Millennial Money was conceived primarily as an anxiety about the subject of personal finance, a taboo almost, an experience of not really feeling qualified to talk about money. Growing quickly into a reluctance to address this feeling and fuelling a lot of short-sighted living. The funny thing about money is that it’s ubiquitous, it touches on every experience we have, it dictates our decisions and directly impacts our well-being. Whether you are incredibly wealthy, crippled by debt, or like most of us, somewhere in between; money matters.
What I quickly learned from conversations with friends, peers, family members and colleagues was that these concerns were shared and so few of us actually understood money. In fact, it seemed that most of us by some description were just winging-it, and in the case of friends and family members of a different generation, winging-it quite successfully.
For us millennials though, we haven’t really been afforded the same luxuries. A lot of us find ourselves working towards expectations and success-markers set by important people in our lives from a different generation, with its own unique opportunities and conditions. The alarming truth here is that most of us can’t actually follow the direct advice or paths of our own parents.
Millennial Money is primarily a multi-media channel that will source, curate and disseminate easily digestible content relating to personal finance. Whilst we aim to improve the financial literacy and financial wellness of all millennials in the UK, we aren’t here to sell you the steps to financial security. We want to demystify personal finance, break down the jargon and explain that everyone is qualified to join the conversation about money.
This channel is hinged on some key principles:
What really inspired us to launch Millennial Money UK is that we are the target audience. This is the content that we’d like to engage with, learn from and contribute to. In the same vein, we will allow our audience to suggest the topics they want to see and learn about. We will then produce research-based content and explain the principles as plainly as possible.
Whilst we aim to educate our audience on topics such as savings, investments, and pensions, we aren’t here to tell you that buying coffee and treating yourself to smashed avocado brunches are why you don’t have a house deposit. We’re much more interested in sharing stories about young people’s experiences with money.
Anyone can and should know about personal finance and everyone who experiences money is qualified to speak about money. Paying a phone bill, opening a bank account, being in debt are all money experiences that we will go through whether or not we have a certified accounting qualification. Pete Matthew of MeaningfulMoney describes how the “self-serving personal finance industry likes to keep things complex”, creating financial products with complex names and then charging you to own them. The money conversation doesn’t appear accessible, Matthew aptly explains, “complexity means you rely on experts, and experts cost money.” Which is why we hope to open up the money conversation and make it as welcoming and accessible as possible for everyone.
We came of age during a global financial crisis, through political austerity, and inherited an inflated housing market. It’s safe to say we haven’t been equipped to succeed in these conditions. Now in the wake of an unprecedented global pandemic that is bringing society as we know it to its knees, there is much uncertainty as we navigate this unchartered territory. One thing we know for sure is that this crisis will pass, and whatever the conditions we inherit thereafter, money will still be as prevalent an issue as it was before. Each generation has its own troubles to negotiate, and it may seem that millennials are negotiating the lion’s share of difficult global events. The Covid-19 crisis is a reset button and will leave behind a different world than the one we knew up until late 2019.
We are self-empowered, tech-enabled, collaborative, health and climate conscious generation defining our own markers for adulthood. We want to create a community at Millennial Money UK, where we can share our generationally unique experience of being a young person in the UK.
We hope you enjoy the content and contribute to the conversation.