life. And I think that spending the last 35 years writing about personal finance, I really kind of come to, and sometimes I'm amazed. Learning about index funds in the late 80s, I was kind of pretty early to that. I even got Burton Malkiel, who was the guy who was the random walk. Yeah, yeah. He wrote an amazingly popular smart. He popularized this idea that index, if you had monkeys throwing darts at a board of all the different stocks, they did as well as actively managed. I'm mixing that. I'm not saying it perfectly

perfectly, but the point being index funds. And he popularized that well before anyone else. And he was kind enough to blur my book a long time ago. So I was really, that was a real point of pride for me. Actually, when I was in my 20s, a stunt that I did for YouTube, I literally blindfolded myself and threw darts at a list of company names. And then I bought like, I think I dedicated like $500 to the experiment. And I bought like 50 bucks worth of 10 companies. Right. And then tracked it for a year or something. It was something like that. What happened? Yeah. I don't even remember. I actually don't remember. I think that you're right. It's like, what's the coolest latest thing when it comes to clothes, when it comes to pretty much everything.

My advice is, and somebody said to them, his father said the best piece of advice he could give him is buy a used car. Because the minute you drive a new car off the lot, it costs twice as much and the value goes down immediately. So buy a used car. And that's like not going to get people that excited in the way. well, but I think getting health insurance, making sure you're starting to save in an emergency cushion in case something bad happens. That stuff doesn't sound as exciting as, hey, let's gamble on this or let's, what's the hot new meme stock? That's always been the case. That's always been an issue. How do you make the plain vanilla, plain boring that is good for you sound good? But they're

so many more people out there diverting your attention. And it's hard to find the plain boring vanilla. I mean, here I am, but I think it's harder to find that when there's so many enticing, exciting things on social media. Right. It can be easy to get caught up in that hype cycle. Yeah. It makes me sad to hear sometimes in people like, well, the system's rigged anyway. And then you lose people. And understandable why sometimes people think that. But on the other hand, again, if they could know, well, just doing the index funder, like I grew up in Queens. And my dad was a principal. My mom was a chemistry teacher. And we did not have a lot of money. Three kids, small house. But I saw my parents be really good about savings. And mainly that was because my

dad grew up in poverty. He knew that he wanted to make sure to be responsible for his family. His parents did his best, but his father drank. It's a whole cycle of I really want to try to be a good provider and a good, he was a great dad, great mom, very lucky in that way. But I also saw them save. Like my dad told the story of how when he first started as a teacher with the retirement plan, you could put away, this is crazy, but like 70% of your income into the retirement plan for the first year. And he said, he told, the story was he told my mom and my mom said, Harold, we can't afford that. And he's like, surely, we can't afford not to. And we never felt wanting for things. It was just like we didn't buy a lot of things. Over time, I saw them save in that TDA, the teacher's

retirement plan, and they were okay. They did that for many, many years. And I think I'm very lucky to have had that as sort of a role model. That's why financial literacy, which you really astutely pointed out early on, is really the key. Like if we can teach this to not just people in their 20s and 30s, but people, teenagers in high schools and New York State just announced that that's a requirement now. Oh, wow. Yes. Yes, it's got to be taught.

Starting in the fall. Oh, that's amazing. Yeah. So it's not required that it be a full class, but there are topics that need to be taught. And I'm making sure my curriculum hits on all those topics. And it is amazing. I've been to dozens of high schools watching teachers, great teachers teach my curriculum. And some know finance, some don't know finance.

But we try to make it so usable that anyone could really teach it. And kids are so interested. They want to know, especially when they're juniors and seniors, like, when should I get a credit card? Like, what's my credit score? How do I find it? What do I need to know about my insurance? Does it run out? The college just said I had to buy it.

