Gen Y broke

Are 20 and 30 somethings in a financial mess?

Emma Johnson writes "Is it because we're dumb, arrogant or simply uneducated?"

Why Gen Y is broke

[S]tats indicate our generation's financial literacy is abysmal, with personal finances to match. Only 52% of high school seniors passed a recent national financial literacy test, meaning adults entering the work force do not know enough about basic budgeting, interest rates or taxes to make sound decisions for their own lives.
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Bob Manning, author of "Credit Card Nation" and professor of consumer financial services at Rochester Institute of Technology, says these problems are compounded by powerful cultural forces...,
"This generation feels that somehow or another they're going to figure out some technological advancement that's going to get them out of their financial troubles and outsmart the market," says Manning,

* The median credit-card debt of low- and middle-income people aged 18 to 34 is $8,200.
* The average college debt for recent grads is more than $20,000 and rising.
* People between the ages of 25 and 34 make up 22.7% of all U.S. bankruptcies (but just 14% of the population at large), according to a recent report.

Because it is not instinctual, financial literacy is a life skill that must be taught and developed with each generation.