Financial anxiety is the new diet anxiety, according to millennial advisor Chantel Bonneau.
Some people will try every new diet trend, rather than work on finding a diet that is sustainable long term. The same came be true with finances.
"I do think it's all about building a financial lifestyle that you can exist in long term and grow with, as opposed to saving so much and you hate it and you break your commitments," Bonneau told ThinkAdvisor.
New findings from Northwestern Mutual's 2017 Planning & Progress Study finds that millennials are significantly more professionally and financially anxious than other age groups.
More than half (53%) of millennials experience high to moderate anxiety about losing their job, compared to less than a third of general population (29%). The same is true for level of savings (67% millennials vs 50% general population) and income (69% millennials vs 48% general population).
The study is based off data from interviews with 2,117 American adults age 18 or older, 632 of whom were millennials age 18 to 34.
Bonneau, a Northwestern Mutual financial advisor and personal finance expert, spoke with ThinkAdvisor about how advisors can deal with millennials' financial anxiety. About 60-70% of Bonneau's clients are millennials, she says.
"One thing I hear a lot is that they have access to so much media and data and research and you can Google your heart away into a black hole of financial information," she said. "While that's all great … it does cause that anxiety and it can prevent them from actually taking action on building that plan that they know that they need."
The good news is that the survey found that nearly two-thirds of millennials (64%) recognize that they need a financial plan that anticipates up and down cycles compared with 55% of Gen X and 43% boomers.