Should I buy it? All those questions we need to really educate young people about. And I think that will really go a long way toward their futures. You mentioned a stat earlier about. how unemployment is worse for people who don't have college degrees. But of course, when we look at broad aggregate data, what often can get lost is sometimes there can be a conflation of correlation causation. So you look at, let's say, the cohort of people who don't have college degrees, right? There are going to be within that some very extreme cases where there are, say, comorbidities that are influencing that.

there are also going to be cases in which there's a subgroup of that cohort where you've got very bright, capable, disciplined people who are making a strategic choice. I'm thinking about an 18-year-old who's listening to this, wondering if they should go to college. And we'll assume that they fall into the subgroup of bright, capable of. bright, capable, disciplined, no extenuating factors that would create life hardships. Yeah, they absolutely should go to college. They should go to an affordable college. The sort of rule of them is don't take on more student loan debt, and I would say stick with federal student loan debt, don't take on more student loan debt than your first year's salary, and that's for four years of college. But if you could go to a two-year community college for very, very little money,

four-year city college. We have some of the, like, really excellent institutions in New York City, New York State, or around the country. Going to college continues to pay off for the future. Now, are there the cases of, yeah, I don't know, who is it, Mark Zuckerberg dropped out of college? Some people drop out of college and they're very talented and they didn't need it. But for the most part, going to college, finishing, getting a two-year degree or a four-year degree, puts you in the bucket of when people are, when AI is combing through resumes, you have the degree. And that does make a difference. Now, in New York City, there's a push toward credentialing, like if I can get a credentialing for HVAC and they, there's, you want to go to the right school because there are a lot of really

crummy schools out there that pretend that you'll get a credential and you don't. But if you can get a credential or join a union or which is very difficult or if there's some specific area where you're looking to and you say, because I don't want to go to college. But if you're a bright young thing as you're talking about getting that, not getting a degree puts you so behind the eight ball. That means you don't have a credential to show that you are even capable. Because you could say I'm very bright, but you might not even get in the door. Statistically speaking, if we're looking at numbers, people who go to college, as we see from the data here, they're having an easier time getting a job than people who don't go to college, but also

historically over long periods of time, they make, on average, hundreds of thousands of dollars more than people who don't go to college. College is still the answer. Is it going to college and majoring in poetry and taking on $200,000 in debt? No, not any negative about poetry. I think we're in a different world. College costs have gotten so high that to not be aware of why you're going or at least get a sense that the school has the major that I want to, I think I want to major in and people change their mind all the time. But what the job is I want to do being more practical about it, I'm absolutely all for that. But if you can go to college and you can do it inexpensively, you should definitely get that degree. What about, and you mentioned credentialing.

So a vocational school, a trade school, getting licensed to become an electrician or a welder. Absolutely. That is something more and more. If you're saying that college isn't right for you, but you know that's a field, I think that's wonderful. And I've been meeting a lot of kids in high schools, one was saying he was going to, for cars, mechanic, one was going to these specialized trade schools. Now, it's harder to get financial aid to get federal student loans for that. And that is something I wish over time that there would be more help for kids who do that in accredited programs. And there's some really great programs. I mean, something like nursing, you have to get a BA, you have to get your degree, but knowing specifically what you want to do

in a specific field is a wonderful thing. And I think that is why there's more credentialing. Because if you think I'm just not a student, and there's some people who just aren't students, but I know I would be the best HVAC person out there, then I absolutely think that's great. And you just have to make sure it's a school that actually graduates, people, that gets them jobs.

And that's important to research. What about entrepreneurship straight out of high school? Do you think people should be starting businesses, bootstrapping businesses? I think if you feel the entrepreneurial bug and you have a really strong idea, the odds are just looking at the numbers, it's not, it won't work. And so it's hard to say, like we all have dreams, but I would still say, okay, then do it 20% of your time, but go to college. Everyone can find an affordable, somewhat affordable college. A lot of people have to work and go to college. That's something that is part of the reality for many people right now.

When you're young, it can be very enticing to sort of not go to college. And I think there's been such a backlash against college that I want to make sure we don't go too much the other way. Because if you look at the numbers, it absolutely pays to go to college. Yeah. I think a lot of the backlash comes from it being oversold. Yeah. Yes. Yes.

Yeah. have gone down. I mean, the numbers of people, yes, it was sold as the answer to the American dream. And I think well-meaning, but mistaken, that people were going to school who probably shouldn't have gone to school and they probably would have been much better off making an informed decision. I think we have to educate students so much more on what are some good trades. What are the, and again, I'm seeing that much more in New York City with really good credentialing programs. and that there are many paths. There's not just one path.

And community colleges, I think, are playing a role in that and should play more and more of a role in that. If you think, you know what, I don't want to go to college, I'm not ready yet, then taking a year off or two years off, it can put you back. It could mean you just never get there. But there are people who make a decision. You know what? I'm not ready yet, but I will be ready in a year or two.

