Where the Money Goes

Millennials (AKA Gen Y) are those born roughly between 1980-1996. They have been defining marketing trends since they came of age. Now, they are in the process of inheriting more wealth ($68 trillion) from their baby boomer parents than any generation in history.

And they are digital natives.

They’ve grown up in a world dominated by the technology companies. Virtually every one of them carries a mobile device in their pocket or purse that is capable of housing all of the world’s known information over the entire sweep of time, i.e., the millennia.

So it makes sense that one of the otherwise obscure stories that caught my eye this week is how millennials have embraced digital banking over the traditional brick and mortar banks we grew up with.

When it comes to transferring money, cashing or depositing checks, paying bills or making investments, they are rapidly transitioning to green, paperless systems that has rendered the old savings and loan of “It’s a Wonderful Life” lore to the history books.

That chapter will henceforth have to be titled “It *Was* a Wonderful Life.”

I’m still getting used to the fact that the days when I took my teenagers to our local bank branch to open their first checking account are a relic of history they won’t be repeating with their kids. When we made those trips, the “bankers” would shake my kid’s hand and say something like, “You’re a real adult now.”

They wore a certain self-satisfied smile when they said that, like they knew something the kid didn’t. I’m pretty sure it’s called “debt.”

As a kid I learned about banking in an odd way. As something of a purported math whiz, I was studied by the local bank when it was first introducing computers into its arsenal, in the early 60s. It was only a matter of time before ATMs would be replacing tellers and, well, the rest of that is history.

After studying my pattern-recognition skills for a spell, the local banker guy told my father that unfortunately, I was not “banker material, psychologically.”

Alas, perhaps that is why my personal millennials will not be inheriting very much of that $68 trillion generational wealth -- what has been dubbed as the “Greatest Transfer of Wealth of All Time.”

I spent all of my reporting career “following the money” rather than accumulating it.

Sorry, kids.

(I wrote this five years ago.)

HEADLINES:

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• Iran official says Trump is stalling talks with ‘excessive demands’ as wait for breakthrough continues (NBC)

• The War Trump Can’t End (Atlantic)

• Why Iran fears a deal today means more war tomorrow (FT)

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• Why Conservatives Are Trying to Kill the Voting Rights Act (Mother Jones)

• Why America’s rich keep getting richer (CNN)

• There are no Supreme Court vacancies, but some judges are acting like there might be (WP)

• U.S. general meets Cuban military officials at edge of Guantanamo Bay (CNBC)

• Russia’s and Ukraine’s neighbors face drone threat (Reuters)

• Trump’s name must come off of the Kennedy Center, judge rules (NPR)

• Massive Blue Origin rocket explosion gives edge to Elon Musk in space race (WP)

• LLMs believe false statements even after explicit warnings that they’re false (ArsTechnica)

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