Well-Off Millennials Uneasy About Their Wealth. NewsWire

NewsWire: 11/5/21

• Millennials with a net worth of $100K or more are nearly twice as likely as Xers to feel guilty about their wealth. They’re also much more likely to be working with a financial advisor for help with financial decisions, according to a new survey. (Spectrem Group)
• NH: This report offers some interesting findings on the differences between Gen-X and Millennial investors. For one, Millennials are much more likely than Xers to say that they’re interested in new types of investing, such as cryptocurrency and NFTs. This mirrors a new Bankrate survey that reported nearly half of Millennials (49%) say they’d be comfortable investing in crypto, compared to 37% of Xers.
• Millennials also have different attitudes towards financial advisors. Both generations are comfortable with using an advisor and believe that investment management is the most important service an advisor can provide. But Millennials are more likely than Xers to say that they also rely on their advisor for help with making general financial decisions (82% vs. 65%). They're seeking step-by-step tutorials for life skills like budgeting and saving that earlier generations just figured they'd pick up along the way. Xers, in contrast, seek advisors for help with specific issues, such as retirement planning and tax planning.
• Given these differences, it makes sense that Millennials are more likely to consider a banker or an accountant their primary advisor, while Xers grant that label to independent financial planners, investment managers, and full-service brokers.
• Those surveyed all have a net worth of $100K or more. But Millennials are nearly twice as likely as Xers say they feel guilty about their wealth. Why? The report speculates that it’s because Millennials are much more concerned about income inequality: 76% think it’s a big problem, which drops to 52% among Xers.
• I’d also wager that among well-off Millennials, there’s a higher likelihood that more of their wealth was inherited rather than earned. As I noted in a recent piece (see "Xer Wealth Still Lags Way Behind"), the rising affluence of older adults has made inheritance an increasingly important source of wealth gains among younger households. Millennials are inheriting inequality to a much greater degree than the generations before them.