As long as you have a plan and you really stick to it, it's good to have your eyes open. And it's good to know that, yes, a college degree will make a difference. It will put you, as employers are sorting resumes, it will put you in the pile to be looked at. Yeah. I regret not taking a gap year because it does feel like that year between high school and college, right? If you can get accepted and then defer enrollment for a year, so you have your acceptance in hand. You've got your financial aid package in hand, but you just defer everything for one year. Right.

Like that is an ideal time to travel while waiting tables. Like it's an ideal time to learn the basics of adulthood. Right. So you take it more seriously. Yeah. I'm such a nerd, though. I feel like I won't. What's the data on that?

What percentage of people have that intention and then never go back and regret never going back. So maybe get the college degree and then do that for a year. Yeah, but then if you have the degree and you don't, because you're probably building on internships that you did while in college in an ideal circumstance, you're parlaying the internships from post-s sophomore year, post-junior year into an offer at the end of your senior year. Then you miss out on that opportunity. Or maybe you can say to them, I love this job. And they love. And they look. love you as an intern. I'm taking a year to do this interesting, but I will be back. And so would you consider me in the next round? And probably, as I'm sure, if somebody's really great, you want them.

And you give them a year. And I mean, I think that's why we're seeing so many, used to be when people who went to college, remember my roommate, she went right to law school, like right after. And now people take many more years in between college and professional schools. And, And that makes a lot of sense because you want to make sure are you ready, do you want to pay for it? It's so expensive. And are you ready for it? The maturity you get a few years out before. We get more and more mature as we get older.

There's a concept. But, you know, we really do. You learn more life experience teaches us a lot. One of the things that we touched on earlier was delayed homeownership. So you mentioned that the average age. of a first-time home buyer is now 40. Right. It used to be that the average age

of a first-time home buyer was 28. That was back in the 90s. With delayed homeownership, does that also translate to delay in marriage and childbearing? You know... Or does that correlate, I should say? Yeah, yeah.

I mean, I was looking at the numbers in 1996, the average age of a woman marrying was 24. in 2026, it's 28. For 1996, for men, they were getting married at 26. For men now, it's 31. So as these economic milestones are being pushed off to the future,

these life milestones are also being pushed off to the future. And there are variety of reasons. But in terms of having a first child, in 1996, it was 24. and the most recent figure I could find, 24, it was 27.5. Now, this is for women. It is interesting how we're moving along and how is that good. Is it good that people, certainly for women, they're having more time in an early career and how that impacts them before they have children.

Because we know statistically once women have children, and if they take time off from the workplace, that slows down and leads to the income, one of the reasons for the income disparity between men and women. I think that we are seeing some of those life milestones put off to later ages. Do you think that that has a relationship with homebuying and homeownership? There is a documented correlation in those two trends, but do you think that they are related? That's a really interesting question. I don't know. But I think when we think of quote-unquote, the American dream, the American dream means working hard, getting a job, maybe getting married. Or I think that historically that idea may be getting married, maybe having a child and then buying a home instead of renting. I think that historically, that idea may be getting married, maybe having a child. I think that. that was painted as the American dream. And I don't know if that really is the American dream anymore at all. I mean, we have a lot of amazing independent women who aren't getting many independent men who aren't

getting all kinds of people doing all kinds of different arrangements. So maybe it's just a sense that there aren't these set goal posts as much anymore, but I don't know. That would be a great question for a sociologist. I'd really want to know because I'm not sure. We were talking earlier about general pessimism, consumer sentiment. How much of that do you think relates to the feeling that homeownership is out of reach, especially for aspiring first-time homebuyers? I think that certainly is part of it. But I also think this notion of there was a time that the narrative was really strongly go to college, come out, get a good job. You get to move out of your parents' house soon enough. And homeownership probably is part of that, but down the line. And now when you

know it's even further down the line, I think it can be discouraging. I spoke in a classroom recently, and we were talking about credit card debt. And we said, if you owe $1,000 on a credit card and you only make the minimum monthly payments, it would take you until you're 30 years old to pay it off. And these kids, 30. I'm like the examples, you pay $10 more. You could pay it off and you'll be 22, which sounded a lot better to them. So that idea that how far off things are, in some ways, sometimes it feels so far away that you think why bother. But I think it's the reality of people feeling like, do I have enough money to get a place of my own? Even renting, rents are so expensive. I think that really impacts people and they have a ton of roommates.

