What's in millennials' wallets? Fewer credit cards

[ellisonz]

Boom-bust cycles leave the millennial generation more wary of credit card debt and more prone to thrifty lifestyles.

By Emily Alpert, Los Angeles Times

May 18, 2013, 6:05 p.m.

Ringed by the posh shops of Beverly Center, Tim Ratliff said no — he didn't have a credit card. He didn't need one.

"I just hear so many horror stories about people being in debt," said Ratliff, 21, who studies psychology at Ohio State University. "When you have a credit card, you feel like you have a lot of money when you don't."

Ratliff is like many young adults, emerging data show. His generation, dubbed millennials by academics and marketers, grew up during the boom and bust cycles of the U.S. economy over the last decade and a half — crises that appear to have reshaped their attitudes toward spending and debt.

---------

Some experts say their habits echo those of another generation, those who came of age during the Great Depression and forged lifelong habits of scrimping and saving — along with a suspicion of financial risk.

"Both generations had a childhood memory of wealth and then saw that wealth yanked out from under them" in or around their teenage years, said Morley Winograd, who has co-written several books on the millennial generation. Though the pain was much more severe during the Depression, "Both generations are very conservative spenders," Winograd said.

More: http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-credit-cards-millennials-20130519,0,7517203.story

[tech3149]

1. Geuss what's not in this boomers wallet

I dumped my last CC about 2005. It was the same one I had for decades but it seemed like every year or so it was another bank than I started with. The last straw was when it was BoA. They hit me with late fees for not paying a bill. The fees were about equal to the charges on that bill. Two days after I paid the bill and the charges I got the bill for the previous month. Now I can accept some simple screw up but the envelope showed that the bill was mailed well after it was due. Hours of conversation with their "customer service" was useless and they wouldn't credit my account for the charges.
I was never big on using credit but when you have an income it's good for smoothing out the flow of money. Now I have no income so I just pinch my pennies tighter than a Scotsman's wallet.