Money Crashers: 6 Money Lessons You Can Learn From the Millennial Generation

A year ago, I found myself wondering whether Millennials were the ecofrugal generation. Although some of their habits—like preferring pump soap to bar soap, or using paper towels at meals—seem wasteful, others are clearly more frugal than those of previous generations. For instance, they're more careful with money, more wary of debt (especially credit cards), and less concerned with brand names.

All this, however, is entirely contrary to the way Millennials are usually pictured in the media. It tends to portray them as, in the words of a cover story in Time, "The Me Me Me Generation": lazy, self-absorbed, and addicted to luxury goods. The New York Times sneers that Millennials think it's "too much work" to wash a cereal bowl. Buzzfeed documents how they've been accused of killing everything from paper napkins to the American Dream.

So I decided it was time to set the record straight. My latest piece for Money Crashers outlines the ways in which this generation is actually very responsible, particularly about money. I outline several useful lessons that my generation, and those before us, could learn from Millennials about shopping, saving, investing, earning, and avoiding debt.

This is not to say that Millennials don't have money problems. They do—although many of them, like low wages and high student debt, aren't precisely of their own making. And certainly there are a few things this generation could stand to do better, like being a little bolder about investing. But on the whole, Generation Y is getting a bad rap from those who are hardly in a position to act superior, and I think it's time for it to stop. 

6 Money Lessons You Can Learn From the Millennial Generation