A lot of us look back on those years and like, oh, that was so much fun. We had so many roommates, whether it really was fun or not. It's hard to know. But I think a lot of it adds to the sentiment that, I'm not sure if I'm getting to where I want to be at this stage. Yeah, I have wondered how much of it relates to people generally like progress. And so for the people who perceive themselves to have a life that may not be as good as their parents, if they're using the parents' experience as the relative benchmark, then it doesn't feel like progress. it feels like the opposite of progress. Where I kind of went down the data rabbit hole was I started looking at reported optimism in countries that are rapidly developing, like Thailand, Mexico, India, like places where Gen Z feels as though their life is going to be better than their parents' lives.

Interesting. Right. And you see, even though, because those places also have really high inflation, right, the, the, global, like with inflation, like obviously the pandemic, a lot of the issues that we faced are also global issues. Inflation is a global issue. But you see higher levels of optimism in countries where people feel that their lives are better relative to their parents' lives. They come from less. Yeah. Yeah. My brother was telling me a story that when he went to dental school and that was like a big deal in our family like we love dentists because my

uncle was a dentist and my brother went to dental school and we were really all so proud of him he took some exam and he's like I didn't score in the top 10% or something and he was upset and he told my parents they're like who cares you're going to be a dentist it was that idea that this is amazing yeah and I think our expectations as we go on in time like you're saying that we want you to be, I don't know, an orthodontist or whatever the next level would be. That was my brother reminded me of that story of how great our parents were, but sort of thinking about that progression. And I think you make a very profound point is, is the benchmark where we were, where our parents were, where our grandparents were, and truly what else do we have but those

benchmarks for the most part? Right. And I also think, The benchmarks have totally been shifted because how social media is in our face all the time. It was different. When you had commercials on TV, when I was a little kid in the 70s, I want this toy. I want a Betty Crocker oven. I never got a Betty Crocker oven, but who cares? Whatever. It passes.

But now it's like everything's a Betty Crocker oven in your face in your face. You know, like it really is overwhelming to see it constantly. And I think that is a. difference. So maybe we're not even looking as much. We're looking in the past for sure, but also what the fiction, whether it's fiction or real or some combination that's on social media, that could have certainly an impact too. People in those countries, though, they're seeing social media. Maybe they realize, we're not going for that. We're trying to just get one step ahead.

that comes also with education, whether it's financial literacy, education, there's no magic bullet. There's no like, yeah, someone's going to hit it big on some gambling thing once, but then statistically, okay, over five years you're going to lose. Knowing that changes the equation for you and what your expectations are. or is if you're looking at social media and like this is my dream this I could get this I could just all I have to do is you know pick the right meme stock and I'll be there that education lack of education leads to unrealistic expectations and my guess will be my guess would be I don't know what the education system or what kind of education is going on in these countries that they're sort of just beginning to get their feet wet and young people are kind of realistically trying to aspire to the next wrong. Right, right. I'm thinking about Nepal had the Gen Z riots when the Nepalese government tried to shut down social media. That was the trigger for what became just an all-out riots.

They burned down parliament. Wow. The government tried to shut down social media because there was already a bunch of antagonism because social media was how the Nepo babies, like the children of high-ranking government officials, were showing off their jet skis in Dubai. That was creating a lot of animosity. They tried to deal with the animosity by shutting down social media. Gen Z rioted.

Now we have a brand new prime minister. So interesting. We don't really know how this interconnectedness, this like constantly knowing what everyone else is. is doing evolutionarily? What does that mean? It's so, so different. That would be something, again, really interesting to ask people who study that sociologists. Like, what are we doing to ourselves if we're seeing these things that we hadn't seen before? I don't know. Right. Well, on the subject of social media, are you on there? Can we find you on there? Yes, Beth Kobliner. I'm on Instagram. I actually enjoy doing it. I've been doing some more, some of the man on the street, women on the street kind of interviews and people ask financial questions and answer them. I'm not great at it. But it can be really effective and interesting and even fun. Thank you for spending this time with us. Where else can people find you if they'd like to learn more?

Bethcopliner.com or my book, Get a Financial Life, is available in any place where books are sold. Thank you, Beth. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? Key takeaway number one, people in their 20s and 30s are not just, quote, unquote, imagining that things are harder for many milestones in life, including getting your first job out of college. and buying a home, things are more difficult. Beth has covered the decade of the 20s and 30s, people in their 20s and 30s. She has covered that for 30 years. And she says that pessimism right now is not just a mood. It's actually mathematically supported.

And the most clear proof is in the cost of housing. The age at which people buy their first home jumped from a median age of 28 to a median age of 28 to a median age of nearly 40. A major part of that is because even after you adjust for inflation, the price tag on entry-level homes has skyrocketed. And so when young people say buying a home is too expensive, what they mean is on an inflation-adjusted basis, they really do have to pay a significant amount more than their parents did for that entry-level home. And that creates a new set of challenges. The median home buying age is closer to 40 now than it was in my day, 30 years ago, it was 28 years old. And even for millennials, just 10 years ago, it was 32 years old. That has to do

a lot with housing inflation, again, which really benefited the baby boom generation and maybe even a little bit of Gen X, but this younger generation is seeing first time median home prices is $430,000 versus it was $280,000 30 years ago. That's after you adjust for inflation. That is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, the gambling boom is not really about gambling. It's about giving up. And this really relates to key takeaway number one. So what do you do when getting a job, an entry-level job, is harder than it was before, buying an entry-level home, is harder than it was before. What do you do in light of those circumstances?

For many people, the logic kind of flips, and many people go, well, you know what, I'm giving up. I'm never going to get the same thing. I'm feeling depressed. I'm feeling pessimistic. And so I'm going to take a flyer on a long shot and just put all my money in draft kings. And that's not a smart decision. It was statistically speaking, you're likely to lose. But there is a psychological reason why you do it.

You know, Beth actually points to economists who name this pattern because it reframes the conversation around risk-taking. So it's not that young people are being reckless. It's that a pervasive sense of despair changes the math they're running. There are these economists from Chicago who talked about the giving up factor. I've given up. I won't be able to buy a home. I think it'll be so far from now. I'm going to take a flyer on gambling. But there's some behavior that stems from the idea, I'm never going to afford a house. And I'm being bombarded by social media or just through my friends hearing about these markets that, heck, I could take a flyer on this. If I'm not going to save for a house, because I'll never get until I'm boredy. And so that piece of financial psychology, when people become too pessimistic, they end up taking bigger risks. That is the second key takeaway. Key takeaway number three, the easier it gets to pay, the more you overspend and the worst offender is tapping your phone.

This one hits everyone. It's not just Gen Z. Beth walks through the research on what's called Frickshinless Finance. There is a documented pattern that the further and further you get from physically handing over cash, the more likely you are to spend. Credit cards already increase the likelihood that you're going to spend more as compared to actual cash. Tapping your phone now only makes it worse. So this is a behavioral tweak that merchants want you to use. Merchants want you to spend more.

But to go the other way, the behavioral tweak that you can incorporate into your own life, if you're looking for some action that you can do. take is to stop tapping your phone, to go back to physically pulling out your wallet and taking out a physical credit card, to go back to increasing the friction in the payment process, because that will, in very subtle ways, statistically speaking, likely trigger you to spend less. I think this whole notion of frictionless finance really leads to more spending in the sense We know the studies show that when you use a credit card, you spend twice as much as then when you use cash. Of course, no one uses cash anymore. And we know now when you tap your phone, you use more money than when you use a credit card because you're getting further and further away from the actual paying for something.

Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with Beth Kobliner. Today's conversation truly was about general personal finance. We touched on financial psychology. We touched on increasing your income. But truly, today's conversation was all five of the elements of F-I-R-E. And so if you want, we've got this filloutable workbook of F-WI-R-E, and it's a workbook that walks you through financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate. state entrepreneurship. It walks you through these exercises where you can dial in how F-W-I-R-E,

how double-I-fire, applies in your life. It's a free downloadable, fill-outable, fill-in-the-blank workbook that you can use. You don't have to print it out. You can use it on your computer, and it's got fill-outable spaces. It's totally free, and it'll help you go through the thought exercise of how do I apply these personal finance lessons into my own life? It's a great thing to listen to this, but what really matters is that you take action. And that's why we create these free giveaways, because we want you to interact. We want you to fill this out. We want you to think through how you can apply this to your own life. And we want you to take action. So, to download it for free, go to Afford Anything.com slash F, I, I.

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